| With the advent of the Information Age, Internet is being valued by most industries as a mean to innovate and generate new profits. Self-service on the other hand, has developed into a popular business form because of the lowered costs and high efficiency it brought. This is particularly true for banking industry. Since currency and various financial products are their main products, banks have to process and communicate massive information. Also, this process requires speed and a high level of transparency. It is these demands that promoted the banking industry becoming the pioneer of all industries in using digital technology to innovate. As a result, online banking was created. Bank of China is the first to adopt online banking in mainland, but it only provides information query services at that time. The other banks kept advancing, and within 4 years all banks in china have adopted online banking. While the products becoming more diversification, websites becoming more visual appealing and security measures getting closer to the international standard in the online market, the operation principal of traditional banks remained the same. Their principal was "product-oriented" rather than "customer-oriented". This then cased the deficiency of service quality. With data from< The Report on the Service Reforming of Chinese Banking Industry in 2012> announced by the Chinese banking industry, it’s easy to find that customers have the most complaints about service quality provided by our banks. This phenomenon revealed a fact that banks services’ efficiency and customers’ expectations are imbalanced. Also, banks services were lagged behind public’s increasing need for financial service.Online banking provides financial service to customers through the Internet and relies on highly advanced information system and technology equipments to operate. Therefore, customers have to participate in the production and transmission of this financial service, otherwise it can not be accomplished. Although with online banking, the efficiency of transactions has improved and customers gained more power in controlling this process and creating financial products and services, there is also a tendency of anxiety among customers when they encountered with technique problems, some even choose to abandon this business at last. Therefore, in order to increase the utilization of online banking and improve its service quality, we have to study customer behavior in the context of self-service.By studying customer psychological perception of online banking form the angle of customer participation, this thesis intended to examine the influence path between customer participation and service quality. (1) Analyzed customer behavior in the context of self-service. By focusing on the specific domain---online finance, this thesis designed a customer participation scale for online banking business. This scale has three dimensions and contains 15 measuring projects. (2) Studied psychological perception of customers, with existing researches, assessed the validity of the application of both perceived control scale and perceived risk scale in online banking. (3) This thesis examined customer perceived behavior of the service quality of online banking business. Then, with existing scales and characteristics of online banking business, a service quality scale was been made. (4) Designed a questionnaire intending to calculate the utilization of online banking. The survey was carried out in most college campuses and parts of business streets in Tianjin.350 copies of valid questionnaires have been collected in the end. After analyzing these original data with SPSS 16.0 and AMOS 17.0 statistical programs, the research finds that customer participation, control perception, risk perception and service quality are interrelated: customer participation has a positive correlation with perceived control but a partial negative correlation between perceived risk, and a partial positive correlation with service quality; perceived control and service quality has a positive correlation; while perceived risk and serviced quality has a negative correlation. (5) Analyzed problems existed in the development of online banking and offered suggestions with modeling.The suggestions include:strengthening service awareness and assisting customers with preparation of business; establishing a user experience mechanism with interaction orientation in order to strengthening customer controlling perception; enhancing the effects of public praise, spreading marketing concept and decreasing customer perceived risk.The innovate points in this thesis are:(1) The designing of a new dimension customer participation scale applicable to online banking business based on characteristics of self-service. Basically, the context of most former customer participation studies is service industry, including hairdressing and tourism. Therefore, human interactions and information communication is their primary focus. However, with the development of internet and its increased impact on customer consumption pattern, the dimension of customer participation with self-service technique definite will change. In the self-service mode, staffs’traditional role of communicating with customers has been replaced by computer systems. As a result, the introduction of high-tech not only promoted the successfulness of operations but also raised the requirement of customers. What’s more, the internet also extended the capacity of service into infinite, customers on longer confined to the limited services provided by banks, they can create their own businesses out of their own needs. Therefore, the dimension of customer participation has to be adjusted in order to explaining customer behavior. These are the main considerations in choosing "internet self-service technique-online banking" as the topic of this research. Besides, the research also designed a customer participation scale with the intention to improve the applicability of this concept within banking industry. (2) The introduction of perceived control and perceived risk as intermediate variables, and built a conceptual model between customer participation and service quality. The former studies observed the direct relationship between customer