Culture in the design of mHealth UI:An effort to increase acceptance among culturally specific groups

Purpose: Designers of mobile applications have long understood the importance of users’ preferences in making the user experience easier, convenient and therefore valuable. The cultural aspects of groups of users are among the key features of users’ design preferences, because each group’s preferences depend on various features that are culturally compatible. The process of integrating culture into the design of a system has always been an important ingredient for effective and interactive human computer interface. This study aims to investigate the design of a mobile health (mHealth) application user interface (UI) based on Arabic culture. It was argued that integrating certain cultural values of specific groups of users into the design of UI would increase their acceptance of the technology. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 135 users responded to an online survey about their acceptance of a culturally designed mHealth. Findings: The findings showed that culturally based language, colours, layout and images had a significant relationship with users’ behavioural intention to use the culturally based mHealth UI. Research limitations/implications: First, the sample and the data collected of this study were restricted to Arab users and Arab culture; therefore, the results cannot be generalized to other cultures and users. Second, the adapted unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model was used in this study instead of the new version, which may expose new perceptions. Third, the cultural aspects of UI design in this study were limited to the images, colours, language and layout. Practical implications: It encourages UI designers to implement the relevant cultural aspects while developing mobile applications. Originality/value: Embedding Arab cultural aspects in designing UI for mobile applications to satisfy Arab users and enhance their acceptance toward using mobile applications, which will reflect positively on their lives.</p

The influence of national culture on the attitude towards mobile recommender systems

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This study aimed to identify factors that influence user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems and to examine how these factors interact with cultural values to affect attitudes towards this technology. Based on the theory of reasoned action, belief factors for mobile recommender systems are identified in three dimensions: functional, contextual, and social. Hypotheses explaining different impacts of cultural values on the factors affecting attitudes were also proposed. The research model was tested based on data collected in China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Findings indicate that functional and social factors have significant impacts on user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems. The relationships between belief factors and attitudes are moderated by two cultural values: collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. The theoretical and practical implications of applying theory of reasoned action and innovation diffusion theory to explain the adoption of new technologies in societies with different cultures are also discussed.National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean governmen

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

An empirical study on university students' continuous utilization of fitness apps in China

University students in China faced great health challenges. Fitness apps based on smartphones have the potential to provide an innovative approach to the university students to increase physical activities and conduct health management. This study examined how confirmed usefulness and confirmed ease of use of fitness Apps affect the attitudes, intention of recommendation, and continuous use of fitness apps among Chinese university students. The study took a quantitative approach, using online questionnaire to collect data from 552 university students who had experiences using fitness Apps. All data analyses were conducted in R. Pearson’s correlation and multiple linear regression were used to examine associations.Results. Both confirmed usefulness and confirmed ease of use were positively associated with attitude towards fitness Apps and intention of recommending fitness apps to others. However, only confirmed usefulness was positively related to frequency of using fitness apps. Confirmed ease of use was not significantly related to frequency of using fitness apps. We recommend future app-based health interventions targeting on university students to pay more attention to the functionality of the apps and integrate professional instructions into the program designs to help users achieve their goal more effectively.Peer Reviewe

How Do Consumers Adopt Imported Products in an Era of Product Overcrowding?

When individuals decide to adopt imported products, they associate these products with one or more places. Thus, consumers are likely to think about the new cultures, ideas, and behaviors associated with these places. When adopting imported products some consumers seek some type of novelty without altering existing decisional and/or behavioral structures whereas other consumers seek novelty to create new consumption situations. Nonetheless, current research has failed to explain how determinant the influence of the product’s place and the process of adopting this product are on consumer’s purchase intention. Therefore, this research analyzes: 1) the influence of the product’s place market development level on consumers’ purchase intention, 2) the process followed by consumers during the adoption of imported products, 3) the effect this process has on consumers’ purchase intention, and 4) the moderating effect of social influence and prior product knowledge on this process. A survey of 491 participants from Mexico and the United States revealed: 1) that significant differences in consumers’ purchase intention are due to the product’s place market development level; 2) that the process followed by consumers during the adoption of imported products represents an explanation chain sequentially described by the consumer attitudes toward that imported product, the behavioral intention to use that imported product, and the selection, evaluation and acceptance of that imported product; 3) that this adoption process has a determinant effect on consumers’ purchase intention for imported products; and 4) that social influence and prior product knowledge also influence consumers purchase intention for imported products. Overall, this research makes a theoretical contribution in three particular ways: 1) by providing an enriched and customized framework to fully understand the product adoption process of consumers when deciding to purchase imported products, 2) by identifying the differences on consumers’ purchase intention due to different levels of market development associated to both, the imported product and the consumer, and 3) by proposing that the product adoption process represents an explanation chain

