Jd. Mckeen et al., THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN USER PARTICIPATION AND USER SATISFACTION - AN INVESTIGATION OF 4 CONTINGENCY FACTORS, Management information systems quarterly, 18(4), 1994, pp. 427-451
User participation has been widely touted by the MIS community as a me
ans to improve user satisfaction within systems development. This clai
m, however, has not been consistently substantiated in the empirical l
iterature. In seeking to explain such equivocal results, the effects o
f four contingency factors-task complexity, system complexity, user in
fluence, and user-developer communication-on the relationship between
user participation and user satisfaction were investigated. As suggest
ed in the literature, this research tests hypotheses that these specif
ic contingency factors should aid in identifying situations where user
participation would have a strong relationship with satisfaction. Ana
lysis of 151 independent systems development projects in eight differe
nt organizations indicated that user participation has a direct relati
onship with user satisfaction. In addition, the four contingency facto
rs were found to play key roles on this relationship. Task complexity
and system complexity proved to be pure moderators. That is, the stren
gth of the participation-satisfaction relationship depended on the lev
el of these factors. In projects where there was a high level of task
complexity or system complexity, the relationship between user partici
pation and user satisfaction was significantly stronger than in projec
ts where task complexity or system complexity was low. User influence
and user-developer communication were shown to be independent predicto
rs of user satisfaction. That is, user influence, or user-developer co
mmunication, was positively related to user satisfaction regardless of
the level of participation. The results help explain the relationship
between user participation and user satisfaction by suggesting the na
ture of the relationship under different sets of conditions. The impli
cations are relevant to systems developers and to academicians seeking
to explain how, when, why, and where user participation is needed.