REDUCING THE COGNITIVE LOAD OF DECISION-MAKERS IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT THROUGH AUGMENTED REALITY

Decision processes in emergency management are particularly complex. Operations managers have to make decisions under time pressure while the situation at hand changes continuously. As wrong decisions in emergencies often have drastic effects, operations managers try to receive information from various sources such as the emergency control centre, their operation forces, databases, electronic location maps and drones. However, previous research has shown that humans have only limited information processing capabilities, and once these are exceeded, task performance decreases. Augmented Reality (AR) offers entire new possibilities to visualise information. Previous research on the relationship between the use of AR for information visualisation and the experienced cognitive load yielded contradictory results. By using the design science approach, we therefore aim to develop an AR decision support system. In a comparative eye-tracking study, we plan to examine how different types of AR information visualisation affect the experienced cognitive load of operations managers and thus decision-making. In this research-in-progress paper, we present the results of expert interviews with six operations managers who described three AR use cases in emergency management and five requirements for an AR decision support system

Crisis Communication on Twitter during a Global Crisis of Volkswagen - The Case of Dieselgate

In this study, we investigate the communication behaviour in Twitter during the rise of a corporate crisis. In September 2015, the emission scandal of Volkswagen (also known as Dieselgate ) became public. We collected Twitter data and analysed approximately 400,000 tweets regarding the Volkswagen crisis. We take different perspectives on the data, by 1) separating the overall communication in peak and quiet phases, 2) analysing the sentiment in each phase, 3) looking at specific tweet contents, and 4) using statistical analyses to determine the significance of differences. Furthermore, we mapped the publishing behaviour of official Volkswagen accounts to the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). The findings suggest that Volkswagen followed a strategy that is not covered by SCCT, i.e. keeping silent. Volkswagen’s tweets were not able to reduce the emotionality and sentiment of the ongoing Twitter discussion. Instead, even during quiet phases, the communication remained rather negative

‘Show Me Your People Skills’ - Employing CEO Branding for Corporate Reputation Management in Social Media

Digitization has led to increased social media utilization among companies to connect with their customers. We know that particularly CEOs, as the representing face of a company, can exert great influence to build corporate reputation. While reputation management in general has been researched extensively, we know little about the dimensions of CEO reputation management in social media. This paper deals with the distinction of organizational and personal branding in Twitter, and moreover, aims to determine eligible dimensions for CEO reputation management, based on the widely accepted Reputation Quotient. Therefore, we collected 3,604 social media postings of companies and their respective CEOs from Twitter. Through statistical and content analyses, we determined two supplementary dimensions for CEO reputation. Shared Interests and Personal Logging add private aspects to the spectrum of CEO reputation management, which have the capacity to foster consumer engagement

Digital Nudge Stacking and Backfiring: Understanding Sustainable E-Commerce Purchase Decisions

Background: The consumption of ‘fast fashion’, which is expedited by cost-effective e-commerce systems, represents one of the major factors contributing to the acceleration of climate change. An emerging approach to steer consumers in the direction of more sustainable purchase decisions is digital nudging. This paper explores digital nudging in the context of green fashion e-commerce by testing the effectiveness of two nudging strategies on the decision to choose green fashion products (GFP) over regular fashion items. Method: This study was conducted as a between-subject online experiment (n=320) with four conditions simulating an e-commerce scenario. The participants were presented with different products: one was ecologically friendly, and another was the regular option. Depending on their randomized group allocation, the participants experienced a default nudge, a social norm nudge, a combination of both strategies, or no nudge. In addition, we conducted 10 qualitative interviews to gain a deeper understanding of consumers’ decision process. Results: Our experiment failed to demonstrate statistically significant relationships between the various nudging strategies and GFP purchase decisions. However, additional explorative analyzes confirmed a backfire effect for the combination of nudging strategies. This reveals the previously overlooked influence of participants’ identification on the effectiveness of digital nudging strategies. In addition, qualitative interviews revealed individual factors that influence sustainable e-commerce purchase decisions. Conclusion: This study contributes to information systems research by explaining the differences in the effectiveness of different nudging strategies regarding high-involvement compared to low-involvement products. Moreover, it provides empirical evidence of a backfire effect resulting from a combination of digital nudging strategies (i.e., digital nudge stacking). Finally, the study underscores the leverage that individual factors have on both GFP purchase decision and the effectiveness of nudges

Under Pressure? - The Effect of Conversational Agents on Task Pressure and Social Relatedness in Digital Labor

Digital labor platforms (and many other digital workplaces) can be anonymous, isolated, and lacking social interaction. In this context, implementing conversational agents (CAs) to provide social presence and relatedness could be a remedy. However, based on research in the context of human-to-human interaction, two counteracting effects of CAs’ social presence can be derived. First, social presence and social relatedness induce enjoyment. Second, social presence can lead to a perception of task pressure, which reduces enjoyment. We conducted a three-condition online experiment with 269 participants from a commercial digital labor platform to investigate these effects. Our results show that social presence directly leads to social relatedness and enjoyment, and indirectly to task pressure. However, this perceived task pressure does not reduce enjoyment and only positively effects performance. Thus, it appears that introducing CAs as part of digital labor platforms is a win-win situation for users and work

Collective Identity Formation on Instagram – Investigating the Social Movement Fridays for Future

In recent years, social media changed the way individuals participate in social movements. While activists demonstrate on the street to fight for a public goal, members of specific movements can also act collective online. Thus, different aspects might influence the formation of collective identity and therefore drive collective action on social media. This study combines the perspectives of social identity- and identity theory in order to examine how members of an opinion-based group contribute to the collective group/social identity formation and therefore, to collective action. To this end, we applied automated text classification techniques to Instagram communication related to the social movement Fridays for Future. Analysing 1,137 comments showed that individuals mainly express Group Cohesion and Emotional Attachment rather than Solidarity by commenting on Instagram. This study further presents a proposed model of collective group/social identity of collective action. Succeeding research aims at enhancing the classification and testing the mode