Keywords

1 Introduction

With the development of information technology, the Internet or web-based environment has become an important service channel for users. More specifically, providing services via electronic channel are available all day long for users and will lead to lower service cost for enterprises. Therefore, both users and enterprises increasingly use e-service to interact with each other. However, not all users are adept at using e-service or self-service technology at the website. Prior studies have shown that while older adults use web or e-service, they tend to rely on user accessibility guidelines or friendly web appearance (Hart et al., 2008). For instance, older people have difficulty reading text presentations more than younger readers. Inappropriate design decisions might create barriers for older people (Curran et al., 2007). That is, the requirement of web contents and appearances for older adults is higher than younger adults. However, as the Internet becomes popular, more and more elderly people have begun to use e-service. This study proposes that age may no longer be the key determinant affecting their requirements of using e-service. Perhaps some latent factors need to be explored and discussed. For example, usage experience has been proven to be associated with user behavior, intention, and performance (Taylor and Todd, 1995; Venkatesh and Davis, 1996; Venkatesh et al., 2012). Specifically, because experience makes knowledge more accessible in memory, it will help users to shape intention (Taylor and Todd, 1995). Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to compare the impacts of age and usage experience of e-service on the associations between e-service quality, satisfaction, and trust (see Fig. 1). The results will help us determine which factor will be the main moderator affecting the user perceptions. The discussions of research constructs are mentioned as follows.

Fig. 1.
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Research model

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2 Literature Review and Hypotheses Development

2.1 The Linkages Between e-Service Quality, Satisfaction, and Trust

As mentioned, the Internet is an important service channel for users. User perceived quality on the Internet has been measured and operationalized by many studies. First of all, perceived e-service quality is defined as the pure information component of a customer’s service experience provided in an automated fashion and without human intervention (Sousa and Voss, 2006). With most virtual channels encompassing more than the Internet, many instruments have been developed to assess the quality of Internet portals, such as web quality. In this vein, this study also anchors discussion on the Internet as the primary e-service channel of service delivery.

e-service quality has been operationalized by several instruments, such as e-service quality (E-S-QUAL) by Zeithaml et al. (2000; 2002), Website quality (SiteQUAL) by Yoo and Donthu (2001), Web quality (WebQUAL) by Aladwani and Palvia (2002), and Quality of e-service (QES) by Fassnacht and Koese (2006). However, most of these instruments have been developed primarily for online shopping context (e.g., E-S-QUAL and SiteQUAL), with the exception of WebQUAL (Gummerus et al., 2004). More specifically, WebQUAL is established to measure perceived web quality from the perspective of Internet users (Aladwani and Palvia, 2002). This instrument is suitable for general context of web-based applications, whether website is concerned with online shopping or not. Therefore, this study uses WebQUAL to measure the e-service quality.

WebQUAL measures four sub-constructs of web quality: content quality, appearance, technical adequacy, and specific content. Content quality consists of information usefulness, completeness, accuracy, and conciseness. Appearance means the proper use of fonts, colors, multimedia, and other website attractive factors. Technical adequacy consists of security, system availability, customization, and other technical abilities. Specific content reflects concerns to finding specific details about products/services, including contact information and detail information related to customer service. However, helping customers find detailed information about service (i.e., specific content sub-construct) seems to be a passive way of providing e-service. Besides, customers might be unable to find or access desired information due to unfamiliarity with e-service (e.g. a new self-service technology). According to the study by Aladwani and Palvia (2002), they conducted three rounds of Delphi method and concluded that technical adequacy, web content and web appearance are three major web quality dimensions. Therefore, this study merely focuses on the discussion of these three sub-constructs and excludes specific content sub-construct from the WebQUAL.

Most importantly, user perceived e-service quality is strongly associated with overall user satisfaction (Collier and Bienstock, 2006; Fassnacht and Koese, 2006) and trust (Liao et al., 2011). More particularly, user satisfaction and trust have been proven to be influenced by the four characteristics of the Internet, such as system availability, privacy, information comprehensiveness, Website design, and so forth (Bauer et al., 2002; Muylle et al., 2004; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003). These characteristics will attract users to stick Internet or use e-service, and thereby influence their satisfaction and trust after they visited the website (Muylle et al., 2004). Therefore this study proposes that the causal associations are positively supported no matter what user’s age and past experience.

  • H1. Perceived e-service quality is positively related to satisfaction.

    • H1a. Web appearance is positively related to satisfaction.

    • H1b. Context quality is positively related to satisfaction.

    • H1c. Technical adequacy is positively related to satisfaction.

  • H2. Perceived e-service quality is positively related to trust.

    • H2a. Web appearance is positively related to trust.

    • H2b. Context quality is positively related to trust.

    • H2c. Technical adequacy is positively related to trust.

2.2 The Moderating Effects of Age and Usage Experience

This study expects the impact of e-service quality on satisfaction and trust to be moderated by age and usage experience. Firstly, older adults tend to face more difficulty in operating complex information, thus influencing their learning performance of new technology (Morris et al., 2005; Venkatesh et al., 2012). Computer-based information requires several cognitive skills that may result in age differences in the website task performance (Priest et al., 2007). Therefore, compared with younger adults, older adults require higher e-service quality helping them familiar with e-service functions. In this vein, this study predicts that age has positive moderating effect on the relationship between e-service quality and user satisfaction and trust. That is to say, user with higher age will lead to more significant relationship between e-service quality and user satisfaction and trust.

  • H3a. The impact of e-service quality on user satisfaction is positively moderated by age.

  • H3b. The impact of e-service quality on trust is positively moderated by age.

