Pan-Pacific Conference XXXIV. Designing New Business Models in Developing Economies

coping-appraisal component of the model. Self-efficacy
concerns an individual’s beliefs about whether he or she is
able to perform the recommended coping response.
Response costs regards the concern on how costly
performing the recommended response will be to the
individual.
2. Research Model
According to PMT, protection motivation consists of two
coping mechanisms: adaptive and maladaptive. Adaptive
coping can be considered an effort to maximize the
positive utility of the activity or behavior. To evaluate
adaptive coping, efficacy and response costs are
considered. Efficacy is the activity where agents try to
maximize positive utility and response cost is the cost that
should be paid when agents try to maximize efficacy. In
this model, agents try to maximize the obtainment of
reputation, positive evaluation, self-satisfaction or fun by
transferring information. This can be considered efficacy.
Loss of knowledge or the possibility of knowledge loss
when can be considered the response costs. Therefore,
maximization of the difference between efficacy and
response cost can be considered a coping appraisal.
Maladaptive coping can be considered an effort to
minimize negative utility. To evaluate maladaptive coping,
in PMT, rewards and severity are considered. The reward
is the pleasure obtained by the activity, while severity is
the (possible) risk or danger of the activity. Therefore, the
agents are willing to minimize the severity if the rewards
are the same. In this model, agents try to minimize the risk
of virus or security fear when agents maximize the utility
of knowledge acquisition. Considering both adaptive and
maladaptive cases, the agents would maximize the
protection motivation by trying to reduce the response cost
and severity. The question of this research is how to reduce
the response cost and severity. The authors suggest two
methods. The first is by using computer security
technologies, and the second method is to appeal to ethics.
Computer technology is a direct and forceful method but
requires extra cost. While ethics are indirect, it has a wide
application range and no extra cost is needed.
3. Hypotheses
Ethics can be used as a tool of protection for agents. Ethics
(Ferrell p. 239) has provided a norm in many different
areas such as sexual discrimination, racial discrimination,
price discrimination, bribery, harmful product, pollution,
telecommunication issue, intellectual property protection,
and many others. If the premise, “ethics is a tool of
protection” is true, the criteria of applying ethics to the
above fields will be different. This is because the needs of
protection will be different according to the subjects and,
therefore, the level of standard of ethics will be different
according to the subject. Therefore, the following
hypothesis was set up.
H1) Agents apply the different level of standards of
ethics according to the subject.
H2-1) The more agents are interested in knowledge
absorption, the more they are active in online
user participation.
H2-2) The more agents are interested in knowledge
transfer, the more they are active in online user
participation.
H3-1) The more agents want to absorb knowledge, the
more they emphasize security to prevent the
unwanted or false inflow of knowledge.
H3-2) The more agents want to absorb knowledge, the
more they emphasize ethics to prevent the
unwanted inflow of knowledge.
H4-1) The more agents want to transfer knowledge,
the more they emphasize security to prevent the
unwanted outflow of knowledge.
H4-2) The more agents want to transfer knowledge,
the more they emphasize ethics to prevent the
unwanted outflow of knowledge.
H5-1) The more agents emphasize security, the more
they are active in online user participation.
H5-2) The more agents emphasize ethics, the more
they are active in online user participation.
Findings and Discussion: Analysis of the structural
equation model
From the primary data (n = 497), the SEM was examined
to test the relationships between participation in the virtual
community and knowledge sharing (absorption and
transfer), security of information systems, and ethics of
information society with seven moderating variables: age,
income, experience, major (computer related or not),
religion, gender, and education. The authors used AMOS
18 to analyze the proposed model and significant paths
were found. As expected, sense of security, sense of ethics
in information society, sense of knowledge sharing, and
online user participation were related to each other.
Additionally, seven moderating factors had a significant
effect on some paths. Fig. 1 and 2 show the results of
hypothesis testing.
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