Thai Internet Users' Personality Traits and their Preferred Web Portal's Characteristics

The objective of this research is to identify a web portal's specific functions and layouts that are aligned with personality trait of an individual internet user. This first stage of the overall research project intends to check whether the research instrument, namely the NEO Five Factors Inventory (NEO-FFI), is applicable to assess the personality traits of Thai internet users. Based on these personality traits, text-based description of functions/layouts of a web portal was developed and given to professional designers to mock up example web portal pages. These web portal pages were in alignment with individual personality traits. Rating data on the functions/layouts corresponding to individual personality traits were collected from an online survey of 207 Thai internet users. Results showed that respondents gave more consistent rating to the functions/layouts close to their individual personality traits identified in the text-based descriptions than in the mocked-up web portal pages.