THE INFLUENCE OF WEB SITE FEATURE-BASED INTERACTIVITY ON USERS’ ATTITUDES AND ONLINE BEHAVIORS
Open Access
- Author:
- Boushra, Manal
- Graduate Program:
- Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 02, 2007
- Committee Members:
- David Allen Cranage, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Carolyn U Lambert, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Elwood Lewis Shafer, Committee Member
William L Harkness, Committee Member - Keywords:
- level of interactivity
interactivity of web site
web site
web users attitudes - Abstract:
- Abstract During the past decade, the Internet has established itself as a powerful medium that has revolutionized the way people do business. Thousands of companies are increasingly realizing the tremendous capability of the World Wide Web as a selling channel and, consequently, integrating e-business into their business models. Like businesses across all industries, hotels are adapting to this new environment and working vigorously to use web sites to communicate directly with travelers and offer customers the ability to search information and book an entire trip online. Recent research suggests that one of the key elements in a successful commercial web site is its design; the success or failure of any particular business is based in large part on the quality of the design of the company’s web site. One of the most important design elements in commercial web sites may be their interactivity. As a critical concept in computer-mediated communications, the interactivity of a web site is known to be a key motivation of consumers’ use of the Internet, an important determinant of web site quality, and one that leads to a positive attitude toward the site. Despite its value, little is understood about the nature and role of interactivity on hotel web sites and its impact on travelers’ attitudes and behaviors. However, studies that provide insight into the strengths, facets, potential, and influences of the interactivity of hotel web sites were not found. In the present study, the researcher examined if the increased level of interactivity of a web site had positive effects on the web users’ attitudes, behaviors, and experience online in the context of hotel web sites, a crucial point of debate among researchers and an assumption that is inconclusive, contradictory, and inconsistent in the extant literature. The researcher also examined the consequences of actual user-site interactivity, specifically how actual user-site interactivity, i.e., from a behavioral perspective rather than an intentional perspective, influences web users’ attitudes and behaviors toward web sites. Last, the researcher examined if there was an interaction effect of the level of feature-based interactivity and actual user-site interactivity on the users’ perceived quality of the site, attitude toward the site, attitude toward the brand, perceived interactivity of the site, intention to revisit and recommend the site to others, and overall experience online. While building on and maintaining sustainability with extant work, a conceptual model was developed to examine feature-based interactivity and actual user-site interactivity as two important determinants of Web users’ perceptions, attitudes, behavioral intentions, and overall experience online in the context of hotel web sites. A computer-based experimental study was conducted with nine Jamaican hotel web sites in which feature-based interactivity varied at three levels: low, medium, and high. These web sites were evaluated by 137 participants in order to identify how the level of feature-based interactivity of a web site impacts actual user-site interactivity, and how both variables influence web participants’ attitudes, behaviors, and experiences online. The techniques for the data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent-samples, t tests, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis. The results of these analyses indicated that the higher the level of feature-based interactivity of a web site, the greater the participants’ perceived quality of the site, attitude toward the site, attitude toward the brand, perceived interactivity of the site, intention to revisit and recommend the site to others, and overall experience online was supported. Additionally, results indicated that a high degree of user interactivity with a site did yield a more favorable attitude and behavior online. Last, there was a significant main effect of perceived quality of the web site, attitude toward the web site, brand attitude, and perceived interactivity of the web site on the participants’ overall experience online, intention to revisit the web site, and intention to recommend the web site to others.