An Abundance of Fruit Trees: A Garbology of the Artifacts in Animal Crossing: New Leaf

The Animal Crossing game series is founded on materialism and consumerism, and its mechanics emphasize the economic principles of production, trade, and consumption. As a social simulator, its gameplay focuses on inventory management, with items and artifacts as rewards for behaviors. Players are urged to customize their town and avatar, by buying and selling clothing, accessories, furniture, and other items. The method of garbology concludes that trash is a valuable resource in revealing the attitudes and motivations of a culture. This article uses garbology to examine the trash left behind by players in ten random towns of Animal Crossing: New Leaf to create a taxonomy of what players valued and disposed of. This study found patterns of production (non-native and “perfect” fruit trees) to maximize monetary gains, and signs of customization through consumption (such as creating a gothic-themed town). The author concludes based on the findings that players of New Leaf are engaged in a culture of economy and thrift, as opposed to conspicuous consumption, per Rathje’s (1984) hypothesis of garbage

Applications of Machine Learning in High-Frequency Trade Direction Classification

The correct assignment of trades as buyer-initiated or seller-initiated is paramount in many quantitative finance studies. Simple decision rule methods have been used for signing trades since many data sets available to researchers do not include the sign of each trade executed. By utilizing these decision rule methods, as well as engineering new variables from available data, we have demonstrated that machine learning models outperform prior methods for accurately signing trades as buys and sells, achieving state-of-the-art results. The best model developed was 4.5 percentage points more accurate than older methods when predicting onto unseen data. Since finance and economics departments pay thousands of dollars in annual data service subscriptions they are often reluctant to fund purchase of additional data containing trade signs when methods for predicting these signs exist. The use of our best trade signing model as an alternative to the purchase of additional data has the potential to collectively save universities millions of dollars in additional subscription fees, facilitate more reliable research, and lighten the burden of data processing for researchers

The Role of Restrictiveness of Use in Determining Ethical and Legal Awareness of Unauthorized File Sharing

A host of different types of information goods are available for free download from illegal file sharing sites. As far as price is concerned, no company can compete against “free.” Hence, managers, researchers, and policy makers are interested in determining factors other than price that might influence consumers’ file sharing behavior. Moral consideration is one factor that might sway individuals to pay for files they could otherwise obtain for free. To help better understand how moral consideration works in the context of file sharing, this research examines how people form perceptions of the legality and ethicalness of downloading music files through file sharing. We propose that when people receive files in a more restrictive manner (e.g. streaming vs. downloading) they are less likely to recognize file sharing as being unethical or illegal. We conduct five studies to test our theory of restrictiveness. The results consistently indicate that consumers’ perceptions of legality and ethicalness of file sharing are associated with restrictiveness of use. In particular, while file sharing with different levels of restrictiveness still transfers intellectual property from one individual to another, increased restrictiveness results in consumers being less likely to identify file sharing as being illegal or unethical. This in turn has a great impact on their actual engagement in the unauthorized file sharing activities. We find the relationships are significant even when controlling for several other elements such as gender, age, income, and prior knowledge about how and where to go on the internet to participate in file sharing

Risk, trust, and the interaction of perceived ease of use and behavioral control in predicting consumers’ use of social media for transactions

There has been continued debate regarding competing models with respect to predicting use of social networking services. In this research the authors conceptualize and empirically test a model that combines constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) together along with (1) a moderator between the two models, (2) perceived risk, and (3) trust. The empirical results support the hypothesis that perceived ease of use (from TAM theory) significantly amplifies (positively moderates) the effect of perceived behavioral control (from TPB theory) on intention to use the social networks for transactions. In short, there are benefits to integrating concepts from the two models instead of choosing one model over the other in research and practice. The results also indicate that perceived risk and trust play significant roles as antecedents in consumer decision making, and that risk-taking propensity has a direct effect on behavioral intention

Life Among the Ruins: An Examination of Monument and Power in the Abandoned Game Star Wars: Galaxies

In the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online video games are titles that have been abandoned by their developers. These cloud-based games are inaccessible and disappear when shut down unless new servers are launched. Such is the case with Star Wars Galaxies, which was discontinued in 2011, but later pirated servers run by fans of the game continue to host the content for themselves. This study examines the community of one server (titled Legends), analyzing the virtual world and its player cities to draw conclusions about the players and their governments. This dissertation is a multi-method approach, employing archaeological methods (site mapping, structural analysis) and anthropological methods (semi-structured interviews, ethnography). Some of the findings are that players engage in spheres of governmental influence that interact with the play experience in different ways, that players aren’t engaging in traditional forms of urbanization, and that these virtual cities and structures are more prone to change than consistency. These findings are relevant to studies and theories about virtual reality (VR) and future technologies such as the metaverse in that they reveal how players create meanings of place in the virtual, and how they create settlements and governments alongside and within the play experience

The Impact of COVID-19 on Utah Women and Work: Changes, Burnout, & Hope

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 has impacted all Utahns in profound ways. Yet, a host of national and global reports have argued that women’s employment and careers have been disproportionately impacted during this time. For example, a McKinsey & Company and Lean In report stated that women are more likely to have been laid off or furloughed, leading to greater financial instability and stalled careers. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reported that women, and particularly women of color, have unduly experienced job losses and have had greater struggles with managing paid work, caregiving responsibilities, and other types of unpaid work obligations. And the United Nations asserted that the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened preexisting inequalities across every sphere, including a global economy

Drivers and Barriers of Social Sustainable Development and Growth of Online Higher Education: The Roles of Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness

Online and distance learning classes have been touted for the last several years as an innovation in higher education that should help improve the entrepreneurial growth mindset of students. However, the reported negative online learning experience of many college students worldwide during the COVID-19 epidemic has shown that many opportunities remain to improve the sustainable development and growth of online visual instruction practices. In this study, we outline and investigate a set of hypotheses related to the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (from TAM) of online video instruction in higher education courses during the pandemic. We employ grounded theory using autoethnographic case studies as a data source. We found that (a) synchronous broadcast lectures improve participant attitude (H1) and motivation (H2) toward online instruction, (b) prerecorded video instruction increases participant perceived “ease of use” (H3) and perceived behavioral control (H4) of online instruction, but (c) indicators of recorded dates on pre-recorded video instruction decreases participant perceived “usefulness” (H5) and “certainty” (H6) of online instruction. We enrich the insights of popular motivation models for organizations and the higher education industry by outlining a set of emotional elements originating in neuroscience leadership research (SCARF) that might either amplify or diminish the perceived the ease of use and perceived usefulness to technology usage relationships when participations engage in online learning situations