Evaluating correlates of GIS adoption success and the decision process of GIS acquisition

The intent of this research was to gather initial informations on specific interpersonal, organizational, and institutional variables that affect an organization's decision to acquire, implement, and use GIS. We selected local governments as an appropriate social system of interest for this initial investigation. One goal was to explore whether factors determined as critical to the adoption of innovations in other fields were also deemed significant by adopters in the GIS field. Another was to examine whether factors important in the acquisition of GIS are also predictive of the successs of GIS within an organization over time. A further goal was to develop various means for evaluating the process of adoption. A final goal was to demonstrate the application of quantitative methods within the framework of a logically consistent progression of methods for investigating GIS adoption variables. -Authors