Virtual Atmosphere, Emotions, Attitudes and Real Use

Abstract

This study involves several theories, namely: the theory of reasoned action, the technology acceptance model, the theory of planned behavior and the internet banking acceptance model. It aims to understand the relationships between the virtual atmosphere and emotional states, how the individual characteristics (social identity, altruism and telepresence) and emotional states influence attitudes, and how attitudes, past experience and trust influence actual use of a site. To this end, the authors developed three conceptual models explaining the relationships among the above-mentioned variables. Methodologically, descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and the generalized maximum entropy estimator are used to test the three models in a wedding site. Of the eight hypotheses proposed, one can only partially validate hypotheses h1, h2, h3 and h6, while hypothesis h7 is accepted and the remaining are rejected.