Assessing the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators on smart green IT device use: Reference group perspectives

•We investigate the determinants of behavior intention to use green IT device.•We tried to understand motivation theory in explaining the causal relationship between motivation aspects and perceived usefulness.•We emphasized on how the reference group moderates the motivations and perceived usefulness relationship.•Intrinsic motivation (perceived enjoyment) is significantly related to the perceived usefulness.•Extrinsic motivation (saving money, legislative pressure) is strongly related to the perceived usefulness.

In this study, we investigated the determinants of perceived usefulness of smart green information technology (IT) device in reducing electricity consumption. Though there are many determinants of intention to use a technology, perceived usefulness is a key determinant of continuance intention. We used motivation theory to explain the causal relationship between motivational variables and perceived usefulness. By using reference group theory, we emphasized how a reference group moderates the relationship between motivations and the perceived usefulness of smart green IT device. We used partial least squares (PLS) regression for analysis and found that intrinsic motivations (perceived enjoyment) significantly relate to the perceived usefulness of smart green IT device. We also found that extrinsic motivations (saving money and legislative pressure) strongly relate to the perceived usefulness of this device. In summary, we found that perceived usefulness strongly impacts the continued use of a smart green IT device and that a reference group partially moderates the independent variables and moderator variables.