Personalized Recommendation through Disentangled Representation Learning of Consumers’ Multiple Digital Footprints
ABSTRACT. The pervasiveness of multiple types of digital footprints recorded on e-commerce platforms have added fuel to the design of personalized recommender systems. Despite the abundance, consumers’ digital footprints can be confounded with many causes, both internally and externally. To disentangle the causes driving consumers’ behaviors, a causal recommendation method, i.e., DIPC, based on cause disentanglement at various consumption stages is proposed in the paper. Referring to related theories, interest and item popularity are recognized as causes driving consumer behaviors in the need recognition stage, while behaviors in the pre-purchase and purchase stages are assumed to be motivated by interest and conformity. To rigorously evaluate the performance of DIPC, extensive experiments are conducted on a real-world dataset with carefully designed protocol in terms of modeling multiple digital footprints and causality learning. The results show that DIPC outperforms all baselines significantly and possesses good interpretability, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed causal recommendation method.
ABSTRACT. Artificial intelligence (AI) services have developed rapidly in recent years, and these services have penetrated our daily life. Even though AI can provide better services than humans, people are dissatisfied with it. AI services may be subject to a bias, which refers to speciesism in this study. We propose that the AE design of AI is effective to attenuate people’s speciesism against AI services. We conduct a 2×2 experiment on 676 volunteers and find AE improves satisfaction by weakening speciesism against AI. This process is also moderated by the task types. The research find that AE can effectively weaken users’ speciesism in subjective tasks, thus improving users’ satisfaction, while these influences have little impact for objective tasks. The findings contribute to the research on AI services and the AE design of AI, and they provide a novel explanation about peoples’ unfair treatment of AI services.
Stereotype effects: How do robots’ voice types affect customer tolerance of robot service failures?
ABSTRACT. Service robots are gradually being deployed to replace employees and provide certain services. However, service failures inevitably occur due to technology malfunctions and the nature of service. Appropriate design solutions to increase customer tolerance of service failures are vital for service platforms. Based on the computers as social actors paradigm, voice stereotypes, and social cognition theory, we conducted three scenario-based experiments to explore how the human-like voice types of service robots influenced customer tolerance of service failures. The results indicated that robots with adult female or child voices led to higher levels of customer tolerance than those with adult male voices. Also, warmth perceptions, rather than competence perceptions, fully mediated the effects of robot voice types. Furthermore, for robots with adult male voices, increasing the level of robot intelligence enhanced users’ warmth perceptions and diminished the difference between the warmth perceptions of different voices. These findings contribute to the literature on robot design for customer service and offer implications for practitioners regarding service robot design and deployment.
Examining the Adaptive and Proactive Performance of Digital Natives in the Workplace: The Role of Digital Skills
ABSTRACT. Shocks caused by economic competition and the pandemic have made the business environment increasingly volatile, requiring employees to have high adaptive performance and proactive performance. As digital natives enter the workplace, they may utilize digital skills developed in their upbringing to possess an advantage when facing changes. However, studies on digital natives’ change-oriented performance are quite scant. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we hypothesize that digital natives raised under appropriate social guidance achieve adaptive performance and proactive performance using their digital skills of problem-solving and collaboration. We conducted structural equation modeling using data from a multi-source and Three-wave longitudinal survey to validate our model. This study enriches the understanding of the formation of employees’ digital competencies and change-oriented performance and suggests the value of digital natives raised with appropriate social guidance.
How Do Product Review Videos Affect Viewer Attitudes: A Mixed-Method Investigation
ABSTRACT. Video has become an emerging carrier of user-generated content (UGC). As a branch of self-media videos, product review videos posted by influencers have become an influential channel in shaping consumers’ purchase decisions. In the past, studies on influencer marketing have largely focused on textual and pictorial social media posts, while there was a lack of research on unstructured UGC videos, from which we can extract deep cognitive and affective information. In this paper, we constructed a theoretical model to explain the influence of product review videos on viewers' attitudes based on the cognitive-affective framework and authenticity theory. Specifically, we posit that viewers’ attitudes towards the product and the influencer will be influenced by both cognitive cues (i.e., information amount and topic diversity) and affective cues (i.e., vocal and facial emotional intensity) because these cues will affect perceived authenticity on influencers. In addition, such effects will differ across different types of videos (i.e., shopping-haul videos and anti-haul videos). A mixed-method approach was proposed to test the theoretical model. In Study 1, we collected product review videos from Bilibili.com, used text mining, sentiment analytics, audio analytics, and facial expression analytics tools to extract video features, and conducted regression analyses on viewers' attitudes (i.e., viewers' sentiment towards the product and the influencer). We further proposed a lab experiment to establish causality between video features and viewer attitudes, and to elucidate the mediating role of influencer authenticity. The contribution and implication of the research are discussed.
