This paper investigates how citizens' uncertainty in e-government services can be managed. First, we draw from uncertainty reduction theory, and propose that transparency and trust are two key means of reducing citizens' uncertainty in e-government services. Second, we identify two key sets of relevant drivers of e-government service use: (1) information quality characteristics, i.e., accuracy and completeness; and (2) channel characteristics, i.e., convenience and personalization. We propose that the means of uncertainty reduction, information quality characteristics, and channel characteristics are interrelated factors that jointly influence citizens' intentions to use e-government. We tested our model with 4,430 Hong Kong citizens' reactions to two e-government services: government websites and online appointment booking. Our results show that the information quality and channel characteristics predict citizens' intentions to use e-government. Furthermore, transparency and trust mediate as well as moderate the effects of information quality and channel characteristics on intentions. A follow-up survey found that citizens' intentions predict use and ultimately, citizens' satisfaction.
This paper discusses the value of context in theory development in information systems (IS) research. We examine how prior research has incorporated context in theorizing and develop a framework to classify existing approaches to contextualization. In addition, we expound on a decomposition approach to contextualization and put forth a set of guidelines for developing context-specific models. We illustrate the application of the guidelines by constructing and comparing various context-specific variations of the technology acceptance model (TAM)—i.e., the decomposed TAM that incorporates interaction effects between context-specific factors, the extended TAM with context-specific antecedents, and the integrated TAM that incorporates mediated moderation and moderated mediation effects of context-specific factors. We tested the models on 972 individuals in two technology usage contexts: a digital library and an agile Web portal. The results show that the decomposed TAM provides a better understanding of the contexts by revealing the direct and interaction effects of context-specific factors on behavioral intention that are not mediated by the TAM constructs of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. This work contributes to the ongoing discussion about the importance of context in theory development and provides guidance for context-specific theorizing in IS research.
This paper examines the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) service innovation and its complementary strategies on brand equity and customer loyalty toward ICT service providers. We draw from research on brand equity and customer loyalty, ICT innovation management, and strategy complementarity to propose a model that includes new constructs representing ICT service innovation, i.e., service leadership, and its two complementary strategies, i.e., customization-personalization control and technology leadership, and how their interactions influence customer loyalty through customer-based brand equity. We test our model using data from an online survey of 1,210 customers of mobile data services. The results show that service leadership and customization-personalization control have significant direct impacts on ICT service providers' brand equity. Moreover, when either the level of technology leadership or the level of customization-personalization control is high, the impact of service leadership on brand equity is enhanced. In turn, brand equity has significant impacts on consumers' affective loyalty and conative loyalty, but not on cognitive loyalty. Our study contributes to the literature on service management and service science, and in particular to the management of ICT service innovation in a consumer technology market.
Internet privacy concerns (IPC) is an area of study that is receiving increased attention due to the huge amount of personal information being gathered, stored, transmitted, and published on the Internet. While there is an emerging literature on IPC, there is limited agreement about its conceptualization in terms of its key dimensions and its factor structure. Based on the multidimensional developmental theory and a review of the prior literature, we identify alternative conceptualizations of IPC. We examine the various conceptualizations of IPC with four online surveys involving nearly 4,000 Internet users. As a baseline, study 1 compares the integrated conceptualization of IPC to two existing conceptualizations in the literature. While the results provide support for the integrated conceptualization, the second-order factor model does not outperform the correlated first-order factor model. Study 2 replicates the study on a different sample and confirms the results of study 1. We also investigate whether the prior results are affected by the different perspectives adopted in the wording of items in the original instruments. In study 3, we find that focusing on one's concern for website behavior (rather than one's expectation of website behavior) and adopting a consistent perspective in the wording of the items help to improve the validity of the factor structure. We then examine the hypothesized third-order conceptualizations of IPC through a number of alternative higher-order models. The empirical results confirm that, in general, the