Virtual agents in retail web sites: Benefits of simulated social interaction for older users

This study investigates the benefits of simulated social interaction (social presence) through virtual agents for older users’ experience in retail Web sites, particularly with respect to age-related barriers to the adoption of online retailing. In Study 1, through four focus group interviews, we identified six social–psychological barriers to the adoption of online shopping among older users (mean age of 73 years). These included barriers relating to perceived risks, trust, social support, familiarity, experience, and search. In Study 2, a laboratory experiment with older users (mean age of 69 years) demonstrated that embedding a virtual agent that serves search and navigational/procedural support functions in the online store leads to increased perceived social support, trust, and patronage intention for the online store. Mediational analyses further revealed that the effect of virtual agents: (1) on trust is mediated by perceived social support; and (2) on patronage intentions is mediated in part by trust and perceived risks. The study provides important implications on the design of virtual agents for older users of e-commerce applications, and on building online trust and e-service patronage through virtual agents.     

A perception-based model for EDI adoption in small businesses using a technology–organization–environment framework

The wide adoption of electronic data interchange (EDI) has been argued to be important for the success of the technology. Past studies on EDI have focused mainly on large firms, as they were the major users at the time. With the advance of technology, however, EDI applications that used to require mainframe computers can be used on PCs at a much lower cost. At a result, small businesses are now able to enjoy the benefits of EDI. Using a technology–organization–environment framework, this study proposes a perception-based small business EDI adoption model that is tested against data collected from 575 small firms in Hong Kong. Six factors are tested using logistic regression and five are found to be significant in distinguishing adopter firms from non-adopter firms. The results suggest the perception-based model using a technology–organization–environment framework is a useful approach for examining factors affecting the adoption decision. For small businesses, while direct benefits are perceived to be higher by adopter firms than by non-adopter firms, indirect benefits are not perceived differently by either adopter firms or non-adopter firms, contrary to the findings in studies on large business. In addition, adopter firms perceive lower financial costs and higher technical competence than non-adopter firms do. Also, adopter firms perceive higher government pressure but lower industry pressure than non-adopter firms do. Implications of the findings and future research areas are discussed.     

Customers perspectives on adoption of cloud computing in banking sector

The advent of cloud computing has transformed the role of the Internet in many businesses and organizations. Currently, banks are increasingly adopting cloud technologies to fulfil their varied purposes and to create a flexible and agile banking environment that can quickly respond to new business needs. However, past studies tend to focus more on the adoption issues of cloud computing from the organizational perspective with little attention paid on the users’ view of these cloud-based services. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the factors influencing cloud computing adoption in the banking sector from the customers’ perspective and to propose an adoption model for this purpose. The model is mainly developed based on the TAM-diffusion theory model (TAM-DTM) with the introduction of three new constructs namely trust, cost, and security and privacy. Questionnaires were randomly distributed to 162 bank customers in Malaysia. Survey data were analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) method while SmartPLS was used to test the hypotheses and to validate the proposed model. The results suggest that trust, cost, and security and privacy can be successfully integrated within the TAM-TDM. The security and privacy constructs exhibited strong positive influence on perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and trust. The study concludes that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, cost, attitudes toward cloud and trust significantly influence users’ behavioral intention to adopt cloud computing. Thus, the finding of this study will enable banks to focus more on customer perspectives on cloud-based applications and identify their attitude towards their adoption.     

Exploring users’ experiences of using personal cloud storage services: a phenomenological study

Recently, cloud computing has attracted great attention for both personal and organisational usages. Despite a large number of research conducted about cloud adoption, little is known about how users practically experienced the usage and adoption of Personal Could Storage Service (PCSSs) particularly in the context of developing countries. To address this gap, this paper seeks a clear understanding of how participants have profoundly experienced and perceived PCSSs to obtain worthwhile insights towards the essence of PCSSs’ adoption as a multifaceted phenomenon. Applying the interpretive phenomenology as a research method, required data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 experienced participants. The results reveal that users’ intentions to adopt PCSSs are highly influenced by three emerged themes, including demand-side factors, supply-side factors, and institutional factors. Concerning the demand-side factors, the paper demonstrates how user-centric aspects work in favour of PCSSs’ adoption. As to the supply-side factors, this research promotes an understanding of how the participants have perceived tangible and non-tangible features of PCSSs as a determinant of the adoption. Regarding the formal and informal institutions, remarkable roles of regulatory environments and culture are highlighted, respectively. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed for both academia and practitioners.     

