A study on key strategies in P2P file sharing systems and ISPs�� P2P traffic management

The flourish of P2P systems draws a lot of attention of networking researchers. Some research efforts focus on P2P systems, trying to understand the mechanism of various implementations and the behavior pattern of P2P users, and then improve the systems?? performance. Others look at the issue from the angle of ISPs, trying to help ISPs solve various issues brought by P2P applications. In this article, we conduct a review study on recent research efforts in these two areas. The first part of this article focuses on several key strategies that have significant influence on the performance of P2P systems. In the second part, we review some important techniques for ISPs to manage P2P traffic, i.e., blocking, caching and localization, and compare their advantages and disadvantages.     

A study on the relationships between different presentation modes of graphical icons and users’ attention

With the vigorous development of applications (App), graphical user interfaces (GUI) have been widely found in computers and handheld devices. This study aimed to explore the relationships between different presentation modes of graphical icons and users’ attention. An eye tracker was employed to measure each participant’s experimental data; in addition, subjective evaluation of attention was conducted. Thus, the optimum presentation mode attracting the most attention might be determined. The experiment was designed to investigate two variables: icon composition and background. Through permutation and combination, six presentation modes were obtained as follows: line + positive background (M1), plane + positive background (M2), line + negative background (M3), plane + negative background (M4), line + no background (M5), and plane + no background (M6). Thirty-six participants were requested to view thirty stimuli, or the contour drawings of graphical icons, presented simultaneously in six modes mentioned above. The participants’ fixation duration, fixation frequency, and subjective evaluation of attention were analyzed through two-way ANOVA. The analytical results showed that in terms of the three performance indicators above, M4 performed the best among the six presentation modes. Moreover, regarding icon composition, planes performed better than lines in terms of the three performance indicators. As for background, negative background performed the best in terms of the three performance indicators, positive background ranked second, and no background performed the worst. The findings can serve as a reference when icons are researched or designed in the future.     

Differentiation of online text-based advertising and the effect on users’ click behavior

Online syndicated text-based advertising is ubiquitous on news sites, blogs, personal websites, and on search result pages. Until recently, a common distinguishing feature of these text-based advertisements has been their background color. Following intervention by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the format of these advertisements has undergone a subtle change in their design and presentation. Using three empirical experiments, we investigate the effect of industry-standard advertising practices on click rates, and demonstrate changes in user behavior when this familiar differentiator is modified. Using three large-scale experiments (N₁ = 101, N₂ = 84, N₃ = 176) we find that displaying advertisement and content results with a differentiated background results in significantly lower click rates. Our results demonstrate the strong link between background color differentiation and advertising, and reveal how alternative differentiation techniques influence user behavior.     

A comparative study of the motivational orientation type on users’ behavior: focusing on ubiquitous computing services

One of the main problems of today’s ubiquitous computing systems is that they do not meet their quality requirements. Ubiquitous computing services such as mobile data services (MDS) are fundamentally different from traditional information systems (IS) in terms of important quality factors such as information or system quality because it has been used in various life contexts. We identify important quality factors on various contexts in Korea MDS market. Using the results of qualitative study, we propose research model. To identify the effect of motivational orientation type on users’ behavior, we classified users according to their propensities into intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientation groups. The results show that the impact of quality factors on user satisfaction is differentiated depending on motivational orientation types. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study’s limitations and implications.     

The role of legitimacy and reputation judgments in users’ selection of service providers on sharing economy platforms

Information systems literature suggests that reputation is the main judgment form that captures user-related information online. Drawing on social judgment literature, we contend that a user's online characteristics and past actions are not all reputation-based, but also legitimacy-based, and that transaction stake determines whether users will use reputation or legitimacy judgment to evaluate other users. Using Airbnb, we show that level of stake in a transaction determines the judgment form (reputation or legitimacy) that guests resort to when evaluating a host. Moreover, we find that providing extensive information on a host to potential guests in low-stake transactions is counterproductive.     

