An Empirical Investigation on the Determinants of Smart Water Grid Adoption

Smart water management is emerging as a new paradigm. Smart water management combines existing water management techniques with cutting-edge IT to enable more sustainable water management. Developed countries have incorporated IT in a broad range of policies governing areas of Social Overhead Capital (SOC), ranging from water management to electricity, transportation, and the environment. As an IT powerhouse, Korea has an advantage in promoting smart water management, but the technologies in this particular field have not kept pace with those in more advanced countries. The Korean government has made a number of attempts to incorporate state-of-the-art IT and establish smart SOC, which is expected to greatly enhance infrastructure efficiency and functions. Water management has been included in SOC initiatives, and the deployment of a "Smart Water Grid" is underway. As a next-generation intelligent water management system, the Smart Water Grid has been well received around the world due to its potential to address dire water shortage problems. However, in Korea, studies on a Smart Water Grid are still at a nascent stage. This study aimed to lay the groundwork for the successful introduction of a new Smart Water Grid system by identifying factors that promote or restrict the adoption of innovative technology, analyze how various factors affect the intention to adopt a Smart Water Grid, and attempt to find a causal relationship between the identified factors and the intention to adopt the new IT system.