The Effect of Image Features on Product Sales: Evidence from an Online Food Delivery Platform
ABSTRACT. Though online retailers have put much efforts to optimize product image to attract consumers and increase revenue, studies about how specific image features promote product sales are rare. This study aims to examine whether image features have impact on product sales, and identify a set of key features essential to promote product sales. Specifically, we collected product images and corresponding sales data from one of the leading online food delivery platform in China. We used image processing technology to obtain image global features and regional features, and conducted a cross-sectional analysis and a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework to examine the effect of image features on sales. Results show that image saturation, colorfulness and the difference of contrast between foreground and background positively influence product sales, while image contrast has negative effect on sales. This study sheds light on the effect of image features and provides practical implications for product presentation
Investigating the Influencing Factors and Outcomes of Self-regulated Learning in Technology-mediated Learning
ABSTRACT. Technology-mediated learning (TML), a branch of online learning, has become an important tool to advance teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of schools that could not start on schedule. In contrast to face-to-face offline instruction, technology-mediated distance learning lacks actual instructional scenarios and supervision from the teacher, and students' self-regulated learning (SRL) dominates the instruction. There are few coherent studies on the influencing factors and outcomes of SRL. This study adopts the research idea of proposing an understanding of SRL from the perspective of influencing factors and outcomes based on social cognitive theory and anticipates a mixed research approach to determine the personal and technology factors that influence SRL, and the outcomes generated by SRL through semi-structured interviews. In the consideration of personal factors, this study considers emotions as moderators of general factors affecting SRL based on the framework of emotions. A questionnaire will be designed based on the analysis of interview data to validate the theoretical model of the influencing factors and outcomes of SRL in TML and to contribute to the enhancement of the effectiveness of SRL.
ABSTRACT. 本文通过Web of Science和中国知网数据库检索了2005年至2022年内的国内外关于人工智能服务代理(AISA)的拟人化影响消费者的86篇文献作为研究样本,对其进行了系统梳理。首先,本文回顾了AISA拟人化影响消费者的研究现状并总结了AISA拟人化的定义和类型。其次,本文构建了AISA拟人化影响消费者的研究框架。最后,本文提出未来研究应当关注AISA情感拟人化对消费者的影响、AISA拟人化带来的伦理和隐私问题、AISA拟人化对消费者福祉的影响、AISA拟人化在整个服务阶段中的动态变化机制、AISA拟人化影响消费者的其他应用情境等方向。
Increasing Crystallized Intelligence through Multimodal Interactions in AI-powered Learning
ABSTRACT. Multimodality is one of the important directions of AI-powered learning at present and in the future. Improving crystallized intelligence is one of the goals of AI-powered learning. In this study, we develop a theoretical model to explain the relationship between modality of AI and crystallized intelligence, based on the Biggs 3P model. We test the hypotheses using data from an experiment (N = 324) and found that modality of AI has a positive effect on deep learning approach and a negative effect on surface learning approach. The modality of AI can affect crystallized intelligence both directly and indirectly through deep learning approach. Moreover, we examine the moderating effect of technological readiness from learners’ perspectives. Optimism and insecurity have moderating effect on the relationship between modality of AI and two kinds of learning approaches respectively.
