Explore success factors that impact artificial intelligence adoption on telecom industry in China

As the core driving force of the new round of informatization development and industrial revolution, the disruptive achievements of artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly and comprehensively infiltrating into various fields of human activities. Although technologies and applications of AI have been widely studied and factors that affect AI adoption are identified in existing literature, the impact of success factors on AI adoption remains unknown. Accordingly, this paper proposes a framework to explore the impacts of success factors on AI adoption in telecom industry by integrating the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. Particularly, this framework consists of factors regarding external environment, organizational capabilities, and innovation attributes of AI. The framework is empirically tested with data collected by surveying telecom companies in China. Structural equation modeling is applied to analyze the data. The study provides support for firms’ decision-making and resource allocation regarding AI adoption.