Warm-Glow Giving, Hedonism, and Their Influence on Muslim User Engagement on Loan-Based Crowdfunding Platforms

This paper investigates how platform design features affect the funding motivation of Muslim users on loan-based crowdfunding platforms. Theoretically grounded in Andreoni’s warm-glow giving theory and Sober and Wilson’s model of evolutionary and psychological giving, this work has high practical relevance, given the increasing demand for Islamic financial products. Loan-based crowdfunding platforms are important to the unique context of this research since Islamic religious constraints regulate monetary transactions involving lending. We used a scenario-based survey developed on the basis of a pilot study and confirmed by our manipulation check. The results show that “hedonism” represented by monetary interest negatively affected Muslim users’ willingness to engage in a loan-based crowdfunding project. This finding challenges the commonly agreed-upon egoistic motivator for loan-based crowdfunding platforms (i.e., monetary interest), which is based on Western Christian and Chinese Confucian capitalist economic and financial paradigms. Remarkably, we also found that Muslim funders’ level of willingness to engage on the hedonistic platform had an exponentially positive effect on the amount of money that funders were willing to lend. By contrast, “warm-glow giving,” manifested as belonging to a community, had no effect on users’ engagement. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed

Student Assessment of Venture Creation Courses in Entrepreneurship Higher Education – An Interdisciplinary Literature Review and Practical Case Analysis

Entrepreneurship Education (EE) is growing and considered to support many beneficial economic and personal developments. This paper aims to enrich the scarce research on student assessment in EE, since assessment is a powerful tool to motivate and encourage students to engage in and experiment with venture creation activities even when they have no initial intrinsic motivation in entrepreneurial practice. First, EE research and assessment literature from related creative disciplines were analysed. Second, the derived results have been used to redesign student assessment in an undergraduate venture creation course. Lessons learnt – what worked well and what did not work well – are discussed. The results indicate that more innovative assessment formats are needed, because they are best suited for action-based, experiential, and learning-by-doing (ABELD) venture creation courses. An enriched pool of assessors, peer feedback as well as reflective self-assessment, and a shift to formative and process-oriented assessment are promising student assessment methods for ABELD venture creation courses, which better account for ambiguous entrepreneurial real-life situations. However, educators’ resources should be taken into account. The paper contributes to our understanding of student assessment of venture creation courses in EE in higher education and offers practical recommendations for educators

College-Aged users behavioral strategies to reduce envy on social networking sites:A cross-cultural investigation

Social networking sites (SNSs) are central to social interaction and information sharing in the digital age. However, consuming social information on SNSs invites social upward comparisons with highly socially desirable profile representations, which easily elicits envy in users and leads to unfavorable behaviors on SNSs. This in turn can erode the subjective well-being of users and the sustainability of the SNS platform. Therefore, this paper seeks to develop a better theoretical understanding of how users respond to envy on SNSs. We review literature on envy in offline interactions to derive three behavioral strategies to reduce envy, which we then transfer to the SNS context (self-enhancement, gossiping, and discontinuous intention). Further, we propose a research model and examine how culture, specifically individualism-collectivism, affects the relationship between envy on an SNS and the three strategies. We empirically test the variance-based structural equation model through survey data collected of Facebook users from Germany and Hong Kong. Our findings provide first insights into the link between envy on SNSs, related behavioral strategies and the moderating role of individualism for self-enhancement

Effects of "Fit" on Email Overload

Email communication is a central attribute of the modern workplace. Email overload has emerged as a research phenomenon of high theoretical and practical importance. While research has examined email use related and organizational antecedents of email overload, it has neglected to examine whether the ‘fit’ experienced by individuals regarding their use of communication technologies, influences email overload. We examine the effect of two types of "fit" - "task-technology fit" and "person - person technology fit" on email overload. We present initial empirical evidence in this ERF paper, from a survey of 134 employees

Does This App Ask For Too Much Data? The Role Of Privacy Perceptions In User Behavior Towards Facebook Applications And Permission Dialogs

Since Facebook has opened its platform to third-party developers, privacy concerns surrounding applications are mounting. By granting “permission” to an app request, users allow app providers to circumvent their privacy settings endangering their own privacy and that of their friends. Considering a rising use of Facebook apps and a paucity of research in this area, there is a pressing need to understand the rationale behind user acceptance of applications on Facebook and the role of different information items requested in this process. This study draws on experimental and survey findings gained on the basis of responses of 199 Facebook users. We find that users are affected by the number of information items included in a “permission” request, even though their concerns can be weakened by peer influence. Users tend to be particularly cautious when granting access to information of their friends, which rejects the assumption of “privacy egoism”. Exploratory Factor Analysis reveals that in terms of privacy concerns users tend to categorize requested information items across five major clusters - friends’, social, extended CV, basic CV and visual information. Our findings are relevant for Facebook page owners who employ applications to increase user engagement and learn more about their audience

Understanding the role of social networking sites in the subjective well-being of users:a diary study

