Consumers’ self-disclosure decisions and concerns : the effects of social exclusion and agent anthropomorphism

Consumer data and privacy is becoming an increasingly important topic in marketing, as the collection and use of consumers’ personal information and instances of data breach are both on the rise. At the core of these recent shifts in the consumer data and privacy landscape is consumers’ concern with sharing their personal information. Past research on consumer privacy has focused on when and why consumers’ concerns are heightened and why people still provide their personal information despite the concerns. This dissertation extends the literature on consumer self-disclosure and privacy concerns and explores novel psychological and situational factors that influence consumers’ decision to disclose and concern with sharing their personal information to brands and marketers. In Essay 1, I focused on the influence of individual and situational differences – namely, the feeling of social exclusion – and examined at how experiencing social exclusion can increase consumers’ self-disclosure intentions toward brands. Specifically, I proposed that consumers will be more willing to share their information with a brand when they experience social exclusion, driven by their desire to forge social connections with the brand. Through five studies, I tested and confirmed these hypotheses and also demonstrated two boundary conditions. In Essay 2, I investigated how anthropomorphism of products and brands – a marketer-controlled variable – influences consumers’ concerns with sharing their personal information when there are threats to privacy in the environment. Specifically, I proposed that consumers’ concerns with information collection by agents (i.e., products or brands) would be influenced by the level of privacy threats in the environment and the anthropomorphic nature of the agent, and that the effects would be driven by the perception of control over the agent. I argued that, when threats to privacy are high (vs. low), individuals’ concern with sharing their data will increase for a non-anthropomorphic agent, but such effect will be attenuated for an anthropomorphic agent collecting the information. Furthermore, I expected that the difference in the perceived control over the agent would account for these effects. I tested and partially confirmed these hypotheses through five studiesMarketin

Electric fields as a means of controlling thin film flow over topography

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.Gravity-driven, steady-state flow of a thin liquid film over a substrate containing topography in the presence of a normal electric field is investigated. The liquid is assumed to be a perfect conductor and the air above it an ideal dielectric. The Navier-Stokes equations are solved using a new depth-averaged approximation that is capable of analysing film flows with inertia, with the flow coupled to the electric field via a Maxwell normal stress term that results from the solution of Laplace’s equation for the electric potential above the film. The latter is solved analytically using separation of variables and Fourier series. The coupled solver is used to analyse the interplay between inertia and electric field effects for flow over onedimensional step and trench topographies and to predict the effect of an electric field on three-dimensional Stokes flow over a two-dimensional trench topography. Sample results are given which investigate the magnitude of the electric fields needed to suppress free surface disturbances induced by topography in each of the cases considered.This study is funded by the European Union via Marie Curie Action Contract MEST-CT-2005-020599

Communicating development, branding nation in South Korea

This dissertation examines foreign aid-related activities of South Korea to demonstrate how the discourse and practice surrounding development is understood, interpreted, and enacted by an emerging donor. The past two decades have given rise to a diversity of development actors committed to doing good for their inter/transnational counterparts, evidenced in the multi-directional flow of development programs and funds to support such causes. Emerging from the multi-polar structure of the development landscape are a diverse range of articulations, motivations, and understandings guiding development aid. This has raised fundamental questions about how to approach and understand the geopolitical field of development at present moment in time, and the possibility of emerging actors to dismantle the dominant discourse of development. The scholarly field of development communication, however, has been slow to take such shifts into consideration. Following a critical approach to development communication, this study understands development as a discursive field where negotiation and struggle among different actors take place at multiple levels. Based on the theoretical understanding, this study examines South Korea’s development thinking and practice, specifically, in relation to its international development volunteer program. Drawing on a discourse analysis of multiple sources data, including news coverage that examines how development is discussed over time by Korean popular press, visual images of Korea’s volunteer program, and interviews with former volunteers, this study makes three points. First, geopolitical and domestic conditions over time have closely tied the understanding of development with nation building, where the two projects mutually constitute one another. Second, in examining how such enduring association of development with the national project is manifested in its representational practices of volunteer encounters, I show that the host becomes simplified, depoliticized, and romanticized, against which Korea is foregrounded as culturally rich, competent, and compassionate. Finally, drawing on an interrogation of multiple structural conditions that are implicated in development volunteering, I show the ways in which Korean volunteers navigate and complicate the dominant imaginaries of development, bringing new perspectives to nation, race, and gender in volunteer-host relationship.Radio-Television-Fil

The associations between religion, bereavement and depression among Hong Kong nurses

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Workplace Violence toward Physicians and Nurses: Prevalence and Correlates in Macau

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Heterotopic heart transplantation in the rat receiving FK-506 alone or with cyclosporine.

In rats, FK significantly prolonged heterotopic heart graft survival over a wide dose range when given for 2 weeks starting on the day of the operation. Brief courses of FK for one to four days preoperatively, and especially beginning four days postoperatively, allowed long subsequent survival of heart grafts in otherwise untreated recipients. The seeming acceptance of the grafts with postoperative FK treatment was largely but not exclusively donor specific when tested eight days after the last FK dose by second grafts from the same donor v third-party donor grafts. FK in minimally therapeutic doses was synergistic with suboptimal doses of CyA

Effect of low intensity exercise on physical and cognitive health in older adults: a systematic review

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Band Structure and Quantum Conductance of Nanostructures from Maximally-Localized Wannier Functions: The Case of Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes

We have combined large-scale, $\Gamma$-point electronic-structure calculations with the maximally-localized Wannier functions approach to calculate efficiently the band structure and the quantum conductance of complex systems containing thousands of atoms while maintaining full first-principles accuracy. We have applied this approach to study covalent functionalizations in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes. We find that the band structure around the Fermi energy is much less dependent on the chemical nature of the ligands than on the $sp^3$ functionalization pattern disrupting the conjugation network. Common aryl functionalizations are more stable when paired with saturating hydrogens; even when paired, they still act as strong scattering centers that degrade the ballistic conductance of the nanotubes already at low degrees of coverage.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. Let