Questionnaire design

Questionnaire design involves several major decision making areas (Tull and Hawkins, 1993). The preliminary considerations refer to what type of information is to be collected, from which respondents and by what techniques. The latter two issues have been dealt with previously and hence only the type of information to be collected is addressed here.

The information requirements are a direct consequence of the research questions. Hence, following the conceptual model adopted by this research, the questionnaire collected information pertaining a series of variables associated with four behaviours:

• Travelling;

• Using computers for leisure purposes;

• Using the Internet for leisure purposes;

• Purchasing tourism-related products for leisure purposes over the Internet.

More specifically, the questionnaire covered several elements likely to influence these behaviours (as suggested by the literature review), such as involvement and motives, attitudes and usage patterns. As Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) suggested, all the perceptual measures were designed to correspond in terms of behaviour, target, time and context. All measures in the study refer to a specific behaviour, a specific target, a specific context and a general time frame.

Question content is centred on the general nature of the questions and the information that the questionnaire is designed to produce. At this stage, the focus was on the decisions regarding what specific approaches and scales to include. For example, in the preliminary decisions stage a decision was made to study attitudes. At the question content stage, the decision of the specific model of attitudes was made and the tripartite model of attitude was chosen. Additionally, the decision about what scales to use for measuring each of the variables was made.

As far as attitude is concerned, the multicomponent model was selected because, as was demonstrated in Chapter Three, it had not been used before to study the adoption of e-commerce. In addition, advocates of the multicomponent conceptualisation argue that this model ensures comprehensive measurement of consumers’ attitudes (Selwyn, 1997).

Finally, it has been demonstrated that affect (feelings) has an important influence upon behaviour beyond the cognitive evaluation.

The adoption of the innovations (Rogers, 1995) model provides a rich set of innovation characteristics with which to evaluate consumers’ perceptions of an innovation and these were used to specify the content of the cognitive component. Six perceived innovation characteristics were selected (Plouffe et al., 2001; Rogers, 1995; Moore and Benbasat, 1991;

Ostlund, 1974): relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, visibility, image and perceived risk:

• Four statements assessed the relative advantage associated with using the innovation (Eason, 1998): the extent to which using the innovation would reduce the use of resources (two items, one related to time and the other to effort), would improve support (quality) and would result in personal enhancement (quality of life).

• Complexity was also measured by the means of four items. Three items (complexity/simplicity of use, ease/difficulty of learning and ease/difficulty of use) were based on previous research (Strutton et al., 1994). One additional item was added by the researcher, encompassing the extent to which the respondents perceived the innovation as easy/difficult to learn by themselves.

• Two statements were developed by the researcher to measure compatibility:

compatibility with daily routine and approval by friends.

• The visibility associated with using computers was measured through three items:

‘have seen what others do when using a computer’, ‘had several opportunities to see a computer being used’ (both drawn from Moore and Benbasat, 1991) and

‘have seen important people using a computer’ (developed by the researcher). Two statements measured the visibility of e-commerce. One statement measured sight visibility (‘have seen others using the innovation’) as was taken from Moore and

Benbasat (1991); the other measured verbal visibility (‘have talked to others about the innovation’) and was developed by the researcher.

• Image was measured by the means of four items. The statements to the benefits in terms of prestige and status were taken from the work of Moore and Benbasat (1991). The statements concerning the benefit in terms of self-image and the compatibility with image that the individual wants to convey to others were developed by the researcher.

• Perceived risk associated with using computers was covered by two statements (Eastlick and Lotz, 1999; Tan, 1999), one pertaining to psychological risk (‘afraid life becomes dependent on computers’) and one to time risk (‘using a computer is a waste of time’). Two statements were also used to gauge the risks associated with purchasing leisure travel over the Internet: overall risk (‘the probability of not doing the best deal is high’) was taken from Eastlick and Lotz (1999) and financial risk (‘can loose money’) was developed by the researcher.

The affective component associated with using the innovation was measured through eight pairs of feelings. Six of the pairs (bored/enjoyed, stressed/relaxed, not stimulated/

stimulated, unsecured/confident, not excited/excited, not entertained/entertained) were adapted from research on affective images of tourist destinations (Baloglu and Brinberg, 1997; Vaughan and Edwards, 1999; OPTOUR, 2001). Two additional feelings were added:

unhappy/happy and frustrated/fulfilled based on the work of Richins (1997). More recent research on the adoption of computer-based innovations (e.g. Aldreck and Settle, 2002;

Bessiere et al., 2006) supports their inclusion in the affective set.

