Title: Impact of the Internet: Internet use, Family Functioning and Sociability in Macau
1Impact of the Internet Internet use, Family
Functioning and Sociability in Macau
- Angus, W. H. Cheong
- (Zhang Rongxian)
- University of Macau
- The International Symposium on Information
Statistics of the Internet
- July 22-23, 2002, Beijing
- China Internet Network Information Center
(CNNIC)
- Policy and Resource Committee, Internet Society
of China
- Department of Sociology, University of Maryland,
USA
- Department of English Communication, Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences, City University
of Hong Kong
2A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
- The Internet was first introduced by the
University of Macau in 1994 and open to the
public in 1995.
3A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
The growth rate increased 24 in March 2002,
comparing to the same period one year ago.
Source DSEC, July 2002
4A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
Source DSEC, July 2002
5A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
6A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
7A Brief Profile of the Internet Diffusion in
Macau
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
8Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
- Online time per week 567.5 minutes (9.5
hours).
- Home 367.1minutes (6.1 hours)
- Workplace/school 135.7 minutes (2.3 hours)
- Elsewhere 64.7 minutes (1.1 hours)
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
9Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
- Online activity time per week
- Information searching 194 minutes (3.2 hours)
- News reading 101 minutes (1.7 hours)
- E-mails 92 minutes (1.5 hours)
- Chart room/forum 84 minutes (1.4 hours)
- Game playing 77 minutes (1.3 hours)
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
10Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
Top Ten Type of Information Browsed ()
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
11Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
12Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
13Internet Use Pattern by Macau Residents
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
14Characteristics of Internet Users
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
15Characteristics of Internet Users
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
16Characteristics of Internet Users
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
17Characteristics of Internet Users
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
18Characteristics of Internet Users
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
19Characteristics of Internet Users
- Of the users, there are more male, aged 18-34,
high secondary school, married/living together,
medium-high family income.
Source WIP-Macau, July 2002
20The Macau Survey
- Telephone survey with a CATI system January 17
to 21, 2002
- Phone numbers randomly selected from Macau
residents phone database
- Age between 18 and 74
- Complete sample 1,002 cases
- AAPOR response rate 3 (RR3) 35.6
- Cooperation rate 4 (COOP4) 63.5
- Sampling error 3.16 at 95 confidence level
- The sample was weighted against gender and age.
21Theoretical Framework
- According to Dutton, Rogers, and Juns (1987)
theoretical framework on personal computer
adoption, and Zhu and his colleagues (2001,
2002) application of the model on the Internet,
the Internet diffusion process involves three
stages
1. Adoption
2. Use
3. Impact
22Internet Impact on
- Knowledge
- Attitudes
- Values
- Behaviors in work or study
- Family functioning
- Social activities
- Civic participation
23Research Questions
- What effects, if any, would the Internet use have
on family functioning?
- What effects, if any, would the Internet use
have on sociability?
24Measurement
- Internet Use
- Time used to be the measurement of the media use.
In this study, Internet use will be measured by
the amount of time spent in different locations,
the amount of time spent with different
activities on the web, frequency of using e-mails
for family functioning and sociability. - On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet at office or school per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet at home per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet at other places such as a friends
home, library or Internet bar per week?
Contd
25Measurement
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet for reading news per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet for e-mails per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet for attending chat room or a forum
per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet for searching information per week?
- On average, how long (hours/minutes) do you use
the Internet for playing games per week?
Contd
26Measurement
- How often do you use e-mails for communication
with your family members or relatives?
- How often do you use e-mails for communication
with your friends?
- How often do you use e-mails for communication
with your colleagues or classmates?
- A Three-point scale is used to tap the above
questions
- Never
- Sometimes
- Often
27Measurement
- Family Functioning
- (namely family interactions in Lee Zhus
(2002) study.)
- Direct interactions with family members
- On average, how many times do you watch TV
together with your family members per week?
- On average, how many times do you dine together
with your family members at home per week?
- On average, how many times do you play games
together with your family members per week?
- On average, how many times do you go shopping
together with your family members per week?
- A composite scale by combing the four measures
(TV watching, dinning, playing, and shopping)
- (A considerably high coefficient of internal
consistency Cronbachs a .57).
- Thus, one variable is used.
28Measurement
- Sociability
- Directly face-to-face contacts with other people
in a private and a social context.
- In the past month, how many times do you attend
other peoples parties or dinners?
