Recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) technology provide an unprecedented opportunity for personalized services. To take advantage of this great potential, consumers are willing to ...provide their personal information at the risk of privacy breach. This paper examines factors affecting the willingness to provide privacy information based on the privacy calculus theory in several IoT services; healthcare, smart home and smart transportation. The proposed model is estimated using survey data collected from 154 people who know the concept of IoT. The results indicate that people do not pay much attention to perceived privacy risk when providing privacy information for a better personalized service. However, in healthcare service, where perceived privacy risk is high, people are not willing to provide their personal information despite the lower expected value from incomplete personalization. Analysis of privacy behavior in the context of IoT services provides implications for and insight into the tradeoff decision between perceived privacy risk and willingness to provide personal information.
•Perceived benefit has an effect on the willingness to provide privacy information.•Some network externality factors have a significant effect on perceived benefit.•Perceived privacy risk does not matter when providing privacy information.•Despite the lower expected value from non-personalization, risk matters in healthcare.
Notwithstanding the biggest victim of digital piracy, we have a limited understanding of how TV drama piracy affects its legal consumption. Unlike movies or music, TV dramas are typically a series of ...episodes, where pirated past episodes may not necessarily carry a negative impact on the legal consumption of current episodes. The consumption boosted by piracy can promote Internet buzz, which may draw the attention of potential consumers and may result in broader legal consumption afterward. Based on an empirical analysis regarding the relationships among the viewership of 20 TV dramas broadcast in the US, social media activities on Twitter, Google and YouTube search trends, and the number of BitTorrent users who pirated these TV dramas, we show that although the direct effect of media consumption through BitTorrent to TV viewership is negative, the indirect effect that mediates Internet buzz is positive, which dilutes the negative effect of digital piracy. Such positive effects of digital piracy are more substantial for the second half of dramas, less popular dramas, and serial dramas. We discuss the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of our study.
Purpose While prior studies have explored the relationship between visual appeal and purchasing decisions, the role of bookmarking has largely been underemphasized. This research aims to address this ...gap by focusing on the impact of bookmarking on consumer behavior, guided by the cognitive load theory and dual-system theory. Design/methodology/approach The authors executed a controlled experiment and analyzed the results using a two-stage regression method that linked visual appeal, bookmarking and purchase intent. Further empirical analysis was conducted to authenticate the authors' proposed model, utilizing real-world mobile commerce data from a clothing company. Findings This study's findings suggest that visual appeal influences purchase intent primarily through the full mediation of bookmarking, rather than exerting a direct influence. Furthermore, an increase in colorfulness corresponds positively with visual appeal, while visual complexity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with it. Originality/value This study provides novel insights into the choice-set formation process through the theoretical lens of dual-system theory. Additionally, the authors employed an image processing technique to quantify a product's visual appeal as depicted in a photograph. This study also incorporates a comprehensive econometric analysis to connect the objective aspects of visual appeal with subjective responses.
•We propose a value-based model to explain the factors for smart speaker adoption.•Network externalities have a positive impact on the perceived benefit.•Product related variables have a positive ...impact on the perceived benefit.•Platform related variables have a stronger effect than product related variables.
The emerging market for smart speakers is growing rapidly. Unlike conventional information technology (IT) devices, smart speakers are becoming a major platform that access many types of information through a voice interface. This study examines the factors related to the adoption of smart speakers from the platform perspective. More specifically, our study investigated how the product related characteristics (e.g., functionality, design, brand, and price), platform related characteristics (e.g., perceived service availability, perceived network size, perceived complementarity) and privacy concerns affect the perceived value and intentions to adopt a smart speaker. The results indicate that platform related variables have a bigger impact on the customer adoption of the smart speaker, whereas product related variables, such as functionality, have less of an impact.
Smart speakers enable communication through a voice interface and are among the fastest growing consumer technologies globally; they provide a new and innovative medium for the delivery of ...interactive advertisements and the sale of products, known as "conversational commerce." However, despite the promising potential of the use of smart speakers as a new advertising channel, little is known about the effectiveness of advertisements made through this medium. Therefore, this article investigates how the distinctive features of smart speakers, namely, interactivity, talker variability, and contextual relevance, influence the effectiveness of advertisements. Through two experiments, we assess the recognition of advertisements for the measurement of advertisements effectiveness through smart speakers. The results of experiment 1 show that the brand and product recognition of advertisements in cases where smart speaker users interact with the advertisements is higher as compared to that of non-interactive advertisements. Experiment 2 further shows that contextual relevance increases the brand and product recognition of advertisement, while talker variability does not affect it. Thus, our findings reveal the nature of the voice interface and provide insights for effective business strategies for advertisements in conversational commerce.