Towards understanding the gamification upon users’ scores in a location-based social network

Online social platform, such as Wikipedia and Foursquare, has been increasingly exploded due to not only various useful services provided but also social gaming mechanisms that can keep users actively engaged. For example, users are awarded ”virtual goods” like badges and points when they contribute to the community in the network by voluntarily sharing ideas and other information. In this paper, we aim to examine the effectiveness of a social gamification mechanism, named user scores, designed in Foursquare which is one of most popular location-based social networks. A user’s score in Foursquare is an aggregate measure based on recent check-in activities of the user, which reflects a snapshot summary of the user’s temporal and spatial behaviors. Whenever a user checks in to a venue, a list of scores of the user’s friends are visible to the user via a ”leaderboard” which ranks these users’ scores in a descending order. Given a pair of friends who participate in a score competition in such a gimification mechanism, we identify if one user’s scores have significant influence on the other user’s scores by utilizing the Granger Causality Test. To understand what types of users and what types of friends tend to participate in the score competition (i.e., their check-ins are more likely driven by such a gamification mechanism), we extract users’ features (e.g. user’s degree) as well as the features of pairs of friends (e.g., number of common friends, score similarity and ranking difference) to examine whether these features have correlations with those pairs of users who are identified as being involved in the score game. The identified influence on user scores has the important implication on applications including friend and venue recommendations in location-based social networks.     

How users’ participation affects reputation management systems: The case of P2P networks

In this work human factor is explored by means of agent based simulation and analyzed in the framework of a reputation management system (RMS), within a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Reputation is about evaluating an agent’s actions and other agents’ opinions about those actions, reporting on those actions and opinions, and reacting to that report, thus creating a feedback loop. This social mechanism has been successfully used to classify agents within normative systems. The systems rely on the feedbacks given by the members of the social network in which the RMS operates. Reputation can thus be seen as an endogenous and self produced indicator, created by the users for the users’ benefit. This implies that users’ participation and collaboration is a key factor for the effectiveness a RMS.     

The effect of mobile applications’ initial loading pages on users’ mental state and behavior

Design of loading screens needs to be optimized given its impact on user experience. This study explored the influence of four commonly used loading feedback types on users’ mental state and behavior regarding waiting using a questionnaire survey. Users’ data (N = 90) was collected using Psychopy and Wenjuanxing. The results suggested that using a logo as the loading feedback enabled better emotional experience, time perception, preference, and higher tolerable waiting time compared with the empty screen or circle icon loading feedback. Users indicated a preference for the combination of a slogan plus a logo loading feedback. These findings can have implications on how to design for improving user experience.     

Exploring users’ switching intention and behavior on social networking sites: Linear and nonlinear perspectives

The increasing integration of computers and networks into society has profoundly affected our lives in recent years. In Taiwan, use of SNSs – especially Facebook – has become the main action for the Internet users; accordingly, a number of scholars have explored people's intention to use, or actual use of, SNSs. However, few studies have investigated how and why users stop using one SNS and begin using another from the linear perspective. The findings are incomplete for the human behaviors which are complex and nonlinear systems. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore the relationship between SNS users’ switching intention and switching behavior based on structural equation modeling (SEM) and cusp catastrophe model (CCM). The key factors for the switching intentions and behaviors of SNS users were examined through empirical research, and a structural model was established. The model, which involved habits as a mediating factor, was used to conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the switching behaviors of SNS users from a nonlinear perspective. This model will provide a new method for future researchers to analyze nonlinear behaviors as well as a dynamic decision support model for service providers to improve their business operation.     

When carrots and sticks meet: A mixed-methods study on internet taxi drivers’ job engagement in the IT-driven sharing economy

Information technology (IT)-enabled taxi services facilitate people's lives. However, little is known about how Internet taxi employees are motivated and how motivation relates to their job engagement. Using a mixed-methods design, this research explores intrinsic motivators and the effects of external regulations on intrinsic motivation and job engagement. The qualitative study identified three context-specific intrinsic motivators: stress reduction, self-efficacy, and job autonomy. A follow-up quantitative research revealed the significance of external regulations in determining intrinsic motivation and job engagement. The study contributes to knowledge by emphasizing the role of intrinsic motivators and the significance of both monetary incentives and punishment.     