Simulated environments with animated agents: effects on visual attention,emotion, performance,and perception

This research assessed how emotive animated agents in a simulation‐based training affect the performance outcomes and perceptions of the individuals interacting in real time with the training application. A total of 56 participants consented to complete the study. The material for this investigation included a nursing simulation in which participants interacted with three animated agents. The results of this investigation indicated that both experienced and novice participants focused more visual attention time on the body of the animated agent than the other defined areas of interest in the simulated environment. The results also indicated that novice participants conveyed more neutral facial expressions during the interaction with the animated agents than experience participants. The results of the simulation performance scores indicated that novice participants achieved higher simulation performance scores on the simulation task than experienced participants. Lastly, the results of the agent persona instrument showed that experienced and novice participants perceived the animated agents as facilitators of learning, credible, human‐like and engaging.     

Unconscious goal pursuit primes attitudes towards technology usage: A virtual reality experiment

Several approaches in technology adoption, such as the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), ask future users to provide evaluations of technology. Such evaluations are expected to predict actual use behavior. For example, users’ evaluations in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are considered meaningful indicators of intention to use the technology, and future usage. However, these approaches still show limited reliability and do not consider other critical aspects, such as situated, unconscious goals and the tendency to perceive related affordances. In order to test the hypothesis that technology evaluation may be influenced by unconscious goals, forty participants were split in two groups. The experimental session included two phases. In the first phase, each group explored a virtual environment that primed a specific goal. In the second phase, participants were asked to evaluate the usefulness and the easiness of use of two versions of the same technology (a mobile devices interface). Results showed that each group evaluated as more useful the version of the technology which featured an affordance related to the respective primed goal. Discussion deals with the possible unconscious influences on attitudes towards technology adoption, and provides operative guidelines to account for them in technology adoption research.     

Perceived benefits of and barriers to the adoption of teleworking: peculiarities of Spanish family firms

The use of information and communication technologies has allowed employees to perform work at an approved alternative worksite. Although family firm is the predominant form of business organisation, no study has analysed their peculiarities in adopting teleworking practices. Family firms are characterised by the alignment of interests of ownership and management, long-term orientation and the pursuit of non-economic objectives. Grounded in the socio-emotional wealth approach and the Technology Acceptance Model, this study examines the idiosyncrasies of family governance in the perception of teleworking benefits and barriers to the adoption of teleworking. Using a sample of 200 Spanish companies, differences are found in the perceived barriers to teleworking. Although family firms perceive higher barriers, they do not influence on teleworking adoption. In contrast, in non-family firms, the decision to adopt teleworking is influenced by both the perceived benefits of teleworking and the perceived barriers. This means that Spanish family firms adopt teleworking evaluating only the perceived benefits. Although family firms may fear problems arising from teleworking when they decide to adopt it, they are more confident in their ability to implement it.     

Determining the antecedents of digital security practices in the general public dimension

Our increased reliance on digital information and our expansive use of the Internet for a steadily rising number of tasks requires that more emphasis be placed on digital information security. The importance of securing digital information is apparent but the success in persuading individual users to adopt and utilize tools to improve security has been arguably more difficult. In this study, we propose a number of factors that may influence individual security practices. These constructs are developed by adapting existing theory from information security and privacy research to examine information security behaviors in the general public dimension. The influence of these factors on perceived need and actual behavior is then examined. The resulting model is shown to fit well and support is found for many of the proposed relationships. The determination of the antecedents of individual digital security practices may provide useful insight to tailoring programs for adoption and utilization of security tools by individuals in the general public dimension.     

基于TAM的企业云应用服务采纳模型及关键因素

云计算将主导企业应用的未来已成为业界的共识,转向云计算是企业应用模式的颠覆性变化。企业用户需要采纳适合企业自身需求的云计算方案,具备评估采纳云应用服务风险的能力;而服务提供商则应提供满足不同企业需求的云应用服务。采用技术接受模型(TAM)的相关理论建立云应用服务技术接受模型,并运用模糊决策实验与实验评估法(DEMATEL)对所设计模型及实例数据进行分析,检验所设计的云应用服务技术接受模型及关键因素。研究结果表明,感知有用性、应用服务质量、社交影响对企业用户采纳产生关键影响。     

Factors influencing the adoption of internet banking: An integration of TAM and TPB with perceived risk and perceived benefit

Online banking (Internet banking) has emerged as one of the most profitable e-commerce applications over the last decade. Although several prior research projects have focused on the factors that impact on the adoption of information technology or Internet, there is limited empirical work which simultaneously captures the success factors (positive factors) and resistance factors (negative factors) that help customers to adopt online banking. This paper explores and integrates the various advantages of online banking to form a positive factor named perceived benefit. In addition, drawing from perceived risk theory, five specific risk facets – financial, security/privacy, performance, social and time risk – are synthesized with perceived benefit as well as integrated with the technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) model to propose a theoretical model to explain customers’ intention to use online banking. The results indicated that the intention to use online banking is adversely affected mainly by the security/privacy risk, as well as financial risk and is positively affected mainly by perceived benefit, attitude and perceived usefulness. The implications of integrating perceived benefit and perceived risk into the proposed online banking adoption model are discussed.     

