This research aims to examine a theoretical model of user’s intention in using YouTube to share videos. We start this chapter by explaining the basic thinking, motivation and purpose of doing this research. Consisting four sub-chapters, this chapter is organized as follows: first is explaining the author’s background and motivation, second is about the research purpose, third is illustrating the research process and fourth is about how this thesis was organized.
1.1 Research Background and Motivation
Nowadays internet has been widely used all over the world. Its functions have also grown not only as the media for communicating data, but also for sharing knowledge, picture, audio, video, and other time-based data (Garrison, 2001). It means that website is no longer regarded as the text or written word, but it is used as a combination of all forms of media and can also function as the source of entertaining, informative media such as television or cinema by uploading the media and sharing it via the internet video sharing application. One of the most successful internet video sharing applications is YouTube. This free online video streaming website has services that allows anyone to view and share videos uploaded by its users.
Since its first launching in December 2005, YouTube has been the leading player in online video and become the destination of both watching and sharing original videos globally across internet using website, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail (YouTube, 2008). In October 2006, YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65 million (Sorkin, 2006). Since then, YouTube has been set into a multi-billion dollar business, generating advertising revenues for Google and fears of displacement for traditional
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producers of video. Everybody can upload and watch videos in YouTube. There are hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded daily and more than 100 million videos are watched daily on this popular video sharing website (YouTube, 2008). The traffic of YouTube is the third highest in all categories with 183 millions of monthly visitors globally and in some countries, such as USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and so on, YouTube ranks number one is video sharing website category (Alexa.com, 2008). List of global top website is provided in appendix.
Seeing this phenomenon, we might have of some questions in our mind, why do people choose YouTube? What are the factors actually contribute to user intention in choosing YouTube to share the videos? The fact that every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube tells us how YouTube dominates this video streaming business. The author was motivated to do this research in order to find the answer of this question which may also be useful for the competitors to benchmark on YouTube’s way to success.
Note that in this paper, we only focus on sharing video to the public activities, no matter whether it is original or duplicate, and do not include watching activities. In order to be able to upload and broadcast either public or private video clips of any reasonable length, users have to create an account to upload their videos.
1.2 Research Purpose
We have three main purposes of this research. First is to examine factors in TAM influences user’s intention in choosing YouTube to share videos. Many researches have modified and widely applied TAM to measure the acceptance level of information technology usage (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000; D. Gefen, Karahanna, &
Straub, 2003; P. J. Hu, Chau, Sheng, & Tam, 1999; Moon & Kim, 2001; Teo, Lim, &
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Lai, 1999; Wang, Hsu, & Fang, 2004; Zhang & Prybutok, 2003). Nevertheless, TAM itself may not enough to reflect the intention of choosing YouTube to share videos.
Therefore we also considered factors from social influences in our proposed model.
Our second purpose is to examine factors influencing user’s intention in choosing YouTube to share videos in the social influences perspective.
The third purpose is to analyze differences of user intention in choosing YouTube to share videos based on their gender. By making comparison, we want to see where the most significant difference between male user and female user is.
This study applies a structure equation model (SEM) to measure the empirical strength of the relationship in the proposed model. The model is being developed with a major objective in mind. It should improve our understanding of user intention in choosing YouTube to share videos, providing new theoretical insight into the YouTube’s success in video streaming business.
1.3 Research Process Flow Chart
The research is begun with identifying the direction and some problems related to this research as well as the purpose. After all the identification processes, we reviewed the literatures that were useful to this research. The next process is to establish the research framework. Afterwards, based on the research framework, we design the questionnaire for our measurement scale. The questionnaire was revised with the guidance of our advisor to avoid some ambiguities and finally the questionnaire was spread through the internet. We used structural equation modeling to analyze the measurement model and the structural model. The final step was to draw the conclusion and propose some suggestions for the future research. We can see the complete research process flow chart in Figure 1.
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Figure 1 Research Process Flow Chart Research direction and problem
identification
Research purpose and scope identification
Literature review
Establishing the research framework
Questionnaire design and revision
Final questionnaire data collection
Data analysis
Conclusion and suggestion
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1.4 Thesis Organization
Chapter one of this thesis includes the research background, motivation, purpose, and process flow chart. Chapter two explains the literature review and prior knowledge. Chapter three describes the framework and methodology used in this research. Chapter four includes the measurement model result and structural model.
Finally, the last chapter intends to present some implications, and to propose some suggestions for the future research.
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