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Previous research suggests that perceived risk is an important ingredient in the consumer decision‐making process. The purpose of the present study is to investigate what are the perceived barriers to Internet usage and e‐marketing by both users and non‐users. By understanding these potential obstacles, more efficient marketing strategies will become available that will drive Internet use and e‐commerce. A detailed perceived risks map has been developed using a qualitative research paradigm. We suggest a model with the factors affecting the Internet’s perceived risk elements. The factors are demographic traits and usage behavior characteristics. The model is tested against a sample of 465 employed adults.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal perceptions of news organization bias among people who use the internet.

Data for this study were drawn from the Pew Research Center June 2005 News Interest Index. Respondents were asked if news organizations were politically biased in their reporting. Another question asked respondents if news organizations had a liberal or conservative bias. The final question asked respondents to judge news organization bias on political and social issues.

In two of the three perceptions of internet user/non‐user ratings of ideological bias in news organizations, internet news users surveyed rate news organizations as more biased than non‐users. However, when asked to ascertain either liberal or conservative bias in news organizations, non‐internet news users were more likely to claim that news organizations were biased.

More valid measures of the dimension of liberal and conservative bias could help in analyzing the effect of this particular variable on the use of the internet for news. Also, there is the possibility of some confusion in identifying internet news sources.

Advertising revenue of traditional media could decline as news use shifts to internet sources, and customers of the traditional US news networks would continue to migrate to the internet.

As this new media technology has the potential to reach new markets throughout the world, consumers who perceive that traditional news media are ideologically biased may favor the new medium over more traditional sources of news.

Previous studies of e-servicescapes have considered general internet consumers as the main research subjects; however, some studies have argued that heavy users are the main sources of consumption. Understanding heavy user’s consumption traits is crucial for enhancing company profits; hence, the purpose of this paper is to compare the significant attributes of e-servicescapes and clarify their relationship with purchase intention by employing heavy and light internet users as moderators.

An online questionnaire was used to collected data from 342 valid internet users with online shopping experience, and the differences were compared through structural equation modeling.

Aesthetic appeal and interactivity significantly increase general users’ purchase intentions. For heavy users, interactivity was the most crucial factor, followed by esthetic appeal, and then layout and functionality. For light users, Aesthetic appeal was the only crucial factor. The data also reveal that financial security does not have significant positive effects on general, heavy, or light users.

Using the insight gained by integrating purchase intention with e-service quality and segmentation theory in the e-servicescape, the authors display how heavy and light internet users evaluate the e-servicescape for signals of quality attributes and contribute their cognitive response and purchase intention according to different consumption traits. Internet retailers are recommended to segment heavy and light users, redesign their current e-servicescapes, and provide more appropriate marketing strategies to attract and keep heavy and light users and enhance their purchase intentions.

Despite internet banking’s popularity, there is a rise in phishing attacks related to online banking transactions. Phishing attacks involved the process of sending out electronic mails impersonating the valid banking institutions to their customers and demanding confidential data such as credential and transaction authorisation code. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model of individual and technological factors influencing Malaysian internet banking users’ intention in responding to malicious uniform resource locator (URL) in phishing email content.

It applied the protective motivation theory, the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour, the habit theory and the trust theory to examine the factors influencing internet banking users’ intention to click URLs in phishing emails. The study identifies individual and technological factors with ten hypotheses. A total of 368 Malaysian respondents voluntarily participated in an online survey conducted in the first week of March 2021. The partial least squares method provided in SmartPLS-3 was used to model the data.

The results revealed that individual factors, namely, internet banking experience, understanding the phishing meaning, response cost, trust and perceived ability were the significant influencing factors of internet banking users’ intention to click the link in phishing emails. This study also suggested that technological factors were not relevant in describing the behavioural intention of internet banking users in clicking the links in phishing emails.

The findings could contribute to Malaysian banking sectors and relevant government agencies in educating and increasing internet banking users’ awareness towards phishing emails.

The outcomes demonstrated the individual factors that influenced internet banking users’ intention in responding to phishing emails that are specific and relevant to Malaysia’s context.

The advent of technology has enabled frequent innovations in the digital modes of doing business. While some users are reluctant to adopt one, others have made it their way of life. The purpose of this study is to find out the approximate time frame of a digital user in an emerging economy like India to adopt their favorite digital application. The importance of an individual’s level of internet skills is explored in the aspect of adopting digital innovations.

The study follows a quantitative approach where data collected from both primary and secondary sources are analyzed to arrive at the results. In total, 837 responses collected with the help of a structured questionnaire are entered and analyzed using SPSS. Multinomial logistic regression is the statistical tool used in the research.

