icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
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an exit mechanism for them and promote labor transfer by<br />
improving their information capabilities and employability, and<br />
thus to diminish the gap between urban citizens and them and<br />
promote their social integration [ 14 ]. As a seminal work,<br />
Construct an Integrated Information Service System for Migrant<br />
Farmer Workers [15], the report of the National Informatization<br />
Expert Committee in 2005 put forward that China should establish<br />
an integrated information service system for MFWs.<br />
Websites are indispensable parts of an integrated information<br />
service system for MFWs. With the implication of “Village<br />
Connection” policy, the number of agriculture-related websites<br />
had reached nearly 20,000 by the end of 2010 in China [16].<br />
Current studies on these websites mainly include website<br />
construction [17]; [18], webmetrics [19], roles of websites played<br />
in rural informatization [20], existing problems e.g. duplicated<br />
and outdated information [21], limited functions and unguaranteed<br />
information authenticity [22], and low browse rate and inadequate<br />
brand building [23]. However, only several websites special for<br />
MFWs have emerged in recent few years. Among 20,000<br />
agriculture-related websites, they occupy only a minimal<br />
proportion but have great significance for MFWs. Moreover, we<br />
had not found any researches on the websites for Chinese MFWs<br />
by June 2011. How do these websites operate? What factors<br />
influence their survival and development? What difficulties are<br />
they faced with? In order to answer these questions, a holistic<br />
exploration is necessary and a multi-case study will be adopted to<br />
realize it.<br />
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK<br />
There are a quantity of theories and methods for website study,<br />
such as usability [24], information architecture (IA), technology<br />
acceptance model (TAM) [25 ], webometrics, social network<br />
analysis (SNA), etc. Studies on usability in LIS and IS fields have<br />
increased dramatically in recent years and a variety of measure<br />
scales have been developed. Shackel advanced four dimensions of<br />
usability, effectiveness, learnability, flexibility and attitude [26].<br />
IA is thought as both a kind of art and a kind of technology on<br />
website building [27] and provides a set of technical aids to make<br />
a website more usable. Webometrics studies the quantitative<br />
aspects of the construction and use of information resources,<br />
structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric<br />
and informetric approaches [ 28 ]. Abovementioned theories<br />
examine websites from technical, managerial or social<br />
perspectives. Our study will focus on disclosing the effects of the<br />
MFW websites and the influences of some internal and external<br />
factors. This is a comprehensive problem related to managerial,<br />
technical and social issues. It is not enough to employ any single<br />
theory to guide a holistic exploration. Therefore, we select<br />
relevant constructs from present theories and combine them into a<br />
new theoretical framework under a managerial-technical<br />
perspective.<br />
Literatures show that some successful studies focus on complex<br />
aspects of a website rather than a single one. Welch and Pandey<br />
[29] compared different measures for the effect of government<br />
websites and found that except technology, political pressure,<br />
centralization, formalization, goal ambiguity, organizational<br />
culture, communication effect, red tape, complexity and size are<br />
all possible determinants of website effects. To avoid the<br />
shortcomings of a single perspective, Eschenfelder and Miller [30]<br />
established a socio-technical toolkit to measure the openness and<br />
accessibility of government information. Lee and Kozer [31]<br />
96<br />
constructed a model consisting of four major website quality<br />
factors, information quality, service quality, systems quality, and<br />
vendor-specific quality, to measure the effect of e-business<br />
website quality. These studies combined online characteristics of<br />
websites with offline factors and obtained satisfying results. In<br />
terms of this study, research problems could be given a more<br />
detailed examination under a holistic theoretical framework than<br />
under a single theoretical perspective. Out of this consideration, 5<br />
qualitative and quantitative constructs and 7 theoretical<br />
hypotheses are put forward as follows:<br />
2.1 Website Effect<br />
The main goal of the studied websites is to deliver information to<br />
MFWs. An effective website will attract more potential users to<br />
click and satisfy actual users’ information needs better. In this<br />
paper, website effect is taken as the dependent variable. Many<br />
constructs could be extracted to describe or measure website<br />
effect in usability researches. Nilsen [32] used ten usability<br />
heuristics related with user’s satisfaction for user interface design.<br />
Preece [33] adopted the user’s attitude as one of the factors in<br />
defining website usability. Success of information delivery to<br />
intended users or not determines a website’s final effect. Thus<br />
website effect could be defined with two variables, awareness and<br />
users’ satisfaction. High awareness means that a large number of<br />
people have known or experienced the website. In search engine<br />
optimization (SEO) average daily IP clicks and page view (PV)<br />
within a month are used to estimate website awareness. Many<br />
methods are used to evaluate overall user’s satisfaction towards a<br />
website in literatures. In this study, we choose both qualitative and<br />
quantitative indicators to evaluate user’s satisfaction. The former<br />
is used to indicate users’ satisfaction degree by qualitative content<br />
analyses on users’ feedback messages and media comments. The<br />
latter include two quantitative indicators, Google Page Rank<br />
Value (a numeric value that represents how important a page is on<br />
the web) and an overall assessment scored with 5-point Likert<br />
scale by researchers after in-depth investigations of each website<br />
and interviews with its webmaster. These indicators for the<br />
concept of website effect are shown in table 1.<br />
Table 1: Indicators for the concept of website effect<br />
Conceptual<br />
indicator<br />
website<br />
awareness<br />
User<br />
satisfaction<br />
Operational indicator Data Source<br />
Average daily IP clicks,<br />
Page view estimates<br />
within one month<br />
Degree of MFWs’<br />
satisfaction<br />
Websites of ALEXA,<br />
SEO and GOOGLE<br />
Users’ feedback<br />
messages on websites<br />
and comments from<br />
other mass media<br />
Overall assessment Google Page Rank<br />
Value, overall website<br />
analyses and interviews<br />
with webmasters<br />
2.2 Business Model of the Websites<br />
Business model is a concept frequently used in e-business, IS,<br />
computer science, strategy or management [34]. “At its heart, a<br />
business model performs two important functions: value creation<br />
and value capture” [35]. A conceptual business model should