Encouraging e-book adoption has great contribution towards environmental protection. In this research, we propose, the extension to the more comprehensive new product model, UTAUT, which comprises of four variables i.e. social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions, by incorporating new variable “benevolence trust”. The finding showed that, in presence of the benevolence trust, all the constructs of UTAUT increased significantly and benevolence trust becomes the most important determinants for predicting e-book purchase. Our findings further explore benevolence trust moderates the application of UTAUT for e-book purchase prediction. All these findings can help e-book providers to formulate effective marketing strategies to make consumers overcome their psychological resistance for using e-book.
Environmental protection is a serious global challenge, which is growing fast with the rapidly growing economy since the Industrial Revolution. In recent decades, the growth of consuming scare natural resources and growing amount of pollution and waste have been leading to global climate change [
In 2007, Amazon launched its e-reader, the Kindle [
However, there are many challenges faced by digital book adoption. Baron [
Numbers of researches (e.g., [
Ganesan and Hess [
Several researches have proposed that benevolence trust is the most important dimension in trust constructs (e.g., [
H1: Enhancing the benevolence trust will increase adoption intention for digital books.
For studying individual intentions to elucidate new product adoption, due to the limitation of two popular models, technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB), Venkatesh et al. [
Social Influence: Nysveen et al. [
Yet, as long as the company can develop benevolence trust, individuals will have better impression and recognition toward the company [
H2: For e-book usage, the benevolence trust will increase social influence.
Performance Expectancy: According to Venkatesh et al. [
H3: For e-book usage, benevolence trust will increase individuals’ perceived performance expectancy.
Effort Expectancy: According to Venkatesh et al. [
We propose that benevolence trust will influence the effort expectancy, since benevolence showing care and “caring is the very bedrock of all successful education” [
H4: The benevolence trust will lead to increase in consumer’s perceived self-effort expectance, in case of digital book adoption.
Facilitating conditions: Venkatesh et al. [
Benevolence trust indicates that focal partner’s genuine concern for the other party’s well-being is beyond their own profit motives, which not only reduces uncertainties, but also enhances the perceived trust of using the product [
H5: The benevolence trust will lead to increase individuals’ perceived facilitating conditions, in case of e-book adoption.
The purpose of the study was to examine how benevolence trust influences participants’ adoption intention and to determine the effect of benevolence trust on the antecedences of e-book adoption i.e. social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. A 2 (benevolence trust: control versus treatment) between subject design was used with adoption intention as the dependent variable.
A pretest was conducted to corroborate the reliability of the survey. Twenty participants age from 20 to 49, who had no prior experience of using e-books, participated in the pretest. After they finished the survey, they were asked to state their overall opinion about the survey (difficulties, ambiguous questions or terms, etc.). We then improve the wordings of survey questionnaire, which were done by the quantitative research experts.
Total 423 participants, 91% of them age between from 20 to 29, who had never used e-book were recruited. They belonged to one of the two groups, control versus treatment. Treatment group received a message of benevolence trust manipulation but control group did not. For data collection, we adopted convenience sampling and designed an Internet-based survey. Finally, 207 and 216 valid questionnaires were collected in control group and treatment group, respectively.
By referring to Wu et al. [
According to the statistical report of the global health study, in 2003, in Nepal, the adult literacy rate is below 50%. The women’s social status is even lower and lots of young female adolescents had no education opportunity. In 2003, Company A launched a “hoping to read charitable program” in Siganhadi, a remote area from Nepal capital. To reach this area, the volunteers need to climb the hill by walk for at least five hours. A team of volunteers of the company provides the necessary educations for those children. Every year, Company A sends 20 volunteers to this area and provides the necessary teaching materials and computers for those volunteers. So far, the company had donated more than 10 million NT dollars to this program and helped more than 500 children in 15 villages in this area, encouraging them to experience the real world through reading. Over a period of 12 years, project participants had reported many touching experiences, such as a young female student, who originally had no education opportunity but now she got the scholarship from a top university in the US.