participation and service quality, but ignored the important mechanism thorough which this two objects connects. In the self-service model, customers mainly relying on the independent operating procedures for service, the change of the psychological factors affected more by evaluation of the quality of service, so the introduction of these two intermediate variables in this paper, pay attention to customer’s psychological factors influence on service quality improvement. Besides, empirical analysis has already verified the fact that with the introduction of intermediate variables, customer participation’s impact on service quality will be intensified. Hence, the variables can help in offering a new approach to improve service quality from a new perspective. (3) This research also covered a survey in order to examine the interrelationship of these 4 subjects:customer participation, perceived control, perceived risk and perceived service quality. Differed from traditional service theory, in the context of internet service techniques, in the three dimensions of customer participation, preparation only significant impact on perceived control, word-of-mouth effect on perceived risk is the largest, cooperative behavior impact on other variables were significantly. The findings will targetedly put forward measures to improve Internet banking service quality from the perspective of customer participation.This article research also has a lot of shortcomings, mainly include the following: (1) Limitation of sample data. Limited to time and expense, the survey sample hasn’t cover enough population. Though 19-35 olds is the key user of online banking, customers from other age group should not be neglected. Besides, Tianjin is the only city sample in this survey, thus, the practical situation of China’s overall online banking business can not be exhibited. (2) The object of study narrowness. In this paper, the specific research object is personal Internet banking, no research enterprise of the bank on the net, so the conclusion is not applicable to the enterprise, this makes the conclusion that the application of narrow. (3)The perceived control and perceived risk of insufficient standard scale development. Among research variables, perceived control and perceived risk, perceived control can be divided into time control, process control and business control three levels, perceived risk can be divided into technical risk, operational risk and privacy risk, property risk and credit risk 5 level, only on the individual measurement projects and the overall scale of the concept of reliability and validity test, and no inspection on the surface of the layered consistency and convergence. (4) Customer participation on service quality affect the path of the intermediate variable incomplete. In this paper, we study the impact of customer participation on service quality path, perceived control and perceived risk is introduced between the two variables, but in actual use process, the factors influencing customers perception of service quality is very complex, especially in the network environment, customer participation, perceived useful, perceived entertainment may become the factors that affect the service quality perception, and after the introduction of technical factors, the customer’s technical anxiety has become an important variable.(5) Demographic variables impact on customer participation and service quality are detailed enough. Due to the limited time and energy, this article only when samples of the descriptive statistical analysis of population variables has carried on the simple sum up, there is no specific analysis of age, gender, income, education and other population characteristics influence on customer participation and service quality perception, and in the process of actual use of the bank on the net, these variables will play an important role in regulating, and staff of the bank on the net in the process of marketing in one of the standard of customer segmentation, therefore, it is necessary to deepen in the follow-up study.Researching is an ongoing process, thesis only represents an accumulation of knowledge in a short phase, and further study is needed. My future research will include:(1)Broadening the scope customer participation scale. Although designing scales is hard and complex, it can provide fundamental theories for quantitative analysis in my future study. As self-service covers a wide range of industries, the exploring of other industries will also be one part of my future research. By focusing on industries with indigenous technology, I hope it can help in reaching a general conclusion of the study on customer participation with self-service technology and providing reference value for my future study. (2)Expanding the research scope and sample quantity. In order to enlarge the range of sample selection, should not only study the personal Internet banking, research enterprise of the bank on the net; Should not only study the first-tier cities online banking customer participation behavior, but also the second and third tier cities and rural areas of customer participation, especially online banking should play a role in the rural financial system, is a possible future research problems. (3) Detailed study of intermediate variables in influence path. In order to examine the intermediate mechanism through which customer participation influences service quality, technology acceptance model will be used. The research will focused on the determinants of customer psychological in the context of internet technology. Also, regulations of the developing and examining process of intermediate variable scale will be covered. (4) Studying the regulating effect of demographic statistic variable. According to documentations, demographic statistic variables such as age, income, education background can affect the antecedents of customer participation and their extent of involvement, and then regulate controlling perception, risk perception and service quality. If these variables were included, the present model will become more complex and the focus will deviate from the present one, therefore, this mechanism will be covered in my future research.
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