| Since entering the 21st century, Information Technology, especially the Internet technology has brought a profound management change to the enterprise. The emerging Software as a Service (SaaS) is re-writing the software industry pattern by radical innovation. Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Google, IBM, Kingdee, eAbax, Alisoft et al, more and more domestic and foreign IT enterprises try to acquire competitive advantage by providing SaaS to users. In order to promote the user acceptance of SaaS, SaaS service providers are urgently needed for some theoretical guidance. Moreover, the traditional technology acceptance theories, which are developed mainly based on off-line information system need to make new interpretation and amendment under the emerging e-service wave. Therefore, research on the influential factors of SaaS user acceptance is of greater value in both theoretical and practical fields.As an earlier study in SaaS user acceptance area, the main purpose of this dissertation is to build an influential factors model of SaaS user acceptance through in-depth analysis of the characteristics of user acceptance of online information system. For this purpose, two issues are introduced in this dissertation: what are the important factors that have impact on SaaS user acceptance, and what are the relations among these factors? Therefore, two studies were done:1. A scale named SaaSQual to measure SaaS e-service quality was developed. First, based on the literature review and 306 samples collected from an open questionnaire, four dimensions of SaaS e-service quality were identified and 16 candidate items were generated. Then, based on pre-test of 76 samples, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis of 1012 samples were done to test these dimensions, and finally a 16-item scale of SaaSQual was produced;2. The influential factors model of SaaS user acceptance is built and tested. First, an initial influential factors model of SaaS user acceptance including the four dimensions of e-service quality is built. Then based on 1532 samples, structural equation modeling (SEM) method is used for data analysis and hypothesis testing by using the Amos software, and finally an optimized model comes out after twice model modification. The conclusions of this study are as below:1. The e-service quality of SaaS is primarily made up of four dimensions: ease of use, security, reliability and responsiveness, which all have impact on SaaS user acceptance and can measure by the SaaSQual scale;2. Perceived usefulness, ease of use, reliability, responsiveness and social influence have a direct positive impact on user behavioral intention to use SaaS, but security only have an indirect positive impact on user behavioral intention to use SaaS through its direct positive impact on perceived usefulness;3. For the long time SaaS Users, security has an insignificant impact on their behavioral intention to use SaaS, but for those short time SaaS users, security is still one of the issues that may discourage them to use SaaS.Based on the above findings, this dissertation brings forward some feasible means and countermeasure for SaaS service providers from three aspects: enhancing perceived usefulness, improving e-service quality and making use of social influence by viral marketing.The contribution or innovation in the dissertation may be:1. The development of the SaaSQual scale enriches the e-service quality research, and lays the foundation for follow-up studies on SaaS user acceptance and e-service quality management;2. This study verifies the applicability of TAM in the context of e-service, which expands its scope of application; moreover, this study explains the e-service quality' impact on user acceptance, which enriches the choice of independent variables in the study of technology acceptance. |
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