How Story Works in Mobile App Stores? Exploring the Same-Side Effect from the Storytelling Perspective

The growing number of mobile apps has contributed to an innovation diffusion paradox whereby the accelerated pace with which mobile apps are being developed and updated has stymied their own diffusion. Due to consumers’ limited personal involvement with mobile apps, storytelling, as an emerging and novel product recommendation format, is gaining traction as a promotional mechanism for diffusing mobile apps within the ecosystem. Storytelling is particularly amenable to the context of mobile app stores by giving affective meaning to the focal app being promoted and strengthening its association with other apps available from these stores. To this end, we construct a research model to illustrate how consumers’ demand for related mobile apps is shaped by similarity in functional and visual attributes between these apps and the focal app being promoted via storytelling. Our model also sheds light on how the preceding effects could be mitigated by within-developer influence

Disentangling the Relationship between Portfolio Homogenization and Transaction of Non-fungible Tokens

There has been an explosion in the popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), drawing attention from practitioners and scholars alike since 2021. Each NFT denotes a digital asset in the likes of an artwork, a tweet, or a video that is recorded on the blockchain with a unique identifying code. In turn, the emergence of NFTs has transformed the digital asset landscape. With the rapid growth of the NFT market, there is a concern that the market is becoming increasingly homogenized due to readily available blockchain technologies and relatively low costs of NFT mints. To this end, this study attempts to elucidate how NFT portfolio homogenization affects transaction volume and variation in the marketplace. Particularly, we collected and analyzed a dataset of 2,004 collections comprising 7,151,515 NFTs from OpenSea, a leading NFT platform. We discovered significant inverted U-shaped relationships between NFT portfolio homogenization and transaction variation and transaction volume

Deep Learning Based Parking Vacancy Detection for Smart Cities

Parking shortage is a major problem in modern cities. Drivers cruising in search of a parking space directly translate into frustration, traffic congestion, and excessive carbon emission. We introduce a simple and effective deep learning-based parking space notification (PSN) system to inform drivers of new parking availabilities and re-occupancy of the freed spaces. Our system is particularly designed to target areas with severe parking shortages (i.e., nearly all parking spaces are occupied), a situation that allows us to convert the problem of detecting parking vacancies into recognizing vehicles leaving from their stationary positions. Our PSN system capitalizes on a calibrated Mask R-CNN model and a unique adaptation of the IoU concept to track the changes of vehicle positions in a video stream. We evaluated PSN using videos from a CCTV camera installed at a private parking lot and publicly available YouTube videos. The PSN system successfully captured all new parking vacancies arising from leaving vehicles with no false positive detections. Prompt notification messages were sent to users via cloud messaging services

Telling an Attractive Digital Story: Unraveling the Effects of Digital Product Placement Strategy on Product Exposure

The accelerated pace with which mobile apps are being launched has translated into an innovation diffusion paradox for mobile app stores. To cope with the avalanche of newly launched apps, conventional product promotion has given way to digital storytelling as a means of bolstering individuals’ exposure to these apps. Digital storytelling, as an emerging and novel format of product placement, has been credited for boosting consumers’ receptivity to featured products through compelling narrative, direct links, and rich media. In this study, we construct and empirically validate a research model that illustrates how digital storytelling can be strategized for product promotion in mobile app stores. In so doing, we endeavor to not only offer an in-depth appreciation of how digital storytelling can aid in promoting mobile apps through the presentation of engaging content but to also shed light on how these promotional effects could be moderated through rich delivery

Disentangling the Effect of Shared Experience on Emotional Arousal in Entertainment Live Streaming

Live streaming platforms are promoting a novel format of entertainment called PK event where live streamers compete to solicit virtual gifts from viewers. Although the two live streamers in a PK event come across as rivals, they implicitly collaborate to emotionally arouse viewers and solicit virtual gifts. We advance a curvilinear moderated mediation model to disentangle the effects of streamers’ shared PK experience on revenue growth through enticing viewers’ emotional arousal, which is moderated by streamers’ within-team experience acquisition difference. Estimating a multilevel linear model on a sample of 118,323 PK records, we discovered that shared PK experience has an inverted-U-shape relationship with emotional arousal level, which is positively associated with revenue growth. We further attested to the moderating influence of experience acquisition difference in strengthening this curvilinear relationship. Our findings help platforms to improve team member recommendation systems and streamers to find the “right” teammates for optimizing PK performance

Facilitating Supplementary Innovation in the Digital Game Industry: The Role of Modding Toolkits

Game modifications (mods) developed by users are common in the digital game industry, serving as a form of user-driven supplementary innovation that enables game developers to extend the lifespan of their core games. Companies have recognized the strategic value of such innovation and offered official modding toolkits to support users’ endeavors. Nevertheless, the effects of modding toolkits on mod performance are not well understood, as extant literature is fragmented and descriptive, lacking an examination of the relationship between official modding toolkits and mod performance. This study plans to address this knowledge gap by analyzing official toolkit documents and behavioral data from platforms such as Nexus Mod and investigating the effects of modding toolkit features on mod performance. By advancing our knowledge of the supplementary innovation toolkit as a strategic approach in the digital game industry, the study is expected to provide valuable insights into extending product lifespan and utility

Come Rain and Shine? Exploring the Effects of Mobile Weather Applications on Users’ Movements

All Weather conditions affect human behaviors and the growing number of Mobile Weather Applications (MWAs) has amplified this effect. Yet, little is known about how human seek to actively control their behavior by appropriating mobile technology to anticipate changing weather conditions. Guided by Anticipatory Behavioral Control Theory (ABCT), this study endeavors to bride the abovementioned knowledge gap by investigating how the interface design and usage of MWAs would impact the relationship between abnormal weather conditions and users’ movement patterns. From analyzing panel data collected on the hourly movement trajectories of over 1.95 million anonymous mobile phone users over a 2-month period, we strive to shed light on the moderating influence of content representation and usage intensity of MWAs on the relationship between weather conditions and human behaviors

Gut microbial DL-endopeptidase alleviates Crohn's disease via the NOD2 pathway

The pattern-recognition receptor NOD2 senses bacterial muropeptides to regulate host immunity and maintain homeostasis. Loss-of-function mutations in NOD2 are associated with Crohn's disease (CD), but how the variations in microbial factors influence NOD2 signaling and host pathology is elusive. We demonstrate that the Firmicutes peptidoglycan remodeling enzyme, DL-endopeptidase, increased the NOD2 ligand level in the gut and impacted colitis outcomes. Metagenomic analyses of global cohorts (n = 857) revealed that DL-endopeptidase gene abundance decreased globally in CD patients and negatively correlated with colitis. Fecal microbiota from CD patients with low DL-endopeptidase activity predisposed mice to colitis. Administering DL-endopeptidase, but not an active site mutant, alleviated colitis via the NOD2 pathway. Therapeutically restoring NOD2 ligands with a DL-endopeptidase-producing Lactobacillus salivarius strain or mifamurtide, a clinical analog of muramyl dipeptide, exerted potent anti-colitis effects. Our study suggests that the depletion of DL-endopeptidase contributes to CD pathogenesis through NOD2 signaling, providing a therapeutically modifiable target