156 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. INTERNET ABUSE INTENTION AT WORKPLACE AMONG EMPLOYEES: A MALAYSIAN PERSPECTIVE M. Krishna Moorthy1+ Chin Yoon Mei2 Choo Wan Cing3 Lee Mang Yin4 Lee Xin Hui5 Sew Yong Sheng6 Tan Wei Lin7 1,2,3,4,5,6,7Faculty of Business and Finance, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kampar Campus, Perak, Malaysia (+ Corresponding author) ABSTRACT Article History Received: 14 September 2018 Revised: 17 October 2018 Accepted: 21 November 2018 Published: 12 December 2018 Keywords Internet abuse intention SMEs Modified theory of planned Behaviour Malaysia. This study examines the factors that contribute to internet abuse intention among employees of SMEs in the services sector in Malaysia. Modified Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model has been adopted as the theoretical framework. Primary data has been collected from 500 SMEs‟ employees who have access to the internet at their workplace through self-administered survey questionnaire. Attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, moral norms and external locus of control are positively related to internet abuse intention. This research has included the additional variables, moral norms (internal variable) and external locus of control (external variable) to enhance the TPB model. This research will contribute to the employers who intend to reduce the internet abuse behaviour of their employees in the workplace and as a reference for future researchers on similar topics. Contribution/Originality: This study added two more variables, external locus of control and moral norms to extend the original TPB model. From the management perspective, it would help to enhance the work productivity of Malaysian SMEs by planning various measures to avoid internet abuse intention among employees. 1. INTRODUCTION Young (2006) has stated that the internet was seen as one of the things that can influence our daily life because internet users are likely to spend most of their leisure time in the cyber community. Internet abuse can be defined as an individual‟s inability to restrain his or her internet usage, and may eventually result in a feeling of distress and causes their daily activities to be functionally impaired (Shapira et al., 2003). Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are legally independent companies that have contributed 21.4% to the overall GDP growth in the services sector in Malaysia for the year 2015 according to the official website of SME Corporation Malaysia. The occurrence of internet abuse in a workplace may jeopardize the organization regarding increase in infrastructure and internal security costs, as well as possible risks related to organization‟s civil and legal liabilities (Conlin, 2000; Verespej, 2000). This concern has become a serious issue in many countries, of which Malaysia is one of them. It is believed that this „plague‟ has infected a great number of employees in Malaysia and this situation is worsening day by day. Internet abuse can be a hidden activity and the growing availability of various internet facilities in the workplace is making it easier for misuse of the internet to occur in many different forms. Humanities and Social Sciences Letters 2018 Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 156-170 ISSN(e): 2312-4318 ISSN(p): 2312-5659 DOI: 10.18488/journal.73.2018.64.156.170 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0431-0957 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2856-8576 https://www.doi.org/10.18488/journal.73.2018.64.156.170 Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 157 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. In this research, internet abuse is defined as the personal use of internet for non-work-related activities during working hours through electronic devices such as computer and mobile phone. This study mainly focuses on investigating the factors that cause the internet abuse intention among employees of SMEs which includes all the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the services sector. 1.1. Problem Statement The internet abuse can be seen as an intensifying issue in Malaysia. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the existence of this problem. Cheng (2013) reported in the Star Online that employees in Malaysia with regular working hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. spend a total of 4 hours being productive. Rosli et al. (2015) mentioned that the internet abuse phenomenon is affecting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. By referring to SME Corporation Malaysia (2015/16) there has been a sharp increase in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption among the SMEs in Malaysia in recent years. Rosli et al. (2015) further stated that it is possible for employers to encounter lawsuits if their employees have used the company network to access pornography or to post inappropriate comments in various online forums. Numerous studies have addressed these concerns. However, these studies have some deficiencies. In a similar study, Jamaluddin et al. (2015) have distributed their questionnaires by using the convenience sampling method to only 12 organizations in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka. We have extended the research to cover four States in Malaysia, which were Selangor, WPKL, Johor and Perak as these States have the highest rankings in the total SME establishments. