A study of on-line legal service adoption in Hong Kong

Vincent Cho and Iris Cheung

Department of Management

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Abstract This research examines the determinants of customer adoption of the online legal services in the B2C E-commerce market in Hong Kong. Drawing from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and other models such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Triandis Model and the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), an extended model of TAM (ETAM) was developed. A quantitative survey, with 207 valid questionnaire collected, was to identify the important factors affecting customers’ intention to adopt the online legal services and their major concerns. The survey findings revealed that Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Compatibility and Trust are the primary determinants of consumers’ intention to use online legal services. Nevertheless, Facilitating Conditions and Perceived Risk are found to have no significant impact on customers’ intention. The research findings provide some theoretical insights into the consumer behavior in seeking professional services in the online environment. It may be useful to legal service providers to promote the adoption of the online legal services and capture a share in the Internet-facilitated legal business services market.

Introduction E-commerce is growing exponentially with more companies offering their products and services online, and communicating with their customers over the web. Besides handling brick and mortar transactions, e-commerce also changes the way in which professional sectors operate and deliver its services. For example, web-based medical services provided by eSalveo enable patients to access to doctors via email. Doctors can give diagnosis or refill prescriptions over the email without paying patient visits. To the legal profession, the emerging concepts of online legal services and “virtual lawyers” have vast implications on the practice of law and the delivery of legal services to customers. In the past, lawyers were the only interface between non-lawyers and the law. The emergence of World Wide Web allows customers to gain access to legal information through online facilities and thus enable legal practices to be more transparent. Moreover, the expensive lawyer fees billing by hourly basis further hinder the communication between lawyers and the public. Online legal services can remove these barriers and bring lawyers within the public’s reach at a more reasonable charge. With all the above implications and benefits to general public, it seems that people should welcome greatly to the on-line services. However, there are not many people accepting the new concept, our study here investigates how people perceive the hindrance in adopting the on-line legal services in Hong Kong. Current Trend and Situation It is a trend that law firms, governments, legal aid societies and commercial legal information providers are providing online information and advice in USA and UK. According to Susskind (2000), online legal services are “online resources that contain the knowledge of lawyers which no longer needs to access exclusively by traditional human consultation” delivered in a face-to-face, one-to-one, consultative, and advisory fashion. Legal web sites, virtual lawyers and online legal guidance systems are examples of online legal services. Linklaters, a law firm in London, is offering legal services via its Blue Flag expert systems and charge a subscription fee from its corporate clients for using question-and-answer advisory services on the web. Along with their living, people can seek legal information and guidance from legal websites and even can chat on-line with lawyers. Most of the legal web sites offer legal forms or documents at a specific cost for downloading. Online legal directories and referral services guide are offered to assist people in searching for a lawyer. The online legal service providers can be law firms or some other nature. Public legal information providers in UK such as Free Lawyer, EmpLaw, Divorce Online and LAW-on-the-WEB are not law firms, although all have lawyers working behind them. For instance, EmpLaw and LAW-on-the-WEB, which use their information and services to attract subscribers and potential clients seeking for law firms, earn their revenues through referral schemes. The estimated monthly visits of these four websites reach 175,000 to 200,000 (Davies M., 2002). USLaw, an on-line legal service provider in US, has a legal chat room where people can interact with lawyers. MyLawyer.com provides standard legal documents, such as will and testament. For example, when preparing a will, rather than getting a blank form, people can download a software that leads them some step-by-step considerations. The intelligent software will pass all the concerns back to MyLawyer.com and then a will is prepared accordingly. The proposed version will be emailed to the user for further adjustment. There are three types of online strategies: i) marketing websites; ii) virtual legal practices; and iii) Web-enabled legal practices that can be adopted by law firms (Davies M., 2002). In Hong Kong, most of the law firms such as Johnson Stokes and Master (www.jsm.com.hk) and Herbert Smith (www.herbersmith.com) are using websites as marketing tools to promote their firms and services.

Web-enabled legal practice by integrating the Internet with the conventional legal practice is a current trend. For example, the legal website www.thebroke.com established by Yip, Tse, Tang Solicitors is a one-stop shop to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about bankruptcy and connect lawyers with those would-be bankrupts. At present, there is no virtual law firm in Hong Kong. LegalStudio, a commercial online legal service provider, is a pioneer in offering online resource for legal solutions to individuals and businesses in Hong Kong. Apart from general legal information and answering common legal questions, do-it-yourself legal kits, which concern conveyance, divorce and company setup, bankruptcy, and formal legal agreement (e.g. wills, trust and sales of goods agreement), can be downloaded at affordable costs. A legal Q&A forum where lawyers will answer questions by email is also available. The fee charged by LegalStudio is modest compared with the traditional legal services. Let’s say, LegalStudio offers legal online software related to divorce at HK$400 and a confidential enquiry service, which will be answered by practicing lawyer, for HK$300 an email. Scope and Purpose of Study With adopting on-line legal services, people may have the following concerns. Firstly, online legal services involve a more private information exchange between customers and web provider. Secondly, a personal client-attorney relationship is substituted by an impersonal web interface in online legal services which may have difficulties in convening legal terms and professional knowledge for a layman. Thirdly, customer trust in the context of the online legal services is multifold, that is, trust in the Internet as a transaction medium, trust in the service provider and trust in their expertise. Fourthly, while online commodity transaction allows customers to make product and price comparison before making transaction, it is difficult to make such comparison for online services due to the intangible nature of services and instance spending upon downloading of information. In this study, we confine our scope on people perception on online legal services providing to general public. As online legal services are still in its infancy in Hong Kong, this paper aims to predict attitudes and behavioral intention rather than actual usage. By developing an Extended Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM), which caters for the above concerns, we will examine the important factors affecting customers’ intention to adopt the online services. Our extended model ETAM would also be applied to study other professions related to their on-line services such as medical, insurance, accounting and financial investment services, etc. which share the similar characteristics of online legal services. In the next section, a review on the literature related to IT adoption is conducted. In Section 3, the research model is presented. In Sections 4 and 5, the research methodology and findings are provided respectively. A discussion of the findings is given in Section 6. Followed by the limitations of the research in Section 7, a conclusion of this paper is made in Section 8. Literature Review A variety of theoretical perspectives have been used to study the determinants of IT usage. Intention-based models are one of the perspectives to predict usage by identifying the determinants of behavioral intentions of individual users. TAM, TRA, TPB and Triandis model are examples of Intention-based models. Another approach for IT adoption research is Innovation Diffusion-based models, such as Innovation Diffusion Technology model (IDT). A brief description of these theoretical models from which the research model adopted are presented in the following sections.

