Development of a survey instrument to examine consumer adoption of broadband
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570610666458 |
| Pages | 700-718 |
| Author | Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi,Jyoti Choudrie,Willem‐Paul Brinkman |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Development of a survey
instrument to examine consumer
adoption of broadband
Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi
School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics,
Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Jyoti Choudrie
School of Business and Economics, Swansea University, Swansea, UK, and
Willem-Paul Brinkman
School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics,
Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Abstract
Purpose – To describe the development of a survey instrument designed to measure consumer
perceptions of the broadband adoption within the UK households.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey research approach was employed to achieve overall
aim and following three objectives of this research: to identify initial items that may help to explain the
broadband adoption behaviour and determine them employing an exploratory survey approach; to
confirm the representativeness of items to a particular construct domain employing content validity
approach; and finally, to test the instrument in order to confirm the reliability of items and construct
validity.
Findings – The final outcome of the instrument development process that culminated from the
confirmatory study was a parsimonious, 39-item instrument, consisting of ten scales, all with
acceptable levels of content validity, reliability and construct validity.
Practical implications – The developed instrument is relevant to both academic and practitioner
communities who hold a particular interest in the study and management of broadband adoption from
the household consumer perspective.
Originality/value – The most conspicuous contribution of the paper is to provide a reliable
instrument that is fundamental to measure the household consumer’s perceptions of adopting
broadband internet.
Keywords Surveys, Broadbandnetworks, Internet, Consumerresearch, Consumer behaviour,
United Kingdom
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Broadband internet offers potential to increase the international competitiveness and
economic growth of a country by accelerating the growth and deployment of emerging
electronic services including e-commerce and e-government (Oh et al., 2003). However,
the full potential of broadband cannot be realised without mass adoption by
consumers. The consumers’ demand for broadband in many countries including the
UK has not been taken up as expected (Choudrie and Lee, 2004). Therefore, this issue of
demand constraints generates the questions such as, why are consumers slow to adopt
broadband and how can broadband demand be accelerated?
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Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 106 No. 5, 2006
pp. 700-718
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635570610666458
In order to provide answers to the aforementioned questions and to investigate the
reasons for the slow adoption of broadband it is essential to have a reliable scale.
The analysis of current literature suggests that the existing studies on broadband
related issues mostly concentrated on macro factors (Choudrie and Lee, 2004), the
investigation of the demographics of consumers (Choudrie and Dwivedi, 2005) and
the examination of the individual perceptions (Oh et al., 2003). Progress has also been
made in developing conceptual models to understand the adoption of broadband from
the household consumer perspective (Choudrie and Dwivedi, 2004). However, in order
to test the conceptual model a reliable survey instrument has yet to be developed and
validated. Validating the instrument is a critical step before testing the conceptual
model (Straub et al., 2004; Wee and Quazi, 2005). This is because the rigour of findings
and interpretations is based on solid validation of the instruments that are used to
gather the data (Straub et al., 2004).
Therefore, this paper describes the development of a survey instrument designed to
investigate broadband adoption within the UK household consumer context. The
paper aims to achieve the following three objectives to:
(1) identify initial items that may help to explain the broadband adoption
behaviour and determine them employing an exploratory survey approach;
(2) confir m the representativeness of items to a particular construct domain
employing content validity approach; and
(3) test the instrument in order to confirm the reliability of items and construct
validity.
By achieving the set objectives, the contribution of this research paper is to provide an
overall reliable instrument that measures the household consumer’s perceptions of
adopting broadband. The developed instrument will be relevant to both academic and
practitioner communities who hold a particular interest in the study and management
of broadband adoption from the household consumer perspective.
Having introduced the topic of interest, this paper now proceeds to offer a brief
discussion of previous research work that has addressed broadband adoption.
Following that the overall research approach to instrument development process is
described and illustrated. This is followed by discussion on methods and outcomes of
the four stages that consist of the exploratory survey, content validity, pre and pilot
test and confirmatory study. Following that an overall discussion including practical
contributions and managerial implications is provided. Finally, conclusions of the
paper are presented.
Background and theoretical basis
From the analysis of previous studies on broadband adoption, it appears that
although researchers have begun to investigate broadband adoption from the
consumer perspective, the conducted studies are still exploratory in nature. However,
one confirmatory study that was conducted to measure the individual level factor s
related to broadband adoption was focused upo n the role of experience in
building attitudes towards adoption of broadband in South Korea (Oh et al., 2003).
This study examined individual level factors by integrating constructs from
three different theories and models that consist of the diffusion of innovation
(compatibility, trialability, visibility, demonstrability), technology acceptance model
Development of a
survey
instrument
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