Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
newspapers and magazines, and listening to the
radio, traditional media will not be replaced by
new media because different media have their
own characteristics and they also have their own
supporters (Hu, 2008).
with newspapers and magazines having the least
impact. On this basis, the following hypothesis
is proposed:
H1: IPTV has a time displacement effect on
the users who are also cable TV subscribers.
In the last two years, there have been few
studies on IPTV users' characteristics. However,
there seems to be more room for discussion. For
instance, with regard to the correlation between
IPTV subscriptions and demographics, some stud-
ies have pointed out that several personal char-
acteristics are unable to provide a more credible
explanation as to the reasons why the consumers
subscribe to IPTV service. Furthermore, it is quite
certain in the analysis that once there are more
members in the family, the possibility of subscrib-
ing to IPTV will be higher. When the consumers
are older, the possibility of subscribing to IPTV
is also higher. Because the respondents may not
be those who decide to subscribe to the IPTV
services, the influence of the age factor should be
further studied (Lin, 2006). Furthermore, it could
be an interesting subject to discuss in the future.
Meanwhile, Lin (2006) suggested that the“life
style” has a considerably positive effect in terms
of “subscribing to IPTV services”, and its effect
is much more important than “education” or “in-
come” based on the statistical results. Furthermore,
those people who frequently use the Internet will
prefer to subscribe to IPTV as well.
Liu (2006) found in her study that the main
reason why people subscribe to IPTV is that it is
“easy to subscribe to”, while the reason why they
do not subscribe is that they “do not understand
IPTV”. This chapter not only examines the user
behavior of the IPTV subscribers, but also looks at
the effect of time displacement on cable TV. Hence,
the following research questions are proposed:
Q1: What are the main reasons why IPTV
users adopt IPTV? What are the functions and
services that the IPTV subscribers frequently
avail themselves of?
Time Displacement
The emphasis of displacement theory is the
amount of time people spend on different media
types (Dutta-Bergman, 2004), and so the concept
of time displacement means that the amount of
time available for the consumption of various
types of media is limited. The basic concept of
time displacement assumes “a zero-sum relation-
ship for the amount of time invested in various
activities” (Kayany & Yelsma, 2000). In other
words, people only have certain amounts of time
and money to spend. If they spend more on one
medium, then they will spend less on others (Lee
& Leung, 2006).
The zero-sum hypothesis was rejected by many
scholars but Nguyen & Western (2006) suggested
that these findings do not totally discredit the
displacement hypothesis. However, until now
most of the displacement effect studies have fo-
cused on comparisons among different types of
media, and very few studies have compared the
competition among different TV platforms. There
are also studies that focus on cable TV's impact
on local television channels or local television
stations. Since these advantages of cable TV had
been widely known during the 1970's, quite a
few studies demonstrated that cable TV greatly
reduced the number of viewers of local television
stations. Kaplan (1978) found that cable televi-
sion decreased local network television viewing:
36% respondents reported decreased viewing of
local network stations. The effect of cable service
on local television stations is quite considerable.
Grotta & Newsom's findings (1982) are gener-
ally consistent with those in Kaplan's study, and
they concluded that the greatest impact of cable
TV appears to be on local television stations,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search