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) Social psychological theories such as the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and its extended model, theory of planned behavior (TPB), were widely adopted as theoretical basis for studying users’ adoption of IT systems and the Internet. For example, in Crisp, Jarvenpaa and Todd (1997) and George (2002), these theoretical models were adopted to study users’ attitudes towards the Internet and their intentions to make online purchases respectively. TRA proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1980) is a well-accepted intention model to explain the attitude-intention-behavior relationship. As presented in Figure 1, TRA posits that actual behavior is determined by behavioral intention, which is a function of one’s attitude towards behavior and subjective norm. TRA assumes that individuals are usually rational and will consider the implications of their actions before making a decision to engage a behavior or not. The model suggests that beliefs about the consequences of the behavior are keys to the formulation of attitude towards the behavior. Moreover, the normative beliefs and motivation to comply with others are important to formulate the subjective norm, that is, a perception that one should or should not perform a particular behavior based on its compliance with others’ belief (Crisp, Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997).

B eliefs & E valu a tion s

N orm ativ eB eliefs &

M otivation to C om p ly

A ttitu d eT ow a rd sB eh avior

S u b jec tiv eN orm

B eh av iora l In ten tio n

A c tu al B eh av ior

Fig . 1 : T he T heory o f R easo ne d A ctio n (T R A ), (F ishb ein a nd A jze n, 1975 )

Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is an extension of TRA. In addition to the constructs of attitude and subjective norm, TPB incorporates an additional construct of perceived behavioral control. It is to address the inability of TRA to account for conditions where individuals do not have total volitional control over their behavior. Perceived behavioral control refers to one’s perceptions of the availability of skills, resources and opportunities that may either inhibiting or facilitating a behavior. It addresses both internal control (e.g. a person’s skills and abilities) and external constraints (e.g. opportunities and facilities) need to perform a behavior. According to TPB, an actual behavior is a function of behavioral intention and perceived behavioral control. Behavioral intention is determined by attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control (Figure 2).

BehavioralBeliefs

NormativeBeliefs

ControlBeliefs

AttitudeTowardsBehavior

PerceivedBehavioral

Control

Behavioral Intention

Actual Behavior

Fig. 2: The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Pavlou, 2001)

SubjectiveNorm

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) proposed by Davis (1989) was derived from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). While TRA is a general theory to explain general human behavior, TAM is specific to IS usage. TAM was originally developed to understand the causal link between external variables and user acceptance of PC-based applications. TAM has been widely used as theoretical framework in the recent studies to explain technology adoption, including the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) (Brohinan, 1997; Lin & Lu, 2000; Al-Gahtani & King, 1999). The constructs of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) are two salient beliefs that form the basis of TAM. According to Davis (1989), Perceived Usefulness (PU) is “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would improve his or her job performance” while Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) is “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of efforts”. PU and PEOU reflect the beliefs about the task-value and user-friendliness of new information systems respectively. As presented in Figure 3, the model posits that actual usage is determined by users’ behavioral intention to use (BIU), which in turn is influenced by their attitude (A) and the belief of perceived usefulness (PU). Users’ attitude, which reflects favorable or unfavorable feelings towards using the IS system, is determined jointly by perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). PU, in turn, is influenced by PEOU and external variables. The external variables may include system design features, training, documentation and user support, etc. The logic inherent in the TAM is that the easier mastery of the technology, the more useful it is perceived to be, thus leading to more positive attitude and greater intention towards using the technology and consequently greater usage of the technology. A number of past studies explain how the beliefs of PU and PEOU lead to system use. A typical extension explores antecedents and determinants of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease

of use (PEOU). For example, in Karahanna & Straub (1999), the psychological origins of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use were explored. The study also examined the causal relationships between PU and PEOU and the antecedents of other social psychological theories such as Triandis model and TRA. A second extension suggests the inclusion of social determinants of using a technology. Further extension suggests perceived user resources be incorporated in the model to examine perceptions of adequate resources that can facilitate or inhibit behaviors. For example, in Fenech’s study, an additional construct of computer self-efficacy is added to improve the TAM’s predictive value for the usage of acceptance of WWW (Mathieson et al, 2001). Later versions of TAM removed the attitude construct and link PU and PEOU to behavior direct.

