When Acceptance Is Not a Choice: The Parallel-System Trap and the Limits of Technology Acceptance Theory in Thai Government Electronic Document Systems

Abstract

Thai research on electronic document management systems in government agencies is dominated by technology acceptance frameworks, above all the Technology Acceptance Model and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, which are used to explain personnel's intention to use such systems. This academic article argues that these frameworks have become poorly suited to their object. Both were built to explain adoption decisions where the user may decline, and the Unified Theory explicitly treats voluntariness of use as a moderator. Since the fourth amendment to the Office of the Prime Minister Regulation on Correspondence B.E. 2564 and the entry into force of the Act on Electronic Performance of Official Functions B.E. 2565, using the electronic channel is no longer a choice available to Thai officials but a legal duty. Where use is mandatory, behavioural intention ceases to discriminate between agencies, and measuring it produces uniformly high and uninformative scores. The article proposes that the analytically meaningful variable is instead the quality of use, and identifies a specific failure mode which it names the parallel-system trap: the agency satisfies the legal requirement by registering documents electronically while continuing to circulate paper alongside, so that total workload rises rather than falls, performance expectancy is depressed by direct experience, and paper becomes further entrenched. The article proposes a four-rung ladder of use and argues that the decisive intervention is the removal of the paper step, not the improvement of attitudes.