Gender Differences in Continuance Intention of On-line Shopping Services*

Given the extensive role of IS in everyday life and the increasing presence of women in IS users, understanding gender differences in individual technology continuance usage decisions is an important issue. Nevertheless, much of the large body of research on gender differences has just examined mean differences between women and men in terms of abilities, usage habit, and traits. Even though lots of psychology studies have shown that women, more than men, were influenced by affective factors, gender-affection-continuance use linkage has not been examined in the context of on-line shopping services. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to seek to examine gender differences in terms of influence of affective factor in the context of IS continuance use. Meanwhile, IS continuance has been an important subject of study in the IT research area. To date, to explain why and how users are motivated to continue to use on-line shopping services, lots of theory-based research such as expectation-confirmation model (ECM) has been proposed. In particular, various affective factors have been proposed to explain continuance use of on-line shopping services recently. Affective factors have been regarded as essential factors for increasing relational strength and satisfaction. Several affective factors have been studied by prior IS adoption and continuance studies. Among them are enjoyment and anxiety. In IS continuance research, positive affect has been commonly and narrowly conceptualized and measured as the enjoyment which a person derives from using computers. Hence, in this study, we introduced intimacy factor, which was conceptually related to the quality of interactions and relationships in previous research. It also has been regarded as essential factors for strengthening human relationships. As a result, we have observed gender effect while examining intimacy-continuance bond. As expected based on the previous literatures, women seem to be more sensitive in affective factors. The con-