ERIC Number: ED534966
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 392
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: ISBN-978-1-1248-7237-7
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Effect of Espoused National Cultural Values, the Five-Factor Model of Personality, and the Context of Travel on Technology Acceptance across Two Levels of Structured Tourism Websites
Welsh, Laura
ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
According to the World Tourism Organization, there were 935 million international tourists in 2010. International tourists collectively spent $852 billion on tourism products in 2009 (World Tourism Organization, 2011). A tourist's awareness, selection, and choice of tourism products are extremely dependent on the information used by the tourist (Bieger & Laesser, 2001; Fodness & Murray, 1997). Today, millions of tourists obtain tourism information through the Internet in a fraction of the time and inconvenience that was required in the past (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Given the worldwide economic importance of the tourism industry, it is imperative for both scholars and practitioners alike to determine what impacts the use of tourism websites, as websites are the primary source of information for travel planning and purchase of travel products. This dissertation's objective was to examine whether espoused national cultural values, the five-factor model of personality, or the context of travel impact the acceptance and use of tourism websites and to see if these effects varied based on differing levels of information structure on the websites. Espoused national cultural values, the five-factor model personality factors, and travel preferences addressing the context of travel all played small but significant impacts on the use of tourism websites. However, their effects are greater because the cultural, personality, and context of travel variables showed that they also indirectly affected intention to use the tourism websites through perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective norms. Some of these effects varied by differing levels of information structure on city-specific and airline reservation websites examined in this study, while other effects remained constant across both levels of structured information tourism websites. Uncertainty avoidance was also explored to see if it is a cultural or universal construct. As it had a significant but modest correlation with the universal construct of Rotter's (1966) locus of control, this lends support to the claim that uncertainty avoidance may be a universal construct in the use of tourism websites. A combined espoused national cultural values and five-factor model of personality theoretical model was created to better predict tourism website use than either model alone. This study was conducted within the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) widely used to predict and explain IT usage. This study replicated the work of Srite and Karahanna (2006) and Devaraj, Easley, and Crant (2008) studying the effects of espoused national cultural values and the five-factor model of personality on IT usage in a different context. This study brought Alvarez and Asugman's (2006) travel preferences addressing the context of travel from the field of tourism to the field of IS using different subjects and incorporated them into the TAM model for the first time. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
Descriptors: Personality Traits, Values, Personality, Usability, Travel, Primary Sources, Tourism, Cultural Influences, Internet, Information Sources, Personality Measures, Web Sites, Air Transportation, Guidelines, Prediction, Information Technology, Locus of Control
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Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: NEO Five Factor Inventory
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A