Selective Exposure to Berita Harian Online and Utusan Malaysia Online: The Roles of Surveillance Motivation, Website Usability and Website Attractiveness

News media allows audiences to be selective in determining both their news sources and type of news stories they read. This study examined factors influencing selective exposure to the online editions of two mainstream Malaysian newspapers, Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia. Using selective exposure theory as the theoretical lens, this study compared both newspapers in terms of their audiences’ level of surveillance motivation, and how audiences rate the newspapers’ websites with respect to usability and attractiveness. This study used a within-subject experimental research design that exposed 51 subjects to both Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online newspapers. The results of the experiment indicate that Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online were significantly different in terms of website usability; however, no significant differences were found in terms of surveillance motivation or website attractiveness between the two newspapers. Further analysis indicate that the only significant predictor of selective exposure was website usability. This study highlights the importance of website usability for online newspapers wanting to harness audience selectivity

Evidence for a data-based environmental policy: induction of a behavior-based decision support system

To advise policy-makers about possible courses of action in the environmental domain, psychological science should employ a support system that allows for evidence-based decisions with respect to the three generic policy questions: what, where, and how. The key to such a system is a measurement instrument in which environmental motivation becomes tangible in individual actions. In this article, we provide empirical examples of such a decision support system in the environmental domain. It consists of (a) evidence about environmental motivation of persons, (b) evidence about motivation's spatial distribution, (c) knowledge about the socio-cultural conditions that affect individuals when they translate motivation into action (i.e. structural information), and (d) a forecast of the environmental impact—the concrete conservation potential of various behaviors. Pour conseiller les décideurs à propos de lignes de conduite possibles dans le domaine de l'environnement, la science psychologique devrait utiliser un système qui tienne compte des décisions provenant des trois questions génériques suivantes: quoi, ou et comment? La clé d'un tel système consiste en un instrument de mesure dans lequel la motivation environnementale devient tangible dans les actions individuelles. Dans cet article, nous prenons des exemples empiriques de telles aides à la décision dans le domaine de l'environnement. Peut être ainsi montré a) la motivation environnementale des personnes, b) la distribution spatiale de la motivation, c) l'influence de la connaissance des conditions socioculturelles des individus quand ils transforment motivation en action (i.e. information structurale) et (d) la prévision de l'impact environnemental sur le maintien potentiel de divers comportements

Mastery grids: An open source social educational progress visualization

While many pieces of educational software used in the classroom have been found to positively affect learning, they often are underused by students. Open learning model and social visualization are two approaches which have been helpful in ameliorating that low usage problem. This article introduces a fusion of these two ideas in a form of social progress visualization. A classroom evaluation indicates that this combination may be effective in engaging students, guiding them to suitable content, and enabling faster content access. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

The need for economic and pre-economic marketing controlling

The splitting or rather the widening of a marketing controlling system into economic and pre-economic control of performance makes effective strategic forward-looking planning, management, and control of marketing activities possible. The main reason for including pre-economic measures of performance is the possibility to receive and assimilate so-called weak signals from the market which cannot be received by traditional economic controlling systems. These early warning indicators prevent marketing management from decision making based on past-oriented data, the use of which would require the structure of the environment to remain unchanged. Based on this expanded knowledge, marketing strategies can be generated in a much more sound way