Self-determination and motivation to use the Website: The role of self-personalization of the user interface

摘要

While past studies of web personalization have focused mainly on how to offer precisely tailored messages to website users, our study is aimed at understanding how allowing users to self-customize websites motivates them to use the website and improve their satisfaction with using the website. We posit that perceived personalization induced by self-customization of the user interface creates the sense of self-determination and that this leads to higher levels of users' motivation and satisfaction. An empirical test using iGoogle confirms the validity of the proposed model and shows that, with the self-customization option, the users feel a higher level of self-determination, becomes more motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically, and more satisfied with the website.