How to motivate people to use internet at home: understanding the psychology of non-active users

ABSTRACT

Although many Internet services exist that can raise our quality of life, there are still many non-active users who cannot fully enjoy the convenience of the Internet and its potential even when they have computers in the home. To deeply understand this failure to use the Internet, we conducted a field study, and arrived at an integrated model depicting the psychology of active/non-active computer users. Our model enables us to understand the psychology of the users and the external factors affecting them and sheds light on how non-active users are stuck in a negative loop. Users that received a support service designed on our model dramatically changed their attitude and started to use the service actively.

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Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Modeling and simulation

    • Simulation theory

      • Systems theory

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

• Mathematics of computing

  • Information theory