Given the rising popularity of social networking sites (SNSs), the influence of these platforms on the subjective well-being (SWB) of their users is an emerging topic in information systems research. Building on the norm of reciprocity and the social functional approach to positive emotions, we posit that targeted reciprocity-evoking forms of SNS activities are best suited to promote users’ positive emotions. The favourable potential of these activities is likely to be particularly pronounced among adolescents who pay special attention to social acceptance, which can be channelled with the help of reciprocal communication. Therefore, we conducted a quantitative 7-day diary study of 162 adolescent Facebook users attending German schools, looking at the impact of their daily SNS activities on their SWB. Based on a linear mixed model analysis, our results confirm a positive link between targeted reciprocity-evoking activities – such as chatting, giving and receiving feedback – and adolescents’ positive emotions. Our findings provide a reassuring perspective on the implications of the sociotechnical design of SNS communication channels. Specifically, by encouraging targeted activities, providers, users, and other stakeholders can ensure the beneficial impact of this technology on users’ SWB

Envy on Facebook: a hidden threat to users' life satisfaction?

The wealth of social information presented on Facebook is astounding. While these affordances allow users to keep up-to-date, they also produce a basis for social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale. Even though envy may endanger users’ life satisfaction and lead to platform avoidance, no study exists uncovering this dynamics. To close this gap, we build on responses of 584 Facebook users collected as part of two independent studies. In study 1, we explore the scale, scope, and nature of envy incidents triggered by Facebook. In study 2, the role of envy feelings is examined as a mediator between intensity of passive following on Facebook and users’ life satisfaction. Confirming full mediation, we demonstrate that passive following exacerbates envy feelings, which decrease life satisfaction. From a provider’s perspective, our findings signal that users frequently perceive Facebook as a stressful environment, which may, in the long-run, endanger platform sustainability

A LITERATURE ANALYSIS ABOUT SOCIAL INFORMATION CONTRIBUTION AND CONSUMPTION ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Social networking sites (SNSs) have emerged as a center for daily social interactions. Every day, millions of users contribute information about themselves, and consume information about others on SNSs. In recent years, we have witnessed a growing number of studies on the issue of social information contribution and consumption behaviors on SNSs. This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review on this topic across different disciplines to understand the current research state and shed light on controversial findings of SNS usage regarding users’ well-being. We identified 126 relevant articles published between 2008 and 2014, and provide an overview of their antecedents and associated outcomes. Our analysis reveals that a majority of existing work focused primarily on social information contribution, its antecedents and favorable outcomes. Only few studies have dealt with contribution behavior and the dark sides of SNS use. Nevertheless, we could identify different characteristics of social information determining the favorability of contribution behavior. Further, we categorized the scarce papers of consumption behavior regarding the social information characteristics and identified different underlying processes: social comparison, monitoring and browsing. These findings contribute to the Information Systems (IS) discipline by consolidating previous knowledge about SNS usage patterns and individual well-being

Managing of B2B-Brands : a discussion of strategies for success according to the marketing of industrial goods and agricultural machinery

Diese wissenschaftliche Arbeit wird sich im Umfeld der Landwirtschaft und der Landtechnikindustrie bewegen. In dieser Arbeit geht es hauptsächlich um die Umsetzung einer identitätsorientierten Marketing-Strategie im Bereich des B-to-B Marktes. Zunächst werden die Landtechnikindustrie und die neusten Entwicklungen darin genauer beleuchtet. Danach geht es weiter mit der Industrialisierung der Landwirtschaft, bzw. auch ihren Ursachen. Auch hier werden wieder die neusten Entwicklungen und der aktuelle Standard untersucht. Anschließend geht die Arbeit in den Marketingteil über. Hier wird zunächst beleuchtet wie relevant Marken innerhalb des B-to-B Umfeldes sind. Dann werden die Determinanten Marke und B-to-B Marketing geklärt. Schließlich wird an dieser Stelle noch ausführlich der identitätsorientierte Marketing-Ansatz behandelt in Verbindung mit dem Konzept der integrierten Kommunikation. Das Praxisbeispiel stellt das Unternehmen Horsch Maschinen GmbH dar. Dessen Marketingaktivitäten werden im Kontext der identitätsbasierten Markenführung analysiert. Am Schluss folgt noch einmal eine Zusammenfassung der erworbenen Erkenntnisse

Der Einfluss sozialer Online-Netzwerke auf ihre Mitglieder:eine Analyse von Nutzungsarten und sozialen Mechanismen

The dissertation deals with the influence of social networking sites on their members. The publication focusses on a differentiation of various usage patterns and social mechanisms taking place on these digital platforms. Based on a structured literature analysis, first, the current state of the art is analyzed. Subsequently, the author investigates two social mechanisms theoretically and empirically, respectively. On the one hand, she analyses how social networking sites can increase belongingness needs of adolescents and thereby their subjective well-being through the usage of directed communication features. On the other hand, the role of envy feelings among students following the consumption of social information on social networking sites is investigated. In a nutshell, the results show the importance to differentiate between usage patterns, because they are linked to various social mechanisms related to controversial outcomes for users. To predict the influence of social networking site use on its members a differentiation of usage patterns is useful