Cyberloafing in the workplace: mitigation tactics and their impact on individuals’ behavior

With the Internet permeating every aspect of daily life, organizations of all types are increasingly concerned about the degree to which their employees are cyberloafing by shirking their work responsibilities to surf the Internet, check e-mail, or send text messages. Although technological interventions against cyberloafing have been shown to be effective, they might be perceived by employees as an invasion to their privacy, and are expected to have repercussions on employee behavior and loyalty. The main objectives of this study are to (1) examine how the introduction of such technological interventions might affect employees’ emotions and fairness perceptions, and (2) understand the effect of the interventions on behavioral outcomes, i.e., employees’ intentions to cyberloaf and their loyalty to the company. We developed a justice-based framework that we empirically test using a field experiment composed of field surveys complemented with hypothetical scenarios describing new organizational initiatives to curb employees’ cyberloafing. Our findings suggest that technological interventions, although associated with perceptions of unfairness, are effective at controlling cyberloafing, albeit at the expense of employee loyalty. On the other hand, contrary to prior findings, we find that fairness perceptions of technological interventions, although reinforcing employee loyalty, are ineffective at curbing cyberloafing. These findings are especially enlightening in that they contradict a common belief that perceived fairness encourages employees, as a sign of their appreciation for this fairness, to curb their misuse of IT. The findings also help managers fine-tune their cyberloafing policies to achieve a long-lasting remedy to their employees’ cyberloafing while maintaining a necessary level of employee loyalty.     

User bias in online trust systems: aligning the system designers’ intentions with the users’ expectations

The advent of social networks opened a myriad opportunities for merging the social character of trust with the technical possibilities offered by the Internet and its availability as a mobile service. While most of the computational trust models aim to detect trustworthy entities, much less attention is paid to how these models are perceived by the users who are the core of the system. This paper delves into the workings of online trust systems under user bias and analyses the user behaviour through biases defined by Prospect theory. By performing empirical study on an existing system, we are able to demonstrate that there is a huge discrepancy between the aim of implementation of the online trust models and the users’ perception of those models. Understanding of this relation by the system designers can reduce complexity and improve the user experience and the system performance. The results imply that the tendency of the users to exhibit cognitive biases is not only the cause, but also the effect from the trust system design. These results and the analysis are then used to propose to the system designers a methodology for user bias identification and mitigation in the form of a Choice architecture for trust systems.     

Predicting customer behavior in the market-space: a study of Rayport and Sviokla’s framework

The rapidly evolving phenomenon of the World Wide Web and the creation of a new international arena for electronic commerce have expanded the possibilities for the marketing of products and services. The role played by customer behavior in the market-space is still not entirely understood and calls for investigations into the significance of customer attitudes and loyalty. In this article, a model is developed; it examines the significance of content, context, and infrastructure in determining customer loyalty. An empirical study involving 145 subjects was conducted to test this model and to gain a better understanding of the relationship between customer belief about a Web site (specifically, an e-publishing site) and customer behavior (such as attitudes toward brand and customer loyalty).The results indicate that customer attitude is influenced by belief about brand equity (value), which is affected by the content, context, and infrastructure. Customer loyalty is determined by attitude and belief about the context in which the products or services are offered. These findings provide a better understanding of customer behavior associated with Web sites in the market-space, also confirm the proposition of Rayport and Sviokla that ‘customer loyalty is developed at the context level’.     

The relation between reflected radiation and yield on the Broadbalk winter wheat experiment†

Abstract

In the classical experiment on Broadbalk field, Rothamsted, winter wheat has been grown continuously under various treatments since 1843. Reflected radiation in red (R) and near-infrared (NIR) wavebands was measured over the field in 1987, twice with an airborne multispectral scanner (MSS) from an altitude of 600m and five times with a muhiband radiometer from 2 m above the crop surface. The normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI= ( NIR?R)/ (NIR + R), was calculated for each date and its relation with harvest yield investigated.

