• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.1-26
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• 2007

In this paper, we identified factors that affect the usage of UCC, which is becoming increasingly popular in our society and throughout the globe. Four hypotheses were tested using a new integrative model of UCC usage, which is built up by incorporating the TAM and the PA(pleasure-arousal)model. We analyzed the data collected in our survey of 258 individual UCC users during the period from Oct 2006 to Dec 2006. We found that pleasure and arousal showed a strong significant effect on individual's UCC usage, supporting the findings of the exiting research on TAM. To be specific, arousal had an effect on the UCC usage through its effect on pleasure and self efficacy. Pleasure affected the UCC usage in two ways: First, pleasure affected UCC usage through increasing the ease of UCC service. At the same time, pleasure had a direct effect on the UCC usage. Contrary to what the prior research on technology acceptance suggested, we found ease of use and social influence had no significant effect on individual’s UCC usage. We suggest that this finding of no effect of ease of use and social influence has an important implication in understanding the UCC usage. That is, the UCC usage may be motivated by different factors than those which inspire other technology acceptance behavior. The UCC users may be engaging in a creative activity enjoying the sheer pleasure of creating UCC, self expression, and sharing what they want to tell. Intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation seems to click this new type of technology users.