Understanding intention to continuously share information on weblogs.

Researched by: His Peng Lu and Kuo Lun Hsiao (2007), Internal Research, Vol 17. No.14 pp.345-361

Summary of the research by Aminsha Shahadan -2008533367

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Introduction.

This research is about understanding the behavior of people keep using blog as a medium to gather information through available comments and provide ideas. Thus this study will identify the motive of individual to keep blogging. The research area is to analyze factors affect the users’ intention of update the blogs.
Weblogs or blogs became popular in recent years worldwide web. Many businesses have begun to use blog as a medium to arouse discussion, to initiate or desire ideas and provide further visibility. The purpose of people to use blog are publishing information, transferring knowledge, and building relationship with another blogger.
According to Accenture(2004), blog is interactive web pages that allowing blogger to publish ideas and information. Blog flexibility which is permit it user to customize the appearance or the looks of the blog will increase the potential to share ideas in a virtually cost-free environment. Fortune Based on Vogelstein et al. (2005), Fortune Megazine in year 2005 has recognized blog as among the top ten technology trend to view.
Du and Wagner ( 2006) said that the success of the blog page is on the content value that the blog could deliver to it user or reader.
Long Tail Theory ( Anderson, 2006) said that continuous sharing less popular blogs may collectively attract more readers or make more profit than the popular blogs and popular blogs do.
Most of the study analyzes the factor of adopting blog. Therefore, this study is to investigate the factors of individual motive continued blogging.
Research Hypothesis
Lu and Hsiao have come out with below hypothesis in this study to identify the motive of individual keep using and up-dating the blog.

H1 – Perceived information creation ability will have a positive effect on knowledge self efficacy.
H2 – perceived knowledge sharing experience will have a positive effect on knowledge self-efficacy.
H3 – Subjective norms will have a positive effect on knowledge self-efficacy.
H4 – Feedback will have a positive effect on knowledge self-efficacy.
H5 – Subjective norms will have a positive effect on personal outcome expectation.
H6-Feedback will have a positive effect on personal outcome expectations.
H7 – Subjective norms will have a positive effect on the intention of continuing to update blogs
H8 – Feedback will have a positive effect on intention of continuing to up-date blogs.
H9 – Knowledge self-efficacy will have a positive effect on the intention of continuing to update blogs.
H10- Knowledge self-efficacy will have a positive effect on personal outcome expectations.
H11- Personal outcome expectations will have a positive effect on the intention of continuing to update blogs.

Research Methodology
The questionnaire has been distributed through on line survey. Blog of WRETCH album has been identified as the most user and questionnaire has been distributed to 1,990 members. Received response from 549 members which is 24 is invalid or repeated.
Results:
The respondent could self report their purpose of using blog. They can choose the following factor as determinant to use blog and as a result, this study found that:
a) 366 respondents ( 82 male, 280 female) choose blog as recording personal information or diaries
b) 155 respondents ( 50 male and 105 female) use blog for sharing information with others
c) 2 respondents use blog for adding the RSS of others’ blogs as a browser
d) 2 respondents said that blog is Raising individual’s reputation or advertising

Based on the above found that most of the bloggers are female. The respondent age ranged between 20 to 40 years old.
As analysis of the data has been generated and these research found results as follows:
a) H1 & H2 – accept that perceived information creation ability and knowledge-sharing experience had a strong positive effect on knowledge self-efficacy.
b) H3 – Reject and found that Subjective norms have less significant effect on knowledge self-efficacy.
c) H4 – Found that Feedback did not significantly affect knowledge self-efficacy.
d) H5 – Accept that Subjective norms will have a positive effect on personal outcome expectation.
e) H6-Accept that Feedback will have a stronger positive effect on personal outcome expectations.
f) H7 – Reject due to Subjective norms did not significantly affect on the intention of continuing to update blogs
g) H8 – Reject due to Feedback did not have a positive effect on intention of continuing to up-date blogs.
h) H9 – confirm that knowledge self-efficacy will have a positive effect on the intention of continuing to update blogs.
i) H10- reject that Knowledge self-efficacy will have a positive effect on personal outcome expectations.
j) H11- Accept that Personal outcome expectations will have a positive effect on the intention of continuing to update blogs.

Discussion.
The result above revealed that knowledge self-efficacy and outcome expectations significantly affect the bloggers’ intention of continuing to update blogs.
In this study also found that subjective norm and feedback has no significant affect on bloggers’ intention of continuing to up-date blogs. One of the reason is due to bloogers have used for a period of time. However, subjective norms and feedback found to be has a positive effect on personal outcome expectations.
Finally, the result of this study found that performance accomplishment ( perceive information creation ability and knowledge-sharing experience) are more important predictor of knowledge self-efficacy than social persuasion(subjective norms and feedback)

Comments:
It’s true that people do blogging to gather information, give ideas or sharing knowledge. This study could assist those people that using blog to promote and advertise their product. Significantly cheap cost of promoting product to the wide market and has potential to be a popular medium of business transaction in the future.
This popular blog worldwide web has a good potential to the small business to promote and advertise its product. We may find a lot of weblog through internet. Some of them doing business such as clothing, painting work, accessories, second hand items and etc,..
The good things about the blog, people could view the comments available from those had past experience using the product. If the products are really good, then the comments found to be positive and could influence others blogger to purchase the product. This new type of word of mouth or probably we could change it to word of mouse since it is using internet instead of traditional way, face to face to deliver the information.
However, the negative impact of blogging if people had bad experience using the product that advertised in the blog. These will affect the image and reputation of the product itself. The damage will significantly affect the profit.
These studies will assist small entrepreneur to smartly use blog to promote its blog and wisely identify tools that can attract people keep continuing up-date the blog. I trust that very attractive blog appearance with sufficient information will attract people to continuing up-date blog. May be we could start with close friends to deliver some comments on the blog, just a starter I perceived, and we will see from there…..happy blogging…..