Examining the Effects among Motivation Needs, Satisfaction, and Instagram Continuance Intention in Malaysian Students

While social media platforms, notably Instagram, have gained traction among university students, this study sought to understand factors influencing their continued use among a segment of Malaysian university students. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the role of satisfaction (SAT) as a mediator in the relationship between various types of motivational needs and the continued intention (CI) to use Instagram. The motivational needs under study included cognitive needs (CN), affective needs (AN), personal integrative needs (PIN), social integrative needs (SIN), and escape needs (EN). This research was built on the foundations of the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT). Using a non-probablistic sampling strategy, this study gathered data via questionnaires from a sample of 384 students from six selected universities in Klang Valley. Within the scope of the research sample, a key finding emerged: SAT notably mediates the relationship between CN, SIN, PIN, and CI. This finding illustrates the pivotal role of SAT in the context of UGT and ECT, suggesting that SAT derived from Instagram usage is a critical factor in explaining the sustained engagement of university students, based on specific motivational needs. Within the context of this study's sampled participants, this result offers insights into how SAT, influenced by distinct motivational needs, may impact the intention to continue using Instagram. In practical terms, these insights may assist social media platform developers and educational institutions in understanding and addressing the satisfaction and engagement levels of university users. Simultaneously, the quota sampling strategy employed in this study serves as a valuable model for future research in similar contexts. However, this study recommend that future research expand the sample to include a broader cross-section of Malaysian university students to enhance representativeness and generalizability

ICT development of community in rural areas

Information Communication Technology (ICT) is no longer limited to urban population, but it has become increasingly relevant to the rural population. The use of ICT is evident through availability of ICT services for all in Malaysia’s rural areas. The internet in particular is gaining influences in the lives of rural communities in many aspects such as socially, educationally or economically is moving towards digitization. The establishment of ICT centers in rural areas has accelerated the adaptation of ICT in rural areas. Therefore, in general, this article will discuss the importance of ICT usage for rural community, and the government initiatives toward enhancing the ICT usage especially in the telecentre. The significance of having telecentres function as the centre for ICT excellence in rural areas. The telecentre provides ICT facilities such as internet and computer training room for use by rural community. Moreover, the establishment of telecentre is aiming for ICT awareness among the rural; one of the government initiatives

Researching natural disaster preparedness through health behavioral change models

There have been an increasing number of studies conducted on community preparedness, particularly on changing individual health behaviors in ways that minimizes individual risk to cope with the stress of a natural disaster. A variety of behavioral change theories and models used by disaster academics scrutinize the manner in which individual behavior is sought and transformed into disaster preparedness. This reflects the lack of knowledge about how these models identify certain behaviors regarding natural disaster preparation. This article seeks to address this lack of knowledge. It presents a set of health behavioral change models that can be used by scholars to comprehend variation in the nature and extent of individual disaster preparedness. The purpose of this study is to provide a review of the existing models on the subject, and also to present a comparative analysis of the models that may contribute to ways of understanding the investigation on natural disaster preparedness behaviors

Factors predicting the adoption of e-government services in telecenters in rural areas: the mediating role of trust

This study aims to inspect the factors that impact the adoption of e-government services (e-Gov) in telecenters in Malaysia and the mediating role of trust in this regard. A survey was conducted with the use of a questionnaire. The collected sample involved people who lived in rural areas and telecenters (N= 388). The results demonstrate that performance expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions are all directly and positively correlated with telecenter users’ intention to use e-Gov, which is directly related to the official usage of e-Gov in telecenters. The results showed that trust partially mediated between users’ intention and the actual usage of these services. This study has revealed that telecenters in Malaysia have opened up a unique window of opportunity for people who live in rural areas. This would help the Malaysian government and policymakers investigate the reasons for the current low penetration rate of e-Gov, and formulate methods to inspire the official use of e-Gov by those living in rural areas, where such facilities are still seen as an innovation

Ganoderma boninense classification based on near-infrared spectral data using machine learning techniques

