How taxing is it to use online services? Evidence from the use of Different Available Online Services from Users’ Perspective

The growth of digitalization in today’s world is not only a trend anymore, rather it is a necessity for the people. With the advancement of digitalization and internet, the use of various types of online services has become very popular in our day to day professional and personal lives. The aim of this thesis was to find out whether some online services are more effortful to use compared to the others and what factors can influence the use of the online services in different degrees. For this analysis, twelve online services were selected where six services were pleasure-oriented (hedonic) in nature and the remaining six were productivity-oriented (utilitarian) in nature. A survey questionnaire was developed with the help of existing and relevant literatures. Seventy respondents who had the knowledge of using different online services filled up the questionnaire. The measures included procrastination, self-control, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness and cognitive effort, which were assumed to be critical factors that can influence the consumption pattern of the information technology (IT) use. The result of the thesis proposes that utilitarian online services are cognitively more effortful in nature compared to the hedonic online services. The analysis also suggested that procrastination and self-control are negatively correlated in nature. This is an important measure because when people use an online service, their cognitive resources depleted over time with the cognitively demanding tasks. Thus, if self-control decreases, people are more prone to procrastinate about using the online services. Perceived ease of use was found to be a more correlated with perceived enjoyment rather than perceived usefulness. It was also concluded that utilitarian and hedonic online services cannot be put entirely in opposite poles rather one can be complementary for the other. The scale developed in this thesis is found to be highly reliable