As I was writing my new entry for this week’s research blog, I discovered conflict between research progress and my interests.  While reading the articles from IS 362, I found some interesting research methods. Specifically, we dealt with the economics IS paper.

Actually, I have never seen a paper combining Economics and Information Systems. Anyway, I was pretty interested in the Econ IS. I think I am apply economics theory to Web 2.0 as a research model in future studies. Applying the concept of Two-Side Network Externality to indicate the characteristics of Web 2.0 such as Wiki and UCC, my idea is intended to provide a broader understanding of web users' behavior. I will provide an analytical framework of the interaction between web users and UCC. Previous studies focus on the analysis of each variable individualy but I wil examine whether web users prefer UCC and how the web users affect the value of firm.   

In fact, there are a few studies which investigate UCC, but they are not based on an economic perspective.  While Web 2.0 is an opportunity for both consumer and firm with economic merit, there is no study using an economic viewpoint.  Additionally, my new interest will provide the reasons that people visit UCC site and the benefits of UCC to consumers.  I also will research why Internet sites try to attract web users to their pages and the additional revenue to firm with the increasing number of visitors.  Even though measuring web user behavior may be difficulty, this study will apply a theoretical base which widely accepted in the Internet community.