Ganoderma boninense (G. boninense) infection reduces the productivity of oil palms and causes a severe threat to the palm oil industry. Early detection of G. boninense is vital since there is no effective treatment to stop the continuing spread of the disease unless ergosterol, a biomarker of G. boninense can be detected. There is yet a non-destructive and in-situ technique explored to detect ergosterol. Capability of NIR to detect few biomarkers such as mycotoxin and zearalenone (ZEN) has been proven to pave the way an effort to explore NIR’s sensitivity towards detecting ergosterol, as discussed in this paper. A compact hand-held NIR with a measurement range of 900–1700 nm is utilized by scanning the leaves of three oil palm seedlings inoculated with G. boninense while the other three were non-inoculated from 16-weeks-old to 32-weeks-old. Significant changes of spectral reflectance have been notified occur at the wavelength of ~1450 nm which reflectance of infected sample is higher 0.2–0.4 than healthy sample which 0.1–0.19. The diminishing of the spectral curve at approximately 1450 nm is strongly suspected to happened due to the loss of water content from the leaves since G. boninense attacks the roots and causes the disruption of water supply to the other part of plant. However, a few overlapped NIRs’ spectral data between healthy and infected samples require for further validation which chemometric and machine learning (ML) classification technique are chosen. It is found the spectra of healthy samples are scattered on the negative sides of PC-1 while infected samples tend to be on a positive side with large loading coefficients marked significant discriminatory effect on healthy and infected samples at the wavelength of 1310 and 1452 nm. A PLS regression is used on NIR spectra to implement the prediction of ergosterol concentration which shows good corelation of R = 0.861 between the ergosterol concentration and oil palm NIR spectra. Four different ML algorithms are tested for prediction of G. boninense infection: K-Nearest Neighbour (kNN), Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Decision Tree (DT) are tested which depicted DT algorithm achieves a satisfactory overall performance with high accuracy up to 93.1% and F1-score of 92.6% compared to other algorithms. High accuracy shows the capability of the classification model to correctly predict the G. boninense detection while high F1-score indicates that the classification is able to validate the detection of G. boninense correctly with low misclassification rate. The result represents a significant step in the development of a nondestructive and in-situ detection system which validated by both chemometric and machine learning (ML) classification technique

Household preparedness for future earthquake disaster risk using an extended theory of planned behavior

The study aims to predict household earthquake preparedness in Malaysia using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in its original form and an extended model including community participation and community-agency trust. A survey was undertaken in 2019 with 550 Malaysian residential households in four locations. The structural equation modeling (SEM) method was used in this study for the analysis of data. The findings demonstrated support for the extended model of TPB and showed that attitude, subjective norms, community participation, and community-agency trust were significant predictors of behavior intention to engage the household in earthquake preparedness. In both models, the intention of the household to earthquake preparedness is an important positive contributor to actual preparedness. The study has shown that, contrary to our expectations, perceived behavioral control in both models has no significant effect on the intent to prepare. The results also displayed that the original TPB constructs contributed 26% and 32% of the variance in intentions to prepare and actual earthquake preparedness behavior, whilst the inclusions of community participation and community-agency trust slightly increased the explained variance by 31.2% and 39.5% respectively. As a result, the extended model of TPB provided a good fit with the data and explains slightly better amounts of variance in intention to prepare in comparison to the original TPB model. Adding constructs in the original TPB model considerably contributes to improving our understanding of household preparedness for future earthquake disaster risk

Hubungan faktor persekitaran dengan penerimaan perkhidmatan e-kerajaan bagi aplikasi MyEG

Kerajaan Malaysia sentiasa berusaha untuk mempertingkatkan mutu kualiti perkhidmatan supaya lebih efisyen dan memudahkan. Antara usaha tersebut ialah dengan pelaksanaan kerajaan elektronik (e-kerajaan). E-kerajaan dibangunkan untuk mengubah cara operasi dalam kerajaan dengan menggunakan sistem penyampaian perkhidmatan dalam talian. Justeru, kajian ini memberi fokus kepada salah satu perkhidmatan e-kerajaan iaitu aplikasi MyEG. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneroka faktor persekitaran yang mempengaruhi penerimaan pengguna terhadap perkhidmatan MyEG secara dalam talian. Satu rangka kerja konsep telah dibangunkan untuk menentukan faktor persekitaran yang menyumbang kepada penerimaan pengguna terhadap aplikasi MyEG. Faktor-faktor tersebut terdiri daripada empat konstruk utama iaitu pengaruh sosial, jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha dan keadaan kemudahan. Manakala bagi pemboleh ubah bersandar kajian ini ialah penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Pendekatan kuantitatif melalui kaedah tinjauan menggunakan borang soal selidik telah digunakan. Seramai 396 pengguna aplikasi MyEG di sekitar kawasan Lembah Klang telah dipilih sebagai responden kajian. Kesemua data dianalisis menerusi statistik dengan menggunakan perisian SPSS versi 22. Teknik persampelan kajian ini ialah persampelan rawak mudah dan bertujuan. Persampelan rawak mudah adalah untuk menentukan populasi kajian manakala persampelan bertujuan untuk mencari subjek kajian. Dua prosedur statistik telah digunakan iaitu statistik deskriptif dan statistik inferensi. Statistik deskriptif digunakan untuk mengenal pasti nilai min, peratusan dan sisihan piawai. Manakala statistik inferensi berupaya menerangkan hubungan, perkaitan dan peramal yang menyumbang antara pemboleh ubah yang dikaji. Antara ujian yang digunakan dalam statistik inferensi ialah ujian korelasi dengan pekali Pearson Product-Moment dan ujian Multi Regresi. Kajian ini menggunakan aras signifikan 0.05.Hasil keputusan menunjukkan bahawa tahap penerimaan pengguna terhadap aplikasi MyEG berada pada tahap sederhana. Dalam pada itu, ujian korelasi Pearson membuktikan bahawa terdapat hubungan yang positif dan signifikan antara jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha, keadaan kemudahan dan pengaruh sosial terhadap penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Disamping itu, wujud perkaitan positif yang kuat antara jangkaan prestasi dengan penerimaan. Analisis korelasi Pearson juga menunjukkan aplikasi MyEG diterima oleh pengguna kerana aplikasi ini mementingkan faktor persekitaran dalam penggunaannya. Manakala ujian multi regresi mendapati jangkaan prestasi, keadaan kemudahan, pengaruh sosial dan jangkaan usaha merupakan pemboleh ubah peramal kepada penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Namun begitu, jangkaan prestasi adalah faktor utama yang menyumbang kepada penerimaan aplikasi MyEG oleh pengguna. Hasil penyelidikan ini mencadangkan dua aspek utama iaitu dari sudut praktikal dan teoritikal. Dari sudut praktikal, kajian ini mencadangkan agar pihak kerajaan mengambil langkah sewajarnya bagi meningkatkan penggunaan aplikasi MyEG secara dalam talian. Begitu juga dengan syarikat pembekal perkhidmatan supaya membuat promosi lebih besar-besaran mengenai aplikasi MyEG supaya semua masyarakat dapat menggunakan perkhidmatan tersebut. Manakala dari sudut teoritikal pula, penyelidik mencadangkan agar penyelidikan lanjutan perlu dijalankan dengan menggunakan teori UTAUT dan juga teori-teori teknologi komunikasi yang lain agar kajian mengenai penerimaan aplikasi MyEG dapat diperluaskan lagi skop dan pemahamannya. Untuk cadangan kajian akan datang, penyelidik mencadangkan agar kajian lanjutan perlu dijalankan dengan menggunakan kaedah kualitatif

