INVESTIGATION OF TRUST, PERCEIVE SAFETY. PERCEIVED EASE OF USE, INCOME, GENDER AND RACE ON BOTTLED WATER USE

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1 INVESTIGATION OF TRUST, PERCEIVE SAFETY. PERCEIVED EASE OF USE, INCOME, GENDER AND RACE ON BOTTLED WATER USE Anh Ta University of North Texas College of Business 1155 Union Circle # Denton, TX ABSTRACT Why do people drink bottled water instead of tap water? Why do sales of bottled water companies keep raising recently? This paper addresses these questions by using influential driving factors, such as Trust, Perceive Safety. Perceived Ease of Use, Income, Gender and Race. The study uses an online survey to collect data from undergraduate students at a large southwest public university. The results reveal that trust, perceived safety, perceived ease of use play crucial roles as antecedents of bottled water use. White people tends to spend less money on bottled water than minorities. The use of bottled water does not differ between male and female. High-income Families do not use bottled water significantly different with low-income ones. KEYWORDS: Bottled water, trust, perceived safety, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention. INTRODUCTION The sales of carbonate drink such as Coke and Pepsi has decreased recently in the U.S. market (Trefis Team, 2015). However, at the same time, the sales of bottled water have been increasing. The phenomenon raises a question of why people drink more bottled water and why they don t drink tap water. This study investigates possible main factors that influence the bottled water use. In literature of behavioral intentions, conceptual models such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985), and Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) have been applied to explain consumer decision making process. This study used construct Perceived Ease of Use, derived from the Technology Acceptance Model, as a main factor driving bottled water use. We also propose other driving factors including perceived safety, trust, income, gender and race

2 HYPOTHESIS Trust plays an important role in any human interaction. Without trust, consumer will not feel safe to start using any product (Simpson, 2007). In literature, trust, perceived safety and perceived usefulness are used to explain behavioral intention to use for many products (Roy & Singh Bisht, 2012; Hossain & Prybutok, 2008). According to Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), when risk perceptions are low, or perceived safety is high, people will be more willing to make a transaction. When people have to choose between two alternative sources of drinking water including tap water and bottled water, they will choose to use the lower risk one. The more perceived safety about bottled water a consumer develops, the less his/her risk perception is. In other word, people will use bottled water more frequently when they know it is safer for them than drinking tap water. Bottled water is more expensive than tap water. We propose that people with higher income will tend to consumer more bottled water than the ones with low income. People come from areas that do not have or limit access to good quality of bottled water may tend to use bottled water more than people comes from areas where high quality of tap water is available. We propose that different race will have different degree of bottlle water use. In other words, race will have an influcen on bottlde water use. Hypothesis 1. Trust will have a direct positive effect on bottled water use. Hypothesis 2. Perceived safety will have a direct positive effect on bottled water use. Hypothesis 3. Perceived ease of use will have a direct positive effect on bottled water use. Hypothesis 4. Income will have a direct positive effect on bottled water use. Hypothesis 5. Gender will have an influence on bottled water use. Hypothesis 6. Race will have an influence on bottled water use

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Survey questions are contextualized from other related studies in the literature (Davis, 1989; Bratanova et al., 2013; Saylor et al., 2011). This study does not differentiate different types of bottled water such as spring, natural mineral or purified water, but focus on the use of bottled water in general. The 7-point Likert scale was used in the survey. The survey was prepared and distributed by using Qualtrics, a popular online survey platform. We sent the survey to 1217 college students at a public University in North Texas area. After filtering invalid response, we collected 565 useable data. RESULTS We use linear regression analysis to measure the relationship between bottled water use and proposed driving factors. The relationship is presented as following regression equation:

4 AU (Actual Use) = *T (Trust) +.177*R (Perceived Safety) +.693*EOU (Perceived Ease of Use) -.326* High_Income.289* Ave_Income -.675*R_White (Race) +.246* Gender1M (Male). The R square of this model is 32%, meaning that 32% of bottled water use explained by variables including trust, perceived safety, perceived ease of use, level of income, race and gender. Actual use is dependent variable, while trust, perceived safety, perceived ease of use are independent variables and income, race and gender is dummy variables. Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, and 6 are supported (beta coefficient equal.411,.177,.693 and -.675, and p-value equal.000,.027,.000 and.000, respectively). However, the hypotheses 4 and 5 are not supported because all the corresponding p- values are greater than DISCUSSION The results of this study indicates that trust, perceived safety and perceived ease of use are the main factor driving the use of bottled water. Consumer trust the bottled water manufacturer and perceived bottled water quality is better than tap water quality. Bottled water user can use this product anytime and anywhere. Thus, they prefer to use bottled water than tap water. An interesting finding is that white people tend to use bottled water less than other races. One possible explanation is that people comes from Asian countries or African countries where the quality of tap water is not good does not have habit to use tap water without treatment. Although bottled water is more expensive than tap water, the price is not an important factor to drive the use of this product. We do not find any difference between consumers income with bottle water use. Also, we do not find any difference between male and female in using bottled water. LIMITATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH The sample includes only college students is a drawback of this study. However, students represent an important demographic market of bottled water. The survey results indicate that almost all participants have been used bottled water. The limitation of student survey also limits the range of income. Thus, extending the data sample to different type of demographic may influence the effect of income on bottled water use

5 The unnecessary use of bottled water may negatively impact on the environment because the energy to produce 1 liter of bottled water is 2000 times greater than the energy to produce the similar amount of tap water (Gleick & Cooley, 2009). Thus, the concerns about the environment should be considered as factor that negatively effect on bottled water use. If this relationship is supported, the companies in bottled supply chain may have to consider to reduce manufacturing energy or improve the recycled process to gain more market from customers that concerns about the environment. CONCLUSION Our proposed model confirms important factors driving the use of bottled water including trust, perceived safety, perceived ease of use and race. Although the model is applied to a specific product in this study, it is potential to apply to other similar products in the market. This study supports the use of trust, perceived safety and perceived ease of use to predict the driving factor of a certain product. The results provide valuable information for companies in the bottled water supply chain to understand the behavior in decision making of their customers. These companies also should consider the demography such as race to predict the sales of bottled water in new market, but level of income or gender do not play important roles in deciding the bottled water consumption. REFERENCES Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior: Springer. Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Bratanova, B., Morrison, G., Fife Schaw, C., Chenoweth, J., & Mangold, M. (2013). Restoring drinking water acceptance following a waterborne disease outbreak: the role of trust, risk perception, and communication. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(9), Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS quarterly, Gleick, P. H., & Cooley, H. S. (2009). Energy implications of bottled water. Environmental Research Letters, 4(1), Hossain, M. M., & Prybutok, V. R. (2008). Consumer acceptance of RFID technology: An exploratory study. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 55(2), Roy, S. K., Kesharwani, A., & Singh Bisht, S. (2012). The impact of trust and perceived risk on internet banking adoption in India: An extension of technology acceptance model. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 30(4),

6 Saylor, A., Prokopy, L. S., & Amberg, S. (2011). What s wrong with the tap? Examining perceptions of tap water and bottled water at Purdue University. Environmental management, 48(3), Simpson, J. A. (2007). Psychological foundations of trust. Current directions in psychological science, 16(5), Trefis Team (2015). Bottled water is a potential growth category that can't be ignored, access May 20, 2016, available at -