21
Direct and Indirect Effects of Responsiveness
Hypotheses 3 predicted that responsiveness of the Web site would influence attitude
toward the source directly, or indirectly via attitude toward the Web site, while both attitude
toward the source and attitude toward the Web site affect attitude toward health information on
the Web site and health behavior intentions (see Figure 1). This hypothesis are not only
concerned with the relationship between the responsiveness manipulation and dependent
variables, but also with relationships between dependent variables. To test the hypothesis,
therefore, a path analytic analysis such as structural equation modeling rather than ANOVA type
of analysis is more appropriate to analyze experimental data (Bagozzi, 1977; Bagozzi & Yi,
1989). Following the recommendation by Bagozzi (1977), both responsiveness manipulation
and manipulation checks were included in the model. Due to correlations among measurement
errors of the indicators and a small sample size, it was not appropriate to construct a full
structural model with latent factors, and estimate factor loadings and relationships between
factors. Instead, factors were treated as manifest variables (Straughan et al., 1996) and a path
analysis was performed using EQS (Bentler, 1995). The correlations among measurement errors
between attitude toward health information on the Web site and health behavior intentions also
prohibited constructing a path model with both variables in it. Therefore, the initial model was
revised and divided into two models (see Figure 2).
The results show that overall model fit for both models were satisfactory (see Table 3).
An examination of path coefficients revealed that responsiveness of the Web site affected
attitude toward the source only indirectly via attitude toward the Web site, while attitude toward
the Web site, but not attitude toward the source, was associated with other outcome measures,
namely, curiosity of the information, attitude toward the issue allergies, preventive behavior
intention and information seeking intention. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was not supported.
Convention