The Personal Usage of Online Information Services : Theory and Empirical Investigation

In thispaper we develop a conceptualframework around the attitudes and intentions towards using online information sewice, and we theorise about the differences in relationships between regular information systems and online information services, Specijcally we hypothesize (1) that affect and perceived ease of use are more important than perceived usefulness. and (2) that gender and experìence wil1 make a significant differente in people’s evaluation to use the service. These hypotheses are then tested with a quantitative study, using 1144 respondents of a real-ltfe online information service. The results effectively demonstrate how the cognitive-affective pattern of user evaluations develops when users start becoming more experienced with an online information sewice.