ExternalVariables

Perceived Usefulness

(PU)

Perceived Ease of Use

(PEOU)

AttitudeTowards

Using (ATU)

Behavioral Intention to

Use (BIU)

Actual Use

Fig. 3 : Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1989)

Triandis Model Similar to TRA, TPB and TAM, Triandis model assumes an attitude-intention-behavior relationship. Triandis model, however, include a number of relevant variables. The model, as presented in Figure 4, takes into account the important constructs such as habit, social factors and facilitating conditions. It postulates that the probability of performing an act is a function of (1) habits; (2) intention to perform the act; and (3) facilitating conditions. The intention of performing a particular behavior is a function of the (a) perceived consequences; (b) social factors (including norms, roles and the self-concept); (c) Affect (Chang & Cheung, 2001). Facilitating conditions refer to the necessary resources and supports to perform a behavior, for example, time, money, expertise, hardware, software, network connection, etc. The inclusion of this construct has made up the deficiency of TAM, which assumes that usage is volitional and that no barriers would prevent an individual from using an IS (Mathieson et al, 2001).

Affect

SocialFactors

PerceivedConsequences

Habit

Intentions

Facilitating Conditions

Behaviour

Fig. 4 Schematic of the Triandis model (Chang & Cheung, 2001)

Triandis model has been widely adopted in the studies of social and health behavior, and consumer behavior. In recent studies, the Triandis model has been applied to technology adoption researches including the adoption of personal computer, internet/WWW and Executive Information System (EIS) (Chang & Cheung, 2001; Cheng et al, 2002; Cheung, Chang & Lai, 2000). For example, Triandis model and its extensions were used to understand the determinants of users’ intention for using the internet/WWW in working environments and for shopping (Chang & Cheung, 2001; Cheung, Chang & Lai, 2000). The findings in Chang & Cheung’s study (2001) show that theoretical constructs in the Triandis model are useful in explaining the intention to use the Internet/WWW. Whereas, the modified model, which includes the constructs of perceived complexity, near-term and long-term consequences, provides a better fit. The new model shows that affect, social factors, facilitating conditions, and perceived near-term consequences all have positive impacts on the intention to use the Intention/WWW. Firstly, the modified model assumes that perceived complexity (in contrast to perceived ease of use in TAM) is a person’s perception, which is an ‘internal’ factor, and should therefore be put under the construct of perceived consequences. Secondly, while the Triandis model posits that facilitating conditions only affect the actual behavior, the modified model postulates that facilitating conditions can have significant impacts on intention. It is similar to TPB that perceived behavioral control affects both the behavioral intention and actual usage. Thirdly, on the basis of the past studies on TAM, the modified model postulates that perceived complexity has positive impact on affect. That is, the users will feel happier if they perceive the computer technology is easy to use. Fourthly, consistent with the TRA that intention is a function of the subjective norm, the modified model assumes that social factors (including social norms and perceptions of the “significant others”) have positive impact on affect (Chang & Cheung, 2001).

Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) Apart from the social psychological theories mentioned above, the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) is also relevant to account for the adoption of the online legal services. IDT explains the innovation decision process, the determining factors of rate of adoption, and different categories of adopters. According to IDT, there are five important innovation attributes that explain the different rates of adoption by users, namely relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. A sixth attribute of perceived risk is proposed in some other studies (www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~gohky/Ibank/ITUsage.htm). Among these attributes, only relative advantage, compatibility and complexity are consistently related to innovation adoption. (Chen et al, 2000). Comparison of the theories Although the TAM, TRA, TPB and Triandis and IDT focus on different determinants to explain the consumer behavior in technology adoption, these theories share some similarities. Firstly, TRA, TPB, TAM and Triandis model assume an attitude-intention-behavior relationship, that is, cognitive and normative or affective beliefs form attitude, which, in turn, has influence on behavioral intention and actual usage of behavior. Secondly, the perceived usefulness (PU) in TAM is similar to relative advantage in IDT and, to a certain extent, the perceived consequences in Triandis model. These constructs are cognitive component of individual’s attitude. The constructs of PU, relative advantage and perceived consequences in various models further justify the rationale in TRA that the beliefs about the consequences of the behavior are keys to the formulation of attitude towards the behavior. Thirdly, the construct of perceived ease of use (PEOU) in TAM is obviously close to the complexity construct in IDT. Fourthly, perceived behavioral control in TPB refers to one’s perception of whether a behavior is under his control and whether he has access to resources and opportunities required to facilitate a behavior (Ajzen, 1991). In this connection, facilitating conditions in Triandis model is related to the perceived behavioral controls in TPB. However, Triandis model posits that facilitating conditions only affect the actual behavior while the perceived behavioral controls in TPB affect both the behavioral intention and actual usage. Although TAM, Triandis model or other social psychological models have been extensively used as theoretical foundation in the study of technology or IS adoption, little attention on the study of online transactions of professional online services has been received. Moreover, the constructs of compatibility and perceived risk, drawing from social psychological models like IDT, are not included in the most of the previous technology adoption studies. This paper attempts to fill the gap by integrating TAM with other theories such as TAM, TRA, TPB, Triandis model and IDT into a research model to fit for the study of online services purchases in the B2C market. Apart from perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU), the constructs of compatibility, trust, perceived risk and facilitating conditions are taken into account in the proposed research model to explain the adoption of online legal services which are generally perceived as high risk and complex online services. Research Model and Hypotheses The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) provides a theoretical foundation for this research. Other theories such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) the Triandis model and the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) are being considered in our ETAM. Although TAM is originally used to predict technology use at workplace, TAM variables can also be applied to predict consumer behavior in e-commerce, including online legal services that involve internet technology and web interface. The past studies indicate that perceived ease of use (PEOU) is a better predictor of attitude while perceived usefulness (PU) is a better predictor of intention of inexperienced users (George, 2002). On this basis, the two salient beliefs of perceived

ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) from TAM are adopted in our ETAM. Despite that TAM could explain most of the technology-driven system in previous studies; it is perhaps insufficient to explain the adoption of online legal services that entail a greater degree of uncertainty as compared to physical product transactions. Given that trust and perceived risk are important elements in the study of B2C e-commerce, these two constructs are incorporated in our ETAM as salient beliefs that shape customers’ behavioral intentions. Indeed, trust and risk are integrated in the structure of TPB as a control belief, acting as an antecedent of behavioral control and influencing transaction intentions indirect (Pavlou, 2002). Moreover, risk is also a construct in IDT. Our ETAM also integrates the construct of compatibility from IDT in the sense that innovation’s compatibility of users’ values and beliefs, need, and experience has influence on their behavioral intention. Drawing from Triandis model, the construct of facilitating conditions is adopted. Whereas, our construct has a broader meaning to include both users’ self-efficacy and the objective factors that facilitate the behavior. Self-efficacy is defined as “the belief that one has the capability to perform a particular behavior” (Mathieson et al, 2001). As a result, figure 5 presents the proposed research model. Each construct of our research model (ETAM) will be further elaborated and their relationships with customer intentions to use online legal services will be justified.

Ease of Use

Perceived Usefulness

Compatibility

Perceived Risk

TrustFacilitatingConditions

Intention

+ve

+ve

+ve

+ve

+ve

-ve

+ve

Attitude

+ve

+ve

-ve

-ve

+ve

Fig. 5 The Extended Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM)

Attitude According to Fishbein & Ajzen, (1975), “attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a

consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with a given object”. It is a person’s positive or negative feelings about performing a particular behavior. Attitude is directly related to behavioral intention because people will only have intention to perform behaviors towards which they have positive feelings. In our proposed ETAM, except for the facilitating construct, the constructs of perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived risk, trust and compatibility are proposed to have influence on attitude, which, in turn, affect the behavioral intention. Behavioral Intention Behavioral intention refers to “instructions that people give to themselves to behave in certain ways” (Triandis, 1980). In our ETAM, behavioral intention refers to customer intention to adopt online legal services. From the perspective of customer behavior, it is customer intention to exchange information online, share confidential information, and engage in a transaction (Pavlou, 2001). Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) According to TAM, perceived ease of use (PEOU) is the belief that a particular technology would be applied with no effort (Fenech, 1998); Davis, 1989). Learning from TPB and TAM, perceived ease of use a particular technology will influence behavioral intention direct or indirectly. Applying this to online legal services, a web interface perceived to be user-friendly will facilitate the usage and will be more likely to be accepted by customers. The past findings on TAM validate the positive relationship between perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU). In some studies, PEOU are found to have influence on behavioral intention indirectly through perceived usefulness (Chen et al, 2000; Lee, Park & Ahn, 2001; Davis, 1989; Pavlou, 2002). In our model ETAM, perceived ease of use (PEOU) means ease of navigating, ease of searching information, and ease of obtaining services from legal websites. It is proposed that PEOU is positively related to customer intention to use online legal services. Thus related hypotheses are: H1: Perceived ease of use (PEOU) is positively related to consumer attitude towards online

legal services.

H2: Perceived ease of use (PEOU) is positively related to perceived usefulness (PU) of online legal services.

Perceived Usefulness (PU) There are some relative advantages of using the online legal services compared with traditional online legal services. The perceived usefulness of using the online legal services is measured by: money and time saving, increased flexibility, and greater access to information about a legal case. Perceived usefulness (PU) influences both attitude and behavioral intention. The more useful it is perceived to be, the more positive attitude and greater intention the users will have towards the adoption of online legal services. H3: Perceived usefulness (PU) is positively related to consumer attitude towards online

legal services.

H4: Perceived usefulness (PU) is positively related to consumer intention to adopt online legal services.