Prior experience of using a technology is typically defined as the passage of time from the initial use by an individual (Venkatesh et al., 2012). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) suggest that feedback from past experiences will influence various beliefs and future behavioral performance. For instance, the strength of the relationship between information usefulness and intention to use is stronger for users with higher experience (Saeed and Abdinnour-Helm, 2008). Also, information technology usage may be more effectively modeled by experienced users (Taylor and Todd, 1995). Accordingly, before inexperienced users use a new e-service, they may require higher e-service quality than experienced users. In this vein, this study proposes that past experience has negative moderating effect on the relationship between e-service quality and user satisfaction and trust.

  • H4a. The impact of e-service quality on user satisfaction is negatively moderated by past experience.

  • H4b. The impact of e-service quality on trust is negatively moderated by past experience.

3 Methodology

3.1 Data Source

Data are collected from a university in Taiwan. This university has been established for more than 50 years and establishes an e-service website for alumni in 2003. The Public Affairs Office (PAO) of this university is an institution responsible for alumni e-services, including helping the alumni to seek lost-contact alumni, apply for diplomas of graduation online and so on. Totally, 318 respondents are selected from a web survey at the PAO website. Of the sample, 53 % are male and 65 % graduate more than 5 years ago.

3.2 Measures

E-service Quality. This study uses the WebQUAL instrument (Aladwani and Palvia, 2002) to measure user perceived e-service quality because it is suitable for non-profit web-based context. A total of 15 items are used to measure WebQUAL (see Table 1); specifically, 3 items for technical adequacy, 3 items for content quality, and 5 items for web appearance.

Table 1. The questionnaire items of research constructs
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Satisfaction and Trust. User satisfaction is the result of a process of evaluation and is benefit for relationship development (Bauer et al., 2002). Trust reflects a willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Both satisfaction and trust are usually measured as the relationship with the service provider based on all the service experiences (Garbarino and Johnson, 1999; Roberts et al., 2003). Thus, this study uses 3 items and 2 items to measure the overall satisfaction and trust with website.

Age and Past Experience. The respondents are asked to answer to their age and past experience of using e-service. According to distribution of age, research respondents are divided into three groups. The first group (A1) is the young adults less than 30 years old. The second group (A2) is between 31–40 ages, and the third group (A3) is older adults more than 41 years old. Likewise, the respondents are divided into three groups based on their past experience. The first group (P1) is the inexperienced users whose usage experience less than 1 time, and the second group (P2) is the users who have had e-service experiences 2 or 3 times. The third group (P3) is experienced users who have had more than 4 times e-service experiences before.

4 Results and Discussions

The hypothesized associations are tested by using regression analyses. As expected, web appearance, content quality, and technical adequacy are positively related to satisfaction. The beta coefficients (β) of these three sub-constructs are .236 (p <= .001), .224 (p <= .001), and .360 (p <= .001), respectively. The H1 is supported. Similarly, trust is positively influenced by web appearance (β = .174; p <= .01), content quality (β = .121; p = .063), and technical adequacy (β = .437; p <= .001). The H2 is supported as well. The results are corresponded with the findings by prior studies (Cristobal et al., 2007; Yang et al., 2005), suggesting greater web quality will lead to higher user satisfaction and trust. But this study duplicates the study and suggests that the causal association is supported without interference from user’s age and past experience.

To test the H3, the results are analyzed based on different age groups (i.e., A1, A2 and A3 groups). Table 2 shows that web quality is positively related to user satisfaction for young adults. But, for older adults, the effects of web appearance and content quality merely approached significance (p value ranges from .05 to .1). The causality from web quality to user satisfaction is not more significant for older adults, showing that the H3a is not supported. Similarly, due to lack of obvious evidences, the H3b is not supported. A possible explanation is that because the Internet is becoming increasingly popular, most of older adults are used to use e-service and thereby do not pursue higher demands for web quality.

Table 2. The results of regression analysis on different age groups
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For the H4, Table 3 shows that web quality is strongly associated with user satisfaction for users with low usage experience, but this association is not significant for users with high usage experience. The result suggests that the causality from web quality to user satisfaction is much more significant for people who seldom use e-service. Corresponded with the expectation, the H4a is supported. The finding reveals that the requirement of web quality is determined by user’s usage experience rather than user’s age. The enterprise managers could spend more efforts on catching users’ past experience and develop appropriate strategy to serve them. For instance, managers can use cookie or system log at the website to analyze users’ usage experience. If they are inexperienced users or did not use the e-service before, the website will pop up a message inquiring the users about the needs of user guideline or friendly web appearance.

Table 3. The results of regression analysis on different usage experience groups
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Furthermore, there is no enough evidence to show the H4b is supported. According to the results of the H3b and H4b, only technical adequacy positively and significantly affects trust in any groups. A plausible explanation is that trust represents a much deeper relationship with user (Corritore et al., 2003). Compared with web appearance and context, providing better technical adequacy (e.g., system security) has a more direct impact on trustworthy relationship. The finding reveals that if enterprise managers aim to establish trustworthy relationships with users, they should be thinking about how to enhance website technology, such as customization, privacy, security and so on.

5 Conclusions

The aim of this study is to compare the impacts of age and usage experience on the relationship between perceived web quality and user satisfaction and trust. This study found that older adults do not necessarily require greater web quality to serve them because the Internet is becoming popular and they are used to use e-service. In contrast, inexperienced users (or users with low usage experience) require greater web quality than experienced users. Therefore, regarding to website design pursuing higher user satisfaction, the importance of usage experience is higher than user’s age.