third-order conceptualizations of IPC outperform their lower-order alternatives. In addition, the conceptualization of IPC that has the best fit with the data contains a third-order general IPC factor, two second-order factors of interaction management and information management, and six first-order factors (i.e., collection, secondary usage, errors, improper access, control, and awareness).Study 4 cross-validates the results with another data set and examines IPC within the context of a nomological network. The results confirm that the third-order conceptualization of IPC has nomological validity, and it is a significant determinant of both trusting beliefs and risk beliefs. Our research helps to resolve inconsistencies in the key underlying dimensions of IPC, the factor structure of IPC, and the wording of the original items in prior instruments of IPC. Finally, we discuss the implications of this research
This paper extends the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to study acceptance and use of technology in a consumer context. Our proposed UTAUT2 incorporates three constructs into UTAUT:hedonic motivation, price value, and habit. Individual differences-namely, age, gender, and experience-are hypohthesized to moderate the effects of these constructs on behavioral intention and technology use. Result from a two-stage online survey, with technology use data collected four months after the first survey, of 1,512mobile Internet consumers supported our model. Compared to UTAUT, the extensions proposed in UTAUT2produced a substantial improvement in the variance explained in behavioral intention (56 percent to 74percent) and technology use (40 percent to 52 percent). The theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed.
The proliferation of information on the Internet poses a significant challenge on humans' limited attentional resources. To attract online users' attention, various kinds of animation are widely used on websites. Despite the ubiquitous use of animation, there is an inadequate understanding of its effect on attention. Focusing on flash animation, this study examines its effects on online users' performance and perceptions in both task-relevant and task-irrelevant information search contexts by drawing on the visual search literature and two theories from cognitive psychology. In the task-relevant context, flash is applied on the search target; while in the task-irrelevant context, flash is applied on a nontarget item. The results of this study confirm that flash does attract users' attention and facilitates quicker location of the flashed target item in tightly packed screen displays. However, there is no evidence that attracting attention increases recall of the flashed item, as is generally presumed in practice, and may even decrease the overall recall. One explanation is that when users have to use their limited attentional resources on suppressing the distraction of flash, they will have less mental resources to process information. Moreover, the results suggest that processing information about an item depends not only on the attention it attracts per se, but also on the attention that other items on the same screen attract. While flashing an item may not increase the recall of that item, it can reduce the recall of other items (especially the nontarget items) on the screen. Finally, flash has negative effects on users' focused attention and attitude towards using the website. These results have implications for website interface design, online product promotion, online advertising, and multimedia training systems, among others.
A feature central to the success of e-commerce Web sites is the design of an effective interface to present product information. However, the suitability of the prevalent information formats in supporting various online shopping tasks is not known. Using the cognitive fit theory as the theoretical framework, we developed a research model to investigate the fit between information format and shopping task, and examine its influence on consumers' online shopping performance and perceptions of shopping experience. The competition for attention theory from the marketing literature and the scanpath theory from vision research were employed to support the analyses. An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of two types of information formats (list versus matrix) in the context of two types of shopping tasks (searching versus browsing). The results show that when there is a match between the information format and the shopping task, consumers can search the information space more efficiently and have better recall of product information. Specifically, the list format better supports browsing tasks, and the matrix format facilitates searching tasks. However, a match between the information format and the shopping task has no effect on cognitive effort or attitude toward using the Web site. Overall, this research supports the application of the cognitive fit theory to the study of Web interface design. It also demonstrates the value in integrating findings from cognitive science and vision research to understand the processes involved. As the information format has been shown to affect consumers' online shopping behavior, even when the information content is held constant, the practical implications for Web site designers include providing both types of information format on their Web sites and matching the appropriate information format to the individual consumer's task.
