Hock Chuan Chan

A balanced thinking-feelings model of information systems continuance

Most studies on technology adoption and usage continuance examine cognitive factors, leaving affective factors or the feelings of users relatively unexplored. In contrast, researchers in the diverse fields of human-computer interaction, medicine, psychology and marketing have begun to note the importance of feelings in understanding and predicting human behavior. Feelings are anticipated to be essential particularly in the context of modern applications, such as mobile Internet (M-Internet) services. Users of modern technology are not simply technology users but also service consumers and may consider both cognitive and emotional benefits. Drawing upon multidisciplinary findings, this study proposes a balanced thinking-feelings model of IS continuance. In the process of developing this model, the concepts of attitude, thinking and feelings are further articulated, defined and distinguished. The balanced thinking-feelings model is validated in a survey of M-Internet service users. To encourage continuance, companies should consider ways to enhance both cognitive and emotional benefits for users. The model could be also useful for balanced understanding of other behaviors.

Conceptualizing and Testing a Social Cognitive Model of the Digital Divide

The digital divide has loomed as a public policy issue for over a decade. Yet, a theoretical account for the effects of the digital divide is currently lacking. This study examines three levels of the digital divide. The digital access divide (the first-level digital divide) is the inequality of access to information technology (IT) in homes and schools. The digital capability divide (the second-level digital divide) is the inequality of the capability to exploit IT arising from the first-level digital divide and other contextual factors. The digital outcome divide (the third-level digital divide) is the inequality of outcomes (e.g., learning and productivity) of exploiting IT arising from the second-level digital divide and other contextual factors. Drawing on social cognitive theory and computer self-efficacy literature, we developed a model to show how the digital access divide affects the digital capability divide and the digital outcome divide among students. The digital access divide focuses on computer ownership and usage in homes and schools. The digital capability divide and the digital outcome divide focus on computer self-efficacy and learning outcomes, respectively. This model was tested using data collected from over 4,000 students in Singapore. The results generate insights into the relationships among the three levels of the digital divide and provide a theoretical account for the effects of the digital divide. While school computing environments help to increase computer self-efficacy for all students, these factors do not eliminate knowledge the gap between students with and without home computers. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

User involvement and user satisfaction with information-seeking activity

This paper presents the result of an empirical study that investigates user involvement and user satisfaction in the context of information-seeking activity. This study adopts the definition of user involvement as the psychological state of the importance and personal relevance that users attach to a given system. Following Celsi and Olson, intrinsic and situational motivators were considered as two antecedents of user involvement. These two types of motivator were treated as formative exogenous variables, while user involvement and user satisfaction were treated as reflective mediating endogenous variable and final endogenous variable, respectively. Five hypotheses were proposed, and all were supported by the data from a laboratory experiment. This paper also reports two other interesting findings. First, intrinsic motivators have a stronger positive effect on user involvement than situational motivators have. Second, situational motivators have a stronger positive effect on user satisfaction than intrinsic motivators have. The discussion part explains these interesting findings.

What Motivates People to Purchase Digital Items on Virtual Community Websites? The Desire for Online Self-Presentation

The sale of digital items, such as avatars and decorative objects, is becoming an important source of revenue for virtual community (VC) websites. However, some websites are unable to leverage this source of revenue, and there is a corresponding lack of understanding about what motivates people to purchase digital items in VCs. To explain the phenomenon, we develop a model based on the theory of self-presentation. The model proposes that the desire for online self-presentation is a key driver for such purchases. We also hypothesize that the social influence factors of online self-presentation norms and VC involvement as well as personal control in the form of online presentation self-efficacy are antecedents of the desire for online self-presentation. The model was validated by using survey data collected from Cyworld (N=217) and Habbo (N=197), two online social network communities that have been pioneers in the sale of digital items. This work contributes to our understanding of the purchase of digital items by extending the theory of self-presentation and adds to the broader line of research on online identity. It also lends insights into how VC providers can tap this source of revenue.

A study on Singaporean women's acceptance of using mobile phones to seek health information.

