Exploring the eco-attitudes and buying behaviour of Facebook users

Eco-friendly consumers’ attitudes are becoming increasingly frequent, recent research indicating that pro-environmental purchase behaviour not only lower costs on the long term, but also enhance business stakeholders’ and consumers’ confidence in high added value products and services. This paper undertakes an interdisciplinary research on how social media (i.e. Facebook) can influence users’ perceptions and buying behaviour related to five categories of ecological products and services (eco-food, eco-tourism, eco-housing, eco-textiles and eco-beauty & cosmetics). This research investigates how ecological products and services could gain popularity and overpass the identified purchasing barriers (e.g. high prices, low awareness, low availability) via superior integration in consumers’ daily experiences with Facebook. The research findings indicate that Facebook represents an effective and innovative environment that could build the necessary links between green attitudes and consumers’ hearts and minds

Exploring the Eco-attitudes and Buying Behaviour of Facebook Users

Eco-friendly consumers’ attitudes are becoming increasingly frequent, recent research indicating that pro-environmental purchase behaviour not only lower costs on the long term, but also enhance business stakeholders’ and consumers’ confidence in high added value products and services. This paper undertakes an interdisciplinary research on how social media (i.e. Facebook) can influence users’ perceptions and buying behaviour related to five categories of ecological products and services (eco-food, eco-tourism, eco-housing, eco-textiles and eco-beauty & cosmetics). This research investigates how ecological products and services could gain popularity and overpass the identified purchasing barriers (e.g. high prices, low awareness, low availability) via superior integration in consumers’ daily experiences with Facebook. The research findings indicate that Facebook represents an effective and innovative environment that could build the necessary links between green attitudes and consumers’ hearts and minds.ecological products & services, Facebook, green attitudes, buying behaviour, eco-food, eco-tourism

Does Facebook’s interface employ narcissism to maximise usage? a critical comparison of the 2008 and 2015 facebook interfaces

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Digital Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016Facebook has become a part of over a billion people’s daily lives, but the mechanisms used by Facebook to keep people using its service may be playing off negative personality traits, one such being narcissism. Studies up to now have not looked at the design of the interface in relation to narcissism and whether or not Facebook is actively exploiting narcissism for its own ends. This study will analyse whether Facebook is deliberately designing an interface that exploits people’s narcissism by reviewing the current research on Facebook and narcissism and then doing a case study that will compare the 2008 interface with the 2015 interface. It will analyse how narcissism is involved in the persuasion strategies employed in each interface by using these four persuasion goals: 1. Create personal profile page 2. Invite friends 3. Respond to other’s contributions 4. Return to the site often The study will compare the features that use design for behavioural change and show whether or not Facebook is continuously designing features that exploit people’s narcissism.GR201

An Examination of the Impact of Gender and Culture on Facebook Privacy and Trust in Guam

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, allows users to develop a profile containing personal information. Users may choose privacy settings to control information access, but improper settings risk personal exposure. Several US studies examining gender differences in privacy management found that females have more privacy concerns. This study investigates gender differences in Facebook privacy settings among college students in Guam, a US territory whose ethnicity and culture differ from mainland US. Results show that neither gender trusts Facebook nor feels Facebook protects them. Significant differences in number and type of privacy settings indicate females are more security conscious. Gender differences exist in three of Hofstede’s five cultural factors, but only Masculinity-Femininity significantly influences perceptions of Facebook Privacy and Facebook Trust. There is also evidence of “privacy paradox” phenomenon. Summarizing for the case in Guam, the findings indicate that culture, in particular Masculinity-Femininity, influences the formation of perceptions regarding both trust in social media and the privacy protection provided by social media, while gender can influence the protective measures actually taken by individuals

