A Study on the User Acceptance Model of Mass Collective Intelligence

대중 집단지성의 사용자 수용 모형에 관한 연구

As web technologies evolve and so-called Web 2.0 technologies appear, collective intelligence is being applied in widespread areas. In general, mass collective intelligence like Wikipedia is created, revised, and managed by anonymous participants in an uncontrolled system. Thus, the knowledge provided by mass collective intelligence may be distorted, and may not be true, which may affect the user acceptance behavior. However, there have been few academic studies that analyzed the factors that affect user acceptance of mass collective intelligence, and their relationships. Under this academic background, we develop a model to examine how mass collective intelligence is accepted by users. The theoretical model is validated through an online survey of the Wikipedia users from three universities in Korea. The results reveal that the users will have positive attitude towards adopting mass collective knowledge when they perceive that the knowledge from mass collective intelligence is useful. We also find that the perceived usefulness of the knowledge is affected by perceived knowledge quality and trust in knowledge contributors. The results also suggest that perceived knowledge quality is determined by perceived level of collaboration, perceived objectivity, and recipient expertise, whereas trust in knowledge contributors is determined by natural propensity to trust and perceived objectivity. Theoretical and practical implications about mass collective knowledge are discussed.