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Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, University of Texas at Austin
Izak Benbasat, University of British Columbia
Ping Zhang, Syracuse University
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Web Site Delays: How Tolerant are Users?
Dennis F. Galletta, University of Pittsburgh
Web page loading speed continues to vex users, even as broadband
adoption continues to increase. Several studies have addressed
delays both in the context of Web sites as well as interactive
corporate systems, and a wide range of "rules of thumb" have
been recommended. Some studies conclude that response times
should be allowed to grow to no greater than 2 seconds while
other studies provide cautions on delays of 12 seconds or more.
One of the strongest conclusions had been that complex tasks
seem to allow longer response times. This study examined,
in an experimental setting, delay times of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10,
and 12 seconds using 196 undergraduate students. It was hypothesized that
longer and longer delays would cause diminishing negative effects on
satisfaction, intentions to return to the site, and performance
(number of tasks completed), that familiarity (mostly related
to the site's terminology) would moderate those relationships,
and that satisfaction is positively related to intentions to return.
Subjects were randomly assigned a single delay time and were asked
to complete 9 search tasks, exploring a familiar and an unfamiliar site.
All of the hypotheses were supported. Plots of the dependent variables
performance, attitudes, and behavioral intentions, along those delays,
indeed suggested the use of non-linear regression, and the explained
variance was in the neighborhood of 2%, 5%, and 7%, respectively.
Focusing only on the familiar site, explained variance in attitudes
and behavioral intentions grew to about 16%. A sensitivity analysis
implies that decreases in performance and behavioral intentions
begin to flatten when the delays extend to 4 seconds or longer,
and attitudes flatten when the delays extend to 8 seconds or longer.
Future research should include other factors such as expectations,
variability, and feedback, and other outcomes such as actual purchasing behavior,
to more fully understand the effects of delays in today's Web environment.
Papers in the Special Theme
Raymond Henry, Clemson University
Scott McCoy, College of William & Mary
Peter Polak, University of Miami
Knowledge-based Support in a Group Decision Making Context: An Expert-Novice Comparison
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Izak Benbasat, University of British Columbia
This research compared the use of knowledge-based and explanation facilities to support group decision-making of experts versus novices. Consistent with predictions from the persuasion literature, the results indicate that experts exhibit a higher level of criticality and involvement in their area of expertise; this not only decreases their likelihood of being persuaded by knowledge-based system, but also accounts for a lower group consensus among experts as compared to novices. Novices are more easily persuaded by the system and find the system to be more useful than experts do. In terms of theoretical contributions, this research integrates theories from the persuasion literature into research on group decision-making in a knowledge-based support environment.