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Theory of Planned Behaviour Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) explains how attitudes and social norms of individuals may affect their intention to behave in a particular way (Pee et al., 2008). TPB is a model extended from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) (Ajzen, 1991). The main assumption of both TRA and TPB models is that individuals are rational in considering their behaviours and actions. TPB has been widely applied and cited by many past researches (Morris et al., 2012b). It is well accepted as a model with a strong predictive function and as a well established model to forecast intention. Attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control are the variables of the TPB model. Attitude is the possibility of carrying out a certain action derived from the belief and the outcome assessment (Henle et al., 2010). Subjective norm is the influence derived from the perception of those who are important to the individual in performing an act (Tan et al., 2015). Perceived behavioural control is which an individual belief that he or she can overmaster the personal resources to perform certain behaviour (Ko and Jin, 2017). However, the determinants of intention are not bound by the three factors of the TPB model (Ajzen, 1991). According to Huang and Chen (2015) the TPB has overlooked on the explicit motivational content as a possible enticement of intention to perform an actual behaviour. Many other determinants may influence behaviour. Many researchers have modified the TPB model. The addition of external locus of control and moral norms is used in this study to fill the lack of the original TPB model. 2.2. Internet Abuse Intention Internet abuse intention can be defined as any voluntary act of an employee to use the company‟s internet to browse web sites and examine personal e-mail during their working hours (Lim, 2002). Harrison et al. (1997) stated that intention construct has been adopted by many studies, as it can predict the actual behaviour accurately. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model proposed by Ajzen (1985) suggests that people will behave according to their intentions and perceptions of control over the behaviour. Similarly, the study by Woon and Pee (2004) has examined the effects of job satisfaction, affect, social factors, perceived consequences, habit, and facilitating conditions on internet abuse intention and all the factors were found to influence the internet abuse intention, which Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 158 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. eventually lead to the behaviour of internet abuse. Moreover, Francis et al. (2004) mentioned that although the relationship between an individual‟s intention and actual behaviour is imperfect, intention can be utilized as an understudy measure of behaviour. Hence, this study proposes to determine what factors will cause the internet abuse intention. 2.3. External Locus of Control External locus of control is where a person believes that his or her future success is due to external causes (Rotter, 1966). Some researchers have found that it may significantly affect the decision to perform a certain behaviour (Chonko et al., 2002; Hume et al., 2006). According to Poškus (2015) by integrating moral norms, it can aid to curb the lack of regards towards an individual‟s moral aspects to behaviour. 2.4. Moral Norms Moral norms refer to an individual‟s belief in moral righteousness when performing certain behaviour. The addition of moral norms has resulted in an increase in intention towards certain behaviours (Taneja, 2006). According to the study of Botetzagias et al. (2015) moral norms have an extensive positive effect on the intention. In his study, moral norms were the second most important predictor to explain the recycling intention. An individual may be determined to act morally when there are internal feelings regarding the moral obligation for particular actions. Gino et al. (2011) explained that moral identity has moderated the relationship between self- regulatory resource depletion and dishonesty, in which such relationship has been weaker for the participants with high moral identity. Moral norms are closely associated with an individual‟s consideration in terms of self-moral worth instead of the outcomes of the behaviour (Huang and Chen, 2015). 2.5. The Relationship between Attitudes and Internet Abuse Intention Attitudes have been found to be a substantial factor in the prediction of behaviour (Glasman and Albarracin, 2006). Lau et al. (2003) found that an individual‟s attitude towards internet abuse does play a role in internet abuse intention and behaviours. Individuals with positive attitudes towards internet abuse are more likely to commit internet abuse at work (Liberman et al., 2011; Lim and Chen, 2012; Askew et al., 2014). Hence, the hypothesis is developed as below: H1: There is a positive relationship between attitudes and internet abuse intention. 