Perceived Risk Perceived risk is the uncertainty perceived by a consumer in a particular purchase situation (Lee,

Park & Ahn, 2001). Adoption of a new technology will usually embody risks because there are uncertainties. The perceived risks associated with online legal services are two dimensions: (a) perceived risk with legal services delivered; and (b) perceived risk in the context of online transaction. Perceived risk with legal services delivered encompass: (i) performance risk, that is, whether the legal services delivered by the legal services providers up to customers’ expectations; (ii) economic losses, that is, monetary losses when the services delivered fall short of customers’ expectation; (iii) personal risk, that is, the possible consequence of legal liability if customers accept the validity of legal advice on the web (McKnight, Cloudhury & Kacmar, 2000). When customers rely on “virtual lawyers” for legal guidance, there is a risk of misinformation and possible legal liability if customers do not have sufficient understanding of their problems or good communication skills to articulate their problems in writing effectively and comprehensively. Online legal service provider may protect themselves in a disclaimer that the information provided is not legal advice nor conveying in the course of an attorney-client relationship (Matthews, 2000). Compared with other online product transactions, online legal services are perceived to have a greater degree of security and privacy risk because a greater extent of exchange of personal information in online environment is involved. The perceived risks in the context of online transaction encompass (i) privacy risk - risk of disclosure of personal information by web host to third party when personal information is stored on unsecured databases; (ii) information risk - risk of trusting the information provided by legal providers on their website that may be incomplete or distorted; and the security concerns over personal information or data, including credit card information during transmission of data; (iii) economic risk - monetary losses due to customer fraud or theft of credit card information. According to TPB, perceived risks may reduce customers’ perceived behavioral control over uncertainties and will have negative impact on their behavioral intention. On the contrary, if the perceived risks associated with online transactions are reduced and customers have more behavioral control over the online environment, they are more willing to transact (Pavlou, 2001). On the other hand, trust and risk are closely interrelated. Trust in the web provider mitigates consumers’ perception of the risks involved in transaction. The higher the perception of risk, the higher the trust needed to facilitate the transaction (Jarvenpaa et al, 1999). Thus, our hypothesis is:

H5: Perceived risk negatively affect customer attitude towards online legal services transaction.

Trust All transaction activities require the element of trust. In particular, trust is a vital antecedent in online environment because it involves more uncertainties and risks vis-à-vis the “brick-and-mortar” shopping. The impersonal and open nature of the electronic infrastructure brings about uncertainties and risks that necessitate a greater degree of trust in making transactions. The notion of trust has been regarded as the main barrier to the widespread diffusion of e-commerce among consumers since there is a fundamental lack of faith on the web. Many customers do not trust web provider, with their personal information, nor to engage exchanges with them (McKnight, Cloudhury & Kacmar, 2000; George, 2002). Customer trust towards online transaction is two-tiered: (a) trust in legal service providers; for example, trust in the ability of service providers to deliver quality services on their commitments; trust in the integrity of legal service providers to preserve the privacy and maintain a proper use of

their personal and financial information; and (b) trust in the Internet as a transaction medium. Therefore, online legal services involve a greater degree of trust than other online product transactions such as buying a CD because higher risk is envisaged by consumers. Trust is a salient behavioral belief TPB to influence customers’ attitude and intention for online transaction. Trust creates positive attitudes towards web providers that help to reduce the fears of retailer opportunism, alleviate infrastructure concerns, and positively influence customers’ transaction intentions. Applying the control belief in TPB, consumers’ perception of greater control over their online transaction will positively enhance their trust over the web providers and will have positive influence on their behavioral intention to transact online (Pavlou, 2001). In other words, the greater perceived control they have over the online transaction, the more customers trust will be on the web providers, the lower risk perception they have on an online transaction and greater intention to transact. In this connection, the trust construct influences users’ behavioral intention directly or indirectly through perceived risk.

H6: Consumer trust is negatively related to the perceived risks associated with online legal services.

H7: Consumer trusts in legal service provider and in the Internet are positively related to their attitude towards online legal services.

H8: Consumer trusts in legal service provider and in the Internet are positively related to their intention to use online legal services.

Compatibility The attribute of compatibility has not been included in most of the technology adoption studies founded on TAM, TPB, TRA or Triandis except IDT. Compatibility refers to the congruence of innovation with users’ values and beliefs, previously introduced ideas and needs (McCole, 2002). According to IDT, the greater an innovation comparable with existing belief or working environment, the more likely that the innovation will be adopted. In our ETAM, compatibility represents the congruence of the online legal services with consumers’ lifestyle of seeking legal information or services. The greater the compatibility is perceived, the lower risk it is perceived to be. Thus, the hypotheses are: H9: Compatibility is positively related to consumer attitude towards online legal services.

H10: Compatibility has positive influence on perceived risk. Facilitating Conditions Facilitating conditions are the objective factors that make a behavior easy or difficult. In the Triandis model, facilitating conditions are important determinants of behavior. Even if intentions to perform the behavior are high, the habits are well established and the physiological arousals are optimal, there may be no action/behavior if the situation or objective factors do not warrant the behavior (Triandis, 1980). The Triandis model postulates that facilitating conditions have impact on the actual behavior. Whereas, empirical investigations have shown that facilitating conditions could have significant positive impact on intention (Chang & Cheung, 2001). Facilitating conditions in Triandis model is similar to behavioral control construct in TPB, which suggests that users’ skills and availability of resources directly affect intention to perform a behavior. (Dishaw & Strong, 1999)

To a certain extent, perceived ease of use (PEOU) in TAM reflects implicitly users’ skills and ability. It is because users’ with sufficient skills and ability will find an IS system easy to use than those who are lacking these skills. However, the skill factor is not considered in TAM. Therefore, the inclusion of facilitating conditions in our ETAM is reasonable. However, facilitating conditions in our ETAM has a broader meaning. Aside from the objective factors such as the availability of resources, the internal factors such as user’s confidence in their ability to use a technology are also considered. Applying to online legal services, users’ skills and abilities to communicate with the virtual lawyers are considered as part of the facilitating condition. Thus our hypothesis is

H12: Facilitating conditions is positively related to consumer intention to use online legal services.

