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also show that perceived behavioral control had no effect on behavioral in-tention among people under 40 and people who don’t speak Hakka well. It is reasonable to expect that young people and people who don’t speak Hakka well may feel that they have less capability or efficacy to participate in HOCs.
Table 4. Standardized Regression Weights by Age and Language Proficiency
Age Language
Path Under 40 Above 40 Not very good Very good
EI -> AT .94*** .83*** .73** .84***
Note: EI = ethnic identity; AT = attitude; SN = subjective norms; PBC = perceived behavioral control; BI = behavioral intention. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05.
Source: Made by authors.
Discussion and Conclusion
We started off with a synthesis of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and ethnic identity to analyze Timorese Hakka participation in ethnic online communities. Overall, the TPB is a significant model in analyzing Timorese Hakka online participation, whereas ethnic identity serves as a strong an-tecedent of the TPB constructs toward participating in those communities.
Specifically, we found that ethnic identity, attitude, subjective norm, and
per-ceived behavioral control are significant factors in influencing the intention to participate in Hakka online communities. The results of this study shed light on some important issues. First, we found that individual, social, and non-vo-litional factors collectively represent the ethnic group’s actual control over their intention. That is, participating in ethnic online communities requires not only a person’s motivation (i.e., attitude and subjective norm) but also the person’s ability (i.e., perceived control). This is in accord with some pre-vious findings which showed exercising and dining out were predicted well by a simultaneous consideration of all three components (Fishbein and Ajzen 2010: 193-195). Moreover, ethnic identity should be considered an important prerequisite of the TPB constructs when ethnic groups are under investigation because ethnic behaviors can be attained if co-ethnics have a strong identity.
The finding appears to reinforce the previous research on the ethnic identity of the same community and its use of the internet for communicative pur-poses, in that the sense of self identity drives motivation in the setting up of social associations and that there appeared to be a desire to use technology to communicate (Chew and Huang 2014: 2017). Ethnic identity is a necessary prior condition before planned behavioural intentions.
Based on the empirical findings, this study has provided some theoret-ical and practtheoret-ical contributions. First, we synthesize Ajzen and Fishbein’s (1975) theory of planned behavior and Phinney and Rotherham’s (1987) eth-nic identity to investigate factors that motivate Timorese Hakka to participate in Hakka online communities. Our modified model suggests ethnic identity
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as an influential antecedent of TPB constructs when ethnic groups are under study. Second, we conducted a mixed-mode survey which differed from nor-mal online surveys in that it is not just an anonymous questionnaire delivered through the internet. We had the benefit of limited fieldwork where we had some face to face interactions with Timorese to address issues of question-naire administration and to gather information, and we attended some social occasions to enhance our understanding of the community. Third, we believe the results of the study can have practical use for leaders or administrators of ethnic online communities. As the intention to participate in ethnic online communities can be predicated reasonably well by ethnic identity, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms, we suggest that commu-nity leaders should strive to stimulate their co-ethnics’ intrinsic motivation.
These elements may better be reflected in ethnicity-labeled activities. The strength of such activities is also likely to attract funding and support from government agencies wishing to promote multicultural policies.
Notwithstanding our findings and hypotheses, it is also important to address limitations in our study and the directions for future research. First, it should be noted that a bias exists because the sampling was targeted, with generalizations only reflecting this sample population. Future studies might want to examine the Timorese Hakka community randomly for a better rep-resentation of the entire population frame if possible. Second, the study only included constructs proposed by TBP and ethnic identity and left out other factors such as community support or system characteristics and other models
like social network analysis or protection motivation theory, which may better understand the behaviors of ethnic online communities, studies which will require more resources and in-depth investigations, beyond the scope of this paper. Third, we found several TPB constructs have high covariation which lead to less than satisfied validity in scale development. Future studies might want to pretest the scales in advance to decrease the validity issues. Last but not least, the existing literature on the Timorese Hakka in Australia is thin because the group has not received much research attention. This research is a starting point for future research. We or other researchers may replicate the model and investigate it in different time periods to make comparisons, thus providing more insights into the nature of such Hakka online communities.
Acknowledgement
This study was made possible through a research grant from the Re-search Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chiao Tung University. The authors would also like to acknowledge Yu-rong Peng and Wan-yu Shih for literature review and data entry contributions and to thank anonymous referees and the editors, Wei-an Chang and Wei-der Shu, for their valuable comments.
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