Word-of-mouth (WOM) study is extended to the on-line context (eWOM) by examining the informational and normative determinants of the perceived credibility of on-line consumer recommendations. A ...survey of users of an on-line consumer discussion forum in China substantiated the effects of the determinants, although post-hoc analyses revealed that prior knowledge and involvement level moderate some of them. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
This study investigates the moderating effect of recommendation source credibility on the causal relationships between informational factors and recommendation credibility, as well as its moderating ...effect on the causal relationship between recommendation credibility and recommendation adoption. Using data from 199 responses from a leading online consumer discussion forum in China, we find that recommendation source credibility significantly moderates two informational factors' effects on readers' perception of recommendation credibility, each in a different direction. Further, we find that source credibility negatively moderates the effect of recommendation credibility on recommendation adoption.
•We probe source credibility's moderating role in the model.•Source credibility has moderating effect with both informational factors.•Source credibility has moderating effect with recommendation credibility.
Real-time online data sources have contributed to timely and accurate forecasting of influenza activities while also suffered from instability and linguistic noise. Few previous studies have focused ...on unofficial online news articles, which are abundant in their numbers, rich in information, and relatively low in noise. This study examined whether monitoring both official and unofficial online news articles can improve influenza activity forecasting accuracy during influenza outbreaks. Data were retrieved from a Chinese commercial online platform and the website of the Chinese National Influenza Center. We modeled weekly fractions of influenza-related online news articles and compared them against weekly influenza-like illness (ILI) rates using autoregression analyses. We retrieved 153,958,695 and 149,822,871 online news articles focusing on the south and north of mainland China separately from 6 October 2019 to 17 May 2020. Our model based on online news articles could significantly improve the forecasting accuracy, compared to other influenza surveillance models based on historical ILI rates (p = 0.002 in the south; p = 0.000 in the north) or adding microblog data as an exogenous input (p = 0.029 in the south; p = 0.000 in the north). Our finding also showed that influenza forecasting based on online news articles could be 1–2 weeks ahead of official ILI surveillance reports. The results revealed that monitoring online news articles could supplement traditional influenza surveillance systems, improve resource allocation, and offer models for surveillance of other emerging diseases.
Rural-urban healthcare access inequality refers to a disparity between rural and urban people with severe medical ailments in gaining access to the high-quality healthcare services they need. ...Although much hope has been pinned on the use of health information technology (HIT) to alleviate this critical and enduring societal challenge, the realized societal impact of HIT is unclear. Anchoring on both social transformation theory and affordance actualization theory, we conducted an in-depth qualitative study with two rounds of data collection in China. In addition to investigating how the societal challenge has triggered transformative HIT interventions, our analysis contributes to a theory on an HIT solution for the rural-urban healthcare access inequality challenge by establishing a link between HIT affordances and HIT interventions. This is done by examining how microlevel HIT effects escalate to macrolevel HIT effects through societal-level affordance actualization, which can affect this healthcare access inequality challenge. Along with providing policy implications on introducing HIT solutions to address intricate and complex societal challenges, this study extends existing theories by revealing the adaptation of the HIT intervention and differentiating the effects of collective and shared affordances.
With the ever-increasing popularity of online consumer reviews, understanding what makes an online review believable has attracted increased attention from both academics and practitioners. Drawing ...on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study examines four information cues used to evaluate the credibility of online reviews: Argument quality, source credibility, review consistency, and review sidedness, under different levels of involvement and expertise. We conducted an online survey that involved users of Epinions.com, a popular online consumer review website, to test the research model empirically. Consistent with previous research, the results reveal that argument quality, a central cue, was the primary factor affecting review credibility. Participants also relied on peripheral cues such as source credibility, review consistency, and review sidedness when evaluating online consumer reviews. Review sidedness had a stronger impact on review credibility when the recipient had a low involvement level and a high expertise level. However, the other interaction effects were not significant. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The adoption of an organization-wide system, such as an enterprise system (ES), has often been mandated by organizational management, which may not necessarily motivate users to proactively explore ...the system's features and subsequently apply pertinent features that best support their job tasks. Anchoring on self-determination theory, this research investigates the antecedents and consequences of users' intrinsic motivation to explore ES features. We propose two organizational levers (i.e., autonomous job design and socialization tactics) that the management could exercise to trigger intrinsic motivation, thereby leading to improved ES feature exploration. Intrinsic motivation is manifested by hedonic motivation and normative motivation, whereas ES feature exploration is conceptualized as a dual-dimensional outcome reflected by cognitive behavior (exploratory usage) and positive affect (exploration satisfaction). Through a two-stage survey of 127 organizational users in China, we find general support for our research model. We further observe significant moderating effects of prevention focus on the association between organizational levers and intrinsic motivations. Beyond demonstrating how organizational users respond to different organizational levers, this research examines a broader, enduring challenge, which is to determine how organizational users can be induced to be intrinsically inspired to innovatively harness implemented information systems.