OBJECTIVE This paper is an exploratory study that investigates Singaporean womens acceptance of using mobile phones to seek health information. METHOD A mobile web containing health topics was developed to track Singaporean womens actual use of their mobile phones to seek health information. A survey questionnaire measured variables hypothesized to predict Behavioural Intention. The survey responses were then matched to the data collected on actual use. Correlation analysis and hierarchical regression were used to analyze the data collected. RESULTS Findings revealed that Perceived Usefulness and Self-efficacy positively predicted the intention to use mobile phones to seek health information. The study also confirmed the presence of an intention-behaviour gap among participants. The conversion of intention to actual behaviour hinges on technical concerns and design factors. Prior experiences with health information seeking reinforced womens evaluations of the usefulness of the mobile web application and helped them to feel more self-efficacious about using their mobile phones to seek health information. Using mobile phones to seek health information was found to be complementary to online health information seeking and can be regarded as an alternative source to the internet for seeking health information. CONCLUSION This study contributes to the existing literature by applying the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in the context of mobile health information seeking, for which there has been a lack of studies, and demonstrated that the inclusion of additional variables can enhance TAMs predictive power. The empirical presence of an intention-behaviour gap calls for future research to investigate the reasons behind the gap. Finally, the findings from this study can serve as input to promote womens use of mobile phones for better self-management of health.

User-database interface: the effect of abstraction levels on query performance*

A common classification of data models is based on their abstraction levels: physical, logical and conceptual. The user-database interaction can be similarly classified. For the conceptual-level interaction, the user and the database exchange information on the users world, e.g., information of entities, relationships, and attributes. For the logical-level interaction, the user and the database communicate based on concepts in the database system, e.g., relations and join operations. We expect users to be familiar with concepts in their world but not the concepts in the database system. This is especially so for infrequent or naive database users. The conceptual level should therefore be easier because it is semantically closer to the user. This deduction was tested in an experiment using the entity-relationship (ER) model for the conceptual-level model and the relational model for the logical-level model. The results were affirmative. The users at the conceptual level had 38 percent higher accuracy and 16 percent higher confidence than users at the logical level. The conceptual-level users took 65 percent less time than the logical-level users, and it took 33 percent less time to train them. The differences were statistically significant with p < 0.003. The huge differences indicate that noticeable improvements can be made by switching from the relational model to the ER model. The experiment also provided valuable data on errors commonly made by users.

Recognition and participation in a virtual community

Although recognition counts among the numerous factors that contribute towards the success of virtual communities, it has received little attention in both academic and practitioner studies. Adopting the theory of information sharing as the conceptual foundation, this interpretive case study examines the effect of recognition on participation in a virtual community for academic dress. Results indicate that there exist three different forms of perceived recognition in a virtual community, namely identity, expertise and tangible recognition. The study also highlights that a link exists across these forms of recognition, their effects, and participation. Implications for community organizers and researchers are discussed.

The effect of data model, system and task characteristics on user query performance: an empirical study

With the proliferation of end-user computing and empowerment of end users in the organizations, the user-database interface is increasingly being recognized as an important research area. A user-database interface consists of two key components: the data model and the query language. Database management system designers can manipulate these two components to produce an effective database interface to maximize user task performance. However, in order to do this, the designers first need to know the effect of the two components on end users and the interaction effect of the two components. Despite the acknowledgment of user-database interface as a cornerstone in database utilization, there is still a paucity of research in this area.In this paper, we report on an empirical study that investigates the effect of entity-relationship versus relational models, and textual versus visual query languages for user-database interfaces. A good understanding of how the data models and query languages affect the user performance will enable the database developer to choose and design interfaces that can provide effective and efficient support for end users.

Three important determinants of user performance for database retrieval

Three important factors that determine user performance during database retrieval are representation realism, expressive ease, and task complexity. Representation realism is the level of abstraction used when formulating queries. Expressive ease is the syntactic flexibility permitted when formulating queries. Task complexity is the level of difficulty of queries. A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted to assess the effects of these three factors on user productivity during database retrieval. The independent variables were representation realism (high versus low), expressive ease (high versus low), and query complexity (simple versus complex). The dependent variables were query accuracy and query time. Results show that all these three factors significantly affected user performance during database retrieval. However, their relative impact on query accuracy and query time differed. Moreover, these factors interacted in unique ways to moderate query accuracy and query time. Besides verifying prior empirical findings, these results offer several suggestions for future research and development work in the area of database retrieval.

Effects of query complexity and learning on novice user query performance with conceptual and logical database interfaces

Users see the database interface as the database system. A good interface enables them to formulate queries better. The semantics communicated through the interface can be classified according to abstraction levels, such as the conceptual and logical levels. With the conceptual interface, interaction is in terms of real-world concepts such as entities, objects and relationships. Current user-database interaction is mainly based on the logical interface, where interaction is in terms of abstract database concepts such as relations and joins. Many researchers argue that end users will perform better with the conceptual interface. This research tested this claim, as well as the effects of query complexity and learning, on the visual query performance of users. The experiment involved three tests: an initial test, a retention test and a relearning test. The results showed that, for complex queries, conceptual interface users achieved higher accuracy, were more confident in their answers, and spent less time on the queries. This is persistent across retention and relearning tests.