Virtual world commerce adoption (VWCA) : a case study of second life investigating the impacts of perceived affordances, trust, and need satisfaction

Virtual worlds are computer-simulated worlds in which multi-players can simultaneously interact in a rich graphical environment. The development of virtual worlds, along with the massive growth of users, creates opportunities for business organizations. This dissertation involves many studies regarding virtual world adoption in business by virtual consumers. Most of the research in Information Systems (IS) was conducted investigating factors influencing technology adoption, such as ease of use and usefulness, subjective norms and behavioral controls, self-efficacy, performance and effort expectancy, flow, etc. However, most of these research studies focused neither on design aspects related to affordances nor users\u27 goal-oriented behaviors, such as need satisfaction. This dissertation examines the effect of affordances, referring to a property of an object, animal, or environment that affords, or makes available certain actions. Particularly, this dissertation investigates the users\u27 perceived affordance of virtual products and environments, in which business transactions take place. In addition, relationship-based trust and need satisfaction are considered as crucial determinants of virtual world commerce adoption in this dissertation. There are three studies that were conducted in Second Life in this dissertation, which are two preliminary studies and a main study. The preliminary studies use multiple data collection methods, including user interviews, documentation, direct observations, and questionnaire surveys. The results of the preliminary studies suggest that trust, social influence, system security, system quality, and service quality are vital for users when they make purchase decisions. The initial measurement model containing valid and reliable measurement scales of the main research constructs was proposed. The main study, using a revised questionnaire survey from the preliminary studies, was conducted to develop the conceptual framework of Virtual World Commerce Adoption (VWCA). Covariance-based and PLS-based path analyses were employed based on the data obtained from the participants who have different experience levels with online business transactions. The final results show a significant relationship between perceived affordances and intention to purchase products in the virtual world. This relationship is mediated by need satisfaction. However, the mediating effect of relationship-based trust is not significant. This is due to more concern about trust related to technical aspects of the system rather than trust from social exchange process

Nudging Online Security Behaviour with Warning Messages: Results from an online experiment

This study is part of a larger effort to better understand online behaviour. We tested the effect on people’s security behaviour of different ways of warning them about cybersecurity threats with an online experiment (n=5,065) in Germany, Sweden, Poland, the UK and Spain. Participants had to make a purchase in a mock online store, and their behaviour was observed through four behavioural measures. Results show that making users aware of the steps they can take to minimise their exposure to risk is effective in generating more secure behaviour, as suggested by protection motivation theory. Gain and loss-framed messages, and a message with a male anthropomorphic character, also had some effect on behaviour compared to the control group. The study also included a questionnaire. Results showed that more risk-averse participants exhibited more cautious behaviour. Finally, although they influenced behaviour itself, warning messages based on behavioural insights did not affect participants' self-reported knowledge of how to prevent cyberattacks.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

Enhancing Privacy through the Visual Design of Privacy Notices: Exploring the Interplay of Curiosity, Control and Affect

Privacy policies are the initial communicators of the services' data handling practices. Yet, their design seldom ensures users' privacy comprehension or provides people with choices around their information management, resulting in negative feelings associated with the sign-up process. In this paper, we investigate how to improve these conditions to enhance privacy comprehension and management, while inducing more positive feelings towards privacy notices. In an online experiment (N=620), we examine factors active during privacy interactions: curiosity, privacy concerns, trust, and time. We study how, together with framing and control incorporated in visual designs of notices, these factors influence privacy comprehension, intention to disclose, and affect (negative-positive valence). Our results show that, depending on an individual's level of curiosity, control can influence privacy comprehension, disclosure, and valence. We demonstrate the moderating ability of valence on privacy concerns, indirectly affecting disclosures. We elaborate on the results, highlighting how privacy notices designed to activate curiosity and provide control, could enhance usability and strengthen privacy-conscious behaviors. We argue that future work should study affect to further the knowledge of its role in cognitive processing resulting from privacy interactions

Enhancing Privacy through the Visual Design of Privacy Notices: Exploring the Interplay of Curiosity, Control and Affect

Privacy policies are the initial communicators of the services' data handling practices. Yet, their design seldom ensures users' privacy comprehension or provides people with choices around their information management, resulting in negative feelings associated with the sign-up process. In this paper, we investigate how to improve these conditions to enhance privacy comprehension and management, while inducing more positive feelings towards privacy notices. In an online experiment (N=620), we examine factors active during privacy interactions: curiosity, privacy concerns, trust, and time. We study how, together with framing and control incorporated in visual designs of notices, these factors influence privacy comprehension, intention to disclose, and affect (negative-positive valence). Our results show that, depending on an individual's level of curiosity, control can influence privacy comprehension, disclosure, and valence. We demonstrate the moderating ability of valence on privacy concerns, indirectly affecting disclosures. We elaborate on the results, highlighting how privacy notices designed to activate curiosity and provide control, could enhance usability and strengthen privacy-conscious behaviors. We argue that future work should study affect to further the knowledge of its role in cognitive processing resulting from privacy interactions

