Compliments to Accomplishments: The Effect of Compliments by Digital Platforms on Consumer Behavior

When shopping online, consumers sometimes hesitate, for example, because they are uncertain about product quality, or they do not know whether the price is reasonable. In the offline shopping context, sellers can encourage purchases by complimenting consumers. This study aims to explore how digital platforms can adopt the compliment tactic to catalyze consumers’ purchase decisions. We hypothesize that online compliments, like offline compliments, can effectively reduce consumers’ uncertainties in online shopping and thus encourage purchases. We plan to run a lab experiment to test the hypothesis. This study enhances previous research on offline compliments and contributes to e-commerce research by providing causal evidence of how digital platforms can use compliments to influence consumer behavior

Privacy Utility and Privacy Disutility Expectancy: An Empirical Study on Social App Usage

Social apps fundamentally transform the way individuals manage their online identities through proxy-disclosure. While individuals do enjoy the potential enhancement to reputation that is realized through social app postings, they could have their privacy threatened when these apps make posting in an uncontrolled fashion. Drawing on the APCO model, this research elucidates the impact of the two key aspects of online proxy-disclosure on privacy expectancy formulation, which in turn influence usage intention of social apps. A survey was conducted to operationalize the research model. Results provide strong evidence that the two determinants of privacy expectancy strongly influence individuals’ perceptions of privacy utility and privacy disutility. Furthermore, the two types of privacy utility powerful drive usage intention of social apps. The implications of the findings are discussed

Effects of Undesired Online Video Advertising Choice on User Behavior and Attitude

Although online video advertising is currently a pervasive medium, its effectiveness is still in great doubt. This study examines the effects of undesired choice on user behavior and attitude in the context of online video advertising. We propose that offering people a choice of video advertisements will motivate them into paying more attention to the chosen advertisement, which in turn leads to better memory of the information contained in the advertisement. Additionally, the choosing behavior will encourage viewers to form a favorable attitude towards the chosen video advertisement and their purchase intention towards the advertised product will also be enhanced. We posit that differentiability of choice-set is able to moderate the choice effect. This work is one of the first to investigate the impact of making an undesired choice regarding video advertisements. It extends our understanding of the impact of choice and presents significant implications for both researchers and practitioners

Push Yourself a Bit Harder: The Impacts of Force-based Gestures on Consumer Decisiveness and Self-Regulation

The emergence of force-based gestures (e.g., peek and pop) brings more functionalities to mobile interaction. Although it is believed that peek and pop could facilitate user navigation experience, the psychological and behavioral effects of force-based gestures remain unexplored. This study aims to investigate whether and how force-based gestures (gentle tap vs. hard press) influence mobile consumer decision making. Drawing on Embodied Cognition Theory and Mobile Application Usability literature, we propose that hard press (compared with gentle tap) could make consumers more decisive and thus lead to faster decisions; moreover, hard press (compared with gentle tap) could also facilitate willpower summoning and thus enhance consumer self-control. We also propose that these effects are contingent on visual responsiveness. Accordingly, a 2 by 2 lab experiment is designed. Potential theoretical contributions, practical implications as well as future research directions are discussed

Online Health Information Seeking and Adolescents’ Intention Towards Health Self-Management

The widespread availability of healthcare websites has changed the traditional healthcare system by enabling patients to play an active role in health management. The emerging field of Health 2.0 has enabled both professionals and patients to engage in content generation; changing the traditionally accepted professional healthcare to a new dimension of patient-centric healthcare. With the easy access to health information online, patients are turning to the Internet to look up for symptoms, diagnose health problems, or determine treatment procedures. Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals’ health management practices can be highly influenced by online health information. Considering the psychological characteristics of adolescents and their high exposure to the Internet, this study investigates the mechanisms of how online health information can motivate adolescents’ behavioral intention towards self-management of their health issues. Our results showed that empowerment, attitude towards the website and privacy concerns significantly predict adolescents’ health self-management behavior. Our findings also revealed that perceived health threat is not directly influencing the intention to self-managed health but instead interacts with other factors to influence intention. The findings provide important implications for theory and practice, by providing a better understanding of an emerging field of health care

THE PERSUASIVE IMPACT OF EMOTICONS IN ONLINE WORD-OF-MOUTH COMMUNICATION

The present research proposes a conceptual framework to examine the effect of emoticons on online WOM persuasion. Using a laboratory experiment, we demonstrate that emoticons enhance recipients’ empathy for the communicator, and this effect is moderated by message valence. Enhanced empathy heightens perceived trustworthiness of the communicator and perceived quality of the message, both of which lead to an increase in the persuasiveness of the WOM message. We conclude by discussing the contributions of this research and identifying the directions for future research

SOCIAL NETWORK PRIVACY DISPOSITIONS: AN OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT SCALE AND A CAUSAL MODEL

The Information Systems literature has substantially advanced understanding of privacy in both offline contexts and online environments. Despite the rich understanding, existing studies predominately focused on elucidating privacy issues specific to individuals. The increasingly popular usage of mobile apps with social media integration has fundamentally challenged current understanding and conceptualization of information privacy. In particular, mobile apps allow information collection beyond individuals’ personal scope (i.e., his/her personal information) and extend the scope of acquisition into individuals’ online social networks (i.e., his/her list of friends on Facebook). To fill this gap in the literature, drawing on the Communication Privacy Management Theory, this proposal focuses on three unique dimensions of social network privacy dispositions, namely permeability, ownership, and linkage. Second, we propose to operationalize these three dimensions of social network privacy dispositions using a second-order reflective construct, and we plan to develop an objective measurement scale for it. Lastly, we plan to validate the construct using a nomological network

Does the Activation Make a difference? The Effects of Video Initiating Formats on Video Advertising Effectiveness

The initiation of a video ad is of great importance to practitioners because it determines how a viewer first sees a video ad and may influence the effectiveness of the video ad. Currently, three initiating formats are widely adopted, namely click-to-play, full autoplay and silent autoplay. This study aims to understand and compare these three video initiating formats. Drawing on the psychological reactance theory and literature on arousal, attention and curiosity, we hypothesize that different video initiating formats lead to differences in viewers’ attention to, attitudes towards, and memory of a video ad. We then propose a lab experiment to test the hypotheses. Finally, potential theoretical contributions, practical implications and future research directions are discussed

Encouraging Active Lifestyle with Social Sharing: A Study on Mobile Fitness App

The prevalence of sedentary lifestyle has been become an alarming problem in recent decades. According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.8 million adults die each year due to insufficient physical activities, which are essential to regulating

Social Identity and Information Privacy Preference

It has been challenging for online platforms to encourage users, especially those concerned about their information privacy, to share their personal data in order to offer personalized service. In this study, we draw on social identity theory from psychology and behavioral economics, and propose that, it is possible to change people’s information privacy preference by priming or inducing specific social identities. We hypothesize that, when priming gender identity, women are likely to show higher level of empathy to others and thus share more personal health information. Regarding ethnic identity, it is expected that priming would cause Asians to show higher level of privacy concern and to share less, while lower level of privacy concern and more sharing for Americans. At last, it is expected that, when inducing group identity, individuals are more likely to share health information with in-group members than with out-group members, because of in-group favoritism