Enhancing trust in dental care recommendation systems : using trust-enhanced information from social networks to improve the matching between patients and dentists

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The recent growth in social media has impacted the way users are searching and sharing health information online. Crowdsources, such as review and rating websites, provide an outlet for consumers to share their opinions on healthcare professionals. Yet, faced with the enormity and diversity of information across multiple online sources, finding the right information can be a challenge for users, particularly when there is no consistency in the evaluation criteria across various sources. This difficulty is manifested when existing review and rating websites do not take patient information into consideration. Extremely biased views – positive or negative – are capable of skewing recommendations and thereby compounding the situation. This makes it important to filter trustworthy information from health social networks and dental crowdsources. In the case of dental care, the invasive nature of many dental treatments highlights the importance of selecting a suitable trustworthy provider for many patients, who may be anxious or reluctant to visit a new dentist. By analysing, from multiple perspectives, the trustworthiness of information available to patients, this study proposes a new trust-enhanced information model for dental care recommendation systems. In this model, dentists are profiled based on subjective information extracted from dental crowdsources. Subjective qualities are also used to profile patients. Currently, online social network data cannot be used for profiling purposes due to privacy and identification concerns. Instead, one of the popular personality tests, the DISC personality test, is used in this study. The importance and suitability of subjective qualities for recommendations is explored. Two matching algorithms are evaluated based on the responses to an online survey. When the patients are classified based on their levels of fear, preferred search methods and other attributes, their list of recommended dentists changes. The subjective characteristics of both patients and dentists are important factors which need to be incorporated to improve the matching capability of dental care recommendation systems. Including the subjective qualities of users could change the way that recommendations are provided in the future, especially in the health sector where the wrong information can lead to adverse impacts on health. Although patients’ discussions about their health are sensitive and private, they can benefit from more accurate recommendations in relation to health care providers

DESIGNING QUANTIFIED-SELF 2.0 RUNNING PLATFORM TO ENSURE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY MAINTENANCE: THE ROLE OF ACHIEVEMENT GOALS AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATIONAL AFFORDANCE

With the rapid development of wearable technologies, people can nowadays easily track and record their health-related information—particularly their athletic performance. The quantified-self 2.0 (QS 2.0) movement encourages running website or mobile application users to share their athletic information with other online community members to ensure the sustainable use of the technology and the maintenance of physical activity. However, the health literature claims that health behavior maintenance is difficult because it is easy for people to give up on the regular physical exercise during the maintenance stage, considering the unforeseen barriers and temptations that may occur in the long term. Drawing upon a motivational affordance perspective and the achievement goal theory (AGT), this theory-based manuscript provides design principles for QS 2.0 running platforms, with the purpose to increase users’ physical activity maintenance (PAM). Additionally, we propose a conceptual model explaining the underlying mechanism in terms of how these affordance design principles serve as the sources of two kinds of achievement goals, namely mastery goals and performance goals, which has distinct roles in determining users’ longitudinal exercise performances

The Effectiveness of Scarcity Messages in Group-Buying Social Commerce: The Comparison of Korea and China

This study attempts to extend the customer value–customer satisfaction–customer loyalty framework by introducing key constructs of scarcity messages as a major environmental stimulus and the urge to buy impulsively as its response in the context of group-buying social commerce, across countries including Korea and China. More specifically, this study proposes that scarcity messages influence customers’ value perception (i.e., utilitarian value and hedonic value. Moreover, the study suggests that scarcity messages and customer values arouse the urge to buy impulsively. In the Korean sample, the results show that scarcity messages increase both utilitarian and hedonic values as well as the urge to buy impulsively, which in turn enhances customers’ satisfaction and further loyalty. In the Chinese sample, relationships related to utilitarian value are insignificant. That is, scarcity messages only influence hedonic value which increases the urge to buy impulsively. Besides, customer satisfaction depends on utilitarian and hedonic values

