Measuring the impacts of mobile commerce on activity-travel behaviour

Recent developments in information and communication technology have meant that mobile commerce will have an increasingly important influence on the travel behaviour; in particular on how, when and where people choose to use their time to conduct activities. In the cases of activities involving the use of mobile services, such as m-shopping or m-banking, the conventional strong connection between the utility which one derives from an activity and its timing and duration are weakened or even broken such that existing utility-maximization models are not suitable in these contexts. This thesis presents a novel approach to characterising the utility of activities which can be applied in a broader set of circumstances, especially those such as m-services in which technology relaxes the patio-temporal constraints of activity participation. Building on concepts from both the microeconomic literature and the activity scheduling literature, the thesis proposes a unified utility framework based on an activity production approach, which is characterised by an activity production function. In this approach, an activity is regarded as the archetypal "small firm‟ theorised by Becker (1965). An individual transforms the inputs (purchased market goods, time, and technology) into the outputs (consumption 'commodities) through some activity production process. Both the production process and the outcome of consumption are potential sources of (dis)utility. We show how this framework generalises existing activity utility model and demonstrate how it can be extended to accommodate activities performed in both electronic and mobile contexts. A stated choice exercise was undertaken to obtain the data necessary to estimate utility models based on this new framework. In this exercise, a hypothetical shopping choice scenario was presented to respondents and a D-efficient design was adopted to investigate people‟s decision making with respect to shopping. Using the cleaned data generated by this data collection program, the basic model with the best overall level of fit was identified. Theoretical and empirical implications were discussed. Strong evidences of taste heterogeneity among respondents were also found

Understanding individuals' behaviour in the convergent use of mobile phones

The aim of this thesis is to conceptualise and operationalise the phenomenon of technology convergence on mobile phones from the perspective of the individual. This research used mixed methods research utilizing personal interviews, an online survey, and a focus group to test propositions and then hypotheses derived from existing research which were modelled in a framework built of previous studies using TAM. The personal interviews and a review of the existing literature helped to develop a single model of convergent use of mobile phones and then 4 differentiated models of convergent use based on 4 different purposes which mobiles are used for, namely personal information management (PIM), entertainment, email and commercial transactions respectively. These models were built on apparently interrelated constructs in the form of hypotheses. The findings from the survey research show that individual perceptions, such as usefulness, enjoyment, and risk are significant factors that predict the use of mobile phones for a specific purpose. The results from a factor analysis and a focus group also found that users do not consider ease of use as a distinctive construct from usefulness when it comes to the use of mobile phones, challenging accepted technology acceptance wisdom. Each individual’s demographics, technology choices and device ownership, on the other hand, were shown to strengthen the causal relationships between individual perceptions and user behaviour based on a particular purpose/use of mobile phones. The new findings were attributed to the characteristics of Generation Y and to psychological perceptions between conventional and advanced users. Individuals’ technology choices, needs, and uses of other technologies were also found to begin to explain why individuals have different acceptedness in convergence. The conclusions in the research were drawn from the triangulation of the different findings from a literature review, from exploratory interviews, from survey research, and from a focus group. These findings, it is argued in the thesis, advance IT adoption theory by demonstrating the impact of moderating factors and the relative unimportance of ‘ease of use’ as a determining factors for advanced users of technology. This research creates a new arena for future research and market strategy to continuously cultivate the knowledge of interactions between technology convergence and individual behaviour based on a model of levels of competence with technology