Shih-Chih Chen

Factors influencing the continuance intention to the usage of Web 2.0: An empirical study

New business models and applications have been continuously developed and popularized on the Internet. In recent years, a number of applications including blogs, Facebook, iGoogle, Plurk, Twitter, and YouTube known as Web 2.0 have become very popular. These aforementioned applications all have a strong social flavor. However, what social factors exert an influence onto their use is still unclear and remains as a research issue to be further investigated. This research studies four social factors and they are subjective norm, image, critical mass, and electronic word-of-mouth. A causal model of the satisfaction and continuance intention of Web 2.0 users as a function of these four social factors is proposed. Results indicate that user satisfaction with Web 2.0 applications significantly affects electronic word-of-mouth, which in turn significantly influences their continuance intention. In addition, subjective norm, image and critical mass all have a significant impact onto satisfaction, which in turn has an indirect significant influence on electronic word-of-mouth. Finally, all social factors have a significant direct impact on continuance intention. Finally, implications for service providers and researchers are discussed.

Understanding the Mediating Effects of Relationship Quality on Technology Acceptance: An Empirical Study of E-Appointment System

This study extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by incorporating relationship quality as a mediator to construct a comprehensive framework for understanding the influence on continuance intention in the hospital e-appointment system. A survey of 334 Taiwanese citizens who were contacted via phone or the Internet and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used for path analysis and hypothesis tests. The study shows that perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) have significant influence on continuance intention through the mediation of relationship quality, consisting of satisfaction and trust. The direct impact of relationship quality on continuance intention is also significant. The analytical results reveal that the relationship between the hospital, patients and e-appointment users can be improved via enhancing the continued usage of e-appointment. This paper also proposes a general model to synthesize the essence of PEOU, PU, and relationship quality for explaining users’ continuous intention of e-appointment.

To use or not to use: understanding the factors affecting continuance intention of mobile banking

The purpose of this study is to figure out the determinants that affect the customers in mobile banking. This research offers a theoretical understanding on the conceptual model regarding the formation of relationship quality and continuance intention towards m-banking by simultaneously considering service quality, perceived risk and technology readiness as exogenous impacts. Based on the online survey of 390 m-banking experienced participants, this study uses the structural equation modelling approach to test the research model. The results show that technology readiness and service quality has indirectly significant influence on continuance intention through the mediation of relationship quality, consisting of satisfaction and trust. Hence, perceived risk had surprisingly no significant impact on relationship quality. This study represents a thorough understanding on the research model of continuance intention, and the managerial implications of mobile banking to researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Understanding the relationships of critical factors to Facebook educational usage intention

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise a framework that integrates information quality, system quality, function quality, and social influence based on the information system (IS) success model, to explore the relationship among these factors, which might be the key determinants of Facebook educational usage intention. Design/methodology/approach – An internet survey was conducted to collect empirical data from 221 Facebook users on their experiences of using Facebook. This study applied structural equation modeling (SEM) to demonstrate the proposed model’s construct relations and multiple group analysis. Findings – The results of this study show that social influence and information quality are critical and direct determinants that affect users’ continuous intention to use Facebook in learning; social influence also indirectly affect Facebook usage intention through the mediating effect of information quality. Except the path between social influence and usage intention in age subgroups,...

Quantitative Ecological Risk Analysis by Evaluating China's Eco-Efficiency and Its Determinants

ABSTRACT Industrial production can produce large amounts of harmful by-products, causing serious pollution and ecological risk. In addition, if government regulations are subjected into the industries, huge cost risk will be faced. This article adopts a two-stage slack-based undesirable-output data envelope analysis (DEA) model to measure the eco-efficiency of China. In the first stage, we analyze the eco-efficiency of each province of China, and in the second stage, we employed a truncated bootstrap method to understand the determinants of eco-efficiency. The results indicate that whereas the eco-efficiency of the eastern region was the highest, that of the western region was the lowest. The western regions economy lagged behind that of other regions, and its environment suffered from heavy pollution. It was found that the level of industrialization did not contribute to eco-efficiency. However, promotion of the service industry, investment for the environment, and regional innovation have positive effects on eco-efficiency.