Five sets of adopter categories based on Rogers (1983) are created using an adoption score and are represented in a Time Horizon to understand better. The Unaffected adopter category is used as the reference point to compare the set of internet skills against each of the other five categories. The five sets of categories comprising the internet skills depict interesting results in the case of all the four comparisons made. Social skills are not seen to have any influence on a user being an Innovator or Early Adopter as compared to an Unaffected user. It is also established that Operational and Creative skills play important role in users’ probability of being an innovator, early adopter and early majority compared to being unaffected.

The study analyzes the role of internet skills in the process of adopting digital innovations. The role of internet skill although is associated with every aspect of the digital revolution taking place all over, its application including the direct score of a digital user’s level of internet skills is not found in the literature.

This study aims to examine how information and social gratifications sought by Internet users affect their affinity for the Internet or for particular types of online content.

A survey was administered in Singapore to collect data. A correlation analysis, a paired‐sample t test, and hierarchical regression analyses are conducted to address the research questions and hypotheses.

Affinity for the Internet and affinity for particular types of online content are correlated and distinct. Both relate positively to social gratifications. The passive social gratification of Internet access and the active pursuit of interactions exert similar impact on both types of affinity. Information affects neither after social gratifications are controlled.

Constant access to online contacts or quality online interaction may facilitate social gratifications, thereby boosting user affinity for the Internet or for particular types of online content. Online information should be presented interactively to attract and retain users. The selection of online content and applications should also be made easier to cultivate a loyal user market.

This study contributes to U&G theory by adapting a television‐based proposition to cyberspace, and examining the attitudinal effect of online social gratifications involving different levels of user activity.

This paper seeks to discuss measurement units by comparing the internet use and the traditional media use, and to understand internet use from the traditional media use perspective.

Benefits and shortcomings of two log file types will be carefully and exhaustively examined. Client‐side and server‐side log files will be analyzed and compared with proposed units of analysis.

Server‐side session time calculation was remarkably reliable and valid based on the high correlation with the client‐side time calculation. The analysis result revealed that the server‐side log file session time measurement seems more promising than the researchers previously speculated.

An ability to identify each individual user and low caching problems were strong advantages for the analysis. Those web design implementations and web log data analysis scheme are recommended for future web log analysis research.

This paper examined the validity of the client‐side and the server‐side web log data. As a result of the triangulation of two datasets, research designs and propose analysis schemes could be recommended.

The growth of Internet usage, spurred by rapidly advancing network technologies, has been bringing about broad changes in customer behaviors related to the Internet, attitudes toward the traditional mass media, and satisfaction. This study attempts to investigate what types of changes have been made in Korea due to the transition of the networking environment. According to the findings, Internet users with a high‐speed Internet service system tend to enjoy various kinds of services, including e‐mail, and depend less on the traditional media, such as TV and radio, for information and entertainment. They also have an increased level of satisfaction in the dimension of convenience.

This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of investors’ cognition and decision-making process with regard to internet financial products. The objective is to effectively guide users’ rational investments.

First, based on grounded theory, this study develops a tool for measuring users’ perceived value (PV) of internet financial products via in-depth interviews. Then, after comprehensively considering users’ environmental, individual and psychological characteristics, this study proposes a theoretical model of internet financial product investment decisions based on the PV of users. Finally, an empirical study is conducted on 693 valid sample data from e-commerce and online banking financial platforms.

The empirical results suggest that network externalities influence users’ financial behavior by herding (HE) (imitating others and discounting their own information) and PV. PV and HE are key factors in users’ investment decisions with regard to internet financial products. Moreover, users’ self-efficacy (SE) and platform type play moderate roles in the influence mechanism.

The research conclusions provide valuable references for designing financial products and establishing regulatory rules, which will help the internet financial industry to grow soundly and innovatively.

This study uncovers the mediating effect of HE and PV between network externalities and users’ investment intentions in the context of internet financial products. In addition, the moderating effect of users’ SE and platform types is revealed.

The emergence and diffusion of the Internet has prompted a surge in web portal sites that are designed to meet the specific needs of ethnic Internet users who are not native English speakers. These ethnic portal sites may be set up by global portal giants (e.g. Yahoo!) or by local entrepreneurs (e.g. netease.com in China). Often, because of the different origins of these sites, they tend to have different operating philosophies and varying appeals to ethnic Internet users. In this study, we first analyze the differences and similarities among different types of ethnic portals. We then propose a conceptual model concerning the factors that affect the patronage of ethnic portals by ethnic Internet users. An empirical study was designed to test the conceptual model with data collected from Mainland Chinese Internet users. Finally, implications of the study results for ethnic portals are presented.