A model to classify users of social networks based on PageRank

In this paper, we present a model to classify users of Social Networks. In particular, we focus on Social Network Sites. The model is based on the PageRank algorithm. We use the personalization vector to bias the PageRank to some users. We give an explicit expression of the personalization vector that allows the introduction of some typical features of the users of SNSs. We describe the model as a seven-step process. We illustrate the applicability of the model with two examples. One example is based on real links of a Facebook network. We also indicate how to take into account real actions of Facebook users to implement the model.This work is supported by Spanish DGI grant MTM2010-18674.Pedroche Sánchez, F. (2012). A model to classify users of social networks based on PageRank. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos. 22(7):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218127412501623S114227Arenas, A., Díaz-Guilera, A., Kurths, J., Moreno, Y., & Zhou, C. (2008). Synchronization in complex networks. Physics Reports, 469(3), 93-153. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.09.002BOCCALETTI, S., LATORA, V., MORENO, Y., CHAVEZ, M., & HWANG, D. (2006). Complex networks: Structure and dynamics. Physics Reports, 424(4-5), 175-308. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2005.10.009Boldi, P., Santini, M., & Vigna, S. (2009). PageRank. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 27(4), 1-23. doi:10.1145/1629096.1629097Clauset, A., Shalizi, C. R., & Newman, M. E. J. (2009). Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data. SIAM Review, 51(4), 661-703. doi:10.1137/070710111Criado, R., Flores, J., González-Vasco, M. I., & Pello, J. (2007). Choosing a leader on a complex network. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 204(1), 10-17. doi:10.1016/j.cam.2006.04.024C. De Kerchove and P. Van Dooren, Lectures Notes in Control and Information Sciences 389 (2009) pp. 3–16.Dorogovtsev, S. (2010). Lectures on Complex Networks. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548927.001.0001Easley, D., & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, Crowds, and Markets. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511761942Estrada, E., & Higham, D. J. (2010). Network Properties Revealed through Matrix Functions. SIAM Review, 52(4), 696-714. doi:10.1137/090761070Fortunato, S. (2010). Community detection in graphs. Physics Reports, 486(3-5), 75-174. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2009.11.002Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380. doi:10.1086/225469Haveliwala, T. H. (2003). Topic-sensitive pagerank: A context-sensitive ranking algorithm for web search. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 15(4), 784-796. doi:10.1109/tkde.2003.1208999Langville, A. N., & Meyer, C. D. (2006). Google’s PageRank and Beyond. doi:10.1515/9781400830329Lazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabasi, A.-L., Brewer, D., … Van Alstyne, M. (2009). SOCIAL SCIENCE: Computational Social Science. Science, 323(5915), 721-723. doi:10.1126/science.1167742Lewis, K., Kaufman, J., Gonzalez, M., Wimmer, A., & Christakis, N. (2008). Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com. Social Networks, 30(4), 330-342. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2008.07.002Nan Lin, Dayton, P. W., & Greenwald, P. (1978). Analyzing the Instrumental Use of Relations in the Context of Social Structure. Sociological Methods & Research, 7(2), 149-166. doi:10.1177/004912417800700203Mayer, A., & Puller, S. L. (2008). The old boy (and girl) network: Social network formation on university campuses. Journal of Public Economics, 92(1-2), 329-347. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.09.001Newman, M. (2010). Networks. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206650.001.0001Pedroche Sánchez, F. (2010). Competitivity groups on social network sites. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 52(7-8), 1052-1057. doi:10.1016/j.mcm.2010.02.031Sabater, J., & Sierra, C. (2005). Review on Computational Trust and Reputation Models. Artificial Intelligence Review, 24(1), 33-60. doi:10.1007/s10462-004-0041-5Serra-Capizzano, S. (2005). Jordan Canonical Form of the Google Matrix: A Potential Contribution to the PageRank Computation. SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, 27(2), 305-312. doi:10.1137/s0895479804441407Vasalou, A., Joinson, A. N., & Courvoisier, D. (2010). Cultural differences, experience with social networks and the nature of «true commitment» in Facebook. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(10), 719-728. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.06.00

Instrument unidimensionality, validity and reliability to measure user intention to use of Facebook Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia

