The Information Systems Academic Discipline in Hong Kong

This paper looks to the history of the development of Information Systems in Hong Kong as a contextual base for examining the Information Systems discipline in Hong Kong. The historical analysis highlights the newness of Information Systems as an academic discipline in Hong Kong, dating back little more than 20 years. The study reports on data from eight of the ten universities in Hong Kong. All Information Systems groups in Hong Kong universities are shown to be located in business schools, with almost all groups having no separate Information Systems identity. Few Information Systems academics in Hong Kong are reported to have senior faculty positions. In keeping with the placement of Information Systems groups, and reflective of Hong Kong\u27s status as a world finance centre, Information Systems curricula are shown to have a level of consistency across the state, with a heavy business component. By contrast, the study reports diversity in Information Systems research topics and research methods. Although the data analysed suggests that that the Information Systems discipline is immature in Hong Kong, evidence of a strong turnaround in ICT in Hong Kong and the recent establishment of the Hong Kong Association for Information Systems suggest a basis for boosting the status of Information Systems as a discipline in Hong Kong universities

“PM！I want to sign up”: Decoding Parental Decision-making in Educational S-commerce Community

This study delves into the prevalence and impact of private supplementary tutoring in Hong Kong, where a significant percentage of Secondary Three and Secondary Six students seek such services. The proliferation of tutoring and interest class advertisements across various media platforms underscores the educational landscape\u27s emphasis on private tutoring. The emergence of educational social commerce communities on social media platforms has further facilitated the exchange of educational information, interest activities, and parenting tips. By analyzing factors influencing parent engagement in these communities, such as perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, sociability, and informativeness, this research sheds light on the dynamics of educational s-commerce. Additionally, the study explores how post characteristics and scarcity of educational resources influence parent engagement and recommendation willingness within these communities. Understanding these factors is crucial for enhancing customer engagement and optimizing the educational social commerce experience

What Makes a Review Voted? An Empirical Investigation of Review Voting in Online Review Systems

Many online review systems adopt a voluntary voting mechanism to identify helpful reviews to support consumer purchase decisions. While several studies have looked at what makes an online review helpful (review helpfulness), little is known on what makes an online review receive votes (review voting). Drawing on information processing theories and the related literature, we investigated the effects of a select set of review characteristics, including review length and readability, review valence, review extremity, and reviewer credibility on two outcomes—review voting and review helpfulness. We examined and analyzed a large set of review data from Amazon with the sample selection model. Our results indicate that there are systematic differences between voted and non-voted reviews, suggesting that helpful reviews with certain characteristics are more likely to be observed and identified in an online review system than reviews without the characteristics. Furthermore, when review characteristics had opposite effects on the two outcomes (i.e. review voting and review helpfulness), ignoring the selection effects due to review voting would result in the effects on review helpfulness being over-estimated, which increases the risk of committing a type I error. Even when the effects on the two outcomes are in the same direction, ignoring the selection effects due to review voting would increase the risk of committing type II error that cannot be mitigated with a larger sample. We discuss the implications of the findings on research and practice

U.S. and Chinese Customers Rate Differently: An Analysis of Yelp and Dianping Restaurant Reviews

This paper explores the differences between the U.S. and Chinese customer satisfaction in Chinese restaurants. Restaurant reviews from Yelp and Dianping are analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation in combination with ordinal regression. Results suggest U.S. and Chinese customers mention food, service, and price differently in association with ratings. For example, food mention is more strongly associated with ratings for Chinese reviewers; both groups tend to mention service in negative reviews, but the association is stronger for U.S. reviewers; U.S. reviewers also tend to mention price in negative reviews. Additionally, the results suggest cultural differences in both review sentiment and reliance on prior information. Our results suggest that review sentiment is more strongly associated with ratings in U.S. reviews, and Chinese review ratings are more positively associated with the restaurant’s prior average rating

Understanding the Message and Formulation of Fake Online Reviews: A Language-production Model Perspective

Consumers have become ever more reliant on online reviews. Therefore, fake reviews have also become increasingly rampant and eroded online review platforms’ credibility. Previous literature suggests that particular linguistic styles can manifest in fake reviews with reference to the varying stages of the language-production process. Drawing on the language-production model as our theoretical foundation, we examine the psycholinguistic styles of fake online reviews at the message and formulation level. We performed a computational linguistic analysis on 66,940 reviews from Yelp. Our results suggest that fake reviews align more with deceptive writing in terms of the message-level variables such as length and psychological (affective, cognitive, social, and perceptual) cues. Interestingly, we found that they align less with deceptive writing in terms of the formulation-level variables such as readability, pronouns, and part-of-speech tags, which may be due to the fake review writers’ conscious attempt to follow the language styles that genuine reviews adopt

