Understanding the determinants of users’ subjective well-being in social networking sites: an integration of social capital theory and social presence theory

In order to understand the factors affecting users’ well-being perception derived from social networking sites usage, this study integrates the perspectives of social presence theory and social capital theory to develop a research model. Data were collected from 305 users of Facebook in Taiwan to test the model. The findings reveal that structural capital, relational capital, and cognitive capital exert significant influences on subjective well-being. The results also reveal that structural capital and cognitive capital have positive influence on relational capital, while structural capital influences cognitive capital significantly. The results, on the other hand, show that awareness and affective social presence are the antecedents of structural capital, whereas cognitive social presence and affective social presence influence cognitive capital significantly. Finally, affective social presence is associated with relational capital positively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

A comparison of ‘traditional’ and multimedia information systems development practices

As multimedia information systems begin to infiltrate organizations, there arises a need to capture and disseminate knowledge about how to develop them. Little is thus far known about the realities of multimedia systems development practice, or about how the development of multimedia systems compares to that of ‘traditional’ information systems. Herein are discussed the findings of a survey of multimedia developers in Ireland. Practitioners generally agree that systematic approaches are desirable in order to beneficially add structure to development processes, but they are predominantly using their own in-house methods rather than those prescribed in the literature.     

Exploring the relationship between information satisfaction and flow in the context of consumers’ online search

The study investigate the subjective aspect of consumers’ online information satisfaction within the frame of flow experience in two processes: ongoing and goal-directed information search. A total of 391 samples for ongoing processes and 415 samples for goal-directed processes obtained in this study were analyzed with structural equation modelling. Flow is conceptualized in the study with Enjoyment, Time Distortion, Curiosity, Perceived Control and Concentration dimensions. The results indicate that flow experience has significant effects on consumers’ online information satisfaction in both processes. Enjoyment, Time distortion, Curiosity and Perceived Control dimensions affect online information satisfaction positively in the ongoing process, which is largely carried out with hedonic urges. In addition to Enjoyment, Perceived Control and Concentration dimensions have positive and Curiosity dimension has negative effects in goal-directed online information satisfaction, which is largely carried out with utilitarian urges. In addition, the results indicate that Enjoyment, Time distortion and Curiosity dimensions have significantly stronger positive effects on online information satisfaction in ongoing search processes compared with goal-directed processes, and Concentration dimension has significantly stronger positive effects on online information satisfaction in goal-directed search processes compared with ongoing processes.     

Understanding the intentions of users to ‘stick’ to social networking sites: a case study in Taiwan

Social networking sites (SNSs) are the most popular social platforms for developing personal networks. They provide multiple interactive functions for users to create and use large social networks. To determine why people exhibit ‘stickiness’ to SNSs, this study uses the uses and gratifications theory as an underlying structure and builds the research model with factors of motivational needs and interactivity. Our results showed that social needs, information needs, human–message interaction, and human–human interaction are crucial factors that affect the ‘stickiness’ of users to SNSs. The implications of these findings are presented in this paper.     

Understanding users’ dynamic behavior in a free trial of IT services: A three-stage model

A free trial of an information technology service (ITS) provides users an opportunity to obtain direct usage experience without purchase commitment, which can significantly reduce their uncertainty about the utility and quality of the ITS and promote their intention of final purchasing. Previous studies of user behavior in a free trial of ITS have mainly focused on either the adoption intention in the pre-trial stage or purchase intention in the post-trial stage. There is a lack of study investigating the trial stage that facilitates the transition and connection between these two separately studied stages. In this study, we view free trial as a motivated learning process and propose a Three-Stage Model (TSM) based on the learning motivation theory and reference-dependent theory to investigate users’ free trial behavior dynamics in moving from motivation to trial, making efforts to gain trial experience, and finally making a further purchase decision after the trial. We collected 377 users’ free trial experience to test our TSM using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling. Our results indicate that the perceived trial benefit and social influence strongly motivate user’s willingness to trial and that the utility experience and flow experience gained through trial effort leads to a willingness to accept and ultimately affect user’s willingness to pay through the mediation effect of expected additional value and price justification. Our study contributes to the theory that explains the dynamics of user decision-making behavior in the context of a free trial of ITS.     

Understanding adolescent students’ use of Facebook and their subjective wellbeing: a gender-based comparison

Adolescence is marked by many changes, and adolescents seek peer support to compensate for the concomitant psychological and social challenges they face. In this respect, Facebook has become one of the primary tools adolescents use to build and maintain social relationships. The current study examines the determinants of Facebook use and its relationship with adolescents’ subjective wellbeing, stratified by gender. Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of 1,121 adolescent students (aged 12–17 years) consisting of 625 boys and 586 girls. The results indicated that the total number of Facebook friends, the need to belong and the perceived waste of time were correlated with adolescents’ use of Facebook; in turn, Facebook use was positively related to the subjective wellbeing of both male and female students. Gender differences were also observed; the need to belong and the positive relationship between Facebook use and subjective wellbeing were both stronger for male students than female students.     

