Three Research Essays on the Effects of Charity Website Design on Online Donations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people\u27s attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3). Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper\u27s High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The central theme of this study is that cues can assume multiple roles, serving as central or peripheral cues, depending on an elaboration state. Moreover, this study asserts that a variable cannot be determined as a central or peripheral cue without consisting the elaboration state and associated theoretical explanations. This study theorizes and empirically tests the multiples roles postulate in the context of charity website and online donations. Using websites as a persuasion channel, this study investigates the effects of charity website quality, consisting of information content quality and system quality, on attitude toward the charity website, which in turn influences willingness to donate to the charity website. In keeping with the multiple roles postulate, this research investigates two charity-specific motivational constructs, personal involvement with charity giving and helper\u27s high as elaboration states, proposing that people with high personal involvement are more likely to be persuaded by information content, including financial, performance, and donation information. Likewise, individuals who reflect greater helper\u27s high, will rely more on system quality characteristics (including navigability, download delay, visual aesthetics, and security) in evaluating and forming their attitudes toward the charity websites. The results of structural equation modeling supported all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by supporting the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivations. Essay 2: Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multi-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Reputation Formation under the Halo Effect The halo effect has been extensively employed to understand how people make judgments of quality about an object. However, there is little research on how people evaluate multi-attribute objects and what types of salient halos exist in their evaluation. In addition, little research has investigated the initial reputation formation of an unknown object. Based on these two research lacuna, the purposes of this study is to identify if there are evidences of various salient halos in evaluating multi-attributes objects and to theorize initial reputation formation. To accomplish these research objectives, this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three dimensions of information contents (mission, financial, and donation assistance information) and four dimensions of system functionalities/features (i.e., navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). This study proposes collective halo, aesthetics halo, two-sided quality halo, quality halo, and reputation halo in the context of charity website evaluation. The results of structural equation modeling and other analyses show evidence of the proposed halos. Essay 3: The Effects of Schema Congruity and Visual Consistency on Social Judgment of Charity Websites Effectively designed websites can positively enhance the donors\u27 perceptions so as to facilitate online donations. Drawing on extensive research on self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric, this study examines the effects of schema congruity (SC) and visual consistency (VC) on the perceived warmth and competence of charity websites. This study theorizes schema-visual congruity, an interaction between SC and VC. Using a controlled lab experiment, this study finds significant main effects of schema congruity and visual consistency on perceived warmth and competence. Also, there is a positive interaction between SC and VC, supporting the need for schema-visual congruity as a determinant of perceived warmth and competence. Consistent with prior eCommerce and donation research, this study finds that positive perceptions of charity websites (i.e., warmth and competence) increase attitude toward donation to the website, which in turn influences donation intention

Principles of Affective Design in Consumers’ Response to Sustainability Design Strategies

The aim of this paper is to explore the generation of consumers’ responses to sustainabilitydesign strategies by considering the principles of affective design. A conceptual model of consumers’response, in which a distinction is made between subjective impressions and behavioral responses,is defined and validated by conducting an experiment. Six wardrobes, representing sustainabilitydesign strategies (refurbishment, adaptability, durability, personalization, maintenance and flexibility)were selected. Eighty-seven participants assessed 14 impressions of the wardrobes including long-life,functional, aesthetic, emotional and environmental aspects as well as behavioral responses (productattachment and willingness to keep). Long-life impressions are more related to willingness to keep,while aesthetic ones are more closely linked to attachment. Practical and emotional impressionsare associated with both behavioral responses. Design strategies and personal concerns have aninfluence on consumer response. These results are expected to help managers and designers promotea sustainable behavior by selecting the most suitable design strategies

Bridging the gap between human and machine trust : applying methods of user-centred design and usability to computer security

