Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use of ChatGPT and their Relationship with Purchase Intentions among Young Professionals in UAE

Abstract

Consumers and workers today are more often able to get information and understand it in the workplace, due to the rapid development of AI (artificial intelligence) and generative applications like ChatGPT. Despite its academic interest, there has been a paucity of empirical studies on the direct impact of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) of ChatGPT on purchase intention (PI) especially for young professionals in the UAE, characterized by high penetration of AI and UAE's bold national AI strategy. This paper explored how ChatGPT’s PU, PEOU and purchase intention relate within the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). The study used a quantitative research design with an online survey conducted for young professionals (209 respondents) in the UAE.. Data were analysed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis conducted in IBM SPSS Statistics 27. Results indicated that perceived usefulness was a statistically significant positive predictor of purchase intention (β = .589, p < .001), whereas perceived ease of use was not a significant direct predictor (β = .093, p = .260). The two constructs together accounted for 44.1% of variance in purchase intention (R² = .441). The findings extend TAM to a consumer behaviour context in the UAE and carry managerial implications for marketers, developers and policymakers of AI platforms. Future research should add variables such as trust and perceived risk and use longitudinal designs to improve causal inference.