Facebook users’ motive encourages them to choose the preferred Facebook page. A motive embedded in an individual can be stimulated to become an action. A motive could also turn into motivation during a particular process. This paper's ultimate purpose is to validate the adequacy of the generated items representing the construct involved in this research. The CFA validation included attitude, subjective norms, behavioural control response, Facebook user's experience, response, and engagement. This research collected 237 valid responses from active Facebook users. Upon finding, the attitude is considered invalid as a construct in this research due to the model fit issue. It can be concluded that in general, the remaining items and constructs are considered valid and reliable to be applied in this research and suitable for the second level (measurement model) analysis for validity and reliability

Facebook Photo Tagging Culture and Practices Among Digital Natives

Social Networking Services (SNS) have gained immense popularity in developing countries like India,where digital natives are actively communicating on these platforms. Understanding the interactionbetween technology systems and digital natives, and proposing guidelines and recommendations for thedevelopment of better systems is highly valuable. Prior research examining users’ motivations and actualusage of photo tagging systems is limited, and predominately focused on Flickr and adult users. In order tounderstand in detail why, how, and with whom users tag digital photos on Facebook, a qualitative essaybasedexploratory study is organized with 67 digital natives in India. The study aims to build understandingof the various gratifications, motivations, experiences, and practices associated with Facebook phototagging, focusing on technologically savvy Indian digital natives. Our results reveal that photo taggingpractices by digital natives vary substantially, especially among gender groups. Facebook photo tagging ispopular among Indian boys, and they are more willing to embrace and use it. Meanwhile, involvement ofIndian girls is considerably limited, as they tend to avoid Facebook photo tagging, mainly due to privacyconcerns, as well as social norms and pressures.Peer reviewe

Social capital and its relationship with Universiti Putra Malaysia undergraduates' Facebook usages

This study envisaged in determining the relationship between the intensity of Facebook usage and social capital among undergraduates at Universiti Putra Malaysia. A number of factors (respondent’s personal and family background, the intensity of Facebook usage and social capital) have been studied with regards to their relationships with each other. Respondents involved 120 male and female undergraduates studying at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), who were selected through a convenience sampling. A self-administered questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. Majority of the respondents were between 21 and 23 years of age, obtained an average of CGPA of 3.05 and came from educated parents (diploma and above), and moderately high household incomes. Pearson correlation was used to test the correlation between the respondent’s personal and family backgrounds with Facebook intensity. Meanwhile, linear regression was used to analyze the strength of the relationship between Facebook intensity and social capital and revealed that all have significant relationships with the intensity of Facebook usage. The linear regression analysis also affirmed that the intensity of the Facebook use (β = 0.274**) has a positive but miniscule effect on the increment of social capital. Relevant factors attributed to findings are also discussed

Tagger's delight? Disclosure and liking in Facebook: the effects of sharing photographs amongst multiple known social circles

The present work identifies the relationship between sharing photographs with different depictions in Facebook on relationship quality, which varies depending on the type of target sharing the photographs. With over 1 billion active users, disclosure on Facebook is frequent, considered a norm of online interaction, and actively encouraged by site providers. The extant academic literature identifies Facebook as an effective tool to connect with known and unknown others, and identifies the differences in sharing behaviour when users are aware of their audience. Operating within a lowest common denominator approach to disclosure on Facebook, the present work identifies the potential consequences to personal relationships when sharing day-to-day information. Results found from a sample of 508 Facebook users suggests individuals should actively adjust their privacy settings to ensure that even amongst flattened information – i.e. that deemed appropriate for release to all target types – disclosure does not harm current and potential relationships. Implications for, users, academic theory and disclosure practice are discussed

Facebook profile picture appearance affects recruiters’ first hiring decisions

We investigate whether the publicly available information on Facebook about job applicants affects employers’ hiring decisions. To this end, we conduct a field experiment in which fictitious job applications are sent to real job openings in Belgium. The only characteristic in which these candidates differ is the unique Facebook profile that can be found online with their name. Candidates with the most beneficial Facebook picture obtain approximately 38% more job interview invitations compared to candidates with the least beneficial picture. In addition, we find suggestive evidence for a higher effect of Facebook profile picture appearance on hiring chances when candidates are highly educated and when recruiters are female