At the beginning, all the participants read the brief introduction of two book publishers. One is publishing traditional paper books and the other, Company A, is publishing e-books. Next, participants in the treatment group read the benevolence scenario message before they filled up the questionnaire regarding their benevolence trust toward Company A; participants in the control group without reading the scenario message directly filled up the questionnaire regarding their benevolence trust toward the company A. Then, the UTAUT questionnaire was administered, to measure antecedents of adoption intention viz. social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. Where, social influence was measured by using five items scale, adapted from Lu et al. [
We firstly examined participants’ perceive differences from manipulation of benevolence trust. By using the t-test analysis, the data of these two groups (treatment versus control) was compared. The paired-sample t-test revealed a positive effect with regard to the benevolence trust (Mtreatment= 4.5709, Mcontrol = 4.1362, t = 4.712, p < 0.001; Mtreatment = 4.5709 > 4, p < 0.001, Mcontrol = 4.1362 > 4, p > 0.05); hence, our manipulation of benevolence trust was successful.
Reliability analysis All constructs in this study demonstrated acceptable reliability (the Cronbach’s alpha for each construct was between 0.64 and 0.92).
As
Control Group | Treatment Group | Difference (Mtreatemnt − Mcontrol) | |
---|---|---|---|
Benevolence Trust | 4.1362 (0.999) | 4.5709 (1.021) | 0.44826*** |
Performance Expectancy | 4.7343 (1.130) | 4.9861 (1.086) | 0.25966* |
Effort Expectancy | 5.0181 (1.146) | 5.2731 (0.994) | 0.26449* |
Social Influence | 4.4589 (1.09) | 4.7338 (1.016) | 0.29348** |
Facilitating Conditions | 4.5314 (0.861) | 4.6968 (0.875) | 0.19203* |
Adoption Intention | 4.3696 (1.392) | 4.5069 (1.264) | 0.18357 |
*Comparison of means, significant at p < 0.05.
study did not support that participants’ notable increase of benevolence trust will significantly increase their adoption intention (Mtreatment = 4.5069, Mcontrol = 4.3696, t = 1.429, p = 0.155). The adoption intention in the treatment group is higher than the adoption intention in the control group, but the difference is not significant. Therefore, H1 is not supported. Whereas, the regression analyses for both groups show that benevolence trust is positively associated with adoption intention (β = 0.690, p < 0.001 for control group and β = 0.651, p < 0.001 for treatment group). Hence, the benevolence trust still is positively associated with consumers’ adoption intention of digital books.
After examining the hypotheses, we would like to perform regression analyses to examine how UTAUT can explain consumer intentions of e-book adoption. Next, we would perform another regression analyses to explore the relative importance of benevolence trust and each construct of UTAUT toward e-book adoption intention.
To verify the impact of the predictors of UTAUT on adoption intentions, the regression analysis was employed. The independent variables were social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions and the dependent variable was adoption intention. From
In case of treatment group, from
Interestingly, without the manipulation of benevolence trust, only one independent
Control group | Treatment group | |
---|---|---|
Performance Expectancy | 0.173 | 0.237* |
Effort Expectancy | 0.107 | 0.263* |
Social Influence | 0.554*** | 0.253* |
Facilitating Conditions | 0.119 | 0.133 |
R2 = 0.42 | R2 = 0.42 |
***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
variable of the UTAUT model i.e. social influence had significant positive effect on adoption intention; but when the benevolence trust is enhanced, three independent variables in the UTAUT model, social influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy, showed significant positive effect on adoption intention. In other word, only when benevolence trust is enhanced, the UTAUT model can be employed to predict the e-book adoption intention more effectively. The finding of this study adds more insights to effective implementation of UTAUT for e-book adoption intention.
To examine the relative importance of benevolence trust and each construct of UTAUT towards adoption intentions, another multiple regression analyses were conducted. The independent variables were benevolence trust and four key constructs of UTAUT, and the dependent variable was adoption intention. From
In case of treatment group, from
These regression analyses provide another interesting finding. Without enhancing benevolence trust, the most important determinant of e-book purchase is social influence. However, when benevolence trust is enhanced, the benevolence trust becomes the most important determinant toward se-book adoption intention. This finding provides another insight for predicting e-book purchase.
