Towards an understanding of the behavioural intention to use a web site

The growing popularity of the Internet has resulted in exciting opportuniti es for companies to reach out for customers with very little additional cos ts. In order to communicate with the potential customers through WWW effect ively, a well-designed Web page is needed. Yet, the factors that affect cus tomer's perception about the acceptance of a Web site are unclear. This pap er addresses why users accept or reject a Web site and how user's acceptanc e is affected by the features (i.e. information quality of a Web site, resp onse time and system accessibility) provided by a Web site. A study with 13 9 users of a Web site was conducted to test the hypothesised model. The res ults showed that the technology acceptance model (TAM) fully mediated the u sage behaviour even in the Internet environment, accounting for 64% of the variance in usage. Furthermore, response time of a Web site is an important factor in affecting the user's beliefs of such a Web site. This showed tha t Web page providers not only have to make the content informative and time ly, but they also need to design a speedy Web page by not putting in unnece ssary pictorial data as it might jeopardise the display time. (C) 2000 Else vier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.