Abstract
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly transforming the design industry, offering new capabilities to enhance creativity and streamline design processes. However, there is still limited understanding of how design professionals in different countries and technological environments view and use these tools, especially given the uneven global development of GenAI. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology framework (UTAUT), this study aims to investigate the factors that influence the adoption of GenAI tools among design professionals in China and the United Kingdom (UK). Overall, 607 responses (233 from China and 374 from the UK) were collected from a cross-national survey. The results showed that in both China and the UK, performance expectations, social influence, and resistance bias had a strong effect on designers’ intentions to use GenAI tools. Trust was important in the UK but not in China, while access to technology and related resources was a stronger moderating factor in China. These findings highlight the role of technological contexts in shaping how professionals adopt GenAI in design work. By providing insights into these differences, this study contributes to the understanding of how GenAI can be adopted more effectively by design professionals in different regions and how these differences may influence the future global competitive landscape of GenAI in design.
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Data availability
The survey instrument and variable codebook detailing variable definitions, coding schemes, and data transformations are provided as Supplementary Materials accompanying this article. The raw survey data are not publicly available because they contain sensitive information related to participants’ professional roles and organisational contexts (including company location and work type), which creates a risk of indirect identification and would breach participant confidentiality agreements. An anonymised, processed dataset supporting the findings of this study is archived on the Open Science Framework and is available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author, subject to ethical approval and applicable data protection requirements.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Research Centre for Future (Caring) Mobility (P0042701), University's Strategic Importance Project (P0036851), SD/COMP Joint Research Scheme (P0042739), Collaborative Research with World-leading Research Groups (P0039528) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62302263). During the preparation of this work, the authors only used ChatGPT 4.0 to improve language readability and proofreading. No AI was used to generate any content or conduct any part of the research.
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Conceptualisation, CF and PVK; Data curation, MYZ and CF; Methodology, CF, PVK and SW; Validation, CF and HL; Software, MYZ; Writing—original draft preparation, CF, MYZ and PVK; Writing—review and editing, CF, PVK, HL and SW; Supervision, WL and SW; Funding acquisition, SW.
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All procedures in this study involving human participants were conducted in accordance with institutional and national ethical standards and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. Ethical approval for this study was obtained prior to data collection from the Ethical Review Board of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Reference No. HSEARS20240315013; approval date: 25 March 2024). The approval covered the full study protocol and its scope. All recruitment procedures, informed consent processes, and data collection activities were centrally designed and administered by the research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The study was conducted under the auspices of a single institution and did not involve site-based data collection, local institutional collaborators, or local investigators in the host countries. In accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, the study protocol, including the survey instrument, recruitment strategy, informed consent procedures, and data management plan, was reviewed and approved by the above-named ethics committee before the research commenced. All participants provided informed consent prior to participation.
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Fang, C., Zhang, M., Khiatani, P.V. et al. A comparative analysis of generative AI adoption among design professionals in China and the United Kingdom: a UTAUT perspective. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06796-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06796-x