The conative component of attitude was covered by a statement regarding the intention to use the innovation in the near future. In addition, respondents who were uncertain or did not agree that they intended to use the innovation in the near future were asked to indicate whether they intended to do it in the long term.

Motives to use an innovation were identified though an open question asking individuals to list the most important motive/reason to use computers and the Internet for leisure purposes, as well as e-commerce in the purchasing of leisure travel. Conversely, the questions regarding the motives/reasons not to use the innovation provided respondents with some possible answers from which they had to rank the three most important ones.

Bearing in mind that the use of computers/the Internet for leisure purposes is likely to take place at home, respondents were also asked about the main motive to purchase computer to have at home.

An adaptation of Zaichkowsky’s (1985) scale was used to measure involvement with using the innovations. Eight items were selected: value, prejudicial/beneficial, relevance, desirability, appeal, importance, essential/dispensable and usefulness. These items were selected based on their suitability for studying the adoption of computer based innovations.

In addition, many of the items of the scale could not be used used due to translation difficulties (explained in more detail later in this section). Moreover, there are concerns about attitudinal contamination of both the original and the revised versions of the scale McQuarrie and Munson, 1992; Zaichkowsky, 1994). Some items, such as ‘boring’ and

‘exciting’, are hedonic in nature and have been used to measure the affective component of attitudes (e.g. Baloglu and Brinberg, 1993; Vaughan and Edwards, 1999). Different compositions of the scale (i.e., the scales by McQuarrie and Munson, 1992; Zaichkowsky, 1994) have yielded high validity and reliability and thus the combination of items selected for this research is expected to retain high reliability and validity (the reliability could be confirmed by the high Cronbach Alpha value, as shown later in section 5.5.2). Removing two items from the scale is not expected to have affected the properties of the scale. In fact, one could question the need to use 10 items to measure a construct that is regarded by many as unidimensional (see Chapter 3, Section 3.4.2.4 for a discussion of Zaichkowsky’s scale).

Several variables were used to assess computer/Internet experience, but only measures of direct experience were included:

• To gauge amount of computer/Internet use, respondents were asked to indicate how many hours they used them in a normal week and when they first used computers/the Internet. Respondents were requested to divide hours of use by main purpose (leisure or business) and by location of access (home, college, work and other places). In addition, the first experience of using Computer/Internet, namely the year, location and purpose, was also included as a measure of amount of experience.

• Opportunity to use the innovation was measured by asking respondents to indicate whether they had a computer/Internet they could use either at home or at work/college.

• Diversity of experience, which refers to the different tasks that the respondent had undertaken while using computers and the Internet, as well as the tasks they intended to perform in the future, were also studied. As far as purchasing over the Internet is concerned, the respondents were asked to indicate the products/services they had purchased, the products/services they attempted to purchase and the products they would purchase.

As far as payment for purchases is concerned, two payment related issues were studied.

One of the questions addressed whether respondents owned credit cards. Respondents who owned credit cards were requested to indicate the highest credit limit of a single card as well as the credit limit of all the credit cards. Respondents who did not own credit cards were asked to give the most important reason for that. In addition, respondents were asked to rank the three most preferred payment methods when purchasing leisure travel over the Internet, as well as to explain their first choice.

As was shown earlier, two main variables related to the product category behaviour were posited to influence the adoption of electronic commerce: the purchasing and consumption of the product category. As far as the variables related to purchasing is concerned, the respondents were asked to indicate their likely behaviours when purchasing leisure travel in terms of the extent to which the respondents would do the reservations, which marketing channel they would purchase their travel from and their preferred media to contact the travel provider. In terms of the consumption of the product-category, the respondents were asked to indicate the number of journeys they had undertaken since between January 2000 and the date of completion of the questionnaire (the questionnaire run from January until December 2002), both for business and leisure purposes.

Due to length limitations of the questionnaire, the cognitive and affective components of attitude, as well as the involvement, related to the using of the Internet for leisure purposes were not covered by this research. The decision to concentrate data collection on the adoption of computers was based on the grounds that the relationship between the adoption of the Internet and the adoption of e-commerce was more understood that the

relationship between the adoption of computers and the adoption of e-commerce. In addition, the national statistics had shown that a large proportion of the Portuguese population were not users of computers (see Chapter 1, Section 1.1.4). This suggested that the adoption of computers could be a major factor influencing the adoption of e-commerce.

A summary of the variables comprising the second order conceptual framework, their sources and the specific items used to measure each of the constructs, as well as the relationship of each item with the concepts pertaining to the first order framework is presented in Table 5.2.

