From Aspiration to Reality: Understanding the Psychological Barriers to AI Adoption in Enterprise Management

Abstract

A significant "aspiration-reality" gap universally exists in enterprise AI adoption processes, with a substantial disparity between management's technology empowerment vision and frontline employees' actual adoption willingness. This study aims to explain the formation mechanism of this phenomenon from a psychological barriers perspective. The study employed a cross-sectional survey design to collect valid samples from three enterprises at different stages of AI application, examining through structural equation modeling and multi-group comparison analysis the influence mechanisms of four psychological barrier dimensions, including perceived threat, technology anxiety, job insecurity, and perceived complexity, on AI adoption intention. Research findings reveal that perceived threat constitutes the strongest psychological barrier impeding AI adoption, with job insecurity playing a partial mediation role between perceived threat and adoption intention, uncovering the complete psychological transmission chain from threat cognition to affective response to behavioral intention, and the influence intensity of psychological barriers exhibits significant heterogeneity across different enterprise sizes, industry types, and employee AI experience backgrounds. The four-dimensional integrated model constructed by this study addresses the fragmentation in existing research and deepens the application of innovation resistance theory in enterprise AI contexts. The study provides enterprise managers with a strategic path shifting from pure technology promotion to dual-wheel driving of technology and psychology, effectively alleviating employee psychological barriers through implementing differentiated psychological intervention measures tailored to different contexts, facilitating the transformation of AI technology from management vision to practical application.