Hello everybody,
i've just read an article by Venkatesh et al. about the development of UTAUT 2 (Consumer Acceptance and Use of Information Technology: Extending the Unified Theory of Accepatnce and Use of Technology) in MIS Quarterly. They used SmartPls for calculating the results.
One methodical question poped up while reading this work and I hope that someone can answer it here.
They computed one R² value excluding and one (higher) R² value including indirect effects and referred a lot to the latter R² in their text. In my opinion this approach ist questionable because you have to model indirect effects after computing the direct effects of a structural model. I think the higher R²can be explained because you have to model the moderating variable as a direct effect before creating a moderating effect but I think you can't use it.
To sum it up a bit: Does including indirect effects results in a higher R²? -> I don't think so. Am I wrong and if so, can someone explain it to me?
Best regards
Tobias