Designing Persuasive Avatars in mHealth for Arabic Culture: A Qualitative Study

Open innovation is built on the core principles of interactions, interdependence and exchange of knowledge. Clusters are believed to support organisations’ efforts to explore and source external knowledge, commercialise internal innovations and cause externalities through commercial activities. Early research on the innovation capabilities of regional clusters in Europe provides limited understandings of these cluster-based effects through which open innovation is fostered. This study investigates the role of clusters on open innovation practices relating to exploration and exploitation of external knowledge, knowledge sharing, acquisition and sale of IP rights of Indian IT organisations. The results reveal that organisations within a close geographic proximity actively participate in inbound and outbound activities and perform better in terms of innovation performance compared to the organisations outside the cluster. The findings are relevant to both the IT clusters and the IT innovation literature as this study sheds light on the role of clusters in improving an organisation’s innovation capabilities through open innovation

Perceiving Sociable Technology: Exploring the Role of Anthropomorphism and Agency Perception on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

With the arrival of personal assistants and other AI-enabled autonomous technologies, social interactions with smart devices have become a part of our daily lives. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to understand how these social interactions emerge, and why users appear to be influenced by them. For this reason, I explore questions on what the antecedents and consequences of this phenomenon, known as anthropomorphism, are as described in the extant literature from fields ranging from information systems to social neuroscience. I critically analyze those empirical studies directly measuring anthropomorphism and those referring to it without a corresponding measurement. Through a grounded theory approach, I identify common themes and use them to develop models for the antecedents and consequences of anthropomorphism. The results suggest anthropomorphism possesses both conscious and non-conscious components with varying implications. While conscious attributions are shown to vary based on individual differences, non-conscious attributions emerge whenever a technology exhibits apparent reasoning such as through non-verbal behavior like peer-to-peer mirroring or verbal paralinguistic and backchanneling cues. Anthropomorphism has been shown to affect users’ self-perceptions, perceptions of the technology, how users interact with the technology, and the users’ performance. Examples include changes in a users’ trust on the technology, conformity effects, bonding, and displays of empathy. I argue these effects emerge from changes in users’ perceived agency, and their self- and social- identity similarly to interactions between humans. Afterwards, I critically examine current theories on anthropomorphism and present propositions about its nature based on the results of the empirical literature. Subsequently, I introduce a two-factor model of anthropomorphism that proposes how an individual anthropomorphizes a technology is dependent on how the technology was initially perceived (top-down and rational or bottom-up and automatic), and whether it exhibits a capacity for agency or experience. I propose that where a technology lays along this spectrum determines how individuals relates to it, creating shared agency effects, or changing the users’ social identity. For this reason, anthropomorphism is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to support future interactions with smart technologies

BYPASSING TRUST IN ONLINE PURCHASE DECISIONS BY ESTABLISHING COMMON GROUND

Revenue from ecommerce represents a multi-billion dollar industry in rapid expansion. Old and new players in this burgeoning market must foster purchase intentions in potential consumers in order to stay afloat. Until now, trust has acted as the lone gatekeeper to purchase intentions. In this study we suggest an alternative gate through establishing common ground with product reviewers. Common ground is a multidimensional construct from the fields of cognitive science that refers to the mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions shared during communication (Clark 1996; Clark et al. 1983). Using PLS to analyze results from 102 online surveys, we distinguish between common ground and homophily (similarity of attributes), and show what role each plays in ecommerce. Our findings support our recommendation to measure common ground and homophily separately. Lastly, we find that purchase intentions can be fostered in potential customers through establishing common ground—regardless of levels of trust

Whom Do You Want to Be Friends With: An Extroverted or an Introverted Avatar? Impacts of the Uncanny Valley Effect and Conversational Cues

With the rapid growth of social virtual reality platforms, an increasing number of people will be interacting with others as avatars in virtual environments. Therefore, it is essential to develop a better understanding of the factors that could impact initial personality assessments and how they affect the willingness of people to befriend one another. Thin-slice judgment constitutes a quick judgment of a personality based on an avatar, and it could be impacted by the avatar’s appearance, particularly if the avatar elicits an uncanny valley effect that brings negative emotions such as eerieness. However, personality judgments and friendship decisions could also be influenced by social cues, such as conversational style. This experimental study investigated how these factors impact willingness to make friends with others in a virtual world. Drawing upon the uncanny valley effect and thin-slice judgment, this study examined how different levels of realism and conversational cues influence trustworthiness, likeability, and the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, the current study tried to shed light on the interaction effects of realism and conversational cues to the dependent variables. In other words, this study investigated how this eventually influences one’s willingness to be a friend under the thin-slice judgment when personality judgments result from the negative feeling (i.e., eeriness) of the uncanny valley effect and social cues are conflicted. To this end, a 2 (realism: cartoonish vs. hyper-realistic) x 2 (conversational cues: extroverted vs. introverted) between-subjects online experiment was conducted. The results showed that trustworthiness and likeability significantly impacted the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, realism and conversational cues marginally affected the willingness to be a friend. Keywords: uncanny valley effect, thin-slice judgment, avatar, personality judgment, willingness to be a frien