2.6. The Relationship between Subjective Norms and Internet Abuse Intention Based on the past studies of Henle et al. (2010); Moody and Siponen (2013) and Tan et al. (2015) subjective norms is a significant independent variable that will positively influence the intention of an individual to perform certain behaviour. Therefore, the following hypothesisis is formulated: H2: There is a positive relationship between subjective norms and internet abuse intention. 2.7. The Relationship between Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) and Internet Abuse Intention The past studies of Ko and Jin (2017); Liao et al. (2010) have shown that higher level of PBC will result in a greater intention to avoid Internet misuse on the employees‟ perspective. This leads to the following hypothesis: H3: There is a positive relationship between perceived behavioural control and internet abuse intention. 2.8. The Relationship between Moral Norms and Internet Abuse Intention Several previous empirical studies have concluded that there is a significant relationship between moral norms and the intention to certain behaviour. According to Botetzagias et al. (2015) moral norms have an extensive positive effect on the intention, similar to the study of Taneja (2006). Gino et al. (2011) explained that impaired Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 159 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. moral norms are positively related to the intention of performing an immoral act. Hence, the following hypothesis is suggested: H4: There is a positive relationship between immoral norms and internet abuse intention 2.9. The Relationship between External Locus of Control (ELOC) and Internet Abuse Intention Past studies by Vitak et al. (2011) and Chak and Leung (2004) have agreed that individuals with external locus of control will have lower self-control ability over internet use and they tend to spend more time on the internet. Similarly, Davis et al. (2002) have concluded that people who possess high ELOC are more likely to be involved in internet abuse at work. With this, the following hypothesis is developed: H5: There is a positive relationship between external locus of control and internet abuse intention 2.10. Proposed Research Model The proposed research model is shown in Figure 1. Figure-1. Proposed research model. Source: Adopted from: Ajzen (1985); Ajzen and Driver (1992); Jamaluddin et al. (2015) 3. METHODOLOGY 3.1. Research Design The quantitative data collection technique is applied in this research as numerical data gathered from questionnaire survey are measurable and quantifiable (Zikmund et al., 2010). According to Sedgwick (2014) cross- sectional study is adopted when all the measurements are acquired at a single point in time. Cross-sectional studies are also used to identify commonness, and it is quick and easy (Mann, 2003). Hence, data for this research were collected on 3 months basis from 3rd October 2016 to 10th January 2017 by using the cross-sectional approach. Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 160 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. 3.2. Population The target population of this study is all the employees of SMEs in Malaysia who have the access to the internet in the workplace. As retrieved from the official website of SME Corporation Malaysia, the Economic Census 2011 reported that SMEs accounted for 97.3%, which amounted to 645,136 of total business establishments in 2010. Selangor, WPKL, Johor and Perak are the four States with the highest rankings in the total SMEs establishments. Hence, our focus narrows down to the services sector in these four States. 3.3. Sampling The sample is used as it is unfeasible to test data from every single element and that it may, at times, produce more reliable results than the entire population (Sekaran and Bougie, 2013). Taking a sample also requires lower cost (Cooper and Schindler, 2008). The cluster random sampling method is used in this study. The researchers classify the population into groups, called clusters which often naturally occur in the population (Teddlie and Yu, 2007). The population was put into clusters by the States. The sample was further selected from the four clusters by utilizing simple random sampling, where each of the population has equal chances to be selected (Cooper and Schindler, 2008). The Comprehensive Business Directory for Small & Medium Enterprises Malaysia has been used as the sampling frame. The minimum requirement for population of above 500,000 is 384 samples (Krejcie and Morgan, 1970). Our population size is 645,136. Hence, 500 questionnaires have been distributed to our target respondents. 3.4. Research Instrument Self-administered questionnaire was used in this study, because it is convenient, less time consuming and does not have any specific skill requirement compared to semi-structured and in-depth interview. In addition, this survey method can also be delivered to a numerous respondents at the same time (Hair et al., 2011). 