The Duality of Autonomy on Continuous Usage of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs): From Agency Perspective

Based on the contradictory phenomenon of rapid development of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) embedded in smart IoT devices, this study examines the dual role of IPAs Autonomy (in terms of decision-making autonomy, scheduling autonomy and methods autonomy) in influencing users’ IPAs usage through users’ experience of agency. Drawing on agency theories, we identify two different types of experience of agency — perceived competence and perceived uncertainty. We hypothesize that these two contradictory aspects of experiences of agency would well explain the complex relationship between IPAs autonomy and IPAs usage. Scale development and data collection would be conducted for the future work. It is expected that the findings of this study could contribute to theoretical and practical implications for the design of IPAs

Artificial Intelligence Service Agents: Role of Parasocial Relationship

Increased use of artificial intelligence service agents (AISA) has been associated with improvements in AISA service performance. Whilst there is consensus that unique forms of attachment develop between users and AISA that manifest as parasocial relationships (PSRs), the literature is less clear about the AISA service attributes and how they influence PSR and the users’ subjective well-being. Based on a dataset collected from 408 virtual assistant users from the US, this research develops and tests a model that can explain how AISA-enabled service influences subjective well-being through the mediating effect of PSR. Findings also indicate significant gender and AISA experience differences in the PSR effect on subjective well-being. This study advances current understanding of AISA in service encounters by investigating the mediating role of PSR in AISA’s effect on users’ subjective well-being. We also discuss managerial implications for practitioners who are increasingly using AISA for delivering customer service

Annotated Bibliography: The Reference Desk: Grand Idea or Gone Down the River?

This bibliography is from a panel presentation at the 2017 ACL Conference. The goal of this panel was to explore different rationales or sets of values that illustrated the continuation of the reference desk and reference service as essential to the success of the academic community. We discovered that “what to do with reference” is far from a settled question. We discovered passionate arguments, diverse models, and an array of data. In this current stage of figuring out the value of academic libraries to the campus as a whole and to students in particular, it seemed that there was limited hard data connecting Reference services to how they met students’ needs. How do we make ourselves valuable, important, essential, and useful? Maybe we need to change our model? If so, how do we examine ourselves and our environment appropriately to make this happen? What factors should we examine? Which ones must we keep? What things can we discard or change? When students come to seek assistance, they generally need the short, instant, and personal help, without having to attend a whole training session or class. Individual and personalized guidance for their immediate need is the most important factor for them. How do libraries provide that

Millennials\u27 Acceptance of Voice Activated Shopping

The rise of voice technologies has changed the way individuals complete tasks and interact with their devices. Retail companies are now offering voice features to shop for products, but there is a gap in literature about consumers’ acceptance of using voice technology to make purchases. Previous studies have compared the different brands of voice technologies, investigated privacy issues, or explained the acceptance of voice technology. Millennials’ acceptance and shopping through voice technologies have not been researched before. Kääriä (2017) calls for future studies to focus on voice technologies, since the technology is constantly improving, and new forms are entering the market. Millennials are known to adapt to new technologies quicker and make up a fourth of the spending power (Cutler, 2015; Lissitsa & Kol, 2016). A majority of the cohort has been found to use voice technology daily, but the use of the technology has yet to be studied (Moore, 2018). Thus, this study explains millennials’ acceptance of shopping through voice technologies by testing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The TAM was the theoretical framework for this study (Davis, 1985). The TAM is found to be more accurate than other models in measuring the acceptance of technology and is widely used by researchers (Shamy & Hassanein, 2017). The TAM model includes two main variables, which are perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) (Davis, 1989). In addition, perceived enjoyment (PE) and perceived innovativeness (PI) were added by subsequent research (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1992). The relationship of gender, age, and experience to behavior intention (BI) were also added to the model (Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2012), and were incorporated into the current study. The purpose of this thesis was to explain the relationships between PU, PEOU, PE, and PI to BI for millennials. Data was collected through an online survey created on Qualtrics and disseminated via Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 204 surveys were collected and coded for analysis through SPSS. A regression analysis was conducted to investigate the relationships between the TAM variables. Surprisingly, gender was found to influence BI, thus women were more likely to use the technology in the future. Age and level of experience did not influence BI. When testing age, gender, and level of experience against PU, PEOU, PE, and PI no significant relations were found, except for gender on PI. Women thought voice technology was more innovative than men, therefore, gender influenced PI. Respondents found shopping through voice to be useful, enjoyable, and innovative. However, millennials believed it was difficult to use, thus retailers should investigate how to make the technology more intuitive. The results of this study indicate that millennials are accepting of using voice technology to shop and retailers should consider offering the skills to do so. Advisor: Jennifer Johnson Jorgense