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than men when subjects were given adequate time
to process information (Rosenthal & DePaulo,
1979). Despite several arguments that gender differ-
ences are not significant (O'Keefe, 2002) in cogni-
tive theories, some findings consisted of evidence
of dependable gender differenced in persuasibility,
with women being more easily persuaded than men
(Becker, 1986; Eagly & Carli, 1981).
In terms of income differences in leisure and
tourists behaviors towards perceptions of online
information, previous research findings revealed
that those in the low income group (less than
RM2500) tend to spend less time than other
income groups in accessing online information.
Noor Ismawati and Ainin (2005) stated that this
probably due to the financial constraints that limit
their access to external entertainment. The mid-
dle income groups often use online information to
access latest information in order to get themselves
updated and engaged to the informative soci-
ety. The high income groups on the other hand,
often use online information to meet with the job
requirement as being professionals. They tend to
access information regardless location and time.
This study developed a self-administered ques-
tionnaire as a research instrument. Items in the
questionnaire were adopted from the measurement
scale of Sport Website Acceptance Model (SWAM)
developed by Hur, Ko, and Claussen (2011).
4 DATA ANALYSIS
The statistical significance of both hypotheses was
tested using
t
-test to explain differences among
gender whereby MANOVA was applied to seek
differences among income groups. A significance
level
p
.05 was adopted to decide the significance
level of each research hypothesis.
≤
5 RESULTS
5.1
Factor analysis and reliability
of measurement scale
Results from factor analysis revealed that there
were four components of perceptions of online
information which include accessibility, flexibil-
ity, interactivity, and reliability. The value of item
loading for the measurement scale was greater than
0.40, with eigenvalues greater-than-one for the four
subscales while the value of item-total correlation
for each subscale was more than 0.45. The Coef-
ficient Alpha for the scale of each component was
0.872, 0.844, 0.739 and 0.750 respectively.
2.1
Research hypotheses
By investigating perceptions of online information
in leisure and among tourists behavior with regards
to gender and income differences, the hypotheses
generated are as followed:
(i) There are differences in perceptions of online
information in terms of gender.
(ii) There are differences of intention to use online
information in terms of gender.
(iii) There are differences in perceptions of online
information in terms of income.
(iv) There are differences of intention to use online
information in terms of income.
5.2
Gender differences towards perceptions
of online information
Generally, there are four types of perceptions of
online information perceived by sports tourists.
Results obtained however indicated that only
accessibility component recorded significant dif-
ferences in perceptions of online information in
terms of gender. As referred to Table 1, the par-
ticular item was identified as “Access organized
collection”,
t
(384)
3 METHODOLOGY
.009, (male: 5.73,
female: 5.41). Obviously, the findings showed that
male sports tourists perceived higher perceptions
on online information in related to accessibility
compared to the female sports tourists.
=
2.635,
p
=
A simple random sampling method was utilized to
select 386 local and international tourists attending
the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon
2013. Out of 386 respondents, 228 (59.1%) were
male whereby 158 (40.9%) were female.
In terms of income, it was reported that 95
(24.6%) respondents were earning RM2000 and
lesser, 52 (13.5%) respondents earned RM2001-
RM2500, 53 (13.7%) respondents earned RM2501-
RM3000, 59 (15.3%) respondents earned between
RM3001-RM3500 and 127 (32.9%) respondents
earned RM3501 and more. The respondents' ages
ranged from 20 to 50 years old and the mean age
was 25years 1 month.
5.3
Gender differences towards intention to use
the websites
Result displayed in Table 2 shows that there was
no significant difference of intention to use the
websites among sports tourists in terms of gen-
der. Thus, it can be concluded that sports tourists
perceived the same intentions to use the websites
regardless of gender.
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