This work presents methods for improving the usability of security. The work focuses on trust as part of computer security. Methods of usability and user-centred design present an essential starting point for the research. The work uses the methods these fields provide to investigate differences between machine and human trust, as well as how the technical expressions of trust could be made more usable by applying these methods. The thesis is based on nine publications, which present various possibilities to research trust with user-centric methods. The publications proceed chronologically and logically from the first user interviews about trust, trusting attitudes and behaviours in general to the actual design and usability testing of user interfaces for security applications, finally presenting the outcomes and conclusions of the research. The work also presents a review of relevant previous work in the area, concentrating on work done in the fields of usability and user-centred design. The work is of cross-disciplinary nature, falling into the areas of human-computer interaction, computer science and telecommunications. The ultimate goal of the conducted research has been to find out 1) how trust is to be understood in this context; 2) what methods can be used to gain insight into trust thus defined; and, finally, 3) what means can be used to create trust in the end users in online situations, where trust is needed. The work aims at providing insight into how trust can be studied with the methods provided by user-centred design and usability. Further, it investigates how to take understanding of trust formation in humans into account when attempting to design trust-inducing systems and applications. The work includes an analysis and comparison of the methods used: what kinds of methods to study trust exist in the field of usability and user-centred design. Further, it is evaluated, what kind of results and when can be reached with the different methods available, by applying a variety of these methods. Recommendations for the appropriate application of these methods when studying the various parts of trust is one of the outcomes. The results received with the methods used have also been compared with results received by others by applying alternative methods to the same research questions. On a conceptual level, the work contains an analysis of the concept of trust. It also contains a brief investigation into both technical and humane ways to express trust, with a comparison between the two

The role of omnichannel tendency in digital information processing

Purpose – Nowadays some consumers consider themselves as “omnichannels” – they combine both physical and digital channels expecting a seamless shopping experience – since they view their shopping process from a multiple-channel viewpoint. Giving that situation, the aim of this paper is to test the role of consumers’ omnichannel tendency (omni-tendency) in the information processing in the digital channel. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), emotions as well as utilitarian and hedonic experiences are proposed to understand consumer attitude towards the digital store. Through a survey, data were collected from 284 digital shoppers. PLS path modelling and PLS-MGA were used to test the research hypotheses. Findings – The results confirm that emotions positively affect the evaluation of the experiences, which in turn improves the attitude towards the digital store. Focusing on the differences among consumers, the findings show that for consumers with low omni-tendency the emotions are key to improve the evaluation of their experiences. Moreover, regarding the attitude, consumers with more omni-tendency follow the central route to process the information; and consumers with less omni-tendency follow the peripheral route. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, this research includes the study of omni-tendency, as a consumer trait, in the information processing developed in the digital channel, ignored in the literature. Second, this work contributes to information processing theories in digital context confirming, specifically the applicability of ELM into the omnichannel context. This offers support to the application of traditional theories to explain new phenomena. Third, and in line with the previous contribution, this work goes a step further in understanding ELM theory by including other constructs –the omni-tendency and emotions– to explain the information processing in the digital context

The effect of Visual Design Quality on Player Experience Components in Tablet Games

Research in the field of Human Computer Interaction Design indicates that there is a need to develop further methods, tools, and frameworks for the design and evaluation of digital game interfaces. This thesis aims to design, develop, and evaluate two different types of tablet games with varying visual design quality interfaces to examine users’ perceptions of hedonic quality, visual design, emotions, and game enjoyment in different channels of experience. The design-oriented approach was adopted to combine both creative practice and scientific inquiry in the game design process and empirical evaluation. Hypotheses were formulated to explore the significance of visual design quality in relation to the components of player experience. The study entailed two phases. In the first phase, participatory design methods were employed to design and develop the tablet games encompassing mind-mapping techniques, focus groups, iterative prototyping with multiple cycles of usability testing of user interfaces. In the second phase, survey instruments were applied to collect and analyze data from 111 participants using tablet games as stimuli in a controlled experimental condition. The main contribution of this research is creation of a player experience model, validated in the domain of tablet gaming, to serve as a new theory. This research will allow for game researchers and practitioners to obtain a deeper understanding of the significance of the player experience framework components to create optimal player experience in tablet games. The finding shows that highly attractive game user interfaces were perceived to have higher utility and ease of use. Participants exhibited higher levels of arousal and valence in the high visual design quality interfaces mediated by hedonic quality. Participants who were highly sensitive to visual design did not necessarily derive the highest level of game enjoyment. Participants derived a heightened level of engagement in the arousal channel of experience and the highest level of enjoyment in the flow state. The use of 2.5D graphics and analogous color schemes created a spatial illusion that captivated users' attention. Practitioners are encouraged to design game artifacts with feature sets and mechanics capable of transporting players into the state of flow, as this is the stage where they experience game control, excitement and relaxation in addition to game immersion in the state of arousal

