BackgroundHepatitis B (HepB) is a major public health concern in Malaysia yet little is known about knowledge and awareness of this infection in the country. Such information is essential for designing effective intervention strategies for HepB prevention and control. The aim of this study was to characterize knowledge and awareness regarding HepB in Malaysia and to identify their associated sociodemographic determinants.MethodsA community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted between January and May 2016 in Selangor state of Malaysia. A two-stage cluster random sampling design was used and one adult member of selected households was interviewed face-to-face. Logistic regression was used to estimate the differences in knowledge and awareness between groups.ResultsA total of 764 households completed the interviews and were included in the final analysis. Only 36.9 and 38.8% of the participants had good knowledge and awareness, respectively. The factors associated with good knowledge were being in the 35–44 year age group, Malay ethnicity, high educational attainment and high family income. Being Chinese, being older and having high educational attainment were determinants of having good awareness towards HepB. Participants who had good knowledge were 2.5 times more likely to also have good awareness (OR: 2.41, 95% CI: 1.78–3.26, p < 0.001).ConclusionsThis study reveals a low level of knowledge and awareness of HepB among households in Malaysia. This finding highlights the need to improve public knowledge and awareness through well-designed programs targeting vulnerable groups in order to reduce hepatitis B virus transmission and achieve the governmental target of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health concern by 2030.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-6375-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
“FinTech” or a compound term of Financial Technology refers as a newly emerged industry that utilizes IT-centered technologies which aims to boost the efficiency of the financial ecosystem. Since its inception, FinTech has successfully established its presence in the global financial industry due to the benefits and advantages of the system. However, the research studies that highlight the importance of FinTech are scarce. Specifically, the study pertaining to the consumers’ attitude towards FinTech products and services in the context of Malaysia remains unexplored by most of the studies. This preliminary study proposed the extension of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to identify the potential factors that influence consumers’ intention to adopt FinTech products and services in Malaysia. This study reviewed the factors, namely the usefulness, ease of use, competitive advantage, perceived risk, and perceived cost that can potentially influence the attitude of customers towards the product and services of FinTech. This study also proposes the potential mediating effect of attitude towards using FinTech products and the intention to adopt FinTech. This study attempts to create new knowledge geared towards the behavior to utilize FinTech products in Malaysia.
The study objective is to investigate the factors affecting the consumer awareness and acceptance towards FinTech products and services in Malaysia. In this study, first, it is to identify the factors that affect the consumer awareness and acceptance towards FinTech products and services in Malaysia. Second, it is to develop a conceptual framework which included the independent variables such as usefulness, ease of use, relative advantage, perceived risk, perceived cost, and mediating effect of awareness of consumers with the dependent variable of the consumer acceptance towards FinTech products and services. The expected output of this study could help FinTech companies to make the right decisions in promoting their products and services in the country. The findings of this study would be benefiting them to develop more personalized products and services for the Malaysian consumers.
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