Control group | Treatment group | |
---|---|---|
Performance Expectancy | 0.152 | 0.224* |
Effort Expectancy | 0.132 | 0.175 |
Social Influence | 0.486*** | 0.190 |
Facilitating Conditions | 0.080 | 0.061 |
Benevolence Trust | 0.139 | 0.314*** |
R2 = 0.42 | R2 = 0.40 |
***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
Drawing from the knowledge around topics of benevolence trust, and the constructs of UTAUT, this study describes the effect of benevolence trust on e-book adoption intention. Our research results also provide the following theoretical and managerial implications.
The usage of e-book provides many benefits for environmental protection such as saving tree, reduction in air pollution, etc. However, adopting e-book encountered some emotional resistances to change due to consumers’ habits and emotional aspects associated with use of paper books from childhood for long. Consumers face some discomfort like adopting new behavior to read on screen, giving up the past traditional way of reading paper book by turning pages by hands. Hoeffler [
The important findings of this study suggest that e-book companies can focus on enhancing their benevolence trust among consumers. Once benevolence trust is enhanced, it becomes the key determinant for e-book adoption. These findings do provide new managerial implications for e-book providers. In general, to develop benevolence trust, providing money, in-kind sponsorship, volunteer work, expertise provision, charitable activities, and environmental caring programs can be helpful. However, more importantly, company must be willing to make short-term sacrifices and take sincere care of customers’ interests and the whole environment.
Next, our study proposed that benevolence trust can increase consumers’ perception of social influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy. As long as benevolence trust is developed, consumers pay more attention on these variables. In turn, consumers’ expectation increases. Under this condition, company’s R&D will become more important. When consumers higher their expectancies of performance towards the provider, company must put more effort to improve the product performance and usage environment to make product become more user friendly. All of them are worth noting issues for managers.
The study provides further and new insights regarding the marketing of e-book by exploring the importance and role of benevolence trust for e-book adoption. This study, however, still possess several weaknesses and limitations that could be further explored in the future study.
The first limitation is related to the R-square of regression analysis. Most of regression analyses could explain only about 42% of the variance in adoption intention. There may have other factors that could affect psychological responses and adoption intentions towards e-books. Nonetheless, to predict the adoption intention of e-book, this study mainly focused on benevolence trust and constructs of UTAUT. Future research is needed to explore other possible influential factors for e-book adoption, such as level of altruism, knowledge of environment protection, product functions (e.g., utilitarian versus hedonic), etc. Under this condition, the prediction result may be improved.
The second limitation of this research is majority of participants’ age is between 20 and 29, i.e. young people. It is because comparing with elderly people, in general, more young persons were early adopters for a new technology and had less resistance to a new technology. While choosing digital book over the traditional paper book, young persons can be easier to overcome their emotional and psychological barriers but it can be more difficult for elderly individuals. However, elderly persons are equally important segments of the readers. Hence we suggest that further research is required to investigate more even and diversified samples in all age groups, which will help facilitate e-book adoption in various segments.
Finally, this research only studies the importance of benevolence trust and role it plays for e-book adoption. We do not deeply involve the development of benevolence trust. To develop benevolence trust, the involved range will be broad and fine; no matter inside or outside, every company activity will affect the benevolence trust. Also, when the industry differs, the approach can be different. Therefore, to study how to build benevolence trust can be an important future research direction.
However, even though there are some limitations, this study still provides new insight into the effect of benevolence trust on e-book adoption. It also explores the role of benevolence trust while adopting e-books. As e-books can save trees and transportation costs and reduce pollution of shipping, the adoption of e-books is very helpful for environment sustainability. For an e-book provider, through caring and genuine concerns toward the customers and environment, not only consumers’ barriers for using e-books can be mitigated, the environment can also be protected. Thus, our findings shed light on the use of e-books as well as the effect of environmental protection. They can be useful for theoretical, managerial and social implications.
Wu, C.C., Kirkole, S. and Huang, Y. (2016) Environmental Pro- tection: Essentials/Antecedents of Digital Book Adoption. Theoretical Economics Letters, 6, 1115-1127. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/tel.2016.65107