Over the past decade, the markets for mobile and wireless services have been among the world's fastest-growing, especially in Asian countries, presenting financial institutions with significant ...opportunities to offer value-added services. Mobile banking has since emerged as a new channel enabling the banks to react strategically to changes in competitive forces and to enhance customer convenience.
Based on Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB) model, this study develops an integrated model to provide a fuller understanding of factors facilitating or impeding the adoption of mobile banking, focusing on consumers in Taiwan and Vietnam. While subjective norms had a significant effect on the intention to adopt, three attributes of mobile banking (compatibility, perceived usefulness, and perceived risk) were found to have indirect effects on intention to adopt mobile banking through attitude toward adoption for consumers in both Taiwan and Vietnam. Intention to adopt mobile banking was indirectly influenced by self-efficacy and facilitating conditions, and directly affected by perceived behavioral control in both nations. Some differences in intention to adopt mobile banking between Taiwanese and Vietnamese are also discussed. Based on the research findings, managerial implications for financial institutions and mobile service providers are discussed.
•Mobile banking has not well adopted in consumer markets.•An integrated model was applied to mobile banking adoption in Taiwan and Vietnam.•The theory of innovation diffusion is sustained except the perceived ease of use.•The theory of perceived behavioral control is sustained except the subjective norms.•Differences between the two nations are in trialability and innovativeness.
The existing literature on the construction costs of nuclear power reactors has focused almost exclusively on trends in construction costs in only two countries, the United States and France, and ...during two decades, the 1970s and 1980s. These analyses, Koomey and Hultman (2007); Grubler (2010), and Escobar-Rangel and Lévêque (2015), study only 26% of reactors built globally between 1960 and 2010, providing an incomplete picture of the economic evolution of nuclear power construction. This study curates historical reactor-specific overnight construction cost (OCC) data that broaden the scope of study substantially, covering the full cost history for 349 reactors in the US, France, Canada, West Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea, encompassing 58% of all reactors built globally. We find that trends in costs have varied significantly in magnitude and in structure by era, country, and experience. In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology.
•Comprehensive analysis of nuclear power construction cost experience.•Coverage for early and recent reactors in seven countries.•International comparisons and re-evaluation of learning.•Cost trends vary by country and era; some experience cost stability or decline.
Fact-checking has gained importance in recent years, as so-called "fake news" has started to spread on social media. News outlets and independent organizations engage in debunking to combat the ...massive spread of disinformation. However, several authors have argued that fact checkers can only be successful if they win the trust of the audience - by making their practices transparent. This article analyzes the degree of source transparency provided by eight fact checkers from different countries (the US, the UK, Germany, and Austria). The findings show major differences among the outlets studied which can be attributed to varying levels of journalistic professionalism as well as to organizational differences. Implications for the success of fact-checking and solutions to combat online disinformation are discussed.
•mHealth apps have the enormous potential to promote patient-centered care.•mHealth apps provide a tool for patient self-management.•mHealth apps effectively empower and improve users’ health and ...health behavior.•Understanding the factors influencing mHealth adoption fosters greater support for mHealth apps in the health system.•The international comparison demonstrates different perspectives of older adults in Germany and Australia.
Although evidence of the global effectiveness and usability of mobile health (mHealth) apps as non-drug interventions is growing, older adults often demonstrate low adoption rates of these apps. This study aims to identify the perspectives of older adults on introducing and adopting mHealth apps in Australia and Germany.
We conducted two online cross-sectional surveys to examine factors from contextual, technological and personal perspectives that influence older adults in mHealth app adoption. Using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests and exploratory factor analysis, we identified the differences and similarities between respondents’ perspectives across two countries.
A total of 290 respondents (149, Australia; 141, Germany) completed the survey. Older adults’ ability to use a mHealth app, the user-friendliness of the app, their positive self-efficacy regarding their health and resource availability for using mHealth apps were related to intended adoption. Differences between Germany and Australia were found in issues concerned with data sharing and empowerment by the doctor, while similarities were related to trust in the doctor and their treatment approaches.
This study highlights participants’ perspectives and attitudes towards mHealth app use, unmet needs and barriers, and the facilitating influences in the two countries. These insights can be used to inform the development and implementation of mHealth apps and to construct tailored strategies to increase the adoption rates of mHealth apps among older adults and to maximise their potential benefits.
•Cost and affordability of healthy diet (CoAHD) are now mainstream food security metrics.•We explore innovations and extensions for improving global CoAHD estimates.•Demographic differences across ...countries have sizable impacts on CoAHD estimates.•CoAHD metrics also very sensitive to assumptions on available income for food budgets.
