The interrelationship between intelligent agents' characteristics and users' intention in a search engine by making beliefs and perceived risks mediators

This study is to examine the possibility of applying intelligent agents' characteristics to affect users' intention in a search engine. All data were collected using online questionnaires provided in the search engine from users older than 15 years. A total of 890 questionnaires were collected. Based on these data, descriptive statistics analysis, the Pearson product-moment correlation, and hierarchical regression were conducted. All preliminary findings indicate that both beliefs and perceived risks of users in the search engine positively affects their behavioral intention. Therefore, businesses operated using a search engine must always focus on the characteristics of intelligent agents, particularly to eliminate perceived risks to increase the behavioral intention of using the search engine. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.