Conversational Agents, Conversational Relevance, and Disclosure: Comparing the Effectiveness of Chatbots and SVITs in Eliciting Sensitive Information

Conversational agents (CAs) in various forms are used in a variety of information systems. An abundance of prior research has focused on evaluating the various traits that make CAs effective. Most studies assume, however, that increasing the anthropomorphism of an agent will improve its performance. In a sensitive information disclosure task, that may not always be the case. We leverage self disclosure, social desirability, and social presence theories to predict how differing modes of conversational agents affect information disclosure. In this paper, we propose a laboratory experiment to compare how the mode of a given CA text based chatbot or voice based smart speaker paired with either high or low levels of conversational relevance, affects the disclosure of personally sensitive information. In addition to understanding influences on disclosure, we aim to break down the mechanisms through which CA design influences disclosure

Crowdsourcing in a Public Organization: Transformation and Culture

Employees increasingly want to participate in the decision-making processes of their organization. Approaches that facilitate organizational participation, such as internal crowdsourcing platforms, can achieve this. However, although organizations of various backgrounds should be able to reap benefits from such systems, in practice, implementation might fail due to an organizational culture built on hierarchical structures, low experience with employee participation and fixed processes. Taking a design science approach, we explore this relation in a five-month case study of a transformational process at a public organization. We design, implement and evaluate an information system for internal crowdsourcing. Based on the results from user-generated content analysis of the proposals and comments, survey data and several in-depth interviews, we observe an IT culture conflict that significantly affects system adoption and use. Our findings contribute to the discussion on theoretical and practical implications for design and implementation of information systems in organizational contexts

When Life Gives You Lemons: How rating scales affect user activity and frustration in collaborative evaluation processes

Initiators of open innovation processes involving customers or employees often face vast amounts of idea proposals. These proposals vary greatly in terms of quality, which is why organizers often engage the users themselves in the evaluation process. Building on the concept of information overload, we evaluate the effects of three distinct rating scales on users’ activity and frustration measures. On the basis of an open innovation campaign for employees of a public-private institution in Germany, we systematically compare the novel “bag of lemons” method with conventional Likert scales and up-down-voting schemes. Our results demonstrate that the “bag of lemons”-approach yields higher levels of user activity, but is also perceived as significantly more frustrating. We find this effect to be fully mediated by perceived information overload, which points to potential avenues for the design of stimulating yet tolerably complex Information Systems for open innovation and rating techniques

Impact of perceived risk and source credibility on intention to use of consumer generated contents for travel planning

In recent years, potential travellers still hesitate to adopt consumer-generated contents (CGC) websites as their main source of information for travel planning purposes. This study investigates the effects of source credibility on risk perceived by social media users to facilitate the use of CGC by potential travellers. Technology acceptance model is used and extended with perceived risk as the antecedent of perceived usefulness and ease of use. Further, two dimensions of source credibility theory namely trustworthiness and expertise are added to the model as determinants of perceived risk. Collected data from 211 Iranian online tourists were analysed using SmartPLS to understand the effect of perceived risk on tourists' behavioural intention to use CGC for future travel planning purposes. The findings of the study showed negative effect of source credibility on risk perceived by potential online tourists. The results has shed more lights on the effects of risk perceived by online tourists on their CGC adoption intention in the context of tourism. It can boost the general understanding of CGC adoption by online tourists for travel planning purposes

Organizational Online Participation

As today’s employees demand higher degrees of involvement in terms of how, when, and where they work, open innovation and (internal) crowdsourcing are being widely adopted. Despite recent efforts by many organizations to implement such systems in order to increase the possibilities for organizational participation, studies have only narrowly explored how their design affects employee opinions and communication as well as how organizational culture influences usage and adoption. This thesis investigates the conditions, capabilities and components for the design of organizational online participation systems, applying a Design Science Research approach. Following a literature review on idea generation, collaboration and evaluation in open innovation processes, we outline success factors for open innovation systems. We validate our success factors in practice by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 experts from mid- and large-cap private and public organizations in Germany. Moreover, we derive three key challenges that guide our subsequent studies. First, we investigate the “Bag of Lemons” approach, a novel rating technique, and compare it to the standard techniques Likert scales and up- and down-voting. Our study with 141 participants in an open innovation engagement at a public-private research organization finds that BOL is perceived as more frustrating than the other two rating techniques, which is partly mediated by the significantly increased information overload. Second, we turn to anonymity in two distinct studies. We analyze the effect of anonymity, as compared to identifiability of user profiles, on communication persuasiveness – operationalized as actual opinion change – in a two-staged online experimental survey with 377 participants. We find anonymity to be a double-edged sword as it decreases perceived social presence, which in turn affects both user involvement as well as perceived user credibility. Thereafter, we investigate the design of a feature for optional anonymous contributions and its effect on participation and the choice of language in an internal crowdsourcing platform. Our analysis of an implementation and five-month test at a public organization with more than 110 employees shows the effectiveness of our “opt-in anonymity” feature as we elicit participation from otherwise reticent employees and no disinhibited language. Third, we analyze the design of an internal crowdsourcing system at this public organization in more detail, focusing on the influence of its organizational culture on usage and acceptance. We assert an IT-culture-conflict, as the organizational values do not match the open and communal approach transposed by the crowdsourcing system. We suggest that organizational online participation is a promising tool to enhance employee involvement, driving innovations and enabling organizational transformation

The Impact of Anonymity on Communication Persuasiveness in Online Participation

As corporations as well as governments employ online discussions in participatory processes, they sometimes allow for anonymous communication. While this may free reticent members\u27 opinions, it may also evoke negative dis-inhibition. Moreover, anonymity may alter the way arguments are perceived with regard to message quality, credibility, and eventually persuasiveness. Our research focuses on how technological as well as social factors in information systems shape human behavior. This research-in-progress article therefore proposes a study design to systematically investigate the effect of user anonymity on communication persuasiveness by varying user identifiability in a corporate discussion platform scenario. Based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion and de-individualization theory, we develop a research model based on the intermediating factors perceived social presence, user credibility, and user involvement. Our model proposes that anonymity decreases social presence and credibility, leading to reduced persuasiveness. We address highly relevant design issues for both platform operators and users