Consumer responses to imported products: The product adoption process, antecedents, and consequences

When consumers adopt imported products, they may rely on a different adoption process than they do when adopting domestic products, primarily because imported products are developed under different positioning strategies in foreign markets that have different levels of development. Little is known about how the process of adopting imported products differs from that involved in adopting domestic products and to what extent the process influences consumer purchase intention. Several factors influence the adoption process of imported products. The main goals of this research are 1) explaining consumers\u27 purchase intention for imported products, 2) examining the process consumers engage in when adopting imported products, and 3) determining how market context (developed vs. emerging) influences consumers\u27 purchase intention and their product adoption process. The findings of this research indicate that consumer attitude toward imported products explains consumer behavioral intention to use these products, which explains imported product selection, which explains consumer imported product evaluation, which explains the level of consumer acceptance of an imported product. In turn, the adoption process explains the intention of consumers to purchase imported products. This adoption process fits an explanation chain, and thus, this chain brings a unique perspective to the literature by addressing imported product adoption as a continuous process rather than a dichotomous decision. This research shows that consumers in an emerging market show a higher purchase intention level when the imported product is produced in a developed market. Conversely, consumers in a developed market show a similar purchase intention level for all imported products. However, the purchase intention level is higher when the product is domestic and consumers identify their home country as a renowned manufacturer of that product regardless of the market development level of the home country. Yet, contrary to what theory suggests, not all the product adoption process antecedents examined contribute to the explanation of consumer attitude toward imported products. Overall, this research has identified important differences in consumer purchase intention and attitude toward product between adopting a domestic product and adopting an imported product. Such differences are due to the variety of cognitive, affective, and normative influences

An empirical investigation of smartphone technology acceptance among Universiti Utara Malaysia students

This study investigated smartphone technology acceptance among Universiti Utara Malaysian (UUM) students by using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The rapid diffusion of computer technology into smartphone increases smartphone penetration among Universiti Utara Malaysia students. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship of Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU) as independent variables, and Attitude (ATT) and Behavioural intention (BI) as dependent variables on Smartphone Technology Acceptance among Universiti Utara Malaysia students. In addition, in this research Gender was used as a moderator to test the relationship between Attitude (ATT) and Behavioural intention (BI). In order to collect data a total of 500 questionnaires were distributed to (UUM) final year and postgraduate students in three colleges COB, CAS and COLGIS. The hypothesis results showed that there was a significant relationship among the four variables except Gender. This was because Gender failed to moderate in explaining the relationship between Attitude (ATT) and Behavioural intention (BI). On the other hand the statistical result showed that there was partial mediation effect of Perceived Usefulness (PU) on the relationship between Perceived Ease (PEU) of Use and Attitude (ATT) on Smartphone Technology Acceptance among Universiti Utara Malaysian students. Furthermore the researcher found that there was a significant relationship between both the dependent variables - Attitude (ATT) and Behavioural intention (BI) on smartphone technology acceptance among UUM students. The overall finding showed that technology advancement and breakthrough design of smartphone technology are the key factors that attract Universiti Utara Malaysia students to accept smartphone technology. On the other hand, usefulness and ease of use of the smartphone technology play important roles in influencing (UUM) students to have the intention to use smartphone technology in accomplishing their personal tasks. This is because the usefulness of smartphone technology with promising results makes (UUM) students rely heavily on this device