Kesan faktor persekitaran dan kualiti e-kerajaan dalam penggunaan ICT di Pusat Komuniti Desa, Semenanjung Malaysia

Aspek pembangunan kawasan luar bandar seperti penyediaan perkhidmatan ICT di Pusat Komuniti Desa menjadi salah satu agenda utama kerajaan dalam menjadikan kawasan luar bandar sebagai penyumbang kepada ekonomi negara. Bagi menggerakkan dan memajukan pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar ini, penyertaan masyarakat luar bandar adalah amat penting supaya kelangsungan ekonomi luar bandar tersebut dapat dijayakan. Namun, walaupun kemudahan ICT di pusat ini telah lama wujud, penyertaan masyarakat luar bandar untuk datang ke sana terutamanya menggunakan perkhidmatan ICT masih kurang mendapat sambutan. Didapati kemudahan ICT yang disediakan tidak digunakan secara meluas oleh masyarakat luar bandar. Secara umumnya, kajian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji penggunaan ICT di Pusat Komuniti Desa. Pemboleh ubah seperti faktor persekitaran dan kualiti e-kerajaan (pemboleh ubah bebas), niat tingkah laku (pemboleh ubah perantaraan), dan umur (pemboleh ubah penyederhanaan) telah diuji terhadap penggunaan ICT (pemboleh ubah bersandar) oleh masyarakat luar bandar. Satu rangka kerja konsep telah dibangunkan untuk menguji setiap konstruk pada faktor persekitaran dan kualiti e-kerajaan tersebut. Faktor persekitaran terdiri daripada lima konstruk utama iaitu jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha, pengaruh sosial, keadaan kemudahan, dan kebolehcapaian. Bagi kualiti e-kerajaan pula, terdapat dua konstruk yang diuji iaitu kemudahan penggunaan dan kepercayaan. Kajian ini berpandukan kepada teori dan model iaitu Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) dan Model Kualiti E-kerajaan (e-GovQual) bagi membina konstruk dalam faktor persekitaran dan kualiti e-kerajaan. Pendekatan kuantitatif melalui kaedah tinjauan menggunakan borang soal selidik telah digunakan. Seramai 400 orang responden di empat buah negeri telah dipilih menjadi responden kajian. Dalam menentukan lokasi dan subjek kajian, penyelidik menggunakan persampelan kluster pelbagai peringkat dan persampelan rawak sistematik. Analisis deskriptif menggunakan SPSS dijalankan bagi mengenal pasti nilai min, peratusan, dan sisihan piawai. Variance based-structural equation modeling (VB-SEM) juga telah digunakan untuk menganalisis data (menggunakan SmartPLS 3.0). Hasil kajian mencadangkan tiga hubungan langsung (iaitu, keadaan kemudahan terhadap penggunaan ICT, kepercayaan terhadap penggunaan ICT, dan niat tingkah laku terhadap penggunaan ICT) mempunyai pertalian positif dalam kajian ini. Selain itu, hasil kajian mendedahkan niat tingkah laku berperantara hubungan antara faktor persekitaran (jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha, dan pengaruh sosial) terhadap penggunaan ICT. Dari segi umur (iaitu, Umur A dan Bukan-Umur A), hasil kajian ini mendapati bahawa umur penyederhana hubungan antara faktor persekitaran (iaitu, jangkaan usaha dan pengaruh sosial) terhadap niat tingkah laku, begitu juga faktor persekitaran (iaitu, keadaan kemudahan dan kebolehcapaian) terhadap penggunaan ICT. Melalui dapatan yang diperolehi, kesimpulan yang dapat dibentuk adalah penggunaan ICT oleh masyarakat luar bandar di Pusat Komuniti Desa banyak bergantung kepada faktor persekitaran dan faktor kualiti e-kerajaan. Dengan memiliki persekitaran yang memberangsangkan dan kualiti e-kerajaan yang baik melalui penggunaan laman sesawang kerajaan dapat menggalakkan mereka untuk datang ke Pusat Komuniti Desa menggunakan kemudahan yang ada di sana. Kajian ini juga memberikan sumbangan unik dengan membangunkan sebuah model iaitu Model Persekitaran Penggunaan Teknologi (MPPT) yang mana dapat menyumbang kepada kesusasteraan sedia ada dan menjadi rujukan untuk penyelidik akan datang dan juga para pelajar. Kajian ini turut menekankan beberapa implikasi dan cadangan untuk pembentukan dasar dan amalan ke arah peningkatan penyediaan perkhidmatan maklumat dan ICT di setiap telecenter di Malaysia