3.5. Constructs Measurement Table-1. Measurement of Variables. Variables Measure Scale of Measurement Personal Profile Gender Nominal Age Ordinal Highest Education Completed Nominal Working Experience Ordinal The Time of Internet Usage during Working Hours Ordinal Company Profile Age of Firm Ordinal Category of Services Sector Nominal Occupational Status Nominal Independent Variables Attitudes Interval 5-point Likert Scale Subjective Norms Interval 5-point Likert Scale Perceived Behavioural Control Interval 5-point Likert Scale Moral Norms Interval 5-point Likert Scale External Locus of Control Interval 5-point Likert Scale Dependent Variable Internet Abuse Intention among Employees of SMEs in the Services Sector Interval 5-point Likert Scale Table 1 shows the measurement of each variable contained in the questionnaire. 5-point Likert scale was employed in this study. 5-point Likert scale ranged from (1) “Strongly disagree” to (5) “Strongly agree”. 5-point Likert scale is convenient for the respondents to view and choose based on the list of scale descriptors (Maringka, 2012). Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 161 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. 4. DATA ANALYSIS SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1 was used in this study to analyse the data collected from survey questionnaire. 4.1. Pilot Test It is important to conduct the pilot test before distributing the questionnaires in a large number. Thabane et al. (2010) defined a pilot test as an investigation way to test the feasibility of procedures and methods that may be useful for the following large scale study. It is sufficient to examine the validity of survey if 20 respondents participate in the pilot test (Arain et al., 2010). Hence, 20 target respondents were selected to conduct the pilot test and this took place at SMEs in Ipoh, Perak State. Table 2 below shows the reliability test result. It shows that the Cronbach‟s Alpha values of the variables fell within the range of 0.708978 to 0.908125. Consequently, we can conclude that our survey questionnaires had met the acceptable level of reliability test which is more than 0.7 to test the validity of a survey. Table-2. Cronbach‟s Alpha Values of Pilot Test. Variables Number of Items Cronbach’s Alpha Attitudes 4 0.781524 Subjective Norms 6 0.860152 Perceived Behavioural Control 4 0.763889 Moral Norms 4 0.708978 External Locus of Control 12 0.808045 Internet Abuse Intention 7 0.908125 Table-3. Summary of demographic profile. Profile Category Frequency Percent (%) Gender Female 226 56.50 Male 174 43.50 Age Below 20 82 20.50 20-29 242 60.50 30-39 42 10.50 40 and above 34 8.50 Highest education completed UPSR/PMR/SPR/SPM 23 5.75 STPM 33 8.25 Diploma 126 31.50 Bachelor‟s Degree 209 52.25 Master‟s Degree 9 2.25 Working experience Up to 5 215 53.75 6-10 99 24.75 11-20 56 14.00 More than 20 30 7.50 Time of internet usage Up to 1 hour 150 37.50 1-5 hours 227 56.75 More than 5 hours 23 5.75 Age of firm Less than 10 179 44.75 10 or more 221 55.25 Category of service sector Wholesale & retailer 56 14.00 Food & beverages 27 6.75 Transportation & storage 5 1.25 Hotels & restaurants 38 9.50 Professional & ICT services 118 29.50 Private education & healthcare 82 20.50 Entertainment & manufacturing services 74 18.50 Occupational Status Managerial 7 1.75 Non-managerial 393 98.25 Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 162 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. 5. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS 5.1. Demographic Profile of the Respondents Table 3 shows the demographic profile of the respondents. Overall, most of the respondents are females aged 20 to 29 with Bachelor‟s Degree qualification, who have working experience up to 5 years and are using the internet for 1 to 5 hours at work. 5.2. Central Tendencies Measurement of Constructs Based on Table 4, the constructs have the mean values in the range of 2.29250 to 3.50500. The results indicate that the constructs are dispersed between disagree to agree. This table also lists out the standard deviations which delegate the dispersion of the data of every item. We can obtain the information that the lowest standard deviation is 0.84482 while the highest figure is 1.17176. Table-4. Central Tendencies Measurement of Constructs. Variables Items Mean Standard Deviation Attitudes AT 1 2.50750 1.10135 AT 2 2.49750 1.14160 AT 3 2.69250 1.05865 AT 4 2.37250 1.06846 Subjective Norms SN 1 3.50500 1.01368 SN 2 3.47000 0.99578 SN 3 2.93250 1.03713 SN 4 2.78000 0.95859 SN 5 2.29250 0.84482 SN 6 2.34000 0.93626 Perceived Behavioural Control PBC 1 3.02250 1.09086 PBC 2 2.55500 0.85663 PBC 3 3.18750 1.14701 PBC 4 3.19750 1.12546 Moral Norms MN 1 2.69000 1.07087 MN 2 2.37750 1.04053 MN 3 2.61000 0.95927 MN 4 2.63000 0.97235 External Locus of Control ELOC 1 2.87000 1.04922 ELOC 2 2.61250 0.94847 ELOC 3 2.68750 1.01608 ELOC 4 3.18000 1.02236 ELOC 5 2.60750 1.00547 ELOC 6 2.60250 0.93363 ELOC 7 2.61750 0.96878 ELOC 8 2.75250 1.02414 ELOC 9 2.79250 1.04267 External Locus of Control ELOC 10 2.82500 0.90078 ELOC 11 2.58000 0.92777 ELOC 12 2.61000 1.04673 Internet Abuse Intention IAI 1 3.02000 1.17176 IAI 2 3.29500 0.99773 IAI 3 3.34500 0.98915 IAI 4 2.98000 1.15453 IAI 5 2.99500 1.13499 IAI 6 2.67750 0.97513 IAI 7 2.73500 0.95502 5.3. Normality and Reliability Test The outcome of the variable‟s items based on the normality test and reliability test is shown in Table 5. Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 163 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. Table-5. Normality and reliability test results. Variables Items Skewness Kurtosis Cronbach’s Alpha Attitudes AT1 0.39946181 -0.5421384 0.768405 AT2 0.57503342 -0.4366396 AT3 0.35910357 -0.4385287 AT4 0.6015685 -0.1606513 Subjective Norms SN1 -0.2820901 -0.6846571 0.863805 SN2 -0.1616874 -0.6957375 SN3 -0.162499 -0.5601624 SN4 -0.1651653 -0.4561792 SN5 0.84482428 0.71372807 SN6 0.17654328 -0.6061998 Perceived Behavioural Control PBC1 -0.0330911 -0.7244839 0.716514 PBC2 0.68169843 0.65920146 PBC3 -0.2118418 -0.7017688 PBC4 -0.182927 -0.656897 Moral Norms MN1 0.31063654 -0.4297022 0.873437 MN2 0.7249599 0.11548903 MN3 0.30048894 -0.0422283 MN4 0.43563958 0.15925461 External Locus of Control ELOC1 -0.0781101 -0.6068377 0.917609 ELOC2 0.01044776 -0.733672 ELOC3 -0.0350603 -0.8563913 ELOC4 -0.6212038 -0.5395088 ELOC5 0.16395194 -0.6465681 ELOC6 0.10793057 -0.4686707 ELOC7 0.09723095 -0.5115234 ELOC8 0.06049548 -0.5776493 ELOC9 0.05021973 -0.3944218 ELOC10 -0.2477434 0.40046885 ELOC11 -0.1502351 -0.8179248 ELOC12 0.22667449 -0.4056079 Internet Abuse Intention IAI1 0.00802593 -0.7469387 0.922997 IAI2 0.00562481 -0.7659748 IAI3 -0.0012469 -0.8587949 IAI4 0.05878287 -0.7463937 IAI5 0.00983694 -0.6891257 IAI6 0.04749629 -0.7308225 IAI7 -0.0036081 -0.7612842 Past studies have suggested that the satisfactory range of skewness and kurtosis in every variable is between ±1 (Byrne, 2001; Fotopoulos and Psomas, 2009). The skewness values range of our research is between -0.6212038 to 0.84482428 whereas the kurtosis values range is between -0.8587949 to 0.71372807. The absolute value for skewness and kurtosis test is ±1. Hence, all the variables in this research have passed the normality test. This study has employed reliability test for each variable. According to Webb et al. (2006) variables are treated as reliable if the Cronbach‟s Alpha has reached a value of 0.7. Therefore, the assumptions of reliability for all the items in table 5 are considered as reliable. 5.4. Pearson’s Correlation Analysis Table 6 shows that the correlation values between the independent variables show a positive correlation ranging from 0.11364 to 0.42751. The dependent variable has a positive relationship with all the independent variables which ranged from 0.29019 to 0.61047. Since none of the correlation values are higher than 0.90, no multicollinearity problem has been revealed in this research (Hair et al., 2009). Moreover, significant relationships exist between the variables as all the variables have p-values that are less than 0.05. Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 164 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. Table-6. Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Variables AT SN PBC MN ELOC IAI AT 1.00000 SN 0.20041 <.0001 PBC 0.15042 0.21417 0.0026 <.0001 MN 0.16382 0.42751 0.11364 0.0010 <.0001 0.0230 ELOC 0.20124 0.39967 0.20757 0.24381 <.0001 <.0001 <.0001 <.0001 IAI 0.46626 0.60904 0.29019 0.61047 0.53900 1.00000 <.0001 <.0001 <.0001 <.0001 <.0001 5.5. Multiple Linear Regression R2 value is presented in table 7 with a value of 0.6932. This signifies that five factors adopted in this study can explain about 69.32% of the changes in the intention of abusing internet among employee and the other 30.68% is comprised of other variables that are not included in this research. Table-7. Model summary. Model R2 Adjusted R2 Std. error of the estimate 1 0.6932 0.6893 0.48760 As shown in table 8, the F-value demonstrates a value of 178.03 with the significance level of <0.001 which is greater than the value obtained from the F-table, 2.175. Large F-value indicates that the model employed fits this research. Furthermore, p-value with a figure less than 0.05 indicates that at least one of the five independent variables can be used to explain and model the dependent variable. As a conclusion, the relationship between all the five factors and IAI (DV) in this research study is significant. Table-8. ANOVA results. Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression 211.63346 5 42.32669 178.03 <.0001 Residual 93.67465 394 0.23775 Total 305.30811 399 Table 9 shows that AT (p < 0.0001), SN (p < 0.0001), PBC (p = 0.0015), MN (p < 0.0001) and ELOC (p < 0.0001) have a significant relationship with internet abuse intention. All the independent variables have an impact to influence the internet abuse intention as their p-value is less than 0.05. These results have confirmed that all the hypotheses are supported. The MLR equation for the model is formulated below: IAI = - 0.81243 + 0.29616 (AT) + 0.31218 (SN) + 0.10413 (PBC) + 0.38088 (MN) + 0.32241(ELOC) Table-9. Multiple linear regression analysis results. Unstandardized Coefficients Supported/Not supported Model Par. Est Std. Est t Sig. Tolerance Var.Inf. Hypo. Intercept -0.81243 0.14186 -5.73 <.0001 - 0 AT 0.29616 0.03018 9.81 <.0001 0.92828 1.07726 H1 Supported SN 0.31218 0.03895 8.02 <.0001 0.70698 1.41447 H2 Supported PBC 0.10413 0.03248 3.21 0.0015 0.92781 1.07780 H3 Supported MN 0.38088 0.03156 12.07 <.0001 0.80602 1.24066 H4 Supported ELOC 0.32241 0.03781 8.53 <.0001 0.80783 1.23789 H5 Supported Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 165 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. 6. DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 6.1. Discussion of Major Findings The results show that attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, external locus of control and immoral norms are positively related to internet abuse intention. Attitudes achieved a p-value of <0.0001 which illustrates attitudes is positively related to the intention of abusing the internet among employees of SMEs in the services sector in Malaysia. The results statistically prove that there is a significant relationship between attitudes and internet abuse intention since the p-value is below 0.05. According to Rosli et al. (2015) an undesirable attitude led by emotional instability, introversion and non-conscientious are significantly correlated with internet abuse intention. In accordance to the study of Liberman et al. (2011) attitudes towards internet abuse behaviours are positively related to internet abuse. In addition, past studies have also determined that involvement, beliefs and commitment as several aspects of attitudes can be a strong determinant to explain the willingness of employees to commit an act of computer abuse (Lee and Lee, 2002). Subjective norms show a positive relationship and significant impact on the internet abuse intention towards the employees of SMEs in the services sector of Malaysia. The result of the p-value for this variable is less than 0.0001. This implies that the internet abuse intention is affected by subjective norms of the respondents since the p- value is less than 0.05. Generally, the higher an individual‟s subjective norm is, the greater the internet abuse intention. The result generated by this study conforms to the researches by Moody and Siponen (2013) and Henle et al. (2010). Moody and Siponen (2013) results showed that the personal self-concept is important for the intention of internet abuse, and the self-concept is mostly influenced by the supervisor and peer culture. Moreover, Henle et al. (2010) have found that subjective norms are one of the causes for organizational misbehaviour, including time theft. Perceived behavioural control (PBC) as one of the independent variables in our research also satisfied the requirement of p-value < 0.05. Thus, the result shows that PBC has a positive relationship with IAI among employees of services sector in Malaysia. However, it is the highest p-value figure comparable to other variables due to the p-value figure for other independent variables are <.0001.The findings for this variable are aligned with Liao et al. (2010) which indicates that the more the user comprehends the mechanisms of internet abuse, the higher probability that the user gets the thoughts to internet abuse. Research by Taneja (2006) also established that this variable had a significant relationship towards internet abuse intention. In the context of this study, Immoral norm has a positive and significant relationship with IAI. The p-value generated from the MLR analysis has shown a value of <.0001 which is below 0.05. This illustrates the significant relationship between the MN and the intention to internet abuse by the employees of services sector in Malaysia. Generally, the greater the MN of employees, the lower the IAI. Several past studies can back this result. In the study of Taneja (2006) it has been found that MN of user has a significant effect on the intention of usage of information system (IS) assets adversely. According to the research done by Godin et al. (2005) MN has an important impact on whether people endorse their intentions. In another study, MN has been proved to have a significant impact on the intention of knowledge sharing (Huang and Chen, 2015). There is a significant relationship between ELOC and the IAI among the employees of services sector in Malaysia. The p-value generated from the MLR analysis shows a value of <.0001 which is lower than 0.05. This indicates that the hypothesis is supported and it means ELOC has a positive relationship with IAI. The greater the ELOC of employees, the higher the IAI among employees of services sector in Malaysia. Our result is supported by the study of Blanchard and Henle (2008) which proved that employees with high ELOC will have higher chance of abusing internet as they believed that the probability of getting caught on the action of internet abuse action during working hours was purely by chance or because they were unlucky from the employees‟ perspective. Moreover, past researchers also concluded that ELOC will influence employees‟ internet addictions and finally lead to internet abuse (Chen et al., 2008). Bellamy and Hanewicz (2002) did a similar study and found that ELOC is related to an increased risk of internet abuse. Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 166 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. 