Unravelling technology-acceptance factors influencing farmer use of banana tissue culture planting materials in Central Uganda

Effective management of plant health is fundamental for food and income security to meet the growing demands of local and global markets. This however requires farmers’ adequate access to quality planting materials under the prevailing contextual and psycho-social factors. This study, anchored in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technologies, unravels technology-acceptance factors that influence farmers’ intentions to use banana tissue culture planting materials in the control of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt. Data were collected from 248 randomly sampled banana farmers using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using structural equation modelling to examine hypothesized paths in the uptake of banana tissue culture planting materials. Results show that farmer intentions to use tissue culture planting materials are dependent on two constructs: social influence and farmer innovativeness. However, social influence is the main predictor of intentions to use tissue culture planting materials. In particular, farmer innovativeness mediates facilitating conditions and social influence in predicting intentions to use tissue culture planting materials. Thus, this study reveals two factors that influence farmer intentions to use tissue culture planting materials: social influence and farmer innovativeness. The findings imply that social influence and farmer innovativeness are critical in disseminating novel agricultural technologies in Uganda and elsewhere

College-Level Foreign Language Instructor\u27s Perceptions on the Incorporation of Mobile Technology Devices and Their Learning Applications in Curricula: A Collective Case Study

The purpose of this case study was to understand the integration of mobile technology devices (MTDs) and their learning applications (apps) into foreign-language curricula by foreign-language instructors at two colleges in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The theory guiding this study was Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, which examined how self-efficacy affects college-level foreign language instructors’ integration of MTDs and their learning apps into foreign language curricula. In this project qualitative case study design was used to explore and investigate the issue of having limited technology knowledge and skills to integrate MTDs and their learning apps into foreign language classes. A critical question that this study attempted to answer was how mobile educational technology training improved the way college-level foreign-language teachers delivered effective foreign-language curricula in the classroom. The study took place in two colleges in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. A total of 10 college-level foreign-language instructors from these two colleges were the study participants. Additionally, the research instruments used throughout the study include journal prompts, foreign-language class syllabi, structured interviews, and transcripts from the interviews. Lastly, the researcher applied hand coding to complete an inductive and deductive coding process, including transcribing, categorizing, and analyzing the data collected from the participants. Five themes and fifteen sub-themes emerged from the study, underscoring the positive views of foreign language instructors on integrating MTDs and their learning apps. Yet, obstacles such as lack of training and connectivity issues challenge their full potential to enhance students\u27 self-efficacy in reading, speaking, and listening

Consumer resistance to innovation among public universities' students in Pakistan

Implementations of technological innovations have been playing key roles for firms to grow and survive in the long run particularly in a dynamic and complex market and unstable economic conditions. The success of any innovation in the market which highly depends on consumers could be one of the potential factors behind the failure of the innovation. Research on innovation resistance is still in infancy and effort to describe the resistance as well as understanding the consumers’ resistance to innovation still require in-depth investigations including the context of resistance to innovation. As a response to this problem, this study examines the consumers’ resistance to innovation through measuring the resistance to smartphones. This study is grounded by the resistance to innovation and appraisal theories. In the research framework, this study includes consumers’ characteristics (motivation, self-efficacy, emotion (negative), and attitude towards existing product) and innovation characteristics (relative advantage, perceived risk, complexity, social influence, and price). A cross sectional, survey data was gathered from 307 university students of four public universities in Pakistan via self-administered survey questionnaires. They were statistically tested using PLS (SEM) path modeling. The results demonstrate the concept of consumers’ resistance to innovation in the context of Pakistan. The results also reveal that majority of the main consumers’ and innovation characteristics (complexity, emotion (negative), motivation, price, self-efficacy, social influence, and consumers’ innovativeness (moderator) have significant influence on consumers’ resistance to smartphone. However, three consumers’ and innovation characteristics (relative advantage, perceived risk, and attitude towards existing product) are insignificant with consumers’ resistance to innovation. The significant factors are good predictors of consumers’ resistance to innovation. Based on the findings of the study, the theoretical and practical contributions are described. The limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions for future studies are also deliberately addressed