Research Methodology Measurement development The constructs in our ETAM are based on the previous studies on TAM, TRA, Triandis model and IDT. The measures are adjusted and applied to specific context of online legal services. Table 2 presents the constructs and their corresponding measures that we are used in our study.

Construct Definition Source/reference Perceived ease of use The degree to which a user expects the use of online legal

service to be free of effort. Davis, 1989

Perceived usefulness The user’s subjective probability that using online legal

services will increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness in searching legal information and seeking legal advice.

Davis, 1989

Perceived risk The consumers’ subjective expectation of suffering a loss in pursuit of a desired outcome.

Pavlou, 2001

Trust The subjective probability with which consumers believe that a particular online transaction will occur in a manner consistent with their confident expectations. This captures both the trust in the reliability of the transaction medium (trust in the infrastructure) and trust in a specific party (Web retailer).

Pavlou, 2001

Compatibility The compatibility of using online legal services with existing values and beliefs, lifestyle, previously introduced ideas, and potential adopters’ needs.

Chen et al, 2000

Facilitating conditions The objective factors such as access to Internet/WWW and users’ self-efficacy that facilitate the use of online legal services.

Chang & Cheung, 2001; Tan & Teo, 2000

Attitude The individual user’s positive or negative feelings about performing the target behavior.

Chen et al, 2000

Behavioral intention to use

The user’s likelihood to use online legal services Pavlou, 2001

Table 2: Constructs and measures A questionnaire was designed for collecting user perceptions on on-line legal service. The questionnaires are divided into three parts. Part One of the questionnaire is composed of 8 categories: PEOU (5 items), PU (4 items), Perceived Risk (6 items), Trust (5 items), Compatibility (5 items), Facilitating Conditions (4 items), Attitude (4 items) and Intention to use (1 item) asking respondents their beliefs, attitude and intention towards using online legal services. The items of

constructs are assessed with a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 point being “strongly disagree” and 5 point being “strongly agree”. Part Two of the questionnaire contains questions asking respondents’ frequency of online shopping and their experience in using legal services. One open-end question asking respondents’ major concerns or difficulties about the use of the online legal services is also included. Part Three of the questionnaire collects respondents' personal information such as gender, age, education level and occupation. The measures of each construct in the ETAM are described as follows. Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) PEOU stresses on how comfortable consumers will be with the Internet as a purchasing medium to seek legal services. Its measurement scale is based on Chen et al (2000). As the online legal services are still in its infancy in Hong Kong and many people do not have experience in using the services nor even browsing the legal web sites, the measurement of PEOU initially focuses on respondents’ perception of the ease of using the Internet as a transaction medium. Respondents’ perception is then associated with the ease of learning to use online legal services.

Perceived Usefulness (PU) PU emphasizes on the benefit expectations, for example, the relative advantages of increased flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness, etc., for using online legal services. The measurement scale is based on Chen et al (2000).

Perceived Risk (PR) PR talks about security and privacy risks with respect to online legal services that may be detrimental to consumers’ adoption. In the first three questions, respondents are asked to rate their perception of web security, that is, the security issue of using the Internet as a secure medium for transaction and transmitting personal information. The measurement scale is adopted from Salisbury, et al (2001). Respondents are asked in subsequent three questions on the level of risks for searching legal information, downloading legal documents and seeking legal guidance. The measurement scale of these three questions is based on Pavlou (2001).

Trust Trust focuses on (i) customers trust in the electronic infrastructure as a transaction and communication medium and (ii) trust in the perceived integrity and ability of legal service providers. The measures are adopted from Lee and Turban (2001).

Compatibility Compatibility, comprising five items in its measurement, underlines the congruence of using online legal services with customers’ existing value and beliefs, and their task needs. The first two items, adapting from Chen et al. (2000), measure the compatibility of using online legal services with respect to respondents’ lifestyle. The last three items are new measures to gauge the compatibility of respondents’ expectation from using online legal services with respect to the actual services being provided. The purpose of including these new measures is to test the linkage of compatibility and perceived usefulness as posited in our ETAM as shown in Figure 5. That is, the greater compatibility of using online legal services with potential users’ needs, the more useful online legal services will be perceived. Facilitating Conditions Facilitating condition, with four items in its construct, consists of the objective factors that make the behavior easy or difficult. In terms of online legal services utilization, facilitating condition is conceptualized as the accessibility to the Internet and users’ self-efficacy. One item is adapted from Chang and Cheung (2001) measuring the ease of access to the Internet. The other three items are