From interactions to transactions : designing the trust experience for business-to-consumer electronic commerce

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Conceptualisation and development of the admin-avatar taxonomy : antecedents, attitudinal and behavioural consequences

Academics and practitioners have increasingly acknowledged the significance of the consumer–brand relationship in both traditional and online contexts. However, the impersonal nature of the online environment is considered to be a hindrance in the development of the brand–consumer relationship. The literature suggests that strong relationship outcomes depend on successful relationship marketing tactics. Admin-avatar concept is a new concept -firstly emerged in this research- which can be used as a technological and marketing tactic. Admin-avatar can embody consumer-facing employees and mimic their real-life roles on companies’ websites, thereby playing a key role in enhancing the relationships between consumers and brands in the online environment. Despite the importance of this technology, very little attention has been paid to the investigation of the admin-avatar concept from a marketing perspective. Following a systematic review of the literature found in 10 major electronic databases and published between 1993 and 2013, significant gaps in literature were identified. Specifically, this research examines the nature of the admin-avatar concept, including its main characteristics, dimensions, and conditions as well as the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of admin-avatar users.Adopting the mixed methods design, a taxonomy was developed from interviews (qualitative phase) which laid the foundation for the development of the admin-avatar framework. Spiggle’s (1994) framework was adopted for the qualitative data analysis. A conceptual framework was developed and built on the theoretical foundations of reasoned action theory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The admin-avatar framework was empirically tested through a series of lab-based experiments (quantitative phase). Following a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to purify the scales, determine the dimensionality of the constructs and support their convergent and discriminant validity. The context used for this study was the university admissions admin-avatar. propositions were tested using repeated measures (first experimental deign study), factorial design (second experimental deign study) and serial mediation techniques for both experimental studies. The results mostly support the taxonomy developed from the qualitative phase.This thesis contributes to the new technology in marketing and practice, specifically by: (1) providing a clear and comprehensive definition of the admin-avatar concept, (2) developing a comprehensive taxonomy of admin-avatar that enriches the area of new technology in marketing by the further investigations by applying the taxonomy to other contexts (e.g., schools, banks, retails and other commercial companies), and (3) confirming the notion that the addition of an admin-avatar will transform the consumer attitude towards the website and the brand. Furthermore, the addition of an admin-avatar will prompt consumers to engage in voluntary behaviours such as saying positive things about the organisation/brand (word of mouth) and recommending the brand and its products to other potential consumers (recommendation). In other words, adding the admin-avatar on the brand website will significantly change the attitudes of brand’s consumers. These positive attitudes will encourage consumers to do voluntary behviours for the brand. From a practical perspective, these findings offer practitioners a clearer and richer understanding of the admin-avatar, facilitating appropriate designs for admin-avatar(s). The findings of this research also give practitioners clear insights into the main advantages of the admin-avatar, such as the degree of its convenience (e.g., quickness and effortless), hedonism (excitement) and attractiveness

