Previous research into website and e-business acceptance and usage has not been completely successful in establishing how this links with factors related to culture. Furthermore, most new technologies have originated within a developed cultural context—namely the United States and Western Europe. Consequently, when new technology transfers to different cultural settings we can predict some sort of cultural gap because of their technology acceptance modes. Most studies have focused on technology transfer into the developed countries with an a priori assumption about the fit of that technology without taking into consideration cultural values that would make impact its ultimate uptake and acceptance. Few of these studies have tried to investigate how Arab cultural values could influence general acceptance and use of e-business websites. The aim of this study is to explain the influence of culture on a user's acceptance behaviour and to develop a new website acceptance model that includes cultural variables. The researcher reviewed the existing literature related to culture, technology acceptance theories, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and e-business. A Culturally- Sensitive Technology Acceptance Model (CTAM) was devised and a pilot study conducted to test the cultural variables considered relevant. Along with Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Cultural Variables and Website Quality, these variables affect user Intention to Use e-business websites. The research combines both qualitative and quantitative methods to reflect the nature of the research problem and to determine whether any relationships between variables can be identified to determine behavioural patterns. A random sample consisting of 623 respondents was drawn from Arab and UK tourists visiting Jordanian tourist sites. A survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview were employed to obtain data from the selected sample. Questions contained in the questionnaire were derived from existing literature and were piloted to enhance its reliability and validity. Statistical methods were used to analyse the data in three main phases. The first phase aimed to establish that there were differences between the Arab and UK samples in terms of e-business website acceptance. This was found to be the case. The second phase aimed to establish that these differences were directly related to culture. Again, the results confirmed that there was a significant relationship between cultural variables and ebusiness website acceptance. In the third phase, a multiple regression analysis was applied to find the relationship between the independent variables (Website Quality, Cultural Variables, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use) and the dependent variable (Intension to Use). The results show that some of the cultural variables are not significant for either sample. Within the Arab sample, Trust, Tangibility, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Individualism were found to be significant but Subjective Norms and Masculinity were not. For the UK sample Trust, Power Distance and Individualism were significant but Tangibility, Subjective Norms, Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance were not. Hence, the results show that cultural variables have a significant impact on user acceptance of e-business websites and Davies’ 1989 original and general Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was found to be moderately applicable in an Arab milieu. However, not only do the Arab and UK groups have different preferences in website quality (such as website design, content, etc), but there are also differences in the acceptance process. For the UK, acceptance is routed through design preferences, usefulness and attitude of satisfaction. However, for the Arabs, it seems to be determined by ease of use. The results also indicate that factors such as tangibility and trust are playing an important role in determining website acceptance in Arab countries.

In this fast-paced, globalized world, certain online sites represent a hybrid personal-public sphere'where like-minded people commune regardless of physical distance, time difference, or lack of synchronicity. Sites that feature chat rooms and forums can offer a deep-rooted sense of community and facilitate the forging of relationships and cultivation of ideologies. This dissertation investigates whether this trend is relevant to web sites concerning hip-hop. This genre is arguably one of the most pervasive and influential global cultural forms, yet it is markedly different from most other forms of globalized culture because it emerged within and is still embedded in a distinct subculture. The notion that the Internet could become a bastion for hip-hop fans is quite paradoxical: hip hop is a cultural form so deeply rooted in the sense of place and so invested in its relationship to spatiality that it could potentially pose a particular challenge to the notion of virtual communities. This research examines the virtual hip-hop experience in the UK in order to assess whether this music and the culture that surrounds it have been adopted in their original American form or whether they have been adapted to make them more relevant to their new locale. In particular, the study probes how the ideology, values, behaviors and attitudes that bestride American hip-hop are represented, consumed, and reproduced on the mediated world of web sites.

The present study aimed to explore the culture specificity of student self-regulation and its supporting motivational attitudes. Specifically, it enquired about similarities and differences between Chilean and English 8 to 9 year-old students in terms of their expression of self-regulatory behaviours, the psychological factors underlying these behaviours, and the functionality of these behaviours for task performance. It also compared student adoption of achievement motivational attitudes as well as the functionality of these attitudes for investment of effort and self-regulatory activity between cultures. Finally, the role of classroom cultures for self-regulation was studied. In particular, it examined the effects of classrooms and the quality of teacher talk (teacher-to-student communicative interactions/demands), such as teacher ‘regulatory talk’ and ‘socio-motivational talk’, on student self-regulation. A quantitative approach to the analysis of qualitative data (i.e. videos of student behaviour engaged in 11 to 13 experimental tasks, semi-structured interviews, videoed literacy lessons) was adopted. Eight classrooms situated in different schools from Chile and England were part of the study. In total, 8 teachers and 49 students – one teacher and six to seven students per classroom – took active part in the study. Qualitative data was primarily analysed using observational scales (for student behaviour), thematic analysis (for interview data), as well as socio-cultural discourse analysis (for videoed lessons). Statistical techniques, such as Mann Whitney U test, Factor Analysis, Multinomial logistic regressions, and Multilevel regressions were then applied on numerical transformations of the data. Overall, results suggest that self-regulation and achievement motivational attitudes vary to important extents according to culture. Most interestingly, these varied between cultures not so much in terms of the degree to which children used or adopted them, but rather in terms of their functionality. Some key findings supporting this conclusion were: i) Strong similarities between English and Chilean children’s levels of self-regulatory behaviours; ii) substantial differences across country samples in relation to the psychological factors underlying the expression of specific self-regulatory behaviours; iii) the finding of evaluative actions being self-regulatory in England but not in Chile; iv) a higher variety of self-regulatory behaviours being predictive of task performance in England than in Chile; v) the fact that learned self-regulatory behaviours accounted for effects of effective metacognitive control on task performance in England but not Chile; vi) some important differences in the achievement motivational attitudes expressed by Chilean and English students; and vii) culture-specific functionalities of various achievement motivational attitudes with respect to student effort and self-regulatory behaviours. Moreover, results suggest that some aspects of children’s self-regulation and motivational attitudes develop as tools to adapt to classroom cultures, specifically to the learning interactions/demands socially afforded by teacher talk. Among key findings supporting this conclusion were: i) effects of classrooms on children’s cognitive, social, and motivational self-regulation behavioural strategies, and ii) clear effects of teacher ‘regulatory talk’ (e.g., teacher ‘self-regulatory talk’ predicting more planning and asking for clarifications in students) and ‘socio-motivational talk’ (e.g., teacher ‘talk against self-efficacy’ predicting higher dependency-oriented help-seeking in students) on those behaviours with respect to which classrooms were found to matter. Thus a theory about the culturally adaptive functionality (CAF) of self-regulation and motivational attitudes supporting self-regulation is developed throughout the thesis.