An empirical study of the factors affecting social network service use

Social network services are emerging as a promising IT-based business, with some services already being provided commercially such as Facebook, Cyworld and Xiaonei. However, it is not yet clear which potential audience groups will be key social network service participants. Moreover, the process showing how an individual actually decides to start using a social network service may be somewhat different from current web-based community services. Hence, the aims of this paper are twofold. First, we empirically examine how individual characteristics affect actual user acceptance of social network services. To examine these individual characteristics, we apply a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to construct an amended model that focuses on three individual differences: social identity, altruism and telepresence, and one perceived construct: the perceived encouragement, imported from psychology-based research. Next, we examine if the users’ perception to see a target social network service as human relationship-oriented service or as a task-oriented service could be a moderator between perceived constructs and actual use. As a result, we discover that the perceived encouragement and perceived orientation are significant constructs that affect actual use of social network services.     

Relationships between young drivers' personality characteristics, risk perceptions, and driving behaviour

Research has shown that inexperienced drivers underestimate the risks associated with a range of driving situations. In addition, personality factors are an important influence on both risk perceptions and driving behaviour. The study investigated the strength of relationship between personality factors, risk perceptions, and driving behaviour among young, mainly inexperienced drivers. One-hundred and fifty-nine students aged between 17 and 20 completed an online questionnaire assessing five facets of personality, four components of risk perceptions, and one measure of driving behaviour. Using structural equation modeling as a means of assessing the overall fit of each model, 39% of the variance in young drivers' speeding was accounted for by Excitement-Seeking, Altruism, their Aversion to Risk Taking, and their own likelihood of having an accident, with Altruism and Aversion to Risk Taking both showing moderate negative relationships. Road safety interventions should examine whether they strengthen young drivers' appreciation of the impact of their actions on others through positive reinforcement of altruistic norms.     

Not just an ego-trip: Exploring backers’ motivation for funding in incentive-based crowdfunding

Incentive-based forms of crowdfunding – such as reward-, equity- and lending-based crowdfunding – are becoming increasingly popular. However, research that studies backers’ motivations for funding in these environments is still in an embryonic state, revealing an inconsistent and narrow picture. The few existing studies are largely guided by the idea that backers are mainly egoistically motivated and do not have prosocial motives. We developed a research model that describes backers’ motivation and conducted an empirical study to examine this model. Results indicate that backers indeed have several self-interest motivations for funding: prospect of a reward; expectation of recognition from others; to lobby a certain project in the hopes of its fruition; and to develop their image. However, some backers are also prosocially motivated in that they develop feelings of liking for a certain venture and/or project team. Furthermore, we found evidence that herding has a significant moderating effect on backers’ reward motivation. Strategic IS researchers as well as crowdfunding practitioners can draw on our findings to systematically design, implement, and evaluate potential incentive systems that respond to reward-, recognition-, lobbying-, image- and liking-motives and thereby attract the crowd more effectively to invest in ventures presented on incentive-based crowdfunding systems.     

Open source software: A community of altruists

To learn about what drives people to devote their time and expertise to creating and supporting free/open source software, a survey with Likert-scaled items measuring different types of motivations was sent to contributors of several open source projects. Open-ended comments were used to illustrate the Likert-scaled items and open-ended questions allowed respondents to express their reasons for participating in these open source communities. Results indicate that the open source contributors (n = 110, 38 paid to work on OSS projects and 72 volunteers) are motivated primarily by a sense of altruism as well as the desire to create and learn. Payment did not significantly impact the reasons for contributing to OSS projects. The comments and open-ended questions validated the findings and indicated that building a “Utopian” community – the desire to help for the greater good worldwide – is one of the most important motivators. Also, respondents revealed that they join and persist as members of open source communities because they enjoy the freedom to create and share free software, tools and knowledge with others inside and outside the community.     

To share or not to share – The underlying motives of sharing fake news amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia

This study investigates the underlying motives for online fake news sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented time that witnessed a spike in the spread of false content. Motives were identified based on a fake news sharing model developed using the SocioCultural-Psychological-Technology (SCulPT) model, Uses and Gratification (U&G) theory and Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and further extended using fake news predictors/gratifications from past studies. A self-administered survey resulted in 869 online Malaysian respondents aged between 18 and 59 years old (Mean = 22.6, Standard deviation = 6.13). Structured equation modelling revealed the fake news sharing model to collectively account for 49.2 % of the variance, with Altruism (β = 0.333; p < 0.001), Ignorance (β = 0.165; p < 0.001) and Entertainment (β = 0.139; p < 0.001) significantly predicting the behaviour. Conversely, Availability/Effort, Pass Time and Fear of Missing Out were found to be insignificant. Our findings indicate that fake news sharing behavior is determined by different motives, hence these need to be understood in order to develop better solutions to mitigate this problem.     

