Adoption of Disruptive Technologies : Exploratory research into consumer attitude formation regarding Bitcoin adoption

Abstract: Attitudes are based on motivations and are formed in anticipation that the person will handle similar information at a later date. Attitudes are, therefore, necessary collections of pre-determined behavioral intents toward certain information (Solomon et al., 2016). Attitudes and their underlying functions form using a hierarchical structure where certain elements hold the primacy of effect over the remainder. These elements affect, behavior, and cognition as presented by Solomon and colleagues (Solomon et al., 2016). This study aims to explore how investors form attitudes towards the adoption of unfamiliar attitude objects, specifically when confronted with communications regarding Bitcoin adoption. The reason for this study is threefold; firstly, congruent academia has only conducted temperature checks on already established attitudes towards Bitcoin from diverse crowds in a spread of non-western cultures (Gagarina et al., 2019; Anser et al., 2020). Secondly, the aforementioned studies incorporated loosely defined sample groups. Understanding technology adoption, following the theories of Rogers (1995), requires that inaugural research is done on those who are most likely to adopt the technology. Lastly, congruent research has yet to tackle attitude formation on Bitcoin as an asset. Established research all commit to researching already established attitudes on a less niched sample (Gagarina et al., 2019; Yoo et al., 2020). The conclusion of said studies found thematic, contextual antecedents to why certain participants had certain attitudes. However, these studies do not explore the underlying hierarchy or function of said attitudes. To fill such a gap, a study following a deductive, exploratory nature was developed. Through thematic coding of qualitative interviews, this study contributes to the existing literature in two aspects: first, active Swedish investors rely on affective reasoning when faced with this particular unfamiliar attitude object. Second, such affective reasoning is most likely a result of participants defaulting to the grouping of information within the knowledge function, as no cognitive baseline (in the form of understanding price developments in Bitcoin) could be established. The general attitude formation followed an affective dominant, low-involvement hierarchy created through the knowledge function.