The NDVI determined from the airborne MSS data was correlated with yield, and the correlation was found to increase if the variable effect of productivity was introduced into the relationship. The NDVI values calculated from the ground radiometry were more strongly correlated with yield, however. The differences in yield on Broadbalk are caused mainly by the amounts of nitrogen-containing fertilizer applied. The results suggest that the radiation measured by airborne MSS can give a rough guide to yield and nitrogen nutrition, whereas ground radiometry could be used to predict yield and potential deficiencies of nitrogen.     

Feedback types and users’ behavior in online innovation contests: Evidence of two underlying mechanisms

Online innovation contests (OIC) provide companies, via a dedicated community, an important means to access remote knowledge and ideas of users and thereby a creative playground for fueling innovation. Our literature review shows that our understanding of the impact of diverse types of feedback on user participation, especially continued participation, and success in OIC is at a nascent stage. The present study therefore seeks to examine why and how different types of feedback influence users’ behavior in OIC, and the detailed mechanisms underlying such influences. While our results do not show a significant relationship between receiving peer dynamic feedback and user success, we find that receiving sponsor static feedback in users’ first submission is positively associated with their continued participation in OIC. Also, when compared to peer dynamic feedback, sponsor static feedback has a stronger effect on users’ continued participation. Our goal is to confer a holistic picture of how the timing, source, and form of feedback shape user continuous participation and success in OIC.     

Hidden assumptions and their influence on clinicians’ acceptance of new IT systems in the NHS

The UK National Health Service (NHS) is embarking on the largest investment programme in Information Technology (IT). The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the NHS is the biggest civil IT project in the world and seeks to revolutionise the way care is delivered, drive up quality and make more effective use of resources of the NHS. Despite these high expectations, the NHS has historically experienced some high profile IT failures and the sponsors of the programme admitted that there remain a number of critical barriers to the implementation of the programme. Clinicians’ reluctance to accept new IT systems at a local level is seen to be a major factor in this respect. Focusing on such barriers, this paper reports research that explored and explained why such reluctance occurs in the NHS. The main contribution of this research derives from the distinctive approach based on Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (PCT) to understand the ‘reluctance’. The argument presented in the paper indicates that such reluctance should be viewed not as deliberate resistance imposed by clinicians, but as their inability of changing their established group personal constructs related to ISDD activities. Therefore, this paper argues that the means that could occur to reduce the ‘reluctance’ are creative rather than corrective or normative. The research took place in a NHS Trust and the paper pays considerable attention to technological, behavioural and clinical perspectives that emerged from the study. The research was conducted as a case study in a NHS trust and data was collected from two local NHS IT project. The main research participants in this study were: (a) IT professionals including IT project managers and senior IT managers; and (b) senior clinicians.     

Comments on ‘Fixed modes and local feedbacks in interconnected systems’

Two statements concerning fixed modes made by Caloyannis and Fessas are shown to be unnecessarily restrictive.     

Smile and the world will smile with you—The effects of a virtual agent‘s smile on users’ evaluation and behavior

Recent studies have demonstrated that people show social reactions when interacting with human-like virtual agents. For instance, human users behave in a socially desirable way, show increased cooperation or apply human-like communication. It has, however, so far not been tested whether users are prone to mimic the artificial agent’s behavior although this is a widely cited phenomenon of human–human communication that seems to be especially indicative of the sociality of the situation. We therefore conducted an experiment, in which we analyzed whether humans reciprocate an agent’s smile. In a between-subjects design, 104 participants conducted an 8-min small-talk conversation with an agent that either did not smile, showed occasional smiles, or displayed frequent smiles. Results show that although smiling did not have a distinct impact on the evaluation of the agent, the human interaction partners themselves smiled longer when the agent was smiling.