The Influence of Online Search Behavior on Consumers’ Decision-Making Heuristics

Information seeking activities have been broadly categorized into two types: exploratory and directed search. Likewise, product-related information is processed either by alternative or by attribute. The current literature does not specifically describe the effect of online information-seeking activities on the type of information processing employed by a consumer. The present study seeks to investigate this relationship, as well as the effect of repeat visits to a website as an antecedent of information seeking. An eye-tracking experiment was performed to test these relationships. Results indicate that participants with a greater proportion of time spent looking at directed-search elements had longer visual sweeps across the attributes of a song, indicating a greater degree of alternative-based processing. Additionally, repeat website visits resulted in a marginally higher proportion of time spent performing directed search. The implication of the findings in relation to website customization according to users’ information searching behavior is discussed.     

Exploring the Effect of Avatar Trust on Learners’ Perceived Participation Intentions in an e-Learning Environment

With continued advancements in Web technology, e-learning systems have emerged as an effective venue in which learners can interact with online contents and they are often equipped with avatar instructors in lieu of human instructors. In this case, avatar trust, the learners’ perceived trust in the avatar instructor, plays an important role in learners’ perceived intentions to participate in the e-learning activities. We assumed that social presence positively affects participation intention (PI) through avatar trust. The main purpose of this study is to empirically validate this hypothesis. Using two types of avatars as a moderating factor, our hypothesis was tested against 200 valid questionnaires. We found that social presence had a statistically significant influence on perceived PI through avatar trust, and that an attractive avatar type sheds stronger moderating effect on paths between social presence and avatar trust, and path between trust and participation than does an expert avatar type.     

Is Online Consumers’ Impulsive Buying Beneficial for E-Commerce Companies? An Empirical Investigation of Online Consumers’ Past Impulsive Buying Behaviors

Previous studies emphasized that e-businesses could increase sales with marketing strategies on shopping web sites that induce impulsive buying behavior, and lacked an empirical approach to problems caused by impulsive buying. This study proposes a research model that deals with online consumers’ impulsive buying behavior and empirically validates it. The results show that impulsive buying could have a strong impact on post e-commerce purchase intention and behavior such as actual behavioral return tendency of goods.     

Re-Examining the Impact of Multidimensional Trust on Patients’ Online Medical Consultation Service Continuance Decision

Information Systems Frontiers - Recent years have witnessed the rapid growth of an emerging digital healthcare service – online medical consultation (OMC). Despite its popularity, many OMC...     

Online Consumers’ Responses to Deal Popularity as an Extrinsic Cue

Deal popularity indicates the popularity of a product or service within a specific deal duration and is being used by many e-tailers in their websites/apps. While deal popularity is receiving increasing attention by academics and practitioners alike, its effect as an extrinsic cue remains under-researched. Using an experimental design, this study investigates the effect of deal popularity on expected service quality in an e-tailing environment. It is found that deal popularity influences service quality expectations for credence services, but not experience services. High deal popularity positively influences consumers’ intention to purchase and willingness to recommend credence services. E-tailers of services need to pay attention to deal popularity displayed for credence services and leverage on the positive effect it has on consumers.     

The Relative Importance of Website Design Quality and Service Quality in Determining Consumers’ Online Repurchase Behavior

Abstract

Previous studies have found that website design quality is one main factor affecting consumers' initial online purchase behavior. For consumers' repurchase behavior, in addition to website design quality, service quality is another important factor. Which factor is more important in determining consumers' repurchase intention? Our results show that, compared with website design quality, service quality has significantly stronger effects on consumers' trust and satisfaction, both of which lead to their repurchase intention.     

Examining the Impacts of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Message on Consumers’ Attitude

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has become one of the most influential communication tools. Few studies have identified what makes certain online reviews more influential than others. The objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of the impact of online reviews on consumer attitude and behavioral intention through a conceptual framework built from a series of theories and models. Combined experiment and survey methods contribute to the literature. Research findings revealed that online review antecedents of eWOM like review quality, valence, credibility, and quantity exerted impact on consumers’ attitude toward products. Personal involvement was a predominant predictor of consumers’ attitude. This study identified emotional strength’s mediating role in enhancing online review credibility and inducing a favorable attitude toward products.     

Online Portfolio Selection Strategy Based on Combining Experts’ Advice

The weak aggregating algorithm (WAA) developed from learning and prediction with expert advice makes decisions by considering all the experts’ advice, and each expert’s weight is updated according to his performance in previous periods. In this paper, we apply the WAA to the online portfolio selection problem. We first consider a simple case in which the expert advice is the strategy for investing in one stock; for this case, we obtain a portfolio selection strategy WAAS and prove that the WAAS can identify the best stock. We also discuss a more complicated case in which constant rebalanced portfolios are considered as expert advice, and obtain a corresponding portfolio selection strategy WAAC. The theoretical result shows that the cumulative gain that WAAC achieves is as large as that of the best constant rebalanced portfolio. Numerical analysis shows that the cumulative gains of our proposed strategies are as large as those of the best expert advice.     

