| Scope and Method of Study. This research examines user behavior in the context of WebGIS use for recreation/tourism. The aim is to delineate the recreation and tourism information seekers' participation in WebGIS services and to explore the factors that significantly affect WebGIS use. The first phase of the study includes a series of instrument development processes that contains preliminary instrument generation. The instrument is organized in the form of a survey for quantitative analyses in phase two. The second phase of this study assesses the users' perceptions and practices in the aspects of attitude-behavior, personal characteristics, artifact features, and recreation/tourism attributes. This phase is quantitative in nature and aims to analyze the relationships between the underlying dimensions identified in the phase one.;Findings and Conclusions. An instrument based on a four-dimensional system developed in this study was established to measure WebGIS utilization in recreation and tourism information search. The results of global tests by constructs were evident to the understanding that the WebGIS usages were situational. Users also had preferences to use certain types or regions of geo-information among the choices. Respondents showed preferences for certain functions in actual operations with WebGIS functionalities. With personal characteristics, sex showed influential to information search behavior. In this study, the factor of age differentiated relatively more effects in all three dimensions. In general, education as a factor showed more non-significant than significant influences. People in different occupational groups made similar judgments as to how useful and playful the WebGIS was, but made different judgments as to how easily WebGIS can be operated. The main effects of the access speed concentrated on the enjoyment-related components. In this study, the effect of the personal income level variable was not influential. Exploring the attitude-behavioral determinants to the WebGIS, the results of this study were highly supported by former studies using the original or extended TAM models. Surprisingly, the results showed that the construct playfulness was the determinant for the depth of use. |