After defining the content of the questionnaire, the next stage was question phrasing. At this stage, the recommendations proposed by Oppenheim (1992) and Sarantakos (1998) were adopted in order to minimise the bias and distortion involved in questioning. In order to make words and phrases easily and clearly understood by the respondents, the questions were made as simple and straightforward as possible. This was a challenging task because day-to-day use of computers, the Internet and e-commerce often involves using technical and non-Portuguese words. However, because the study included respondents without previous experience with these technologies, their use was avoided. For example, instead of using the word ‘email’, ‘correio electrónico’ (electronic mail) was used.

Another challenge was the translation of the questionnaire from English to Portuguese. As Efendioglu and Yip (2004) stated, “the possible danger of lost meanings and incorrect interpretations of what is being asked when questionnaires are developed in one language and administered in another language to a culturally different population requires a special care in translation of the questionnaire” (p.

49). There were some difficulties in the translation task because some of the English words, when translated to Portuguese, do not have a common-sense meaning. For example, in translating the Zaichkowsky (1985) Personal Involvement Inventory it was not only difficult to find the correct words that would make sense in Portuguese, but also in some circumstances the translation of two different English words would result in the same word in Portuguese. This is the case, for example, of the ‘important’ and ‘matters to me’

dimensions, which would translate to a same word (‘importante’). A Portuguese university lecturer with background both in teaching English language and tourism management reviewed the translation made by the author. Several ammendements were made after the recommendations of the reviewer.

Table 5. 2: Operationalisation of variables included in the conceptual framework

First order conceptual framework Main variable Sub-variableSpecific items Source Computer Internet Purchasing travel over the Internet Travel Relative advantage Reduction of time/effort; Quality of task ; Quality of life Eason (1998) X X Complexity/simplicity of use; Easiness/difficulty of learningDavis et al. (1989) X X Easiness/difficulty of use Strutton et al. (1994) X X Complexity Easy/difficult to learn by themselvesAuthor X X Compatibility Compatibility with daily routine; Approval by friends Author X X Have seen what others do when using the innovation; Have seen the innovation being usedMoore and Benbasat (1991) X Have seen important people using the innovation Author X Have seen others using the innovation Moore and Benbasat (1991) X Visibility Have talked to others about the using innovation Author X Increase prestige; Enhance status Moore and Benbasat (1991) X X Image Build a positive self-image; Compatibility with the image that wants to conveyAuthor X X Afraid life becomes dependent on the innovation; Using the innovation is a waste of time Eastlick and Lotz (1999) Tan (1999) X Using the innovation can loose money Eastlick and Lotz (1999) X

Attitude: Cognition Perceived risk Probability of not doing the best deal Author X Bored/enjoyed; stressed/relaxed; not stimulated/stimulated; unsecured/confident; not excited/excited; not entertained/entertained

Baloglu and Brinberg, (1997) Vaughan and Edwards (1999) OPTOUR (2001)X X Attitude: Affect Unhappy/happy; frustrated/fulfilled Richins (1997 X X Attitude: Conation Intention to use in the near future; intention to use in the long future Ajzen and Fishbein (1980)X X X Involvement Valuable/worthless; prejudicial/beneficial; relevant/irrelevant; desirable/undesirable; appealing/not appealing; important/not important; useful/useless; essential/dispensable

Zaichkowsky (1985) X X Motives to useOpen answer Author X X X Motives to purchase Open answer Author X Motives not to use Access, advantages, need, liking Author X X X Motives Motives not to use Advantages, access to Internet, access to computers, trust, liking, knowledge, travel Author X

Table 5. 2: Operationalisation of variables included in the conceptual framework (continued)

First order conceptual framework Main variable Sub-variable Specific items Source Computer InternetPurchasing travel over the Internet Travel Amount of use Number of hours of use according to purpose and location Jones and Clarke (1995) Smith et al. (1999) X X Opportunity to use Access to the technology at home or at college/work Jones and Clarke (1995)X X Purpose (work, study, play games); location (college, own home, family/friends home, office) Author X First experience Purpose (work, study, get information about products, curiosity); location (college, own home, family/friends home, office) Author X Use the Internet; write texts; play games; get information; get information about products and services; check email. Author X Read newspapers; get free music; use email; get information about products and services; banking; purchase products and services; get non-commercial information; compare offers from companies

