An Investigation into the Successful Emergence of Online Events, with the Increasing Use of Technology in the Events Industry

Abstract

The following study looks to answer; ‘To what extent do people adopt technology to support online events?’, by carrying out an online questionnaire. This study asked ten questions to gather quantitative data, using convenience sampling to gather responses through social media, resulting in 132 respondents to this study. The questionnaire briefly examined the demographics of respondents, including age and gender, where the rest of the questionnaire was based on the Technology Acceptance Model, measuring five constructs. Those included ‘Perceived Usefulness’, ‘Perceived Ease of Use’, ‘Attitude Towards Use’, ‘System Use’ and ‘Future Use’, measured using a five-point Likert Scale. Data was analysed through descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation, by comparing the respondents’ answers to the adoption of technology, with their demographic characteristics. The data generated from these results showed a wide variety of ages were interested in completing an online questionnaire about online events, therefore Age was used to compare the results of each construct, to develop a deeper understanding of how respondents adopt technology. The results showed that most people are confident to use technology to attend online events and have suitable technology to attend online events, however data suggests that most respondents do not favour online events over physical events. Most perceive technology is easy to use and have access to suitable technology, with some believing it is beneficial to attend an online event over a physical event, where most. Therefore, people do adopt technology in support of events, to a certain extent. This study concludes by recommending ways around the limitations of this study, including limited research previously carried out in the relevant area, time constraints imposed on this study, the sample and the analysis technique. Therefore, this study recommends future research to further explore the various reasons to attending an online event to develop a deeper understanding, by using a representative sample and analyse the data through regression analysis or factor analysis, to further understand how people adopt technology in support of online events.