Sustainable Technology: Antecedents and outcomes of households adoption

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Marketing Research and CRMWith the development of cities and growth of a consumerist lifestyle, there are several impacts that human influence has caused on nature. Therefore, environmental concern increases, being important the adoption and development of measures to reduce environmental devastation. With technological evolution, the use of sustainable technologies is a solution. Smart homes have gained special attention in reducing energy consumption, being one of the sectors with a biggest impact on the environment. Few studies were done to understand the consumer perspective on the household adoption of sustainable technologies, specifically regarding smart thermostats. Based on a sample of 327 responses and using the PLS-method, this study aims to understand the relevant dimensions that influence households to adopt smart thermostats, as well as the antecedents and outcomes of that adoption. The results suggest the relevance of internal and external motivators, privacy risks, and comfort to the adoption. Moreover, the adoption of sustainable technologies positively impacts to two major outcomes: perceived well-being and intention to recommend. Comfort and pro-environmental behavior also work as moderators for these two outcomes. Final results allow us to understand households motivation to sustainable technologies adoption, emphasizing their importance in the topic of energy efficiency.Com o desenvolvimento das cidades e crescimento de um estilo de vida consumista, vários são os impactos que a influência humana tem causado na natureza. A preocupação ambiental aumenta, sendo relevante a adoção e desenvolvimento de medidas para diminuir a devastação ambiental. Com a evolução tecnológica, a utilização de tecnologias sustentáveis é uma solução. As casas inteligentes têm ganho especial interesse, especialmente na redução do consumo de energia, sendo este um dos setores com maior impacto no ambiente. Poucas pesquisas foram realizadas para perceber a perspetiva do consumidor na adoção de tecnologias sustentáveis em casa, mais concretamente quanto aos termostatos inteligentes. Baseado numa amostra de 327 respostas e utilizando o método PLS, o presente estudo visa compreender as dimensões que influenciam as famílias à adoção de termóstatos inteligentes, bem como os antecedentes e resultados dessa adoção. A pesquisa sugere a relevância dos motivadores internos e externos, os riscos de privacidade e conforto para a adoção. Além disso, a adoção de tecnologias sustentáveis tem um impacto positivo em dois resultados principais: perceção de bem-estar e intenção de recomendar. O conforto e comportamento pró-ambiental funcionam também como moderadores destes dois resultados. Conclusões finais permitem-nos compreender a motivação das famílias para a adoção de tecnologias sustentáveis, salientando a sua importância no tópico da eficiência energética

The Impacts of Privacy Rules on Users' Perception on Internet of Things (IoT) Applications: Focusing on Smart Home Security Service

Department of Management EngineeringAs communication and information technologies advance, the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way people live. In particular, as smart home security services have been widely commercialized, it is necessary to examine consumer perception. However, there is little research that explains the general perception of IoT and smart home services. This article will utilize communication privacy management theory and privacy calculus theory to investigate how options to protect privacy affect how users perceive benefits and costs and how those perceptions affect individuals??? intentions to use of smart home service. Scenario-based experiments were conducted, and perceived benefits and costs were treated as formative second-order constructs. The results of PLS analysis in the study showed that smart home options to protect privacy decreased perceived benefits and increased perceived costs. In addition, the perceived benefits and perceived costs significantly affected the intention to use smart home security services. This research contributes to the field of IoT and smart home research and gives practitioners notable guidelines.ope

Precision Medicine Informatics: Principles, Prospects, and Challenges

Precision Medicine (PM) is an emerging approach that appears with the impression of changing the existing paradigm of medical practice. Recent advances in technological innovations and genetics, and the growing availability of health data have set a new pace of the research and imposes a set of new requirements on different stakeholders. To date, some studies are available that discuss about different aspects of PM. Nevertheless, a holistic representation of those aspects deemed to confer the technological perspective, in relation to applications and challenges, is mostly ignored. In this context, this paper surveys advances in PM from informatics viewpoint and reviews the enabling tools and techniques in a categorized manner. In addition, the study discusses how other technological paradigms including big data, artificial intelligence, and internet of things can be exploited to advance the potentials of PM. Furthermore, the paper provides some guidelines for future research for seamless implementation and wide-scale deployment of PM based on identified open issues and associated challenges. To this end, the paper proposes an integrated holistic framework for PM motivating informatics researchers to design their relevant research works in an appropriate context.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables, journal pape

Alternative strategies in the delivery of injury prevention health education

"The primary purpose of this study was to identify health education strategies which are effective in increasing the use of protective devices which can prevent injury. The specific protective device studied was the helmet worn by off-road vehicle [including All-Terrain Vehicles [ATVs] and snowmachines] riders in rural Alaska"--Leaf 3.Thesis (Ed. D.)--Boston University, 1996