Knowledge sharing and social media: Altruism,perceived online attachment motivation,and perceived online relationship commitment

Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have become extremely popular. Facebook, for example, has more than a billion registered users and thousands of millions of units of information are shared every day, including short phrases, articles, photos, and audio and video clips. However, only a tiny proportion of these sharing units trigger any type of knowledge exchange that is ultimately beneficial to the users. This study draws on the theory of belonging and the intrinsic motivation of altruism to explore the factors contributing to knowledge sharing behavior. Using a survey of 299 high school students applying for university after the release of the public examination results, we find that perceived online attachment motivation (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) and perceived online relationship commitment (β = 0.49, p < 0.001) have positive, direct, and significant effects on online knowledge sharing (R² 0.568). Moreover, when introduced into the model, altruism has a direct and significant effect on online knowledge sharing (β = 0.46, p < 0.001) and the total variance explained by the extended model increases to 64.9%. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

On the tradeoff between altruism and selfishness in MANET trust management

Mobile ad hoc and sensor networks may consist of a mixture of nodes, some of which may be considered selfish due to a lack of cooperativeness in providing network services such as forwarding packets. In the literature, existing trust management protocols for mobile ad hoc networks advocate isolating selfish nodes as soon as they are detected. Further, altruistic behaviors are encouraged with incentive mechanisms. In this paper, we propose and analyze a trust management protocol for group communication systems where selfish nodes exist and system survivability is highly critical to mission execution. Rather than always encouraging altruistic behaviors, we consider the tradeoff between a node’s individual welfare (e.g., saving energy to prolong the node lifetime) vs. global welfare (e.g., achieving a given mission with sufficient service availability) and identify the best design condition of this behavior model to balance selfish vs. altruistic behaviors. With the system lifetime and the mission success probability as our trust-based reliability metric, we show that our behavior model that exploits the tradeoff between selfishness vs. altruism outperforms one that only encourages altruistic behaviors.     

In justice we trust: Exploring knowledge-sharing continuance intentions in virtual communities of practice

Knowledge has become the key to success in the global knowledge economy, not only for organizations, but also in virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). The major challenge in sustaining a VCoP is acquiring knowledge spontaneously from members. This challenge leads to our research question: what encourages VCoP members to voluntarily and continuously help one another through continuous knowledge-sharing? In this study, we integrate three research streams—justice, trust, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)—into one model in order to analyze the antecedents of knowledge-sharing continuance intentions in VCoPs. Our model theorizes that the four dimensions of justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice) affect two different referents of trust (i.e., trust in members and trust in management). We further link these trust constructs to altruism (i.e., OCB directed to the individual) or conscientiousness (i.e., OCB directed to the organization), which in turn effect the knowledge-sharing continuance intentions in VCoPs. This hypothetical model is empirically validated using data collected from 142 members of an IT-oriented VCoP in Taiwan. Our integrated model has been helpful in VCoP research as it broadens our theoretical understanding of knowledge-sharing continuance intentions.     

An analysis of peer-to-peer networks with altruistic peers

We develop a new model of the interaction of rational peers in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network that has at its heart altruism, an intrinsic parameter reflecting peers’ inherent willingness to contribute. Two different approaches for modelling altruistic behavior and its attendant benefit are introduced. With either approach, we use Game Theoretic analysis to calculate Nash equilibria and predict peer behavior in terms of individual contribution. We consider the cases of P2P networks of peers that (i) have homogeneous altruism levels or (ii) have heterogeneous altruism levels, but with known probability distributions. We find that, under the effects of altruism, a substantial fraction of peers will contribute when altruism levels are within certain intervals, even though no incentive mechanism is used. Our results corroborate empirical evidence of large P2P networks surviving or even flourishing without or with barely functioning incentive mechanisms. We also enhance the model with a simple but powerful incentive scheme to limit free-riding and increase contribution to the network, and show that the particular incentive scheme on networks with altruistic peers achieves its goal.

The effect of stress and personality on dangerous driving behavior among Chinese drivers

The relationship between stress and road safety has been studied for many years, but the effect of global stress and its joint effect with personality on driving behavior have received little attention in previous studies. This study aimed to elucidate the impact of global stress and various personality traits on driving behavior. 242 drivers completed the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10), the Dula Dangerous Driving Index (DDDI), and several personality trait scales related to anger, sensation seeking, and altruism. The results showed that perceived stress and sensation seeking were significantly correlated with the four subcategories of dangerous driving behavior, namely, negative cognitive/emotional driving (NCED), aggressive driving (AD), risky driving (RD), and drunk driving (DD). Moreover, anger was positively correlated with negative cognitive/emotional driving, aggressive driving, and risky driving, and altruism was negatively correlated with aggressive driving and drunk driving. Hierarchical multiple regressions were applied to analyze the mediating effect of personality traits, and the results showed that anger mediated the relationship between stress and dangerous driving behavior and that this mediating role was especially strong for negative cognitive/emotional driving and aggressive driving. Collectively, the results showed that stress is an important factor that can affect people's driving behavior but that personality traits mediate the effect of stress on driving behavior. The findings from this study regarding the relationship among stress, anger, and dangerous driving behavior could be applied in the development of intervention programs for stress and anger management in order to improve drivers’ ability to manage emotional thoughts and adjust their behavior on the road.