Critical factors affecting consumer acceptance of online health communication: an application of service quality models

The paper examines critical factors affecting consumer behavioral intentions in accepting online health communication through social networking sites. Unlike recent research under this topic, the paper assimilates some components of service quality dimensions and consumer behavior theories. The paper employs factor analysis and structural equation modelling analysis with latent variables to identify critical factors from the survey data collected from Korean consumers. The results of the study identifies three major constructs: consumer needs for health information, the perceived value of tangible attributes of health information providers, and the perceived value of intangible attributes of health information providers. The results show that consumer needs for health information and the tangible and intangible attributes of health information providers should be considered as important antecedents of accepting online health communication through social networking sites. The findings suggest that the success of online health communication via social networking sites largely depends on the tangible and intangible attributes of health information providers

Antecedents of acceptance of social networking sites in retail franchise and restaurant businesses

The paper examines the antecedents of acceptance of social networking sites in retail franchise and restaurant businesses. The success of retail franchise and restaurant business oper-ators via social networking sites depends not only on organiza-tional benefits but also on their behavioral intentions of using it. Three hundred and twenty four samples collected from South Korean retail franchise and restaurant employees are analyzed using factor analysis, structural equation model techniques and one-way analysis of variance. The results of the study identify the three constructs of organizational benefits, perceived tangible assets and perceived intangible assets as for important ante-cedents to accept social networking sites for their business use. Moreover, higher position employees tend to have more favor-able perception of tangible assets and acceptance of social net-working sites for their business use

Vodcast Impact on Students\u27 Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions

Purpose: This paper uses structural equation modeling to assess the effectiveness of Vodcasts (video podcasts) as part of a university’s communication strategy with prospective students. Design/methodology/approach: Three theoretical models were tested using a structural equation model. Findings: We find that perceived informativeness, credibility, and irritation of the advertising are directly related to the value of the Vodcast advertising. However of those three factors, only the informativeness is directly related to the intent to take further action toward enrollment. In addition, while prior work has suggested that perceived entertainment of advertising positively influences its perceived value, we find that for these university Vodcasts, perceived entertainment is not a statistically significant factor. Research limitations/implications: The results suggest that for Vodcasts used for these purposes, less attention should be given to entertainment value, and more attention should be focused on providing useful information in a manner that is credible and not irritating to students. Originality/value: Vodcasts have become part of the Internet multimedia experience and have been integrated into universities’ web-based promotion strategies. While prior work has examined general advertising on the web, few studies have considered the impact of the interactive medium of Vodcasts on attitudes and behavioral intentions

Using Job Embeddedness Factors to Explain Voluntary Turnover in Five European Countries

This paper investigates actual voluntary turnover from the employee's perspective using a large European dataset integrating the available job factors related to job embeddedness and other variables that have been related to turnover in previous turnover models. The study shows that the traditional turnover model, where ease of movement and desire of movement are regarded as important predictors of turnover, receives support. However, the study also shows the job embeddedness factors play a key role in predicting turnover as well, even after the role of demographic and ease and desire of movement variables are taken into consideration. Thus, this shows that the turnover decision is not only about the individual's attitudes towards work or about the actual opportunities in the labor market, but these decisions are the result of an analysis of complex web of factors that are labeled job embeddedness.

Online help-seeking in communities of practice

Interactive online help systems are considered to be a fruitful supplement to traditional IT helpdesks, which are often overloaded. They often comprise user-generated FAQ collections playing the role of technology-based conceptual artifacts. Two main questions arise: how the conceptual artifacts should be used, and which factors influence their acceptance in a community of practice (CoP). Firstly, this paper offers a theoretical frame and a usage scenario for technology-based conceptual artifacts against the theoretical background of the academic help-seeking and CoP approach. Each of the two approaches is extensively covered by psychological and educational research literature, however their combination is not yet sufficiently investigated. Secondly, the paper proposes a research model explaining the acceptance of conceptual artifacts. The model includes users’ expectations towards the artifact, perceived social influence and users’ roles in the CoP as predictors of artifact use intention and actual usage. A correlational study conducted in an academic software users’ CoP and involving structural equations modeling validates the model, suggesting thus a research line that is worth further pursuing. For educational practice, the study suggests three ways of supporting knowledge sharing in CoPs, i.e. use of technology-based conceptual artifacts, roles and division of labor, and purposeful communication in CoPs

A conceptual model of channel choice: measuring online and offline shopping value perceptions

This study tries to understand how consumers evaluate channels for their purchasing. Specifically, it develops a conceptual model that addresses consumer value perceptions of using the Internet versus the traditional (physical) channel. Previous research showed that perceptions of price, product quality, service quality and risk strongly influence perceived value and purchase intentions in the offline and online channel. Perceptions of online and offline buyers can be analyzed to see how value is constructed in both channels. This model enables comparisons between online and offline shoppers perceptions. As such, it is possible to determine the factors that encourage or prevent consumers to engage in online shopping.

The Relationship Between Job Search Objectives and Job Search Behavior

This research expands the notion of “job search” beyond traditional models of searching for an alternative yet similar job, arguing that motivations for search are varied. Specifically, we investigate whether search objectives associate with use of different search processes. A study of high-level managers found mixed support for the hypotheses

“You’re Nobody ‘til Somebody Loves You”: The Use of Job Search for Bargaining Leverage

The purpose of this research is to investigate a previously overlooked yet important objective for an employee engaging in job search – seeking alternative employment to obtain leverage against the current employer. We focus specifically on how employees conduct job search to obtain leverage, and then turn to the question of what motivates employees to adopt this objective. Using a sample of high-level managers, our results indicate the leverage-seeking job search predicts both preparatory and active search beyond the more traditional reason for engaging in job search (i.e., to change jobs). However, as expected, leverage-seeking search was a weaker predictor of the job search processes compared to searching to leave and was not significantly related to job satisfaction. Hierarchical level, perceived alternatives, financial independence, and the meaning attached to money significantly predicted leverage-seeking search, while compensation level, equity, and career plateau showed little effect. Implications for practice and future research on job search and employee retention more generally are discussed

Characterizing Pedophile Conversations on the Internet using Online Grooming

Cyber-crime targeting children such as online pedophile activity are a major and a growing concern to society. A deep understanding of predatory chat conversations on the Internet has implications in designing effective solutions to automatically identify malicious conversations from regular conversations. We believe that a deeper understanding of the pedophile conversation can result in more sophisticated and robust surveillance systems than majority of the current systems relying only on shallow processing such as simple word-counting or key-word spotting. In this paper, we study pedophile conversations from the perspective of online grooming theory and perform a series of linguistic-based empirical analysis on several pedophile chat conversations to gain useful insights and patterns. We manually annotated 75 pedophile chat conversations with six stages of online grooming and test several hypothesis on it. The results of our experiments reveal that relationship forming is the most dominant online grooming stage in contrast to the sexual stage. We use a widely used word-counting program (LIWC) to create psycho-linguistic profiles for each of the six online grooming stages to discover interesting textual patterns useful to improve our understanding of the online pedophile phenomenon. Furthermore, we present empirical results that throw light on various aspects of a pedophile conversation such as probability of state transitions from one stage to another, distribution of a pedophile chat conversation across various online grooming stages and correlations between pre-defined word categories and online grooming stages