Theft of software and other intellectual property has become one of the most visible problems in computing today. This paper details the development and empirical validation of a model of software piracy by individuals in the workplace. The model was developed from the results of prior research into software piracy, and the reference disciplines of the theory of planned behavior, expected utility theory, and deterrence theory. A survey of 201 respondents was used to test the model. The results indicate that individual attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are significant precursors to the intention to illegally copy software. In addition, punishment severity, punishment certainty, and software cost have direct effects on the individual's attitude toward software piracy, whereas punishment certainty has a significant effect on perceived behavioral control. Consequently, strategies to reduce software piracy should focus on these factors. The results add to a growing stream of information systems research into illegal software copying behavior and have significant implications for organizations and industry groups aiming to reduce software piracy.
Our existing knowledge of business process reengineering (BPR) is mainly derived from the experiences of private sector organizations, which have fundamentally different characteristics from public organizations. This paper represents a first step in understanding how BPR may be different in public organizations. Drawing on the public administration literature, it examines the differences between public and private organizations and their implications for BPR. Following that, it examines the BPR experience of a large public organization through an intensive case study. The case analysis shows that while there are similarities in the BPR experiences of public and private organizations, there are also notable differences. In this specific case, there were social and political pressures to reengineer, press publicity to promote BPR, a reengineering team comprised mainly of neutral staff, performance benchmarks adapted from the private sector, high-level approval for redesigned processes, and a pilot site implementation to secure further funding. It concludes with lessons learned for implementing BPR in public organizations.
Based on theories from the technological innovation literature, this study develops an integrated model of information systems (IS) adoption in small businesses. The model specifies contextual variables such as decision-maker characteristics, IS characteristics, organizational characteristics, and environmental characteristics as primary determinants of IS adoption in small businesses. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 166 small businesses. Data analysis shows that small businesses with certain CEO characteristics (innovativeness and level of IS knowledge), innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity of IS), and organizational characteristics (business size and level of employees' IS knowledge) are more likely to adopt IS. While CEO and innovation characteristics are important determinants of the decision to adopt, they do not affect the extent of IS adoption. The extent of IS adoption is mainly determined by organizational characteristics. Finally, the environmental characteristic of competition has no direct effect on small business adoption of IS.
There is a lack of both theoretical and empirical research on the process of ethical decision making in the domain of information systems (IS). As a step in this direction, the authors describe and test a general ethical decision-making theory developed in the marketing discipline. They conducted a study on the ethical decision-making process of 243 entry-level IS professionals with regard to softlifting--that is, illegal copying of software for personal use. The results show support for the applicability of the tested ethical decision-making theory to the domain of IS, specifically in the context of softlifting. Entry-level IS professionals were found to use both deontological and teleological evaluations to arrive at an ethical judgment of a moral issue. Subsequently, moral intention to pursue softlifting behavior is primarily determined by the ethical judgment. These findings have implications for both research and practice.
Top management support is a key recurrent factor critical for effective information systems (IS) implementation. However, the role of top management support may not be as critical as external IS expertise, in the form of consultants and vendors, in small business IS implementation due to the unique characteristics of small businesses. This paper describes an empirical study of the relative importance of top management support and external IS expertise on IS effectiveness in 114 small businesses. Partial least squares (PLS) was used for statistical testing. The results show that top management support is not as important as effective external IS expertise in small business IS implementation. While top management support is essential for IS effectiveness, high quality external IS expertise is even more critical for small businesses operating in an environment of resource poverty. These findings call for more research efforts to be directed at selecting and engaging high quality external IS expertise for IS implementation in small businesses.
Most small businesses lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal computer expertise. Hence, small businesses are more dependent on external expertise such as consultants and vendors than are larger businesses. This paper compares the information systems (IS) effectiveness of a group of small businesses that engage separate consultants and vendors (consultant-vendor approach) with that of another group of small businesses that engage vendors who also provide consultancy service (vendor-only approach). The results show that small businesses that adopt the vendor-only approach have more effective information systems than small businesses that adopt the consultant-vendor approach. Further, the vendor-only approach results in the same level of consultant effectiveness and a better level of vendor support for small businesses compared with the consultant-vendor approach. The relationship between vendor and other parties in the IS implementation project is found to be an important predictor of IS effectiveness.