Understanding forced adoption of self-service technology: the impacts of users’ psychological reactance

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, information system, and mobile technologies, some companies (e.g. airlines) consider fully replacing service employees with self-service technologies (SSTs) to cut down costs and to increase efficiency. However, replacing full services with SSTs sometimes fail to deliver the benefits companies have hoped for: users may feel that they are being forced to use SSTs and show resistance to the new technologies. To investigate why users show resistance, we draw inferences from psychological reactance theory and argue that users may perceive the forced adoption as a threat, which leads to resistance of SSTs. A conceptual model was developed and an empirical study was conducted. The results show that, under a forced situation, users are likely to perceive the forced adoption as a threat to their freedom, causing them to have negative emotions and perceptions towards the SSTs, and, in turn, their adoption intention decreases and switch intention increases. The findings provide insights on why users show resistance to SSTs and highlight the impacts of the motivational state of psychological reactance.     

Needs’ elaboration between users,designers and project leaders: Analysis of a design process of a virtual reality-based software

ContextThe participation of users in the design process is recognized as a positive and a necessary element as artifacts suit their needs. Two complementary approaches of users’ involvement co-exist: the user-centered design and the participatory design. These approaches involve learning process from users to designers and vice versa. However, there has no research in design of virtual reality (VR)-based software dealing with how the elaboration of needs is actually distributed in time and among users, designers and project leaders, as well as how it is actually supported by tools and methods.ObjectiveThis paper aims to observe, in a real design project of a virtual reality-based software, how the various stakeholders (users, designers, project leaders) actually participate by sharing and pulling pieces of information from the process of needs elaboration, and how these contributions evolve throughout the decisions made in the course of the project.MethodOur method, based on the observation of the practices in collective design, allows us to collect and analyze the relationship between each possible action (e.g., elicitation), each stakeholder who initiates these actions (e.g., users) and each phase of the design process (e.g., evaluation phase), and the dynamics of the construction of needs.ResultsOur results detail how the elicited needs are dealt with by designers, users and/or project leaders: (1) we show a strong contribution of users in the design, compared to others stakeholders, (2) among the needs elicited by users, most have been validated by the designers, (3) some elicited needs could have been firstly rejected and finally validated and implemented.ConclusionWe identify the reasons which justify and explain our results confronting them to the literature. We underline the conditions have been satisfied in our study in order to involve effectively users in the design of emerging technologies.     

Understanding users’ continuous content contribution behaviours on microblogs: an integrated perspective of uses and gratification theory and social influence theory

ABSTRACT

Microblogs are revolutionising the way users produce, consume and distribute short content. The continuous content contributions of users are crucial for the sustainable development of microblogs. Knowledge regarding this user behaviour is scarce. Based on the uses and gratifications theory (U&G) and the social influence theory (SIT), this paper proposes an integrated research model with the aim of understanding the factors that affect users’ continuous content contribution behaviours (CCCB) on microblogs. The data were collected from 379 microblog users in China. The empirical results indicate that perceived gratification had a positive but surprisingly trivial effect on continuous content contribution behaviours. Social influence had a strong and significantly positive effect on users’ CCCB, it also had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between perceived gratification and CCCB. Users’ perceived gratification was positively affected by the antecedents of self-expression, anticipated extrinsic rewards and anticipated reciprocity but negatively affected by privacy concerns. The platform attributes of microblogs (i.e. accessibility and interactivity) also influenced users’ perceived gratification. This research contributes to social media research with regards to the theory of users’ CCCB.     

Exploring factors related to users’ experience of public transport route choice: influence of context and users profiles

This exploratory study aims to achieve a better understanding of the users-related factors that affect the choice of routes in public transport (PT). We also look at what can motivate route and modes changes towards alternatives in a real situation. We investigated the experience of 19 users of PTs, using the critical incident technique (Flanagan in Psychol Bull 51(4):327, 1954). We asked participants to report incidents (i.e. situations) in cases they were very satisfied or dissatisfied with their choice. For both situations, the case of their usual route and case of an alternative were considered. A total of 91 incidents were collected and analysed using a multiple correspondences analysis. Additionally, users’ profiles were characterized and superposed to the analysis of incidents content. The main results are as follows. First, the user’s choice of PT route depends on the context (i.e. aim of the travel, time of day). Second, taking an alternative to the usual PT route or using a route combining different transport modes is determined by the context and by factors related to the pleasantness of the travel (e.g. to accompany a friend along the travel). Finally, depending on the user’s profile (i.e. combination of attitude towards PT and demographic variables), the factors taken into account to make the choice of a PT route are related to the efficiency or the pleasantness of the trip. These results show the importance of the contextual factors and the users’ profiles in route choice. They suggest that these factors should be further taken into account in new tools and services for mobility.     

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.     

