Examining gender issues in perception and acceptance in web-based end-user development activities

In the recent years in the End-User Development (EUD) research there is a shift from the study of tools that focus on desktop graphical applications, to the development of EUD for web environments. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has shown significant gender differences while users interact with EUD systems. However, most of this research focuses on desktop spreadsheet environments. In this paper we examine the potential gender differences in perception and acceptance in modern web-based EUD environments. We step on previous gender research in the fields of EUD and Technology Acceptance to concentrate a set of appropriate items and examine a set of related hypotheses. To check out our research hypotheses we have conducted a field test using a prototype web-based EUD tool based on a natural language approach (named ‘simple talking’), to assist end-users in creating database-driven mobile applications. The results of the field test show significant gender differences in Risk-Perception and Perceived-Ease of Use. As it was predicted, male users perceived significantly higher ease of use and female users perceived significantly higher risk. Gender differences also exist in the correlations between different pairs of perception and acceptance items.