THAT Animeblog

After toiling on it for the past few days, I have finally finished the first draft of the paper (and possibly final draft because I am so lazy to edit it). I must admit that the written draft is perhaps a little under-par. However, I can make the excuse that I have limited time to work and it is perhaps a decent piece of research that can help people understand more about anime fans, the likelihood to adopt, and how the social condition and negative publicity of ODEX can create a spiraling effect in terms of adoption intention.

Here is the link for those who wants the report. A warning for those is that it is decently long, and have rather complicated terms for those not trained in basic statistics.

For those who are not that academically inclined, here are some of the major findings.

Results

1. The attrition rate was 9%, with a total of 338 complete surveys. The sample had a mean age of 20 and a median monthly spending of 26-50 dollars on anime and manga merchandise. 63.6% of the respondents were male and more than 71.1% had more than secondary school education. This was consistent with the demographics of teenagers who used the Internet for social interaction and downloading (iDA, 2006).

2. The attitude toward ODEX, attitude toward anime VOD, history of anime/manga merchandise are positively related to the likelihood of adopting anime VOD. There is also a weak negative relationship between escapism and likelihood to adopt anime VOD.

3. Age, education, innovativeness, attitude toward new technologies and the other four Internet use motivational factors are not significantly correlated with the likelihood to adopt.

4. A majority of the respondents (81.2%) were interested to adopt anime VOD if it was reasonably priced. More interestingly, the study showed that there was a prevalence of negative sentiment toward ODEX among the anime fans in Singapore. All four questions elicited a negative response. On their propensity to buy ODEX’s products, 65.7% of the respondents answered that they would be unlikely to support ODEX. More than three quarters of the respondents of the respondents disagreed with the legal proceedings of illegal anime downloaders and felt that ODEX’s products lacked quality. Almost all respondents (98.5%) felt that ODEX’s reputation was bad or neutral.

5. The lack of innovativeness as a significant factor is very surprising. The study’s results contradict with most diffusion studies that found a significant relationship with innovativeness (Leung & Wei, 1998). It is interesting to note that innovativeness was not a key predictor of adoption. One of the possible reasons could be the variables used. The new media technologies used in the study was from studies in the early 2000s and might be obsolete in the fast growing information age. Further studies might require a newer examination on the new media technologies among a younger and skewed sample due to their tech-savvy behavior.

6. As expected, the social climate revolving around anime VOD was a factor in determining the intention to adopt anime VOD. The results of the ODEX questions showed that negative sentiments or expectations of a product could affect adoption even if it could be a legal source for anime fans. The association of legal anime downloads and ODEX seemed to be strong as anime fans did not seem to separate the purchasing of anime VOD with the distributor which was ODEX. It seemed clear that the negative public relations caused by the legal letters to fans created a spiraling effect in terms of adoption.

So, does the paper help you to understand a bit more? Are the results accurate or baffling?