•Mobile devices have become people’s first go-to informational source.•This study explores whether attention predicts mobile system discontinuance.•Attention has significant statistical power over ...transaction-related metrics.•XGBoost consistently outperforms benchmarks in the empirical literature.
As mobile devices have become people’s first go-to informational source, they are becoming critical for e-commerce companies in understanding how mobile trading devices influence their businesses. This study involves a collaboration with a nationwide financial services company in Korea to examine the role of mobile attention in predicting mobile stock trading system discontinuance. Employing XGBoost and an artificial neural network, we analyze the complete transaction history, as well as the usage and login patterns data from 2017 to 2018 for 25,822 mobile trading application users. We find that mobile attention has significant statistical power over traditional trade-related metrics such as recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) in predicting subsequent mobile trading system discontinuance. Moreover, the new prediction methodology, augmented by incorporating mobile attention into the RFM framework and utilizing up-to-date machine learning techniques, consistently outperforms benchmarks in the empirical literature. Thus, this study sheds new light on the post-adoption information system usage literature and furnishes practical guidance to those companies whose business hinges on mobile systems.
Polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG) phosphate was used as a disinfectant for the prevention of microorganism growth in humidifiers, without recognizing that a change of exposure route might cause ...significant health effects. Epidemiological studies reported that the use of humidifier disinfectant containing PHMG-phosphate can provoke pulmonary fibrosis. However, the pulmonary toxicity of PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles is unknown yet. This study aimed to elucidate the toxicological relationship between PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles and pulmonary fibrosis. An in vivo nose-only exposure system and an in vitro air–liquid interface (ALI) co-culture model were applied to confirm whether PHMG-phosphate induces inflammatory and fibrotic responses in the respiratory tract. Seven-week-old male Sprague–Dawley rats were exposed to PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles for 3 weeks and recovered for 3 weeks in a nose-only exposure chamber. In addition, three human lung cells (Calu-3, differentiated THP-1 and HMC-1 cells) were cultured at ALI condition for 12 days and were treated with PHMG-phosphate at set concentrations and times. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, airway barrier injuries and inflammatory and fibrotic responses were evaluated in vivo and in vitro. The rats exposed to PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles in nanometer size showed pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis including inflammatory cytokines and fibronectin mRNA increase, as well as histopathological changes. In addition, PHMG-phosphate triggered the ROS generation, airway barrier injuries and inflammatory responses in a bronchial ALI co-culture model. Those results demonstrated that PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles cause pulmonary inflammatory and fibrotic responses. All features of fibrogenesis by PHMG-phosphate aerosol particles closely resembled the pathology of fibrosis that was reported in epidemiological studies. Finally, we expected that PHMG-phosphate infiltrated into the lungs in the form of aerosol particles would induce an airway barrier injury via ROS, release fibrotic inflammatory cytokines, and trigger a wound-healing response, leading to pulmonary fibrosis. A simultaneous state of tissue destruction and inflammation caused by PHMG-phosphate had whipped up a “perfect storm” in the respiratory tract.