Assessing the Relationship between Technology Readiness and Continuance Intention in an E-Appointment System: Relationship Quality as a Mediator

Numerous types of self-service technologies have prevailed due to innovations in network and information technology. To hospitals, patient intentions to continue to use the e-appointment system are crucial. Previous investigations discussed only the relationships between the technology readiness of users and their continuance intentions, and ignored the most important mediator, relationship quality. This study explored the relationships among technology readiness, relationship quality, and continuance intention. The research results demonstrated that both optimism and innovativeness significantly and positively influenced continuance intention through the mediating effect of relationship quality. However, discomfort and insecurity hid not significantly influence relationship quality or continuance intention. Finally, theoretical contributions, managerial implications and future research directions were discussed.

Better to be flexible than to have flunked: The mediating role of service flexibility and its determinants for team performance

Purpose – High team performance helps achieve several organizational benefits, such as strengthened competitive advantages, enhanced productivity, and higher profits and market share. For these reasons, the purpose of this paper is to propose a model based on the framework of proactive motivation and the theory of collectivism to analyze the formation of service flexibility and team performance. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypotheses, this study conducts a survey of service staff in teams from high-tech firms in a well-known industrial zone in Northern Taiwan. These teams provide service for their industrial customers. From the survey, this study confirms the full mediating mechanism of service flexibility among the teams. Findings – The test results reveal that service flexibility fully mediates the relationship between team performance and its exogenous factors. Whereas collectivism negatively moderates the relationship between team efficacy and service flexibility, it does not moderate th...

Understanding information system quality on public e-government service intention: an empirical study

The aim of this study is the proposition of a model for the understanding and examination of public satisfaction and intention towards e-government service. Based on the online survey of 366 e-government experienced participants, this study uses the structural equation modelling approach to test the research model. The results of analysis reflect that public intention use is significantly determined by public satisfaction, and perceived usefulness toward e-government, and information system quality (ISQ) is positively influenced by public intention usage directly, while public perceived usefulness directly is influenced by ISQ, and indirectly influenced through public confirmation of expectation. Other results indicate that public satisfaction is directly influenced by ISQ and indirectly influenced through public perceived usefulness. Finally, the findings of this research offers detailed theoretical, and managerial implications for scholars, governmental and software engineering.

Effects of virtualization on information security

Virtualization provides the essential assistance to save energy & resources and also simplify the required information management. However, the information security issues have increasingly become a serious concern. This study investigates the post-virtualization business security landscape related to system security. A questionnaire is developed based on 133 control management principles of ISO/IEC 27001 standard and a sampling technique is employed to collect responses from IT professionals with an understanding of virtualization information environment. The obtained findings suggest that virtualization may be beneficial to certain industrial sectors in handling the issues of information security. To investigates the post-virtualization business security landscapeImplementation of virtualization may be beneficial to information security.Virtualization may securely benefit certain industrial sectors.For the IT and automobile industries, virtualization also has a significant influence.

Assessing the impact of determinants in e-magazines acceptance: An empirical study

Abstract The ongoing global trend moving towards digitization and the growing popularity of hand-held devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, have created an exponential increase in the utilization rates and sales volumes of e-magazines. To understand the perceptions and opinions of e-magazines users, this study integrated the expectation-confirmation model, technology acceptance model and innovation diffusion theory with the factor of habit to investigate and predict users’ beliefs in terms of e-magazines, as well as study the major factors contributing to the intended readers’ willingness to continuously read e-magazines. The hypothesized model is empirically validated using a sample collected from 370 responses and the structural equation modeling results indicated that the use of e-magazines was mainly determined by the constructs based on the proposed e-magazine adoption integration model. No other considerable correlation was found between the perceived usefulness and e-magazine users’ satisfaction and continuance intentions. The empirical results and management implications of this study can be applied to serve as a basis for the future development of marketing strategies in the digital content industries.