While governments and researchers often focus on the opening of data through open data infrastructures, the adoption and use of open data infrastructures has received less attention, despite the fact that this use should result in the envisioned benefits. This study aims to examine to which extent and by which factors the acceptance and use of open data infrastructures by researchers can be influenced. For this purpose we use an integrated model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the two-stage Expectation Confirmation Theory of Information Systems continuance (ECT). Our research confirms the hypothesis that Perceived Usefulness (PU), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI) and Trust (T) in the pre-usage stage can be used to predict PU, EE, SI and T in the post-usage stage, which may subsequently influence the acceptance and use of open data infrastructures. Nevertheless, not all of our findings show support for applying the combined UTAUT-ECT model, and the findings suggest that the model needs to be specified and adapted for the domain of open data. We recommend future research to develop models for the acceptance and use of technologies that are more specific to the context of open data.

This paper is related to the H2020 VRE4EIC project (www.vre4eic.eu). The authors would like to thank their colleagues of this project for their input for this paper, although the views expressed are the views of the authors and not necessarily of the project.