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Aesthetic Automata: Synthesis and Simulation of Aesthetic Behaviour in Cellular Automata

This thesis addresses the computational notion of aesthetics in the framework of multistate two-dimensional cellular automata (2D CA). The measure of complexity is a core concept in computational approaches to aesthetics. Shannon's information theory provided an objective measure of complexity, which led to the emergence of various informational theories of aesthetics. However, entropy fails to take into account the spatial characteristics of 2D patterns; these characteristics are fundamental in addressing the aesthetic problem, in general, and of CA-generated patterns, in particular. This thesis proposes two empirically evaluated alternative measures of complexity, taking into account the spatial characteristics of 2D patterns and experimental studies on human aesthetic perception in the visual domain. The measures are extended to robustly quantify the complexity of multi-state 2D CA-generated patterns. The first model, spatial complexity, is based on the probabilistic spatial distribution of homogeneous/heterogeneous neighbouring cells over the lattice of a multi-state 2D cellular automaton. The second model is based on algorithmic information theory (Kolmogorov complexity) which is extended to estimate the complexity of 2D patterns. The spatial complexity measure presents performance advantage over information-theoretic models, specifically in discriminating symmetries and the orientation in CA-generated patterns, enabling more accurate measurement of complexity in relation to aesthetic evaluations of 2D patterns. A series of experimental stimuli with various structural characteristics and levels of complexity were generated by seeding 3-state 2D CA with different initial configurations for psychological experiments. The results of experimentation demonstrate the presence of correlation between spatial complexity measures and aesthetic judgements of experimental stimuli. The same results were obtained for the estimations of Kolmogorov complexity of experimental stimuli

Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with

Investigating Visitors’ Behavioural Response to Virtual Reality (VR) Retail Environments

This thesis aimed to explore the influence of Virtual Reality (VR) retail environment cues on visitors’ behavioural intentions in the context of urban shopping destinations. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974) were employed as a theoretical foundation given that many researchers have provided substantial evidence on its suitability as a theoretical framework to investigate the effects of various physical and virtual (online/mobile) retail environment cues on human behaviour through the mediating variables of affective and cognitive states. The first step to achieving the aim was to determine the current state of knowledge surrounding this topic. Therefore, relevant literature over four key topic areas was critically reviewed including 1) urban place marketing, particularly within the broader context of urban tourism, 2) retail store environment literature extending to electronic and mobile commerce research, 3) immersive technology, and 4) technology adoption (Objective 1). Then, primary data were collected in two research phases. Research Phase 1 entailed two sets of semi-structured interviews. First, a contrasting case-based approach was employed, and interviews were conducted with seven urban place marketers from three urban place marketing organisations in four urban shopping destinations in the UK (Objective 2). The findings provided initial insights into urban place marketers’ views on the perceived barriers, benefits, internal organisational capability and external pressures associated with immersive technology (VR and Augmented Reality) implementation and their overall intention to adopt these innovative technologies for city marketing. This data was analysed using thematic analysis and four themes and eleven sub-themes emerged including three new context-specific sub-themes (technology access, organisational readiness and industry readiness). Based on these findings, twelve semi-structured interviews with visitors to Manchester City Centre were gathered and aimed to draw out context-specific themes and sub-themes. This data was also analysed using thematic analysis and overall, three themes and thirteen sub-themes emerged including four new sub-themes (virtual aesthetics, virtual atmospherics, social presence and layout design) under the main theme of VR retail environment cues. Accordingly, ten hypotheses were proposed and informed the development of a qualitative VR Visitor Behaviour Model based on S-O-R theory. The aim of Research Phase 2 was to validate the proposed model (Objective 3). To achieve this, survey data were gathered from 150 potential visitors to urban shopping destinations and the data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) (Objective 3). From these findings, a final VR Visitor Behaviour S-O-R Model was proposed, which is the main contribution of this study (Objective 4). The thesis concludes by outlining the theoretical contributions of this research and providing guidance to urban place marketers and VR developers and designers. Finally, avenues for further research based on the identified study limitations are offered