Faktor peramal penerimaan perkhidmatan e-kerajaan

E-kerajaan dibangunkan untuk mengubah cara operasi dalam kerajaan dengan menggunakan sistem penyampaian perkhidmatan dalam talian. Justeru, kajian ini memberi fokus kepada salah satu perkhidmatan e-kerajaan iaitu aplikasi MyEG. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneroka faktor peramal yang mempengaruhi penerimaan pengguna terhadap perkhidmatan aplikasi MyEG. Faktor tersebut terdiri daripada empat konstruk utama iaitu pengaruh sosial, jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha dan suasana dorong. Manakala bagi pemboleh ubah bersandar kajian ialah penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Pendekatan kuantitatif melalui kaedah tinjauan menggunakan borang soal selidik digunakan. Seramai 396 pengguna aplikasi MyEG di sekitar kawasan Lembah Klang dipilih sebagai responden kajian. Kesemua data dianalisis menggunakan perisian SPSS versi 22. Teknik persampelan kajian ialah persampelan rawak mudah dan bertujuan. Dua prosedur statistik telah digunakan iaitu statistik deskriptif dan statistik inferensi. Hasil keputusan menunjukkan bahawa tahap penerimaan pengguna terhadap aplikasi MyEG berada pada tahap sederhana. Ujian korelasi Pearson membuktikan bahawa terdapat hubungan yang positif dan signifikan antara jangkaan prestasi, jangkaan usaha, suasana dorong dan pengaruh sosial terhadap penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Aplikasi MyEG diterima oleh pengguna kerana aplikasi ini mementingkan faktor persekitaran dalam penggunaannya. Manakala ujian multi regresi mendapati jangkaan prestasi, suasana dorong, pengaruh sosial dan jangkaan usaha merupakan pemboleh ubah peramal kepada penerimaan aplikasi MyEG. Namun begitu, jangkaan prestasi adalah faktor utama yang menyumbang kepada penerimaan aplikasi MyEG oleh pengguna

Modified CMIS factors predicting Chinese women’s mental health information seeking in Douyin

The popularity of Douyin (known as TikTok overseas) could provide additional mental health information services to Chinese women. However, the factors that influence women to seek mental health information services in Douyin are still understudied. The study applied the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS) to Chinese women’s mental health information seeking behaviors on Douyin to examine this. The study used a questionnaire (N=505), and the data analysis was conducted using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). SmartPLS 4.0 was the primary data analysis technology. Results showed that direct experience, beliefs, salience, and characteristics of mental health information could significantly affect the utility of mental health information on Douyin. In addition, utility, social support, and characteristics directly affect Chinese women’s mental health information seeking. Moreover, utility partially mediates the relationship between direct experience, beliefs, salience, characteristics, and mental health information seeking. Rather than targeting specific diseases or pan-health information, this study demonstrates the possibility of applying CMIS to mental health information seeking. This insight could contribute to Douyin and government health interventions to better meet the mental health information needs of Chinese women