A Study of the Attitudes, Media Credibility, and Usage Dispositions in e-News Sites

• Main Authors: Kuo-Fang Peng, 彭國芳
• Other Authors: Yi-Wen Fan
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/06652919694706525283

博士 === 國立中央大學 === 資訊管理研究所 === 92 === How to effectively manipulate web site content tactics to make web site content attractive or favorable for massive web users and keep them revisiting to generate advertising revenue has inevitably become one of the most important issues for the online content business. Despite of the importance and urgency of developing systematic knowledge to guide the web content design for the online content industry, in the literature, there has been relatively little research investigating how the web content perceptions influence web users' psychological responses and behavior. Aiming on responding to this managerial question, the purpose of this study is to propose and test a research model portraying how the web content perceptions generate impacts upon the surfers exposed to content web sites, in addition, the exploration of contingency factors moderating those proposed theoretical relationships is also conducted. Specifically, a research model mainly integrating the AST theoretical model, telepresence theory, functionalism theory of attitudes, and media credibility research, is developed through the web content perception perspective. In order to solidly test this proposed theoretical model, an elaborately designed lab investigation utilizing the structural equation modeling technique is employed. After collecting and analyzing 549 empirical survey observations of Taiwanese e-News site surfing in a controlled campus lab environment, the result of this study shows that most of our arguments are supported. Overall, effective content perceptual dimensions can help content web surfers to develop positive attitudes toward content sites and increase their perceived media credibility, which can in turn directly or indirectly induce their favorable behavioral usage disposition outcomes, such as expected web site usage and loyalty toward the site. In addition, contingency factors including site type, user’s gender, user’s Internet experiences and daily usage, are explored to be found to moderate some theoretical influencing paths within the proposed research model. Such a proposed theoretical model with contingentization explorations not only has the potential to enrich the theoretical underpinning of Internet studies but also presents a practical framework to guide content policy formulations for various players with different operational contingencies within the online content industry. Detailed implications for both managerial research and practice are finally discussed.