From General Technology Familiarity to Anti-Spyware Program Adoption: Comparison between the U.S. and South Korea

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Business at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Dong-Heon Kwak on April 7, 2009

Three Research Essays on the Effects of Charity Website Design on Online Donations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people\u27s attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3). Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper\u27s High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The central theme of this study is that cues can assume multiple roles, serving as central or peripheral cues, depending on an elaboration state. Moreover, this study asserts that a variable cannot be determined as a central or peripheral cue without consisting the elaboration state and associated theoretical explanations. This study theorizes and empirically tests the multiples roles postulate in the context of charity website and online donations. Using websites as a persuasion channel, this study investigates the effects of charity website quality, consisting of information content quality and system quality, on attitude toward the charity website, which in turn influences willingness to donate to the charity website. In keeping with the multiple roles postulate, this research investigates two charity-specific motivational constructs, personal involvement with charity giving and helper\u27s high as elaboration states, proposing that people with high personal involvement are more likely to be persuaded by information content, including financial, performance, and donation information. Likewise, individuals who reflect greater helper\u27s high, will rely more on system quality characteristics (including navigability, download delay, visual aesthetics, and security) in evaluating and forming their attitudes toward the charity websites. The results of structural equation modeling supported all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by supporting the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivations. Essay 2: Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multi-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Reputation Formation under the Halo Effect The halo effect has been extensively employed to understand how people make judgments of quality about an object. However, there is little research on how people evaluate multi-attribute objects and what types of salient halos exist in their evaluation. In addition, little research has investigated the initial reputation formation of an unknown object. Based on these two research lacuna, the purposes of this study is to identify if there are evidences of various salient halos in evaluating multi-attributes objects and to theorize initial reputation formation. To accomplish these research objectives, this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three dimensions of information contents (mission, financial, and donation assistance information) and four dimensions of system functionalities/features (i.e., navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). This study proposes collective halo, aesthetics halo, two-sided quality halo, quality halo, and reputation halo in the context of charity website evaluation. The results of structural equation modeling and other analyses show evidence of the proposed halos. Essay 3: The Effects of Schema Congruity and Visual Consistency on Social Judgment of Charity Websites Effectively designed websites can positively enhance the donors\u27 perceptions so as to facilitate online donations. Drawing on extensive research on self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric, this study examines the effects of schema congruity (SC) and visual consistency (VC) on the perceived warmth and competence of charity websites. This study theorizes schema-visual congruity, an interaction between SC and VC. Using a controlled lab experiment, this study finds significant main effects of schema congruity and visual consistency on perceived warmth and competence. Also, there is a positive interaction between SC and VC, supporting the need for schema-visual congruity as a determinant of perceived warmth and competence. Consistent with prior eCommerce and donation research, this study finds that positive perceptions of charity websites (i.e., warmth and competence) increase attitude toward donation to the website, which in turn influences donation intention

How Team Cohesion Leads to Attitude Change in the Context of ERP Learning

Universities and corporate training programs have realized the importance of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the business world and have incorporated such systems into their curricula and training. Although there is a rich body of literature on ERP, extant research remains relatively scant in examining team-based ERP learning. Drawing upon attitude change literature and expectation-confirmation theory, this study presents an Attitude Change Model of Team-Based ERP Learning. In particular, this study focuses on how team cohesion influences satisfaction and attitude change in ERP learning. The results of structural equation modeling support all but one hypothesis. The study concludes with discussions and implications for researchers, educators, and practitioners

The Role of Espoused National Cultural Values in Cross-National Cultural IS Studies

Hofstede’s work on national culture has been extensively used in cross-national studies in the information systems discipline. In particular, many cross-national cultural researchers have used Hofstede’s cultural index. This study argues that espoused national cultural values should be measured when the unit of analysis of the cross-national cultural study is the individual. This study reviews cross-national studies published in eight IS journals and examines both cross-national studies and cross-national cultural studies. After that, this work provides rationales of why espoused national cultural values should be measured. Finally, we conclude that espoused national culture is more appropriate for individual behavior research

How to Achieve Goals in Digital Games: An Empirical Test of a Goal-Oriented Model in Pokemon GO

To effectively design digital games and gamified systems, it is important to properly understand the psychological and behavioral processes that players use to reach goals. Although numerous prior studies have examined individual adoption, use, and continued use of digital games, few attempts have been made to understand how people desire and strive to achieve goals. The objective of this study is to develop and test a model of individual achievement of goals in digital gaming. Drawing upon theories of goal-directed behavior, we propose a conceptual model describing goal setting, goal striving, goal attainment, and feedback evaluations in the context of mobile gaming. To empirically test the proposed model, we collected two sets of (cross-sectional and longitudinal) data from 407 users of Pokemon GO. The results generally indicate that goal-directed effort plays an important role in translating goal desire into goal attainment. In addition, we found prior game points and goal desire have interaction effects on goal-directed effort and the subsequent acquisition of game points. Finally, this study shows that action strategies such as in-game payment and deliberate planning have differential effects on goal-directed effort and satisfying experiences. Overall, our findings provide empirical support for the efficacy of our goal-oriented model as a theoretical tool for explaining the process of goal striving to obtain game points. Our findings not only have important implications for digital gaming but also contribute to emerging research on gamified systems