Exploring factors affecting Chinese consumers' usage of short message service for personal communication

Abstract. Short message service (SMS) is very popular in China. While many reports indicate that the SMS market has great potential, little is known about why people adopt SMS. This study uses the technology acceptance model and network externalities to examine the factors influencing the adoption of SMS for personal communication in China. Using data collected from 262 mobile phone users, we find that perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and perceived service cost affect SMS use. Perceived network externalities also contribute to higher perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use and affect SMS adoption. The results provide insight to SMS marketing strategies.     

The effects of speech–gesture cooperation in animated agents’ behavior in multimedia presentations

Until now, research on arrangement of verbal and non-verbal information in multimedia presentations has not considered multimodal behavior of animated agents. In this paper, we will present an experiment exploring the effects of different types of speech–gesture cooperation in agents’ behavior: redundancy (gestures duplicate pieces of information conveyed by speech), complementarity (distribution of information across speech and gestures) and a control condition in which gesture does not convey semantic information. Using a Latin-square design, these strategies were attributed to agents of different appearances to present different objects. Fifty-four male and 54 female users attended three short presentations performed by the agents, recalled the content of presentations and evaluated both the presentations and the agents. Although speech–gesture cooperation was not consciously perceived, it proved to influence users’ recall performance and subjective evaluations: redundancy increased verbal information recall, ratings of the quality of explanation, and expressiveness of agents. Redundancy also resulted in higher likeability scores for the agents and a more positive perception of their personality. Users’ gender had no influence on this set of results.     

Security services as coping mechanisms: an investigation into user intention to adopt an email authentication service

Email plays an important role in the digital economy but is threatened by increasingly sophisticated cybercrimes. A number of security services have been developed, including an email authentication service designed to cope with email threats. It remains unknown how users perceive and evaluate these security services and consequently form their adoption intention. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model and Technology Threat Avoidance Theory, this paper investigates the factors that affect user intention to adopt an email authentication service. Our results show that user intention to adopt an email security service is contingent upon users' perception of risk and evaluation of both internal and external coping strategies. This study contributes to research in security service adoption, service success and design, and information security behaviour.     

Design of animated pedagogical agents—A look at their look

A well-established effect of animated agents in educational and other contexts is their potential to motivate and engage. “Increased motivation in users” is also one of the more frequent answers given to the question, “What is gained by adding an animated pedagogical agent to an intelligent tutoring system?”To further develop and exploit this potential, there are, however, several issues that need to be resolved. In this article we discuss the visual form and look of animated pedagogical agents. A survey is presented of how the area is approached (and, in particular, not approached) in research on animated pedagogical agents. Two possible reasons are proposed as to why visual form and look are so little addressed are also proposed. We also propose and discuss some key aspects of look that merit a systematic approach in future research.The main thesis of the paper is that users’ visuo-aesthetic experience of animated pedagogical agents is too important with respect to the goals to motivate and engage, to be treated as a secondary issue. We do not deny that there are other pressing and fundamental issues that need to be solved, such as those concerning the content of the support and the competence level of agents, as well as various design elements that can contribute to making animated agents lifelike. But we argue that visual rendering issues are pressing and need to be seriously addressed as well.     

Exploring the potential effects of emoticons

Instant messaging (IM) has shown signs of becoming one of the main stream communication applications for users, like e-mail. Many people maintain constant contacts with multiple friends and relations via IM simultaneously whenever they are online, whether working on other applications or not. In addition to allowing instant exchange of text information, a unique feature of IM is its use of graphical icons that express emotions, known as emotional icons or emoticons. We explored their potential effects. Our model, based on prior theory and research, was tested using data collected from student users; it was analyzed to reveal potential effects of emoticons on various factors related to the use of IM. Our study used structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis; the results showed that the user of emoticons felt a positive effect on enjoyment, personal interaction, perceived information richness, and perceived usefulness. Our results suggested, however, that emoticons were not just enjoyable to use, but also a valuable addition to communication methods.     

Empowerment through seamfulness: smart phones in everyday life

In this paper, we describe research into use of multifunctional mobile phones by working adults and posit the device as a plausible realization of ubiquitous computing. We investigate how users actively adapt and adopt the different functions in smart phones to suit their needs and lifestyles. Through an interview and diary study, we discover how the smart phone is used in pragmatic and seamful ways, regardless of the interface of the specific phone selected or the particular features available. Users used phones in highly individual manners; mixed and adapted existing functions to meet their own priorities; added some functions and ignored others to create their own portfolio; and blended their use with the specifics of their everyday lives. While these data challenge some assumptions of human–computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, it also presents new research potential in terms of understanding how users take advantage of the multiple features in smart phone devices and how they utilize seamfulness in everyday smart phones practices.     

