Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach

A prior study showed that mobile viral marketing is an important issue of mobile marketing. Using a multicase study research approach, we introduce a typology of four standard types of mobile viral marketing and extract eight success factors for this new form of marketing. As a final step, we structure the relationship between both, showing success factors’significance in different standard types and deriving a success factor framework. We conclude with a consideration of research implications.

Experimental designs for environmental valuation with choice-experiments: A Monte Carlo investigation

We review the practice of experimental design in the environmental economics literature concerned with choice experiments. We then contrast this with advances in the field of experimental design and present a comparison of statistical efficiency across four different experimental designs evaluated by Monte Carlo experiments. Two different situations are envisaged. First, a correct a priori knowledge of the multinomial logit specification used to derive the design and then an incorrect one. The data generating process is based on estimates from data of a real choice experiment with which preference for rural landscape attributes were studied. Results indicate the D-optimal designs are promising, especially those based on Bayesian algorithms with informative prior. However, if good a priori information is lacking, and if there is strong uncertainty about the real data generating process - conditions which are quite common in environmental valuation - then practitioners might be better off with conventional fractional designs from linear models. Under misspecification, a design of this type produces less biased estimates than its competitors

Persuasive technology for improving information security awareness and behavior: literature review

The use of Persuasive Technology in various fields is rapidly increasing. It can be applied in many fields such as computing, marketing, sales, environment, education, and health. Persuasive Technology has been found effective in bringing a required change in users' behaviors and attitudes. However, the use of persuasive technology is scarce in the field of Information Security awareness. This paper reviews extensive literature review which focuses on a perspective on how to create awareness among users for good information security practices by applying Persuasive Technology techniques and approaches. The conceptual findings suggest there is a tremendous potential of Persuasive Technology to be applied to persuade users to change their behavior and perception toward Information Security practices

LOOKING BENEATH THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG: THE TWO-SIDED NATURE OF CHATBOTS AND THEIR ROLES FOR DIGITAL FEEDBACK EXCHANGE

Enterprises are forecasted to spend more on chatbots than on mobile app development by 2021. Up to today little is known on the roles chatbots play in facilitating feedback exchange. However, digitization and automation put pressure on companies to setup digital work environments that enable reskilling of employees. Therefore, a structured analysis of feedback-related chatbots for Slack was conducted. Our results propose six archetypes that reveal the roles of chatbots in facilitating feedback exchange on performance, culture and ideas. We show that chatbots do not only consist of conversational agents integrated into instant messenger but are tightly linked to complementary front-end systems such as mobile and web apps. Like the upper part of an iceberg, the conversational agent is above water and visible within the chat, whereas many user interactions of feedback-related chatbots are only possible outside of the instant messenger. Further, we extract six design principles for chatbots as digital feedback systems. We do this by analyzing chatbots and linking empirically observed design features to (meta-)requirements derived from explanatory theory on feedback, self-determination and persuasive systems. The results suggest that chatbots benefit the social environment of conversation agents and the richness of the graphical user interface of external applications

The Problem-Based Learning Approach towards Developing Soft Skills: A Systematic Review

In this paper, we review systematically the role of problem-based learning (PBL) in developing soft skills in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and other fields of studies. The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) includes the most recent empirical, review, and conceptual studies from TVET and other multiple fields of studies including medicine, humanities, and engineering between the years of 2001 and 2016 collected from four databases. A qualitative method was used to accomplish the systematic review. After the collection of articles, the selected studies were analyzed through thematic analysis. From this review, we concluded that PBL as an instructional approach has a significant role in the development of soft skills among students of various disciplines including TVET; empirical evidence is predominantly conclusive in identifying the acquisitions of various soft skills including communication skills, conflict resolution skills, leadership skills, and interpersonal skills, and finally, several factors might influence the relationship of PBL and soft skills such as duration and process of PBL instruction, role of facilitator, and awareness and training of learners. Moreover, there are fewer number of empirical studies on the role and effects of PBL approach to developing soft skills in TVET

The dual pathway to information avoidance in information systems use

This article develops an explanatory model of information avoidance behavior from extant theory and examines its hypotheses using psychophysiological methods. It integrates existing but partially conflicting explanations into a coherent positivist model based on Coping Theory. The existence of two distinct but interlinked causal pathways to information avoidance will be outlined. Both pathways are cause by defects in the information quality. The first pathway is grounded on being threatened by the information’s inconsistency. The second pathway is based on being distressed by the information’s complexity. Due to the involvement of cognition as well as affect, the usefulness of traditional measurement methods alone is deemed to be limited. Thus, we will draw upon recent advances from NeuroIS research in order to integrate psychophysiological measures into an extended, triangulated measurement protocol. This article intends to contribute to this special issue in three ways. First, it shapes a theoretical model for studying information avoidance which has received little attention in IS research. Second, it exemplifies the derivation and instantiation of a NeuroIS measurement model and the selection of appropriate NeuroIS methods for scrutinizing the theoretical information avoidance model. Third, based on the evidence of an experiment, it provides guidelines for how to conduct eye-tracking, pupillometry, and facial electromyography measurements as well as how to subsequently derive meaning from the initial data collected

Risks, alternative knowledge strategies and democratic legitimacy: the conflict over co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in Portugal.

The decision to incinerate hazardous industrial waste in cement plants (the socalled ‘co-incineration’ process) gave rise to one of the most heated environmental conflicts ever to take place in Portugal. The bitterest period was between 1997 and 2002, after the government had made a decision. Strong protests by residents, environmental organizations, opposition parties, and some members of the scientific community forced the government to backtrack and to seek scientific legitimacy for the process through scientific expertise. The experts ratified the government’s decision, stating that the risks involved were socially acceptable. The conflict persisted over a decade and ended up clearing the way for a more sustainable method over which there was broad social consensus – a multifunctional method which makes it possible to treat, recover and regenerate most wastes. Focusing the analysis on this conflict, this paper has three aims: (1) to discuss the implications of the fact that expertise was ‘confiscated’ after the government had committed itself to the decision to implement co-incineration and by way of a reaction to the atmosphere of tension and protest; (2) to analyse the uses of the notions of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’ in scientific reports from both experts and counter-experts’ committees, and their different assumptions about controllability and criteria for considering certain practices to be sufficiently safe for the public; and (3) to show how the existence of different technical scientific and political attitudes (one more closely tied to government and the corporate interests of the cement plants, the other closer to the environmental values of reuse and recycling and respect for the risk perception of residents who challenged the facilities) is closely bound up with problems of democratic legitimacy. This conflict showed how adopting more sustainable and lower-risk policies implies a broader view of democratic legitimacy, one which involves both civic movements and citizens themselves