I. INTRODUCTIONRadio frequency identification (RFID) technology has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. RFID has the potential to serve as a foundational technology for ubiquitous services where objects and people can be identified automatically via attached RFID tags [35]. However, the promise of RFID technology comes with issues that must be addressed for it to achieve widespread consumer acceptance. For example, the use of RFID technology by retailers and government agencies raises questions about the potential violation of personal information privacy [35] and potential threats to the security of personal information. information [40]. Motivated by these issues, this study proposes and validates a theoretical model of acceptance of RFID technology by consumers. The proposed model is developed based on existing literature and provides a theoretical framework of the critical factors that determine consumer acceptance of RFID technology. A contribution of this article involves examination of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Manuscript received September 1, 2006; revised June 27, 2007. Revision of this manuscript was organized by Department Editor A. Chakrabarti. The authors are with the Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, College of Business Administration, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76201 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]).Digital object identifier 10.1109/TEM.2008.919728 and contextualize it to RFID technology. This contextualization is carried out with the aim of extending the TAM to the acceptance of a specific technology: RFID technology. This study is the first in the RFID literature to use and contextualize TAM to explain a technology to the consumer in the middle of paper technology. Perceived usefulness is defined as the extent to which individuals believe their job performance is improved by the use of a particular technology. Perceived ease of use is defined as the extent to which an individual believes that using a particular system requires no effort. TAM also posits that perceived ease of use is a predictor of perceived usefulness. Researchers have used and validated TAM for use with many types of technology (51). Some studies suggest that TAM successfully predicts an individual's acceptance of various business information technologies [1], [8], [12], [39]. According to Straub et al. [42], TAM can be applied to all technologies, people, contexts and times. Recently, TAM has proven itself in e-commerce [50], [51] and mobile services [46]. This study extends TAM to the study of consumer acceptance of RFID technology..