6.2. Theoretical Implications Theoretically, this research examined the importance of Modified Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model in finding out the factors that will contribute to Internet Abuse Intention among employees of SMEs in the services sector in Malaysia. The proposed conceptual framework focused on how the five independent variables, Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioural Control, Moral Norms, and External Locus of Control could affect the Internet Abuse Intention. Undoubtedly, the Modified TPB model is the valid theory in explaining the Internet Abuse Intention of the employees of SMEs in Malaysia. Consequently, the Modified TPB model is suggested to the future researchers in conducting any research relevant to Internet Abuse Intention. According to Hasbullah et al. (2014) the existing TPB model (Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioural Control) lacks external factors. Hence, this research has included the additional variables, moral norms (internal variable) and external locus of control (external variable) to enhance the TPB model. 6.3. Practical Implication Firstly, many of the past studies have analysed the internet abuse intention among adolescents, generation X and generation Y but not in the workplace. Therefore, here is a study about internet abuse intention in the workplace and it had narrowed down the scope into only on SMEs in the services sector so that this research is more specific to this target respondents. Internet abuse intention among employees had created serious productivity matters and legal issues towards the organizations. From the consequences of this research, employers will have a clearer guideline to handle the occurrence of employee‟s internet abuse intention. On the other hand, employers will also able to manage this issue in a proper and efficient way. By understanding the factors of internet abuse intention among employees, employers also can plan appropriate measures to deal with this issue. 6.4. Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research Several limitations have been noticed in this study. Firstly, our research focused on the services sector and four States in Malaysia only due to the cost and time saving reasons. There are many sectors such as construction and manufacturing sectors in Malaysia which have not been considered. Besides that, Malaysia consists of thirteen States and only the employees in four States were covered in our research. It is suggested that future researchers study the internet abuse intention among employees in other sectors and other States in Malaysia, as employees from different sectors and different States may show different internet abuse intention. In addition, our study has generally focused on all the micro, small and medium-sized SMEs. Future researchers are suggested to carry out their study by specializing on the size of SMEs selected. Employees in different sizes of SMEs may behave differently for the intention of abusing internet in the workplace. Besides, the targeted respondents in this study were mainly located in the middle and south Malaysia. It is strongly suggested that similar research be conducted to investigate the factors of internet abuse intention of employees in north Malaysia as they might have a different mindset for internet abuse compared to employees of the middle and south Malaysia. Moreover, self-administered survey questionnaire method has been adopted to collect all the data for this research. It is a self-report method as target respondents are assumed to respond to the questionnaires accurately. However, there is a possibility that people might answer the questionnaires incorrectly. Besides, collecting back the self-administered survey questionnaire may be time-consuming and there is also a chance that researchers cannot collect back their survey questionnaire. The face-to-face interview method is recommended to collect reliable and accurate data as interviewers are allowed to take advantage of social or nonverbal cues to gain additional information from the interview (Emans, 1986). Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2018, 6(4): 156-170 167 © 2018 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. Also, a cross-sectional study was applied to this research due to the insufficiency of research time and low-cost budget. Cross-sectional study is adopted when all the measurements are acquired at a single point in time (Sedgwick, 2014). The result can be irrelevant in the future as the information obtained from this research may be outdated. Future researchers can adopt longitudinal study to investigate the similar issue as the research can be carried out in a longer period instead of just focusing on a single point in time. Hedeker and Gibbons (2006) commented that information can be provided with more detail by applying longitudinal study. 7. CONCLUSION In brief, this research has achieved and fulfilled all of its objectives and research questions. It proved that the relationship between all variables are statistically significant and all of the proposed hypotheses have been accepted. This research also concludes that all of the independent variables (i.e AT, SN, PBC, MN and ELOC) have significant influence on the internet abuse intention among employees of SMEs in the services sector in Malaysia. 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