Empirical Findings On Persuasiveness Of Recommender Systems For Customer Decision Support In Electronic Commerce

More and more companies are making online presence by opening online stores and providing customers with company and products information but the overwhelming amount of information also creates information overload for the customers. Customers feel frustrated when given too many choices while companies face the problem of turning browsers into actual buyers. Online recommender systems have been adopted to facilitate customer product search and provide personalized recommendation in the market place. The study will compare the persuasiveness of different online recommender systems and the factors influencing customer preferences. Review of the literature does show that online recommender systems provide customers with more choices, less effort, and better accuracy. Recommender systems using different technologies have been compared for their accuracy and effectiveness. Studies have also compared online recommender systems with human recommendations 4 and recommendations from expert systems. The focus of the comparison in this study is on the recommender systems using different methods to solicit product preference and develop recommendation message. Different from the technology adoption and acceptance models, the persuasive theory used in the study is a new perspective to look at the end user issues in information systems. This study will also evaluate the impact of product complexity and product involvement on recommendation persuasiveness. The goal of the research is to explore whether there are differences in the persuasiveness of recommendation given by different recommender systems as well as the underlying reasons for the differences. Results of this research may help online store designers and ecommerce participants in selecting online recommender systems so as to improve their products target and advertisement efficiency and effectiveness

Organising domestic workers : for decent work and the ILO Convention No. 189

Domestic work is the largest sector of female employment world-wide, yet it is extremely undervalued and unprotected by labour law. Exasperating this situation, the estimated one hundred million domestic workers world-wide have until recently hardly been organised as workers. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how domestic workers, despite these condi-tions, have never the less organised successfully during the past decade. The study is con-ducted as a literature review, a quantitative methodological approach. In order to understand the variety of organisations that have emerged, part two of this the-sis is committed to delineating characteristics and circumstances of domestic work; a dis-tinguishing feature being the private nature of the employment relationship. An overview of the extent of domestic work, the changing concepts of work and identity formation and central regulatory frameworks are provided as background information. First, my findings reveal that the organisations that domestic workers typically organise in fall into two main categories. One is membership based organisations (MBOs) such as tra-ditional unions, associations or community based organisations, characterised by owner-ship and democratic leadership structures. In contrast the second form, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), support and empower from the “outside”, providing invaluable ser-vices. They do not, however, represent domestic workers, but intervene on their behalf. Mixed forms are common, as are changes of organisational forms over time. This thesis finds secondly that domestic workers have built strong international alliances, thereby gaining growing recognition by parts of the international trade union movement. In this context a trend toward unionisation, up-scaling and transnationalisation can be identi-fied. This has been instrumental to domestic workers representation within the structures of the ILO, and the attainment of a sector specific convention. Importantly, the findings indi-cate that domestic workers’ organising efforts and the ILO preparatory mechanisms for the convention have had a mutually reinforcing effect. Domestic workers’ organising has not been focused on the usual counterpart; the employ-ers, who are generally not organised. Further research on labour relations in the domestic work sector could therefore be an analysis of models in the field of collective bargaining.Master in International Social Welfare and Health Polic

A Survey on Fairness-aware Recommender Systems

As information filtering services, recommender systems have extremely enriched our daily life by providing personalized suggestions and facilitating people in decision-making, which makes them vital and indispensable to human society in the information era. However, as people become more dependent on them, recent studies show that recommender systems potentially own unintentional impacts on society and individuals because of their unfairness (e.g., gender discrimination in job recommendations). To develop trustworthy services, it is crucial to devise fairness-aware recommender systems that can mitigate these bias issues. In this survey, we summarise existing methodologies and practices of fairness in recommender systems. Firstly, we present concepts of fairness in different recommendation scenarios, comprehensively categorize current advances, and introduce typical methods to promote fairness in different stages of recommender systems. Next, after introducing datasets and evaluation metrics applied to assess the fairness of recommender systems, we will delve into the significant influence that fairness-aware recommender systems exert on real-world industrial applications. Subsequently, we highlight the connection between fairness and other principles of trustworthy recommender systems, aiming to consider trustworthiness principles holistically while advocating for fairness. Finally, we summarize this review, spotlighting promising opportunities in comprehending concepts, frameworks, the balance between accuracy and fairness, and the ties with trustworthiness, with the ultimate goal of fostering the development of fairness-aware recommender systems.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figure

BlogForever: D2.5 Weblog Spam Filtering Report and Associated Methodology

This report is written as a first attempt to define the BlogForever spam detection strategy. It comprises a survey of weblog spam technology and approaches to their detection. While the report was written to help identify possible approaches to spam detection as a component within the BlogForver software, the discussion has been extended to include observations related to the historical, social and practical value of spam, and proposals of other ways of dealing with spam within the repository without necessarily removing them. It contains a general overview of spam types, ready-made anti-spam APIs available for weblogs, possible methods that have been suggested for preventing the introduction of spam into a blog, and research related to spam focusing on those that appear in the weblog context, concluding in a proposal for a spam detection workflow that might form the basis for the spam detection component of the BlogForever software