Why do Individuals Continue Using Mobile Payments - A Qualitative Study in China

Many financial and mobile service providers are viewing mobile payment (MP) as a strategic growth area for their business. In order to realize this anticipated growth potential, users must initially adopt and then continue to use MP systems. However, a rich and detailed user perspective of MP continuance behavior is lacking. We address part of this research gap by content-analyzing interview transcripts of 38 MP users. The findings indicate that perceived usefulness and risk, disconfirmation, satisfaction, subjective norm, and habit are important when users making MP continuance decisions

Competition for the International Pool of Talent: Education Policy and Student Mobility

This paper presents a model of two countries competing for a pool of students from the rest of the world (ROW). In equilibrium, one country offers high educational quality for high tuition fees, while the other country provides a low quality and charges low fees. The quality in the high quality country, the tuition fees, and the quality and tuition fee differential between the countries increase with the income prospects in ROW and the number of international students. Higher stay rates of foreign students lead to more ambiguous results. In particular, an increase in educational quality can be accompanied by a decline in tuition fees. Furthermore, international competition for students can give rise to a brain gain in ROW.Higher education; student mobility; vertical quality dierentiation; return migration; brain gain

Beyond Just Money Transactions: Redesigning Digital Peer-to-Peer Payments for Social Connections

Financial activities, such as the exchange of money between individuals, have long been considered a crucial aspect of how people build and maintain their interpersonal relationships (i.e., a strong, deep, or close association/acquaintance between two or more people) with individuals they know because money is a sensitive social construct. In particular, over the past decade, how to conduct, manage, and experience money exchanges and processes between individuals has been dramatically transformed due to the increasing popularity of digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services (i.e., performing one to one online money transactions via a digital device). In this sense, digital P2P payments have shown the potential to affect how people pay and interact with each other regarding money, an important impact factor on various forms of interpersonal relationships, by facilitating direct money transactions between individuals through computer-mediated channels. Therefore, this dissertation research is motivated to leverage a sociotechnical approach to conduct an in-depth investigation of the nuanced human experiences of personal money exchanges mediated by digital P2P payments between people who know each other and the unique role of digital P2P payments in shaping these individuals\u27 social connections with each other online and offline. In doing so, this dissertation research aims to (i) reveal and elaborate the multidimensional influences of digital P2P payments on interpersonal relationships between people who already know each other in terms of both experiences of money exchanges and everyday social interactions; ii) advance our knowledge and understanding of how digital P2P payments systems can be redesigned to better support people\u27s social connections with individuals they know; and iii) envision the future landscape of digital P2P payments in our increasingly networked digital society. This dissertation research involves four studies. Grounded in 158 social media posts and 8 interviews, Study 1 explores how people perceive the increasing trend of integrating digital P2P payments with social media services (e.g., Facebook Messenger payment) and why they decide not to use this service in their daily lives. Study 2 reports findings of a qualitative study of 31 in-depth semi-structured interviews to investigate the influences of using digital P2P payments on people\u27s offline interpersonal relationships. Study 3 reports results of a large-scale anonymous online survey with 218 valid responses to measure the specific immediate social consequences and lasting impacts of using digital P2P payments on people\u27s interpersonal relationships. Study 4 adopts the research through design (RtD) approach with a specific emphasis on participatory design activities to both elicit and qualitatively investigate user needs and user-generated design solutions for digital P2P payment services that can better support people\u27s social connections. This dissertation research thus contributes to innovating financial technologies in the perspective of Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Centered Computing by better understanding new and more complicated social phenomena and dynamics emerging in today\u27s digital economy. First, this dissertation research offers one of the first empirical evidence to unpack and explicate the multidimensional influences of digital P2P payments on both financial experiences/processes and everyday social connections between known contacts, which is understudied in prior scholarship. In doing so, we provide new perspectives on today\u27s technology-mediated financial life and shed light on the intertwining financial and social relationships through technology. These insights also help re-conceptualize computer-mediated interpersonal relationships in today\u27s networked society. Second, we identify and further reflect on user-generated design recommendations and develop prototypes that highlight the importance of taking the interplay of financial and social engagement, in addition to security and privacy, into consideration when redesigning digital P2P payments platforms. Through this RtD approach, we thus rethink and envision the future landscape of digital P2P payments where such technologies can be designed, developed, and used in a more comfortable, innovative, and emotionally satisfactory way. As we are entering a post COVID-19 pandemic age, there is an increasing interest to make digital financial technologies not only secure but also more human-centered, interaction-centric, and culturally sensitive, which can be used to better support and maintain human connections through daily financial activities with or without face-to-face interaction. Therefore, in a broader sense, this dissertation research on the social values of digital P2P payments also contributes to building a more robust and inclusive digital economy in today\u27s changing society

Teacher Compensation and Teacher Quality

This CED report examines teacher pay and other compensation issues. Schools must be able to compete effectively for college-educated workers who have more career choices and see themselves as more mobile professionally than did earlier generations. Traditional compensation policies for teachers (salary schedules that reward only longevity and academic credentials, and pension policies that penalize mobile teachers and those who do not spend a lifetime career in teaching) are out of sync with the objective of expanding the pool of talented individuals who are willing to teach

Business strategies of organisations in a challenging economy : the case of mobile company X Zimbabwe (MCXZ)

This study sought to establish the business strategies employed by Mobile Company X Zimbabwe (MCXZ) for it to survive the challenging economy. A qualitative research and a case-based approach involving MCXZ were used. Semi-structured interviews and secondary data were used to produce qualitative data and for triangulation of findings. Data was analysed and managed through qualitative coding and Atlas.ti program. The findings of the study showed that MCXZ employed growth business strategies through market penetration, product development, market development and strategic alliances. In addition, the study found that banking crisis, high competition, rapid technological changes, consumer preferences, shrinking markets and unfavourable government policies are the main threats in the challenging economy. However, MCXZ managed to survive and grow due to the integration of business strategies and the key success factors (KSF) in the industry. The KSF are organisational agility, research and development, quality and affordable mobile phones and effective after sales service and accessories.Business ManagementM. Com. (Business Management

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

ON CONTEXTUAL CONTRADICTION: A FIELD STUDY OF DIGITAL PAYMENT INCLUSION IN MEXICO

Digital payment technology allows financially excluded communities to access financial services by crossing infrastructural, regulatory, and economic boundaries. However, there are also cases where its presence might lead to exclusion. In addition to these diverse findings, it remains unclear why exclusion prevails in Mexico, where digital payment technology is highly developed for Latin America. Consequently, this study addresses how and why the Mexican context conditions digital payment inclusion. Based on a dynamic understanding of context and a field study, we operationalise Mexico\u27s contextual conditioning through inequalities. Using observations, interviews and documents, the study\u27s results reveal what we term contextual contradiction. Socio-economic infrastructure separation, evolutionary regression, and informal legislation are contextual contradictions which convey a dynamic conditioning leading to digital payment inclusion and exclusion. These findings contribute to debates on contextual explanation by addressing how context and phenomenon emerge together without bounding, stabilising, or situating context