Recently developed cost and affordability of healthy diet (CoAHD) metrics have quickly become mainstream food security indicators. However, published research on the sensitivity of estimation methods is limited. This paper focuses on two important innovations in CoAHD measurement at the global level. First, we develop a demographic scaling factor to adjust healthy diet costs for cross-country differences in age structures, since younger populations generally require fewer calories than older populations. Second, we improve the way in which household expenditure available for purchasing food (“food budgets”) are derived. In addition, we explore sensitivity of global CoAHD estimates to potential problems with the representativeness and food product coverage of global food price data and vary assumptions for activity levels that shape energy expenditure requirements. We apply these explorations to the EAT-Lancet reference diet in 137 countries using price data from 2017. Relative to the conventional methods, we find that demographic scaling and improved food budget derivation substantially reduces the estimated population who cannot afford a healthy diet, from 3.02 to 2.13 billion. Adjustments for low product coverage can lead to modest reductions for specific regions and food groups, while higher physical activity assumptions increase the share of people who cannot afford a healthy diet, though perhaps implausibly so. Methods clearly matter in CoAHD estimation, and more accurate and timelier CoAHD estimates have substantial scope to improve policy analysis, design and targeting.
In this international, longitudinal study, we explored gender differences in, and gendered relationships among, math-related motivations emphasized in the Eccles (Parsons) et al. (1983) ...expectancy-value framework, high school math participation, educational aspirations, and career plans. Participants were from Australia, Canada, and the United States (Ns = 358, 471, 418, respectively) in Grades 9/10 at Time 1 and Grades 11/12 at Time 2. The 3 samples came from suburban middle to upper-middle socioeconomic backgrounds, primarily of Anglo-European descent. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed stereotypic gender differences in educational and occupational outcomes only among the Australian sample. Multigroup structural equation models identified latent mean differences where male adolescents held higher intrinsic value for math in the Australian sample and higher ability/success expectancy in both North American samples. Ability/success expectancy was a key predictor in the North American samples, in contrast to intrinsic value in the Australian sample. Attainment/utility ("importance") values were more important for female adolescents' career choices, except in the Australian sample. Findings are interpreted in relation to gender socialization practices, degree and type of early choice, and specialization across settings. Implications are discussed for long-term math engagement and career selection for female and male adolescents.
The Moral Machine experiment Awad, Edmond; Dsouza, Sohan; Kim, Richard ...
Nature (London),
11/2018, Volume:
563, Issue:
7729
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence have come concerns about how machines will make moral decisions, and the major challenge of quantifying societal expectations about the ethical ...principles that should guide machine behaviour. To address this challenge, we deployed the Moral Machine, an online experimental platform designed to explore the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. This platform gathered 40 million decisions in ten languages from millions of people in 233 countries and territories. Here we describe the results of this experiment. First, we summarize global moral preferences. Second, we document individual variations in preferences, based on respondents' demographics. Third, we report cross-cultural ethical variation, and uncover three major clusters of countries. Fourth, we show that these differences correlate with modern institutions and deep cultural traits. We discuss how these preferences can contribute to developing global, socially acceptable principles for machine ethics. All data used in this article are publicly available.
How to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the functioning and structures of our society has become a concern of contemporary politics and public debates. In this paper, we ...investigate national AI strategies as a peculiar form of co-shaping this development, a hybrid of policy and discourse that offers imaginaries, allocates resources, and sets rules. Conceptually, the paper is informed by sociotechnical imaginaries, the sociology of expectations, myths, and the sublime. Empirically we analyze AI policy documents of four key players in the field, namely China, the United States, France, and Germany. The results show that the narrative construction of AI strategies is strikingly similar: they all establish AI as an inevitable and massively disrupting technological development by building on rhetorical devices such as a grand legacy and international competition. Having established this inevitable, yet uncertain, AI future, national leaders proclaim leadership intervention and articulate opportunities and distinct national pathways. While this narrative construction is quite uniform, the respective AI imaginaries are remarkably different, reflecting the vast cultural, political, and economic differences of the countries under study. As governments endow these imaginary pathways with massive resources and investments, they contribute to coproducing the installment of these futures and, thus, yield a performative lock-in function.
A large body of research has found an association between short birth intervals and the risk of infant mortality in developing countries, but recent work on other perinatal outcomes from highly ...developed countries has called these claims into question, arguing that previous studies have failed to adequately control for unobserved heterogeneity. Our study addresses this issue by estimating within-family models on a sample of 4.5 million births from 77 countries at various levels of development. We show that after unobserved maternal heterogeneity is controlled for, intervals shorter than 36 months substantially increase the probability of infant death. However, the importance of birth intervals as a determinant of infant mortality varies inversely with maternal education and the strength of the relationship varies regionally. Finally, we demonstrate that the mortality-reducing effects of longer birth intervals are strong at low levels of development but decline steadily toward zero at higher levels of development. These findings offer a clear way to reconcile previous research showing that birth intervals are important for perinatal outcomes in lowincome countries but are much less consequential in high-income settings.
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