Examining the Cognitive Style Effects on the Acceptance of Online Community Weblog Systems

Weblog is increasingly important over time with researchers anxious to learn why millions of Internet users are so eager to post their own diary on the web everyday. This study collected views from 265 business school undergraduate students on their opinions concerning the use of weblog. In this questionnaire, cognitive style was used to analyze potential significant differences among various user types. Cognitive style measured respondents in a spectrum of two extremes that is, the intuitive, who had nonlinear thinking at one end; while the analytic, who used a rational type of information processing at the other end. Group analysis found that there were significant differences between the two cognitive groups: (1) performance expectancy was significantly higher; while (2) effort expectancy and social influence were significantly lower towards intention to use in the analytical group. Nevertheless, differences in facilitating conditions towards intention to use were found not significant.