adapted from Tan & Teo (2000) for the measurement of users’ self-efficacy. Attitude Following Ajzen and Fishbein’s suggestion that attitude should be predicted from a person’s salient beliefs; a four-item scale is adopted from Chen and et al. (2000) to measure respondent’s attitude toward using online legal services. Intention to use One item is used to measure respondents’ intention to use online legal services. Since most of the respondents do not have prior experience in using online legal services, a question asking whether they have intention to use the services in future. Sampling and Research Method A questionnaire survey was conducted to validate our ETAM. The population of this study is the potential users of online legal services who are internet-literate, have experience in using legal services and online shopping. Samples were selected to represent reasonably well the population as it consisted of part-time postgraduate students, law students in local universities and employees in public organizations and government departments. All the subjects are educated and internet-literate and can be potential users of online legal services. Since the objective of this research is to study the customers’ behavioral intention towards using online legal services, self-reporting measures of beliefs, attitudes and behavioral intention are more appropriate than direct observations. Approximately 300 questionnaires were distributed to the target subjects by mail or email. A total of 207 questionnaires were completed and returned from the respondents, of which 187 usable questionnaires were used for data analyses, thus giving a response rate of 62%. 44% of the respondents are male and 56% of the respondents are female. The respondents profile is shown in Table 3.

Age 18-29 74 (39.6%) 30-39 86 (46%) 40-49 23 (12.3%) 50 or over 4 (2.1%) Sex Male 82 (43.9%) Female 105 (56.1%) Education Level Post-graduate 92 (49.2%) Tertiary educated 78 (41.7%) Secondary school 16 (8.6%) Primary school 1 (0.5%) Occupation Academic 19 (10.2%) Executive 33 (17.6%) Manager 26 (13.9%) Professional 49 (26.2%) Self-employed 3 (1.6%) Student 14 (7.5%) Technician 3 (1.6%) Others 40 (21.4%)

Frequency of internet shopping Few times a year 90 (48.1%) Few times a month 7 (3.7%) Never 90 (48.1%) Experience in using legal services Yes 135 (72.2%) No 52 (27.8)

Table 3 : Demographic characteristics Findings and Discussion The internal consistency and reliability of the scale was tested using Cronbach’s alpha. As shown in Table 4, except for Trust in the Internet, the reliability coefficients ranged from 0.7079 to 0.8449, which are higher than the acceptable level of 0.7, thus confirming the internal consistency and reliability of the scales. While Trust in service providers demonstrates an acceptable level of coefficient (α = 0.7079), Trust in the Internet shows a relative low reliability coefficient (α = 0.5849). The low coefficient may be due to a relative small number of questionnaire items (2 items) used in measuring the scale of Trust in the Internet. On the other hand, the sample is tested against different demographic variables such as gender, age, education level, occupation using ANOVA. It is found that most of the constructs are indifferent on their means among those variables. In general, the scales used in this research are valid and reliable.

Table 4 : Reliability Test Scales Number of items Reliability

Perceived Ease of Use 5 0.7405 Perceived Usefulness 4 0.8449 Perceived Risk 6 0.7379 Trust in the Internet 2 0.5849 Trust in Services Provider 3 0.7079 Compatibility of Values and Beliefs 5 0.7821 Facilitating Conditions 4 0.7731 Attitude towards using online legal services 3 0.7349

Among the scales, Facilitating Conditions and PEOU receive a relative high mean score of 3.73 and 3.6 respectively, indicating the respondents are confident in their ability to command the use of the Internet and perceive online legal services relatively easy to use. This is justifiable in view of the high education level of the respondents and the widespread of the Internet access in Hong Kong. On the other extreme, the score on perceived risk (PR) is relatively low, 2.22, which shows that respondents generally disagree that the Internet is a secure medium for transactions and exchange of personal information. Path analysis is conducted to examine the causal relationship among the variables of the research model. The standardized path coefficients of the research model are shown in Figure 5.

Perceived Ease of Use

Perceived Usefulness

Compatibility

Perceived Risk

Trust in the Internet

Intention

0.344**

0.417**

Attitude

0.307**

0.184* 0.286**

0.263**0.264**

0.219**

** p < 0.01; *p < 0.05

Figure 5: Model showing the results of the Path Analysis As expected, our ETAM model is consistent with previous studies and most of the hypotheses are supported as shown in Table 7 below.

Hypotheses Effects Remarks H1 PEOU -> Attitude Not supported H2 PEOU -> PU Supported H3 PU -> Attitude Supported H4 PU -> Intention Supported H5 PR -> Attitude Not supported H6 Trust in the Internet -> Perceived Risk

Trust in Legal Service Provider –> Perceived Risk Supported Not supported

H7 Trust -> Attitude Not supported H8 Trust in the Internet -> Intention

Trust in Legal Service Provider –> Intention Supported Not supported

H9 Compatibility -> PU Supported H10 Compatibility -> Attitude Supported H11 Compatibility -> Perceived Risk Not supported H12 Facilitating Conditions -> Intention Not supported

Table 7: Hypothesis-testing results

PEOU and PU Although Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) is not significantly related to Attitude, there is an indirect impact from PEOU on Attitude and Intention through Perceived Usefulness (PU) (β = 0.344, P<0.01). This validates Davis’ argument that ease of use may act on behavioral intentions indirectly through PU (Pavlou, 2001; Davis, 1989). As predicted, PU has strong correlation with Attitude (β = 0.417, P<0.01) and Intention (β = 0.219, P<0.05). The results validate the postulation in TAM that PU is positively related to Attitude and Intention (Davis, 1989). It demonstrates that ease of use does not engender customers’ intention to use online legal services. Instead, customers will use the online legal services which are perceived useful in an easy to use interface. Both PEOU and PU will generate a favorable attitude towards using online legal services, leading to greater intention to utilize the services. In designing a legal website, developer should pay attention to Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), the user-friendliness and ease of navigating in order to enhance people perception on the website’s usefulness which will increase people’s intention to make use of the service. Along with the open-end questions, respondents also consider the scope of service, responsiveness of feedback and the extent of interaction with virtual lawyers to be taken into account in determining the usefulness of online legal services. Compatibility