Avatars and computer-mediated communication: a review of the definitions, uses, and effects of digital representations

Avatars are growing in popularity and present in many interfaces used for computer-mediated communication (CMC) including social media, e-commerce, and education. Communication researchers have been investigating avatars for over twenty years, and an examination of this literature reveals similarities but also notable discrepancies in conceptual definitions. The goal of this review is to provide a general overview of current debates, methodological approaches, and trends in findings. Our review synthesizes previous research in four areas. First, we examine how scholars have conceptualized the term “avatar,” identify similarities and differences across these definitions, and recommend that scholars use the term consistently. Next, we review theoretical perspectives relevant to avatar perception (e.g., the computers as social actors framework). Then, we examine avatar characteristics that communicators use to discern the humanity and social potential of an avatar (anthropomorphism, form realism, behavioral realism, and perceived agency) and discuss implications for attributions and communication outcomes. We also review findings on the social categorization of avatars, such as when people apply categories like sex, gender, race, and ethnicity to their evaluations of digital representations. Finally, we examine research on avatar selection and design relevant to communication outcomes. Here, we review both motivations in CMC contexts (such as self-presentation and identity expression) and potential effects (e.g., persuasion). We conclude with a discussion of future directions for avatar research and propose that communication researchers consider avatars not just as a topic of study, but also as a tool for testing theories and understanding critical elements of human communication. Avatar mediated environments provide researchers with a number of advantageous technological affordances that can enable manipulations that may be difficult or inadvisable to execute in natural environments. We conclude by discussing the use of avatar research to extend communication theory and our understanding of communication processes

The Influence of Virtual Representatives on Recommender System Evaluation

Virtual representatives are increasingly used in recommender systems to guide users and add conversational aspects. However, the impacts of virtual representatives on users’ evaluations of the recommender system have not been investigated. This study specifically examined the influence of virtual representatives’ anthropomorphism cues on system users’ perceptions of system credibility and liking. The results revealed that system users’ perceptions of the virtual representative’s credibility have a significant influence on users’ perceived credibility and liking of the system. Also, the human-like appearance of a virtual representative significantly influences users’ perceived attractiveness of the virtual representative, while voice outputs from the representative were found to have a significant influence on users’ liking of the recommender system

Mindful and mindless anthropomorphism: how to facilitate consumer comprehension towards new products

Individual’s perception of anthropomorphic platforms in promotion of really new products or novel innovations has not been examined fully. There are contradictions in the academic literature on how various presentations of social cues are perceived by audience mindlessly or mindfully. Perceived mindful and mindless anthropomorphism are explored in this study in order to understand its effect on individuals’ attitude, purchase intention and comprehension of new products. A single factor between-subject design using two innovative products and websites with four levels of social cues (voice, language, interactivity and social role) was used. Five hundred participants took part in the main experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to each experimental group. The analysis indicated that a human-like avatar is preferred by individuals over static avatar and perceived higher mindlessly. Interactive content didn’t improve individuals’ perceived mindless anthropomorphism. There was no significant increase in individuals’ mindful anthropomorphism in any condition. The study indicated perceived mindless anthropomorphism results into better comprehension, attitude and purchase intention towards really new products

Understanding the Influence of Cultural Dimensions on the Interpretative Ability of People to Infer Personality from the Avatars: Evidence from Cultural Dimensions of Greece, Pakistan, Russia, and Singapore

Avatar is a customized cartoon representation of the self and many people develop inferences about individuals’ online representations through their avatar’s facial appearance. Research has shown that avatars can signal information about the personality and social desires of a person [1]. Nonetheless, customizing an avatar enables control of self-representation that could potentially moderate the true personality traits of an individual. The customized facial appearance of the avatar affects people’s ability to draw expressions [2], whereas, several cultural dimensions affect the interpretative ability of the people to construct personality inferences from the facial appearance of avatars. We found a significant relationship between neuroticism to uncertainty avoidance and masculinity, whereas, negative relationships were found between extraversion and masculinity, and agreeableness to uncertainty avoidance. The study uses three-dimensional avatars to capture detailed features and expressions on avatar faces

Determinants of Friendship in Social Networking Virtual Worlds

This paper examines the determinants of friendship between two users in a virtual world who are unaware of each other's real identities. Drawing on theories of homophily, heterophily and propinquity, three virtual world behaviours are analysed: avatar appearance, avatar location, and avatar communication. Data are collected on 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The main results show that: (1) avatars did not tend to form friendships with avatars that are similar in appearance to themselves but did tend to form friendships with avatars that are dressed differently from themselves; (2) in terms of location, the closer an avatar stands to other avatars, the more likely the avatar is to receive a friend invitation; and (3) the fewer words an avatar uses in communication, the more likely the avatar is to receive a friend invitation. This paper contributes to theories of virtual world interaction and to using virtual worlds as a data collection platform