Reasoning of Competitive Non-Functional Requirements in Agent-Based Models

During the decision-making process in real-time competitive environments, there is a need to perform concurrent optimisation of multiple competitive objectives to select an optimal design decision for interdependent stakeholders. To handle such issues, this thesis successfully assimilates the goal-oriented requirements-engineering knowledge with analytical decision-making approaches to facilitate reasoning and analysis by encouraging stakeholders’ involvement. This leads to optimal decisions with domain knowledge improvement in the agent-based i*-goal model by balancing multiple conflicting non-functional requirements reciprocally

AHP based Optimal Reasoning of Non-functional Requirements in the i∗ Goal Model

Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) has been found to be a valuable tool in the early stages of requirements engineering. GORE plays a vital role in requirements analysis like alternative design/ goal selection during decision-making. The decision-making process of alternative design/ goal selection is performed to assess the practicability and value of alternative approaches towards quality goals. Majority of the GORE models manage alternative selection based on qualitative approach, which is extremely coarse-grained, making it impossible for separating two alternatives. A few works are based on quantitative alternative selection, yet this does not provide a consistent judgement on decision-making. In this paper, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is modified to deal with the evaluation of selecting the alternative strategies of inter-dependent actors of i∗ goal model. The proposed approach calculates the contribution degrees of alternatives to the fulfilment of top softgoals. It is then integrated with the normalized relative priority values of top softgoals. The result of integration helps to evaluate the alternative options based on the requirements problem against each other. To clarify the proposed approach, a simple telemedicine system is considered in this paper

Review Manipulation: Literature Review, and Future Research Agenda

Background: The phenomenon of review manipulation and fake reviews has gained Information Systems (IS) scholars’ attention during recent years. Scholarly research in this domain has delved into the causes and consequences of review manipulation. However, we find that the findings are diverse, and the studies do not portray a systematic approach. This study synthesizes the findings from a multidisciplinary perspective and presents an integrated framework to understand the mechanism of review manipulation. Method: The study reviews 88 relevant articles on review manipulation spanning a decade and a half. We adopted an iterative coding approach to synthesizing the literature on concepts and categorized them independently into potential themes. Results: We present an integrated framework that shows the linkages between the different themes, namely, the prevalence of manipulation, impact of manipulation, conditions and choice for manipulation decision, characteristics of fake reviews, models for detecting spam reviews, and strategies to deal with manipulation. We also present the characteristics of review manipulation and cover both operational and conceptual issues associated with the research on this topic. Conclusions: Insights from the study will guide future research on review manipulation and fake reviews. The study presents a holistic view of the phenomenon of review manipulation. It informs various online platforms to address fake reviews towards building a healthy and sustainable environment

WINNING DIGITAL CITIZENS: A MODEL AND INSTRUMENT

Citizens may not always be right, but governments are recognizing their right to exercise more control over their public service experience. As government agencies increasingly explore the use of digital capabilities to empower citizens and increase their engagement, Gov2.0 has emerged as an enabler and an enhancer of citizen engagement. Government agencies that adjust their engagement models to include one or more of these tools stand to gain engaged digital citizens who are more empowered with positive engagement experiences. However, little research has been done on citizen empowerment to realize public value via citizen participation and satisfaction. Our understanding about the drivers that encourage citizen to participate via Gov2.0 is limited due to the lack of rigorous research that covers issues beyond the e-government field. Therefore, this paper discusses a trans-disciplinary model that identifies the relevant empowerment dimensions that affect citizen participation and satisfaction. This paper extends prior literature by evaluating citizen empowerment as a precedent of citizen participation and satisfaction, which in turn is expected to enhance public value. Further, it proposes a validated research instrument that can be employed in citizen’s survey. It can also be used as an evaluation tool to identify, measure, and manage citizen participation via Gov2.0. Implications of the study suggest a need to consider citizen empowerment in understanding citizen participation and satisfaction