- In the past month, how many times do you attend
the activities organized by the community
organizations in Macau?
- Although the two measures are positively
correlated (.30,
correlations is moderate.
- Thus, two variables are used.
- Face-to-face friends socializing Party/dinner
attending
- Face-to-face community socializing community
activity attending
29Analytical Model
Independent variables
- Gender
- Age
- Education
- Family Income
- Marital Status
- Total online time
- Time on online news
- Time on e-mails
- Time on chat room/forum
- Time on information search
- Time on online games
- Family communication via e-mails
- Friends communication via e-mail
- Colleagues/classmate communication via e-mail
Dependent variables
- Family functioning
- Friends socializing
- Community socializing
30Findings
The Impact of Internet Use on Family Functioning
and Sociability
Standardized beta coefficient for variables at
final step.
31Findings
- Impact on family functioning
- Age is negatively correlated with family
functioning, meaning that the older the
respondents are, the less interactions they have
with their family members. - For marital status, it is found that the
married/living together is significantly
correlated with family functioning. It is
understood that married respondents are having
more family contacts than single respondents. - Gender has a moderate correlation with family
functioning though it is not statistically
significant.
- For education, family income, and
divorced/separated/widowed, no significant
relationship were found.
32Findings
- Impact on family functioning
- Previous studies (Lee Zhu, 2002) found that
there was no relationship between Internet use
and family interactions. The same results were
found in this study. - When looking into the amount of time that the
respondents spent on different types of Internet
activities and e-mail communication, we found
that the frequency of family/relatives
communication via e-mails has a moderate
correlation with family functioning. - This may suggest that more communication via
e-mails among family members and/or relatives
lead to more family interactions.
33Findings
- Impact on friends socializing
- The marital status of the married/living together
was found to have a significantly negative
relationship with friends socializing.
- This suggests that the married/living together
has less fact-to-face interactions with their
friends than the single.
- Family income is another predictor of friends
socializing. The result suggests that for those
who are having higher family income, they tend to
attend their friends party/dinner more. - Gender, age, education, and divorced/separated/wid
owed were found to be non-significantly
correlated with friends socializing.
34Findings
- Impact on friends socializing
- Not surprisingly, the total time of internet use
was found to have no significant correlation with
friends socializing.
- However, when looking into to specific type of
online activities, we found that time spent on
chat room/forum has a significant correlation
with friends socializing. - Moreover, frequency of communication with friends
via e-mails is significantly correlated with
friends socializing.
- Thus, more interactive online activities with
others or friends leads to more friends
socializing.
35Findings
- Impact on community socializing
- Age was found to be significantly correlated with
community socializing, suggesting that the older
the respondents are, the more they attend
community activities. - Education is also a good predictor of community
socializing. The result suggest that those who
have a higher education level attend more
community activities. - Though gender and the married/living together
were found to be not significantly correlated
with community socializing respectively, they
presented a moderate relationship. - Divorced/separated/widowed and family income have
no significant relationship with community
socializing.
36Findings
- Impact on community socializing
- Again, the total amount of time of Internet use
was found to be not significantly correlated with
community socializing.
- However, time spent on chat room/forum and
frequency of friends communication via e-mails
were found to be good predictors of community
socializing. - The longer the respondents stay with chart
room/forum, the more often they attend community
activities.
- The more often they communicate with their
friends via e-mails, the more frequently they do
community socializing.
37Conclusion and Implications
- This study has tried to explore the impact of
Internet use on family functioning, friends
socializing, and community socializing.
- Generally speaking, social-economic status
variables have more predicting powers than
Internet use variables.
- The results confirm that there was no significant
correlation between Internet use and family
functioning as well as sociability when using the
total amount of online time as the predictor. - Offline and online seem to be two separate worlds.
38Conclusion and Implications
- However, different from the traditional media,
the Internet has multi-functional attractions to
users.
- After having tried to include a larger dimension
of the concept of Internet use, the current study
found that the amount of the online time for
functional purpose like reading news and
searching information has no effects at all,
whereas the amount of the online time for
communicative purpose such as attending chat
rooms and using e-mails do have significant
impact on the similar off-line activities. - This may imply that the Internet use produces
impacts as supplement to offline activities,
depending upon the similarity and differences of
the features of the online and offline features.
- In conclusion, a broader conceptualization of
Internet use and more applications should be
encouraged.