With the support of smart technology, IT-enabled services have become “smart” and have progressively disrupted existing markets. Ride-hailing services (RHSs) are widely regarded as representative of ...these IT-enabled services. However, few studies on IT-enabled services investigate how the technological attributes of smart technology influence service performance in a continuously changing environment. We developed our research model according to Wixom and Todd’s model, the literature on change management, and the literature on information system postadoption behavior. We conducted a large-scale field study by surveying 380 drivers from major metropolises in mainland China and a post hoc qualitative interpretation to validate our model. We found that smart technological attributes of RHS systems (i.e., monitoring, control, advisory support, and responsive support) positively influence functionality and content quality, which in turn influence service quality. In addition, service quality positively influences drivers’ postadoption attitudes and behaviors, including openness to RHS change, job satisfaction, and continuous usage intentions. Our findings provide important theoretical and practical implications.
Researchers have long speculated about the distinction between trust and distrust, yet the majority of studies on trust have treated them as essentially the same construct on opposite ends of a ...continuum. In order to resolve this ambiguity, we propose a theoretical framework to investigate the antecedents and influences of trust and distrust in the online shopping context, relying on the literature of website design and consumer trust, ambivalence theories, as well as emerging studies on distrust in the work place. Our findings indicate that trust and distrust are two separate concepts by reason of their distinct cognitions, different antecedents and different influences on consequent outcomes. In particular, the results show that specific website design attributes have distinct effects on shaping consumers’ trust and distrust. These findings suggest new ways in which website attributes can be fine-tuned by website designers and managers.
► Trust and distrust are two separate concepts by reason of their distinct cognition, different antecedents and different influence on consequent outcomes. ► Website design attributes have asymmetric impacts on shaping consumers' trust and distrust in the online shopping context. ► The influences of trust and distrust on buying intention are asymmetric in that distrust weighs more heavily in terms of lowering buying intention than trust does in terms of enhancing buying intention. ► A consumer's functional perception and motivating perception have asymmetric effects on a consumer's buying intention. ► Theoretical implications on ambivalence research and new insights about positive and negative manifestations have been emphasized.
We empirically tested a parsimonious model that incorporates cost-benefit analysis/transaction cost theory, institutional theory, and organizational capability-based theory to predict organizational ...adoption of IT-facilitated virtualization in an Asian context. Virtualization implies the use of IT and communication technology by organizations in managing their interactions and key business operations with stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and employees. Our research extends existing literature by using organizational structure adoption theories. The study should provide insights into the salient adoption issues of Asian firms. A survey was conducted of B2B organizations in Singapore. Results indicated that an increase in the level of net perceived benefits, external influences, and organizational capabilities had a positive effect on organizational decision makers’ intention to use virtualization. In particular, external influences were found to be the most important antecedents of intention to adopt virtualization in B2B organizations in Singapore.
This study explores how the quality and credibility of information on healthcare websites can be enhanced through the simultaneous delivery of multiple information sources. Such information ...integration is achieved using a new experimental Web API called Portals. Accessing multiple information sources is salient due to the uncertainty surrounding an overwhelming amount of online health information that can be incorrect or misleading. When readers seek health information, the almost instantaneous verification that comes with the possibility of multiple-sources assessment is critical. This research provides novel insights that establish the value of reliably integrating health content from multiple sources (websites). The behavioral differences when people encounter consistent or inconsistent information from multiple-websites integration are investigated, and the implication of the findings are discussed. The research findings guide how health-related websites can help online seekers access higher-quality healthcare websites.
PDF