The Impact of Social Media on Consumers’ Acculturation and Purchase Intentions

Social media has emerged as a significant and effective means of assisting and endorsing activities and communications among peers, consumers and organizations that outdo the restrictions of time and space. While the previous studies acknowledge the role of agents of culture change, it largely remains silent on the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices. This study uses self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents and examines how their use of social media affects their acculturation and consumption choices. This research makes a significant contribution to consumer acculturation research by showing that social media is a vital means of culture change and a driver of acculturation strategies and consumption choices. This study is the first to investigate the role of social media as an agent of culture change in terms of how it impacts acculturation and consumption. The paper discusses implications for theory development and for practice.     

Exploring students’ behaviors in a competition-driven educational game

Educational mini-games, one of the applications of game-based learning, have been widely used to benefit student learning. However, few studies have examined the influence of competition-driven educational games on students’ behaviors, which might offer insights into how to develop well-designed educational games. Thus, this study discusses a Pet-Master system, as an example of a competition-driven educational game, in an investigation of students’ behaviors through both event-based and time-based analysis. Two empirical studies were conducted using the two types of analysis. The results of the event-based analysis indicated that the behaviors can be categorized into two parts: competition-driven and learning cycles. Evidence from the time-based analysis showed that the two behavior cycles appeared in an alternating way with a lower transition frequency. Based on the results we develop a design framework for competition-driven educational games, which illustrates the relationship among the social, learning, and gameplay dimensions. The framework and its application might serve to optimize learning outcomes and influence the way games are designed in order to maximize educational benefits in the future.     

Appropriate or Remix? The Effects of Social Recognition and Psychological Ownership on Intention to Share in Online Communities

Even though negative aspects of making use of others’ work, such as illegal appropriation, have been found in online communities, remixing is considered a type of constructive creation for generating and recreating creative works. To make constructive creation via remixing sustainable, it is critical for users to share their own creations and allow others to use them in these online communities. We propose psychological ownership and social recognition as key antecedents for original creators to increase their intention to share their works in an online remix context. In this study, we aim to examine the relationships between intention to share, psychological ownership, and social recognition.

To investigate the effects of psychological ownership and social recognition on intention to share, we proposed research hypotheses based on the theories of social recognition and psychological ownership. Prior to testing the hypotheses, we conducted a preliminary study including user interviews and community log analysis within an online remix community. Specific patterns of psychological ownership and social recognition in the online remix context were found in accordance with the theoretical background. The results from the preliminary study were applied to forms of apparatus and stimuli in the following experiment. A quasi-experiment was designed to test hypotheses of causal relationships between the key factors. A prototype of an online remix community for smartphone themes was developed based on the detailed findings of the preliminary study and utilized as an experimental apparatus. Sixty-nine participants carried out our experimental procedure of creating, sharing their own work, checking responses from others, and reporting their intention to share their future creations.

The results of the quasi-experiment supported all our research hypotheses. Social recognition was found to increase the intention to share. Moreover, psychological ownership was found to increase the intention to share, an observation that may seem at odds with the exclusive aspects of ownership found in prior studies. More interesting, the positive effect of social recognition on intention to share becomes stronger with a higher perception of psychological ownership. This article ends with theoretical and practical implications of the study results.     

Effects of training on truck drivers’ interaction with cyclists in a right turn

Cognition, Technology & Work - With encounters between trucks and cyclists still being a major safety issue and physical as well as technological improvements far from ubiquitous...     

The Effects of Hover Interface on Users’ Behavioral Multitasking Intention

As the number of features with smartphones is increasing, user interfaces have been advanced considerably with innovative ways for providing useful, multitasking interfaces. In particular, the z-axis of the user interface has been considered to help multitaskers control their smartphone more easily. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the significance of the z-axis on task switching. The main research goal of this study is to explain how a z-axis can affect the experience of multitasking on a mobile device. In particular, the authors focused on a hover interface because of its high functional relevance to multitasking as a form of task switching. Theoretically, the authors provide a conceptual model based on the concept of spatial presence. Systemically, they suggest the important system factors for implementing z-axis interface technology: controllability and naturalness. With regards to users, the authors assume that if the experience with the z-axis interface is increased, users’ intention to multitask is also increased, even when the task complexity is high. The influence of controllability on perceived spatial presence by the hover interface was negatively validated, and the influence of naturalness was positively validated. In addition, the influence of perceived spatial presence on users’ behavioral multitasking intention was positively validated. Finally, the influence from perceived spatial presence to users’ behavioral multitasking intention in the high level of task complexity was significantly stronger than in the low level. Implications and limitations of the study results are discussed in the final section of the article.     

