End User Perceptions of the Benefits and Risks of End User Web Development - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 126

lips, & Freedman, 1990; Janvrin & Morrison,
2000). End-user training has also been shown
to positively influence attitudes to technology
(Igbaria, Guimaraes, & Davis, 1995; Simmers &
Anandarajan, 2001) and to improve the quality of
end-user developed applications (Kreie, Cronan,
Pendley, & Renwick, 2000; Kruck, Maher, &
Barkhi, 2003).
However, despite this evidence, organizations
have done little to address the risks of end-user
development (Panko & Halverson, 1996; Taylor
et al., 1998). Nelson and Todd (1999) investigated
what strategies organizations are using to reduce
the risks of end-user development on the Web.
They followed up on 18 risk reduction activities
identified by Alavi, Nelson, and Weiss (1987-
1988). Each of these activities was classified as
being in one of three categories: standards setting,
resource allocation, or management and support
of application development. They found that
organizations placed most emphasis on setting
standards, followed by resource allocation, and
that support of development was the least used
type of approach. They also noted that there were
large gaps between the perceived importance of
some approaches to reducing the risks of end-user
Web development and the degree to which they
were currently being used.

importance of end-user Web development, more
needs to be known about end-user Web develop-
ers and the preparation they receive. The first two
aims of this study were therefore to:

1. Explore the extent of end-user Web devel-

opment amongst current end-user develop-
ers.

2. Explore the training end users receive to

prepare them to undertake end-user Web
development.

As discussed above, Web development tools
facilitate the development of applications that are
more widely accessible than end-user developed
applications have traditionally been (Nelson &
Todd, 1999). End-user Web development has
the potential to bring greater benefits to end
users and their organizations, but also has the
potential for increasing risks. The benefits and
risks of end-user Web development may affect
the various stakeholders more than ever before.
As spreadsheet development has been the most
common form of end-user development to date,
the benefits and risks of Web development relative
to spreadsheet development are of interest. The
next aim of the study was therefore to:

3. Compare end-user developers' perceptions

of the relative benefits and risks of end-user
spreadsheet development and end-user Web
development.

researCh aims

Despite the various largely anecdotal reports
of the popularity of end-user Web development
(e.g., O'Brien, 2002; Ouellette, 1999), there has
been little empirical research on end-user Web
development. In a recent survey of end-user
development, Govindarajulu (2003) found that
approximately 40% of his sample of end-user
developers had created static Web pages and
25% had created dynamic Web pages; however,
information about the levels of experience of these
end-user Web developers or the training they had
received was not available. Given the potential

Despite research highlighting the risks of
end-user development, organizations have done
little to counter them (Panko & Halverson, 1996;
Taylor et al., 1998). Given the potential for greater
risks to be associated with end-user Web develop-
ment, more research is required on approaches
to addressing these risks. The only significant
research to date on the risks of end-user Web
development is the study by Nelson and Todd
(1999) that surveyed predominantly information
technology staff (28 out of 34) with the remainder