Our findings indicate that respondents are prone to agree that searching legal information online is compatible with their lifestyle. In our path analysis, it is consistent with the studies by Chen et al (2000) that Compatibility is strongly correlated to Perceived Usefulness (β = 0.307, P<0.01). Besides, Compatibility evinces positive influence on Intention through Attitude. The implication is that early adopters of the online legal services are probably those people with “wired lifestyle” who find the online legal services useful. Perceived Risk One of the unexpected results is the insignificant link between perceived risks and attitude. This would be due to current online legal services are still in the preliminary stage and mostly concentrate on information dissemination and marketing. Thus respondents may find those services are not risk-bearing and the perceived risk is not seriously considered. However, some respondents do concern with privacy and security of data. Skepticism is expressed on the identity, integrity and expertise of the services providers and the possible leakage of personal data when transmitting information online. In this connection, uncertainties and perceived risks are possible impediments to the adoption of the technology. Trust Trust is an important determinant to affect people’s intention and behavior to adopt e-commerce. Our findings show that greater trust in the Internet reduces perceived risk associated with the use of online legal services. However, the trust in the service provider is not significantly related to any constructs. This indicates that trust in service provider still not a major concern as most legal service provider is only acted as a legal information provider. According to Hoffman, the main barrier to the diffusion and adoption of e-commerce is consumers’ lack of trust in Web providers to “engage in ‘relationship exchanges’ involving money and personal information with them” (McKnight, Choudhury & Kacmar, 2000). This reasoning should also be applied to online legal services that entail private personal details. Apart from moderate concern over the trustworthiness of legal service providers, some respondents show distrust of the Internet

technology and feel insecure to seek legal advice from the Internet where face-to-face interaction is missing. They will feel more secure to have a lawyer who provides them legal advice through extensive questioning. Our survey has some implications to the legal service providers. Firstly, web security and personal privacy are of paramount importance. Legal service providers should take measures to safeguard the confidentiality and privacy of customers’ sensitive information. Secondly, the provision of personalized services and follow up services will help to create a sense of “personal feeling” which would build the trust. Lastly, reputation of legal service provider will reduce the uncertainty and risk perception. Facilitating Conditions In contrast to some empirical investigations such as Chang & Cheung (2001), our results show that Facilitating Conditions does not have significant effect on Intention. Such difference may be due to the fact that respondents find the access to the Internet rather extensive and their skill to command the Internet adequate. Thus facilitating condition is not a concern in the adoption model. Anyway, even though the respondents’ education level is high, there are still some voices related to difficulty in understanding the legal terminology and articulating legal problems in writing precisely. The implication is that the content of legal websites should be free from legal jargons. Moreover, assistance should be rendered to users whenever they have difficulty to understand the online instructions and legal information. Limitations and Future Extension There are some limitations which may lead to future extension in this study. Firstly, online legal services are still in its infancy at present and many respondents are not familiar with them. It is also due to this reason our study can’t include the relationship between intention to use (behavioral intention) and actual behavior (actual usage) as online legal service has not been widely used. Secondly, cultural, ethical or regulatory issues, which are relevant to legal services, may need to be considered in the future. The inclusion of these factors in future studies may improve the model fit. Lastly, our ETAM is designed to explain adoption behavior for some on-line professional services, thus studies in the other area such as accounting, financial advice, etc. should help to enhance our ETAM model. Conclusion

The contribution of this study is to investigate factors affecting intention to adopt the online legal service in the business-to-consumer E-commerce context. The research model not only incorporates various factors affecting intention formations, but also demonstrates the interrelationships among the determinants. An extended model ETAM based on classical models such as original TAM, TRA, Triandis and IDT is developed to explain the adoption of more complicated e-commerce activities such as online legal services. The research helps to understand the consumer behavior in adopting the online legal services, which are perceived to involve greater degree of uncertainties and risk than commodities’ online transactions. In anticipation of the advent of new vista for online services, the findings of this research can provide law firms and legal service providers with some insights in understanding customer behavior for the adoption of the new technology.

This research generates the following insights in understanding consumer behavior in adopting online legal services. Firstly, the theories on TAM, TRA, Triandis and IDT are still influential and useful in explaining and predicting user intentions in the B2C Electronic Commerce. In particular,

the two basis variables of PU and PEOU show strong influence on intention, validating TAM outside the workplace. Secondly, consumer intention to adopt the online legal service can be predicted from their attitude towards using online legal services. Thirdly, Compatibility, PU, PEOU and Trust are the primary determinants of consumer attitude towards using online legal services. Fourthly, both compatibility and PEOU affect PU. Fifthly, trust in the Internet and trust in the services providers influence perceived risks. It is evident in the survey that respondents perceive greater risks in the confidentiality and security of personal data over the Internet for online legal services than other online shopping. To address this barrier, law firms and legal services should assure by all means that customer privacy and security is protected.

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