Digital Exclusion and Divide in the United States: Exploratory Empirical Analysis of Contributing Factors

Digital divide and exclusion continue to be among the intractable global challenges. Even in a relatively prosperous nation like the United States, the severity of the problem and its effects have not shown much improvement. We analyzed the influence of income, income distribution, education levels, and ethnicity on levels of access to Internet using the 2016 US census data census data at the county level. Our results indicate that these variables correlate significantly with levels of Internet access. As well, certain combinations of variables such as low levels of education (below middle school) and high percentage of people below the poverty line tend to lead to higher proportion of people with no Internet access. Some of the implications of the results are discussed

Managing Inter-Organizational Boundary Spanning in Collaborative Innovation

Despite the touted benefits of embracing collaborative innovation, organizations continue to face the challenge of benefiting from it. The crux of the issue moves beyond whether to embrace collaborative innovation towards how to integrate knowledge across organizational boundaries for innovation performance. This research draws from the boundary spanning view and the IT capability literature to explore this issue. We conceptualize coordination roles as boundary spanners, inter-organizational systems usage as boundary objects, as well as inter-organizational task interdependence as boundary spanning process characteristic. We examine how the boundary spanners and boundary objects as well as their interaction effects with boundary spanning process influence inter-organizational knowledge integration, which consequently determines the collaborative innovation performance. This research-in-progress advances understanding of how organizations benefit from collaborative innovation, depending on the inter-organizational knowledge integration across boundaries. An appreciation of the boundary spanning mechanisms will help organizations mindfully manage collaborative innovation projects in future endeavors

THE ROLE OF REVIEW AROUSAL IN ONLINE REVIEWS: INSIGHTS FROM EEG DATA

This paper examines the effects of review arousal on perceived helpfulness of online reviews, and on consumers’ emotional responses elicited by the reviews. Drawing on emotion theories in psychology and neuroscience, we focus on four emotions – anger, anxiety, excitement, and enjoyment that are common in the context of online reviews. The effects of the four emotions embedded in online reviews were examined using a controlled experiment. Our preliminary results show that reviews embedded with the four emotions (arousing reviews) are perceived to be more helpful than reviews without the emotions embedded (non-arousing reviews). However, reviews embedded with anxiety and enjoyment (low-arousal reviews) are perceived to be more helpfulness that reviews embedded with anger and excitement (high-arousal reviews). Furthermore, compared to reviews embedded with anger, reviews embedded with anxiety are associated with a higher EEG activity that is generally linked to negative emotions. The results suggest a non-linear relationship between review arousal and perceived helpfulness, which can be explained by the consumers’ emotional responses elicited by the reviews

Temporal Features and Consumer Evaluations of Group-Buying: The Effects of Product Image Zooming

Group-buying sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial offer daily deals at large discounts of typically 50% or more. Such deals are also characterized by two temporal features. First, these deals involve lead time before they are available for redemption. Second, such deals are available for a limited time only. This study examines how the two temporal features (lead time and deal time) of group-buying deals affect consumer evaluations by drawing on construal level theory (CLT). This research also determines how such effects can be moderated by the level of zooming on product images. In two experiments, we show that (1) increasing product image zooming mitigates the negative effects of lead time on consumer evaluations, thus limiting the unattractiveness of deals with long lead time; and (2) increasing product image zooming as deal time decreases improves consumer evaluations, thereby enhancing the attractiveness of such deals as the expiration date nears. These findings can be explained by the psychological distance that is associated with the temporal features of group-buying and with product image zooming. These findings also provide practical implications for group-buying websites regarding the effective use of product images to present deals

UNDERSTANDING HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSIMILATION AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL: THE CASE OF ELECTRONIC MEDICATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

For technology to contribute to organizational performance, an essential prerequisite is not just adoption but full utilization by its users. Understanding IT assimilation is particularly important in the contexts where system use is mandatory. This paper examines factors affecting the assimilation of electronic medication management system (eMMS) at the individual level in a hospital setting where the use of eMMS is mandatory. Drawing on literature in IT assimilation, a re-search model was proposed with both organizational (direct supervisor, job specification, and performance evaluation) and cognitive factors (intrinsic motivation, absorptive capacity, and perceived usefulness) that are hypothesized to have impacts on width and depth of eMMS assimilation. The model was tested with survey data from 196 eMMS users in a public hospital. The results show that factors have different effects on width and depth of eMMS assimilation for different user groups. Specifically, it was found that nurses with more absorptive capacity are more deeply and widely assimilated. For doctors, their direct supervisors and intrinsic motivation influence their depth of assimilation. Interestingly, nurses with more favorable perception of usefulness have assimilated more deeply, whereas more deeply assimilated doctors are those with less favorable perception of usefulness