Impact of Perceived Usefulness on Attitude of Members for Having Christian Church’s Website in Thailand – A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the online presence of Christian churches in Thailand, and to test the influence of perceived usefulness of Church’s website on the attitude of members to have or improve the website. A sample survey was conducted throughout the Kingdom of Thailand from July 2019 to February 2020 and data were collected from 400 churches without discriminating the online presence or not. Finally, the data set of 177 churches, comprising 335 respondents, having online presence were used for analysis. The theoretical base for the study was the Technology Acceptance Model with its modified version (TAM-2) and the data were tested in a hypothetical model, called, Moderated Mediation Model. The results of analysis showed that model is statistically significant for the data. It has been estimated that 51 to 61 percent of the Christian churches in Thailand did not have any kind online presence and 90 percent of the respondents opined that Church’s website is essential for them and 80 percent demanded for an improvement of the existing website. The effect of moderating variable, perceived ease of use of internet on perceived usefulness, increases as the level raises and that has a significant influence on the mediating variable behavioral intention to use the website. The focal predictor variable ‘Perceived usefulness’ has significant direct influence on the predicted variable ‘Attitude’ at 1 percent level, and, the mediating variable ‘Behavioral intention’ has significant direct influence on the predicted variable ‘Attitude’ at less than 1 percent level.