Predicting the influence of users’ posted information for eWOM advertising in social networks

Many social network websites have been aggressively exploring innovative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) advertising strategies using information shared by users, such as posts and product reviews. For example, Facebook offers a service allowing marketers to utilize users’ posts to automatically generate advertisements. The effectiveness of this practice depends on the ability to accurately predict a post’s influence on its readers. For an advertising strategy of this nature, the influence of a post is determined jointly by the features of the post, such as contents and time of creation, and the features of the author of the post. We propose two models for predicting the influence of a post using both sources of influence, post- and author-related features, as predictors. An empirical evaluation shows that the proposed predictive features improve prediction accuracy, and the models are effective in predicting the influence score.     

Road safety communication effectiveness: the roles of emotion and information in motorists’ ability to detect vulnerable road users

Cognition, Technology & Work - This study aimed to investigate the impact of the emotional and informational components of road safety communication on the motorists’ ability to detect...     

Adapting groupware systems to changes in the collaborator’s context of use

Owing to the dynamic nature of collaborative environments, the software intended to support collaborative work should adapt itself to the different situations that may occur. This requirement is related to the concept of “context of use”, which has been considered as an important aspect in the design of interactive systems. Nevertheless, two main problems about this concept have been identified by current research in context-aware computing: (1) most of the studies have mainly focused on the context of a single user, so the context of multiple users involved in a common endeavor remains little explored, and (2) adaptability in context-aware systems generally takes into account a reduced number of contextual variables (mainly the user’s location and platform). In this paper, we firstly re-conceptualize the notion of “context of use”, in order to consider the main characteristics of collaborative environments. Based on this new notion, we then design and implement a framework that allows application developers to specify the adaptability of groupware systems in terms of the state of activities, roles, collaborators’ location, available resources, and other typical variables of working groups. This framework has been generalized from scenarios that highlight dynamic situations presented in real collaborative settings. Finally, we validate our proposal by a set of applications that are able to adapt their user interface and functionality, when significant changes are produced in the environment, the working group, and/or the used devices.     

Does ethical ideology affect software piracy attitude and behaviour? An empirical investigation of computer users in China

This study empirically examines Chinese computer users’ ethical ideology and its relationship to their software piracy attitude and behaviour. The investigation reveals several important findings. First, cluster analysis results show that Chinese computer users can be divided into four ethical ideology types (i.e., situationists, absolutists, subjectivists, and exceptionists) reasonably consistent with Forsyth's taxonomy. Second, when compared with situationists, absolutists, and exceptionists, subjectivists are found to have the least unfavourable attitude towards software piracy and are most frequently engaged in software piracy. Third, Chinese computer users’ ideological relativism exerts a stronger influence on their software piracy attitude and behaviour than does their ideological idealism. The findings suggest that the government, and authentic software developers and vendors should focus on subjectivists as their target audience of anti-software piracy communications. These policy makers and practitioners should also make concerted efforts to help subjectivists better realise how their software piracy act may damage parties ‘proximate’ to themselves so as to lower the rate of software piracy.     

Changing information retrieval behaviours: an empirical investigation of users’ cognitive processes in the choice of location-based services

The introduction of smartphones and the accompanying profusion of mobile data services have had a profound effect on individuals’ lives. One of the most influential service categories is location-based services (LBS). Based on insights from behavioural decision-making, a conceptual framework is developed to analyse individuals’ decisions to use LBS, focusing on the cognitive processes involved in the decision-making. Our research is based on two studies. First, we investigate the use of LBS through semi-structured interviews of smartphone users. Second, we explore daily LBS use through a study based on diaries. The findings highlight that the decision to use LBS can be described by either a comparative mode based on the value of LBS in relation to other available options, or an intuitive mode in which past experiences trigger the use of heuristics. These modes in turn have positive influences on the continuance of LBS use and indicate changes in individuals’ information retrieval behaviours in everyday life. In particular, the distinct value dimension of LBS in specific contexts of use changes individuals’ behaviours towards accessing location-related information.     

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.     

An observer’s information dynamics: Acquisition of information and the origin of the cognitive dynamics

Conventional information science considers an information process, but traditionally uses the probability measure for random states and Shannon’s entropy as the uncertainty function of these states.This paper presents a new approach, based on an integral information measure of the random process.An entropy functional (EF) on the trajectories of the process accumulates and encodes the process’ inner connections between the information states.The application of a variation principle (VP) to the EF determines the process’ information path functional (IPF), whose extremal trajectories describe the informational dynamics of this process.Information dynamics with the VP invariant relations evaluate the information content of a random process, expose its information code and reveal a conserved (hidden) information, produced at an acquisition of the process information.By introducing both objective and subjective information observers, we consider the observers information cognitive dynamics and neurodynamics, based on the EF–IPF approach.The universal nature of information process’ dynamics and regularities, discovered in the information observers, have many applications not only in cognitive and intelligent systems, but also in different biological, social and economic systems.