Experimental Changes in Shift Schedules—Their Effects on Well-Being

A questionnaire was given to 400 workers on different shift schedules (day, 2 shift, 3 shift (weekly rotation) and 4 shift (2-3 day rotation)), shortly before, and in the year after the work schedules of 131 of them had been changed to accommodate an overall reduction in the total amount of shift working. Those workers who had to change from 3 or 4 shift working to 2 shift working (without night work) showed a significant increase in well-being with respect lo sleep/mood, gastrointestinal functioning, and social factors, along with an improvement in attitude to their work schedules. Those who were switched from shift to day work reported greatly increased social well-being, a shortening of sleep-length during free days, and considerably improved altitudes towards their work schedule; their sickness absence rates were also reduced. Attitudes towards the change from fast rotation to slow rotation of shift cycles in those whose schedule was altered from 4 shift to 3 shift working were mainly negative. Questionnaire scores remained at their original levels in the 269 workers whose schedules were left unchanged, It is concluded that the abolition of night work results in a substantial improvement in mental, physical and social well-being.     

Modeling Business Land Use Equilibrium for Small Firms’ Relocation and Consumers’ Trip in a Transportation Network

This paper studies the integrated models for small and medium-sized enterprises’ distribution and consumers’ trip in an urban network based on the simultaneous equilibrium approach. In this paper, each firm aims at finding some business centers to set up shops to maximize his net profit while each consumer is a traveler who chooses his destination (business center) and travel route according to the minimization of individual net social cost, which is equal to the cost of travel time minus the destination attraction measure. The contribution of this paper can be divided into three parts. Firstly, a new deterministic equilibrium model is developed to capture consumers’ travel choice and firms’ location choice. The relocation cost between any two business centers is explicitly considered. Furthermore, the business center passenger/firm flow capacity constraint is incorporated into the previous model. Mathematically, we prove that this extension will derive the endogenous location transfer market in a business center for firms if the maximum firm flow capacity is reached at equilibrium. Finally, we extend the preceding deterministic models to the stochastic case.     

Effects of gender grouping on students’ group performance,individual achievements and attitudes in computer-supported collaborative learning

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gender grouping on students’ group performance, individual learning achievements and attitudes in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). 588 undergraduate students enrolled in a digital design course were randomly divided into 147 four-student groups that fell into five categories according to the composition of group members’ gender, namely 4M (four males), 3M1F (three males and one female), 2M2F (two males and two females), 1M3F (one male and three females) and 4F (four females). Results indicated that: (1) For group performance, 2M2F and 4F groups significantly outperformed the other groups. (2) For individual learning achievements, no significant difference was found in females among different gender grouping interventions; however, males in mixed-gender groups performed significantly better than those in single-gender groups. (3) In terms of individual attitudes, males preferred mixed-gender, gender-balanced, and gender-majority grouping; however, females preferred single-gender and gender-minority grouping. (4) The effect of gender grouping mainly influences students’ attitudes, rather than performance. These findings provide evidence that female-only and balanced-gender grouping are two kinds of good grouping interventions that could be recommended for CSCL, and male-minority groups should be avoided because they led to the worst group performance and individual attitudes.     

Clarifying the Impact of Social Escapism in Users’ Acceptance for Online Entertaining Services—An Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model Based on Online Karaoke Television Services Users

Despite the fact that the number of online services for entertainment, such as online games, online karaoke singing, etc., has increased, clarification of the impact of social escapism, reflecting users’ social compensation needs, in acceptance of online entertainment services is still lacking. Data from 217 online karaoke television users were gathered and analyzed using structure equation modeling. The empirical results showed that perceived enjoyment helped users’ social escapism and provided a psychological basis.     

Improving the Robustness of ‘Online Agglomerative Clustering Method’ Based on Kernel-Induce Distance Measures

Recently, an online agglomerative clustering method called AddC (I. D. Guedalia et al. Neural Comput. {\bf 11} (1999), 521--540) was proposed for nonstationary data clustering. Although AddC possesses many good attributes, a vital problem of that method is its sensitivity to noises, which limits its use in real-word applications. In this paper, based on \hbox{kernel-induced} distance measures, a robust online clustering (ROC) algorithm is proposed to remedy the problem of AddC. Experimental results on artificial and benchmark data sets show that ROC has better clustering performances than AddC, while still inheriting advantages such as clustering data in a single pass and without knowing the exact number of clusters beforehand.