Évaluation de la confiance dans la collaboration à large échelle

Large-scale collaborative systems wherein a large number of users collaborate to perform a shared task attract a lot of attention from both academic and industry. Trust is an important factor for the success of a large-scale collaboration. It is difficult for end-users to manually assess the trust level of each partner in this collaboration. We study the trust assessment problem and aim to design a computational trust model for collaborative systems. We focused on three research questions. 1. What is the effect of deploying a trust model and showing trust scores of partners to users? We designed and organized a user-experiment based on trust game, a well-known money-exchange lab-control protocol, wherein we introduced user trust scores. Our comprehensive analysis on user behavior proved that: (i) showing trust score to users encourages collaboration between them significantly at a similar level with showing nick- name, and (ii) users follow the trust score in decision-making. The results suggest that a trust model can be deployed in collaborative systems to assist users. 2. How to calculate trust score between users that experienced a collaboration? We designed a trust model for repeated trust game that computes user trust scores based on their past behavior. We validated our trust model against: (i) simulated data, (ii) human opinion, and (iii) real-world experimental data. We extended our trust model to Wikipedia based on user contributions to the quality of the edited Wikipedia articles. We proposed three machine learning approaches to assess the quality of Wikipedia articles: the first one based on random forest with manually-designed features while the other two ones based on deep learning methods. 3. How to predict trust relation between users that did not interact in the past? Given a network in which the links represent the trust/distrust relations between users, we aim to predict future relations. We proposed an algorithm that takes into account the established time information of the links in the network to predict future user trust/distrust relationships. Our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on real-world signed directed social network datasetsLes systèmes collaboratifs à large échelle, où un grand nombre d’utilisateurs collaborent pour réaliser une tâche partagée, attirent beaucoup l’attention des milieux industriels et académiques. Bien que la confiance soit un facteur primordial pour le succès d’une telle collaboration, il est difficile pour les utilisateurs finaux d’évaluer manuellement le niveau de confiance envers chaque partenaire. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions le problème de l’évaluation de la confiance et cherchons à concevoir un modèle de confiance informatique dédiés aux systèmes collaboratifs. Nos travaux s’organisent autour des trois questions de recherche suivantes. 1. Quel est l’effet du déploiement d’un modèle de confiance et de la représentation aux utilisateurs des scores obtenus pour chaque partenaire ? Nous avons conçu et organisé une expérience utilisateur basée sur le jeu de confiance qui est un protocole d’échange d’argent en environnement contrôlé dans lequel nous avons introduit des notes de confiance pour les utilisateurs. L’analyse détaillée du comportement des utilisateurs montre que: (i) la présentation d’un score de confiance aux utilisateurs encourage la collaboration entre eux de manière significative, et ce, à un niveau similaire à celui de l’affichage du surnom des participants, et (ii) les utilisateurs se conforment au score de confiance dans leur prise de décision concernant l’échange monétaire. Les résultats suggèrent donc qu’un modèle de confiance peut être déployé dans les systèmes collaboratifs afin d’assister les utilisateurs. 2. Comment calculer le score de confiance entre des utilisateurs qui ont déjà collaboré ? Nous avons conçu un modèle de confiance pour les jeux de confiance répétés qui calcule les scores de confiance des utilisateurs en fonction de leur comportement passé. Nous avons validé notre modèle de confiance en relativement à: (i) des données simulées, (ii) de l’opinion humaine et (iii) des données expérimentales réelles. Nous avons appliqué notre modèle de confiance à Wikipédia en utilisant la qualité des articles de Wikipédia comme mesure de contribution. Nous avons proposé trois algorithmes d’apprentissage automatique pour évaluer la qualité des articles de Wikipédia: l’un est basé sur une forêt d’arbres décisionnels tandis que les deux autres sont basés sur des méthodes d’apprentissage profond. 3. Comment prédire la relation de confiance entre des utilisateurs qui n’ont pas encore interagi ? Etant donné un réseau dans lequel les liens représentent les relations de confiance/défiance entre utilisateurs, nous cherchons à prévoir les relations futures. Nous avons proposé un algorithme qui prend en compte les informations temporelles relatives à l’établissement des liens dans le réseau pour prédire la relation future de confiance/défiance des utilisateurs. L’algorithme proposé surpasse les approches de la littérature pour des jeux de données réels provenant de réseaux sociaux dirigés et signé

Cultural effect on electronic consumer behaviour: the effect of uncertainty avoidance on online trust for the Egyptian Internet users

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The ubiquitous nature of e-commerce demands an innovative conceptualization of consumer behaviour that responds to various cultural preferences. Culture has been identified as an underlying determinant of consumer behaviour, and this extends to ecommerce. This research investigates this phenomenon for the Egyptian consumer. This research designed a plausible, integrated framework for investigating the target phenomenon, especially for un-explored cultures. To help to identify salient components of the phenomenon, a three-study exploratory phase, that included: interviews, a survey, and card sorting sessions, was undertaken. The exploratory results highlighted the roles of trust, uncertainty avoidance, Internet store familiarity, and reputation as the main salient factors affecting the perception of the targeted group toward e-commerce. The research hypotheses were then developed based on the exploratory results. Finally, a model testing phase to empirically assess the research hypotheses through a laboratory experiential survey with 370 Egyptian Internet users was undertaken. The experiential survey results support the significant role of the Internet store’s perceived familiarity and reputation as the main antecedents of online trust. The relationship between trust and its two antecedents are found to be culturally sensitive; the high uncertainty avoidance of the consumer is found to be associated with a stronger effect of the store’s reputation on trust, and a stronger effect of store’s familiarity on trust. The research also highlights the significant effect of trust on the attitude towards and the willingness to buy from an e-commerce site. This research, by providing an understanding of the cultural drivers of e-commerce, contributes to building a theory of consumer’s cultural trust within an Internet store context. The research reports on the development of an integrated cultural trust model that highlights recommendations for expanding the adoption of e-commerce. The systematic research framework, introduced by this research, can be a robust starting point for further related work in this area