Antecedents and consequences of Personal Financial Management Behavior: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current state of research on Personal Financial Management Behavior (PFMB), with a prime focus on its antecedents and the consequences. By analyzing the research trends, methods, determinants and outcomes, the PFMB literature is synthesized, and agenda for future research is suggested. A framework is presented that portrays PFMB\u27s antecedents and consequences and further specification of the mediation and moderation linkages. Design/methodology/approach: The review is based on 160 articles published during 1970–2020. It follows a systematic approach and presents the definitions and theories of PFMB, publication trends based on time, region, sample population, research designs, data collection and analysis techniques, along with antecedents and outcomes through content analysis. Findings: The synthesis draws upon various factors affecting PFMB, such as demographics, socio-economic, psychological, social, cultural, financial experience, financial literacy (FL) and technological factors. The prominent outcomes of PFMB include financial satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, quality of life, financial success, happiness, financial vulnerability/resilience and financial well-being. The future research agenda sums up the recommendations in the form of research questions on variables and their linkages, followed by methodological advancements. Originality/value: This paper covers the scholarly work done in this area in the past 51 years. To the best of authors\u27 knowledge, this is the first attempt to offer a most comprehensive and collective scholarship of this subject. It further gives an extensive future research agenda

Situation-oriented requirements engineering

The establishment of smart environments, Internet of Things (IoT) and socio-technical systems has introduced many challenges to the software development process. One such main challenge is software requirements gathering which needs to address issues in a broader spectrum than traditional standalone software development. Consideration of bigger picture that includes software, its domain, the components of the domains and especially the interactions between the software and the surrounding domain components, including both human and other systems entities, is essential to gathering reliable requirements. However, most of the traditional Requirements Engineering approaches lack such comprehensive overlook of the overall view. The main objective of this work is to introduce a human-centered approach to Requirements Engineering in order to push the boundaries of traditional concepts to be more suitable for use in the development of modern socio-technical systems in smart environments. A major challenge of introducing a human-centered approach is to effectively identify the related human factors; especially, since each individual has unique desires, goals, behaviors. Our proposed solution is to use the observational data sets generated by smart environments as a resource to extract individual\u27s unique personalities and behaviors related to the software design. The concept of situations defined in our earlier study is used to represent the human and domain related aspects including human desires, goals, beliefs, interactions with the system and the constrained environment. In the first stage of this work, a computational model called situation-transition structure is developed to understand the discrete factors and behavior patterns of individuals through the observational data. During the second stage, the information mined from the situation transition structure is applied to propose new human-centered approaches to support main Requirements Engineering concepts: requirements elicitation, risk management, and prioritization. The pertinence of the proposed work is illustrated through some case studies. The conclusion asserts some of the future research direction

Willingness to pay for residential PV: reconciling gaps between acceptance and adoption

Photovoltaic (PV) has recorded an impressive development in the last years. The increasing economic potential and further technological improvement will continue to reduce the cost of PV. However, it is not yet well adopted by household customers. Adversely, there is lacking empirical evidence for understanding residential PV adoption behaviour, which this study addresses with empirical research. Although a variety of models can be used to explain social acceptance (SA) and willingness to pay (WTP) for renewable energy, they overlook the connection between SA and WTP in the final purchase decision of a decision-maker. Based on a survey of both SA and WTP in the same observation sample of 2039 Vietnamese residents, this study introduces well-established models with a new linking psychological and economic aspects to measure multiple outcomes involving residential PV behaviours to testing hypotheses with no precedent in the literature. The theoretical and integrative moderated mediation models help to understand residential PV behaviour and suggest solutions for development by revealing how different factors affect SA and WTP in different manners. Environmental interest reveals the predictive power within the SA and WTP behaviour models. Meanwhile, PV knowledge drives SA, but not WTP in Vietnam. Attitude and Perceived behavioural control not only impact SA and WTP directly but also mediate the effect of Environmental interest and SA and WTP. Age & Marital status & Children and Place of residence are important covariates that drive in the SA and WTP models, respectively. Lastly, Income is the covariate in the SA model, but the moderator in the WTP model. In practical implications, this study provides evidence that residential PV is a lifestyle product rather than an economical product, but it is not considered as an essential good for household customers. Thereby, suggestions are given to policymakers and stakeholders to promote market development

What cognitive mechanisms predict travel mode choice? A systematic review with meta-analysis

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.Reduced private car use can limit greenhouse gas emissions and improve public health. It is unclear, however, how promotion of alternative transport choices can be optimised. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to identify potentially modifiable cognitive mechanisms that have been related to car use and use of alternative transport modes. A qualitative synthesis of measures of potentially modifiable mechanisms based on 43 studies yielded 26 conceptually distinct mechanism categories. Meta-analyses of associations between these mechanisms and car use/non-use generated 205 effects sizes (Pearson’s r) from 35 studies. The strongest correlates of car use were intentions, perceived behavioural control, attitudes and habit. The strongest correlates of alternative transportation choices were intentions, perceived behavioural control and attitudes. Implications for researchers and policy implementation are discussed