Cigarette smoke is responsible for many fatal pulmonary diseases, however, the toxic mechanism is still unclear. In this study, we first confirmed that whole cigarette smoke condensates (WCSC) ...contain hydrophilic elements, lipophilic and gaseous components. Then, we treated BEAS-2B cells, a normal human bronchial epithelial cell line, at dosages of 0.25, 0.5, and 1% for 24 h and explored the toxic mechanism. Cell viability decreased in a dose-dependent manner, and fission and fusion of mitochondria, damage of endoplasmic reticulume (ER) structures, and formation of autophagosome-like vacuoles were found in cells treated with 1% WCSC. Mitochondrial and ER volumes, lysosomal fluorescence intensity, LDH release, and intracellular ROS levels notably decreased at the highest doses compared with the control, whereas intracellular calcium ion and NO levels were significantly elevated accompanying G2/M phase arrest. Expression of an iron-binding nuclear protein-related gene (pirin) was the most up-regulated in the WCSC-treated cells with enhanced expression of antioxidant-related genes, whereas expression of carbonic anhydrase IX gene, a marker of tumor hypoxia, was the most down-regulated. Additionally, levels of apoptosis (BAX, Apaf-1, and cleavage of caspase-3 and PARP), autophagy (p62 and LC3B-II), ER stress (PERK, IRE-1a, Bip, and CHOP), antioxidant (SOD-1 and SOD-2), and MAPkinase activation (p-ERK, p-p38, and p-JNK)-related proteins were clearly enhanced following exposure to WCSC, whereas expression of several mitochondrial dynamics-related proteins was reduced with dose. Interestingly, expression of ferritin protein (light chain) was dramatically enhanced near the ER along with that of p62 protein. More importantly, the hypoxia inducible factor-1 pathway and ferroptosis were proposed among the 20 terms in KEGG pathway analysis, and secretion of IL-6 and IL-8, which are involved in hypoxia-induced inflammation, were clearly elevated with dose. Taken together, we suggest that WCSC may induce ferroptosis in bronchial epithelial cells via ER stress and disturbed homeostasis in mitochondrial dynamics caused by induction of hypoxia conditions.
Minimum variance (MV) beamforming has been studied for improving the performance of a diagnostic ultrasound imaging system. However, it is not easy for the MV beamforming to be implemented in a ...real-time ultrasound imaging system because of the enormous amount of computation time associated with the covariance matrix inversion. In this paper, to address this problem, we propose a new fast MV beamforming method that almost optimally approximates the MV beamforming while reducing the computational complexity greatly through dimensionality reduction using principal component analysis (PCA). The principal components are estimated offline from pre-calculated conventional MV weights. Thus, the proposed method does not directly calculate the MV weights but approximates them by a linear combination of a few selected dominant principal components. The combinational weights are calculated in almost the same way as in MV beamforming, but in the transformed domain of beamformer input signal by the PCA, where the dimension of the transformed covariance matrix is identical to the number of some selected principal component vectors. Both computer simulation and experiment were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method with echo signals from simulation as well as phantom and in vivo experiments. It is confirmed that our method can reduce the dimension of the covariance matrix down to as low as 2 × 2 while maintaining the good image quality of MV beamforming.
•In Korea, PHMG-P-contained humidifier disinfectant (PHMG-CS)-related patients occurred.•We studied the toxic mechanism using human normal bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B).•PHMG-CS bound to the ...cell membrane and the inner wall of vacuoles 6 h post-exposure.•Apoptosis, damage of cellular components and a decrease of intracellular ROS was induced.•Secretion of IFN-γ significantly increased, whereas those of IL-8 and CXCL-1 decreased.•Dead cells rapidly attached to lung fibroblasts and elevated secretion of IL-8 and CXCL-1.
Polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG) has been widely used in the industry owing to its excellent biocidal, anti-corrosive, and anti-biofouling properties. In Korea, consumers exposed to PHMG-phosphate (PHMG-P)-containing humidifier disinfectant have begun to suffer from fibrotic lung injury-related symptoms for unknown reasons. However, no appropriate treatment has yet been found because the detail toxic mechanism has not been identified. Herein, we first studied the toxic mechanism of PHMG-P-containing solution using human normal bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B cells). When exposed for 24 h, PHMG-P-containing solution rapidly decreased cell viability from around 6 h after exposure and significantly increased of the phosphatidylserine exposure and the LDH release. At 6 h of exposure, the material contained in the solution was found to be bound to the cell membrane and the inner wall of vacuoles, and damaged the cell membrane and organelles. In addition, a significant increase of IFN-γ was observed among cytokines, the expression of apoptosis-, autophagy-, and membrane and DNA damage-related proteins was also enhanced. Meanwhile, the level of intracellular ROS and the secretion of IL-8 and CXCL-1, which are chemokines for professional phagocytes, decreased. Thus, we treated dead BEAS-2B cells to lung fibroblasts (HFL-1), non-professional phagocytes, and then we observed that the dead cells rapidly attached to HFL-1 cells and were taken up. Additionally, increased secretion of IL-8 and CXCL-1 was observed in the cells. Based on these results, we suggest that pulmonary exposure to PHMG-P induces apoptosis of bronchial epithelial cells and lung fibroblasts might play an important role in the clearance of the apoptotic debris.