Author X

Innovation experience Diversity of experience (past and future) Books; CDs; Airline tickets; entertainment tickets; movies/DVDs; packages; financial services; computers; rent- a-car; tourist accommodation; cruises; insurance Author X Motive for not owning a credit cardOpen answerAuthor X Credit card limitsLess than 500 euros; 501-1000 euros; 1001-1500 euros; 1501- 2500 euros; 2501-5000 euros; 5000 euros or more.Author X Payment methods Preferred payment methodCredit card (details by phone); credit card (details by email); credit card (details online); bank transfer; debit card. Vrechopoulos et al. (2001) X Consumption of travelTravel frequency Number of journeys according to purpose (leisure or business) and main destination (Portugal, Spain, Other EU countries, other European non-EU countries, other countries)

Author X Participation in the reservation of leisure journeys

Always the respondent; most of the times the respondent; most of the times others; always others. Author X Marketing channel Always travel agencies; most of the times travel agencies; most of the times suppliers; always suppliers Author X Purchasing of travel Communication channels Email, face-to-face, telephone (most preferred and less preferred) Author X

Of paramount importance in question wording was the setting of the frame of reference.

Every question clearly stated the purpose of the action (e.g. using a computer for leisure purpose) and attempts were made to re-enforce that it was the respondent’s use that was being asked. For example, the question regarding the affective component of attitudes was

“when using the computer and the Internet in the purchasing of leisure travel, I would feel…” rather than “using the computer and the Internet in the purchasing of leisure travel is…”. This follows the suggestion that research on perceived characteristics of innovations should concentrate on the individual’s perception about his/her use of the innovation rather than in the perceptions about the innovation itself (Moore and Benbasat, 1991).

After the decisions about the question content and phrasing were made, the next stage was designing the response formats. There are two types of response format: open-ended and pre-coded (or closed) and both have advantages and disadvantages (Hoinville and Jowel, 1977; Sarantakos, 1998; Jennings, 2001). Because no best format exists, the questionnaire included a mixture of open and pre-coded questions. Open-ended questions were mainly used to ask respondents about their motives and why they had given a certain answer (probing questions). In contrast, closed questions were mainly used in the measurement of attitudes, involvement and behaviours. A variety of response sets were used, including ranking scales, Likert scales and semantic differential scales.

The question sequence is an important issue because it can be a potential source of error.

Following Tull and Hawkings (1993, p. 356) recommendations, the questionnaire consisted of four parts, ordered in the following manner:

Part A: Travelling. This section gathered information regarding recent travel patterns and the several behaviours associated with purchasing leisure travel, such as who would do the reservations, from where would they purchase and the preferred communication means when contacting the suppliers.

Part B: Computers. This section included questions regarding the context of first use of computers, reasons for never having used computers, current use or reasons for not being a current user of computers for leisure purposes, motives to use or not to use computers for leisure purposes and involvement with, and attitudes towards, using computers for leisure purposes.

Part C: The Internet. This section included questions regarding the context of first use of the Internet, the reasons for never having used the Internet for leisure purposes, current use or reasons for not being a current user of the Internet for leisure purposes, motives to use or not to use the Internet for leisure purposes and intentions to use the Internet for leisure purposes.

Part D: Purchasing leisure travel on the Internet. This section included questions regarding what products the respondent has purchased/would purchase on the Internet, reasons for never having purchased leisure travel on the Internet, motives to purchase leisure travel on the Internet, involvement with, and attitudes towards, using the Internet in the purchasing of leisure travel, ownership of credit cards, preferred payment methods and motives that would lead to purchase leisure travel over the Internet.

Within each of the A to D parts, the factual questions were followed by attitudinal and perceptual questions.

In self administered questionnaires, appearance is an important variable in securing cooperation from the respondent (Tull and Hawkins, 1993). Hence, the presentation of the questionnaire was designed to make the questionnaire easy to use. The same formatting was maintained throughout the questionnaire, and detailed instructions were given about the type of answer required. Moreover, instead of individual sheets of paper, the questionnaire was printed in A3 size sheets in order to form an A4 size book. A laser photocopy machine was used to guarantee high quality printing.

After printing, the questionnaire was pre-tested and this took place in two stages. First, five (Portuguese) academics were given the questionnaire for completion. Four had previous experience with designing and implementing questionnaires. One had an university degree in the English Language, which enabled the clarification of some issues related to the translation of the questionnaire. In line with the comments made by the academics, amendments were made regarding question wording, scaling and instructions.

However, the most important finding of this stage was that a single questionnaire for all the respondents was not appropriate. The main reason was that the different levels of prior experience with the computers, the Internet and Internet purchasing required the use of many filter questions, which made the answering process confusing. Therefore, it was decided to present the questionnaire in four versions. The versions had all questions in

common other than the experiential questions which were adapted to each of the

common other than the experiential questions which were adapted to each of the