研究期間：10208~10307;As the computer revolution has created more and more readers reading online, studies areundergoing to look at the act of reading digitally. It has been widely acknowledged that reading on a paper is in many ways different from reading on a screen, such as in how people “read” and what people retain in the reading process, it is worth of investigation.The goal of this study is to investigate the contemporary market of digital reading in Taiwan. Although digital reading has gained much attention and has been a popular phenomenon in Taiwan, many topics such as the digital reading behavior and preference on e-reading devices remain unexplored. The 2-year study will be conducted to answer the above questions.In the first year, a survey questionnaire will be delivered to collect data on the frequency of digital and paper reading behaviors, preference on e-reading devices. The questionnaire also aims to find out who are the major consumers in Taiwan’s digital reading market. In addition, questions such as what are the most popular reading subjects in digital reading in Taiwan; where and when do the digital reading acts occur; is there any difference in e-reading devices preference across different target population; is there any difference in turns of reading subjects, time spent in reading, reading population characteristics between digital reading as opposed to reading a paper book, etc., will also be explored in the first year’s study. In the second year, a repeated measure experimental design will be conducted to contrast participants’ reading performance, mental efforts, and usage behaviors among three most popular e-reading devices: Kindle DX, IPAD 2, and Acer Aspire one ZG5. A three-week laboratory experiment will be implemented with thirty subjects drawn from digital reading population by convenient sampling method. An open-ended interview with selected participants will follow up when the experiment is completed to complement our findings on the quantitative data.The results drawn from this study will help enhance our understanding on Taiwan’s digital reading market as well as the characteristics of digital reading population as contrasted to the paper reading population. Discussion and implications of the findings will be provided for government developing policy in digital content industry and e-reading device industry.