Anthropoid agents

In the study of agents on the Internet, we often ascribe to them human qualities, such as beliefs and intentions. These qualities are best understood as metaphors that give developers a way to talk about and design the capabilities and applications of agents. Despite all the progress in computing, users have been slow to accept the technology. They have often accepted what was thrown at them, but only under economic duress. Bringing the technology closer to their emotional needs might ease this resistance. So how can we put a human face on computing? Maybe by putting an animated face on it! Thus, an interface may consist of an agent, which has an explicit presence (for example, as an on-screen animated figure) and appears to have a personality. In computer human interfaces, especially for education and commerce where a large variety of people must deal with computers, an anthropoid agent might be more inviting. Depending on the situation, the agent might appear shy, friendly, stern, or knowledgeable. For example, people might better accept advice offered politely by a shy agent, or heed warnings uttered seriously by a stern agent. And they might be more likely to purchase goods or services offered by a friendly, knowledgeable agent that could appear empathetic to their needs     

The effect of animation on comprehension and interest

Abstract  Although animations are believed to be effective in learning and teaching, several studies have failed to confirm this. Nevertheless, animations might be more attractive and motivating. Fourth and sixth grade students learned the operation of a bicycle pump from graphics that were: (i) presented simultaneously; (ii) presented successively; (iii) self-paced, or (iv) animated. The presentation mode affected evaluation of perceived comprehensibility, interestingness, enjoyment and motivation, but not comprehension test score. Fourth graders who were low in need for cognition rated the animations as more enjoyable and motivating, whereas sixth graders rated self-paced graphics as more interesting and motivating. The evaluations of sixth graders correspond to results of many studies on learning. Animations are not more effective than equivalent static graphics in learning, and they are not seen as more motivating by sixth graders.     

Understanding the factors affecting online elderly user’s participation in video UCC services

Video user-created content (video UCC) is currently being spotlighted by business practitioners and researchers. However, little consideration is being made on elderly people’s adoption of this innovative service. This paper highlights this issue of elderly online users and discovers the factors affecting their participation decisions in video UCC services. This study introduces elderly-specific constructs such as perceived physical condition (physical age), life course events (psycho-social age), perceived user resources, prior similar experience, and computer anxiety, each reflecting the complex aging process. Then, the relationship between these constructs and the conventional constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM) (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and compatibility) is hypothesized and tested. Data was collected from 290 online users older than 50 years of age. The results show that elderly people are not highly resistant to change and will adopt video UCC if some conditions are satisfied. In addition, elderly-specific variables could be good antecedents for conventional TAM constructs, while having direct effects on the intention construct for some cases (perceived physical condition, life course events, and perceived user resources). We believe the implications of this study are important for both researchers and practitioners.     

Mobile technology acceptance model: An investigation using mobile users to explore smartphone credit card

Smartphone credit card (SCC) is an emerging payment method using NFC-enabled smartphones. The proximity payment allows consumers to pay their products and services by waving their smartphones with a NFC reader. While there are advantageous adopting SCC, the adoption rate has not been encouraging. Interestingly, existing research work on past information technology and system models have so far focused primarily on organizational context and adopted specifically for work. Furthermore, past antecedents were mainly constructed using electronic commerce literatures which do not reflect the actual mobile environment. In contrast SCC is mainly adopted voluntarily by mobile users and for personal purposes. Thus this leads to the difficulty in drawing meaningful conclusion. The study addresses these limitations by proposing a new mobile technology acceptance model (MTAM) which consists of mobile usefulness (MU) and mobile ease of use (MEU) to determine SCC adoption. In anticipating on the complexity which exists in the mobile environment, additional mobile constructs namely mobile perceived security risk (MPSR), mobile perceived trust (MPT), mobile perceived compatibility (MPC) and mobile perceived financial resources (MPFR) were incorporated into the parsimonious MTAM. The integrated model was applied to 459 mobile users through a questionnaire approach and tested using partial least square-structural equation modelling-artificial neural network (PLS-SEM-ANN) has provided a new impact and a possible new research methodology paradigm as it is able to capture both linear and non-linear relationships. While the model confirms the role of MU in MTAM, MEU needs for more attention in practice. The results from the extended model showed that only three of the proposed hypotheses were non-significant in this study and thus warrant further investigation. The study contributes to academia by proposing new mobile constructs that brings together MTAM to assess the likelihood of mobile users to adopt SCC. The study also offers several important managerial implications which can be generalized to the mobile studies of other transportation, hotel, banking, and tourism industries.