Internet Users' Attitudes Toward and Beliefs About Internet Advertising

Abstract

This exploratory study aims to investigate Internet users' attitudes toward and beliefs about Internet advertising. First, this paper intends to identify belief factors of Internet users about Internet advertising. Secondly, it examines belief factors that can predict Internet users' attitudes toward Internet advertising. Thirdly, it explores whether Internet users' demographics, Internet usage, and innovative characteristics can predict their attitudes toward Internet advertising. Ten belief factors were extracted from 36-item Likert questions and account for 60.361 percent of the variance in Internet users' beliefs about Internet advertising. Eight out of ten belief factors contributed significantly to the prediction of users' attitudes toward Internet advertising. These predictor factors altogether explained 48.7 percent of the variance. To determine if Internet users' beliefs about Internet advertising were still predictive of their attitudes toward Internet advertising after controlling demographic, Internet usage, and users' innovative characteristics, hierarchical regression analyses were undertaken. The full model explained 49.5 percent of total variance in users' attitudes toward Internet advertising. After controlling all possible confounding variables, the predictive impacts of beliefs about Internet advertising on Internet users' attitudes toward Internet advertising remained powerful and stable.