Norms or Fun? The Influence of Ethical Concerns and Perceived Enjoyment on the Acceptance of Deep Synthesis Applications
ABSTRACT. Deep synthesis can play a positive role in applications such as film production and virtual fitting. It also can generate ethical risks in malicious use such as defamation and fraud. Ethical risks cause public concern, but the concern is not evident in entertaining applications. Therefore, this study aims to understand the role of ethics and entertainment in the acceptance of deep synthesis applications. A mixed-method is used to qualitatively derive the ethical concerns and quantitatively validate the impact mechanism. We confirm that informed consent, privacy protection, traceability, and non-deception have significant impact on ethical acceptability and social acceptance, with privacy protection being the most sensitive. Perceived enjoyment significantly weakens the effect of ethical acceptability on social acceptance. The findings provide the entry point for ethical regulation of deep synthesis applications, and the weakening effect of perceived enjoyment is a wake-up call for regulators to guard against pan-entertainment applications.
What Capabilities Can Make AI Voice Assistance Appear More Intelligent? ——The Evidence from Xiao Ai Classmate
ABSTRACT. With the growing popularity of voice assistant, they have revamped how people use technology and connect with brands conveniently. Empirical studies have revealed that factors motivating people to use voice AI assistant include many factors, but a common theme is their capabilities. We believe voice assistance's capabilities cannot be seen as a single construct, we focus specifically on the computational and cognition functional ability of voice AI assistant. According to the analysis of a real interaction data set from voice AI assistant——Xiao Ai classmate voice assistance—— company, we find that the capabilities of computational and cognition is positive to service quality, and higher service quality will make users feel more intelligence. with the expectancy violation, service success as a moderating variable to explain the relationship between computational capability and intelligence preference. This research contributes to the nascent literature on voice AI assistant in customer service and has managerial implications both for how AI assistance should be designed.
How enterprise social media use affect job performance: A new perspective of working and non-working time
ABSTRACT. Many organizations have adopted enterprise social media to improve employees' job performance. It has become common for employees to use enterprise social media to deal with work during non-working time. However, the impact of non-working time enterprise social media use remains unclear. Based on conservation of resource theory, this paper constructs a research model to study the relationship between enterprise social media and job performance at different times. Using structural equation model to analyze 323 employee’s data, the results show that: (1) Neither working nor non- working time enterprise social media use has significant effect on emotional exhaustion. (2) Both working time and non-working time enterprise social media use have promoting effect on organizational commitment. (3) Emotional exhaustion has inhibited effect on job performance, and organizational commitment has promoting effect on job performance. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of this study are explored.
ABSTRACT. 为捕捉更全面的用户偏好、景点特征及评级与在线评论的交互信息以解决数据稀疏和特征融合问题,论文提出了一种混合3D卷积融合评级和在线评论的景点推荐方法:首先采用深度矩阵分解和细粒度情感分析分别从评级和在线评论中提取用户和景点特征,其次通过特征堆叠实现交互后输入 3D 卷积网络提取非线性信号,然后利用相似度计算,为用户推荐排名前N的景点,最后采用去哪儿网数据集进行验证。结果表明,该方法具有较优的推荐性能。
The impact of display advertising introduction on the performance of native advertising in the mobile e-commerce platform
ABSTRACT. Based on a natural experiment of online advertising in an e-commerce platform, this study empirically investigated the impact of display advertising introduction on the performance of native advertising, as well as the moderating role of merchant size and reputation. We found that after the introduction of display advertising, native advertising clicks, bidding and investment decreased significantly by 6.6%, 6.6% and 11.9%, respectively, while total advertising costs increased by 18.4%, indicating that display advertising and native advertising are partially substitutable. In addition, the negative impact of display advertising introduction on the effectiveness of native advertising increased as the reputation of the merchant declined, and this effect was strongest among regional chain stores, but not significant among national chain retailers.
ABSTRACT. Content creators, such as YouTube and TikTok influencers, attract growing attention from advertisers, which presents a novel tradeoff for the hosting platform. On one hand, allowing content creators to embed sponsored ads (CADS) in the content undermines the platform's own ad sales (PADS); On the other hand, the platform might benefit from CADS through commissions. We develop a game-theoretical model to examine this tradeoff, in which a group of content creators and their hosting platform compete with each other on ad sales. We find that the dual mode (i.e., allowing CADS) might be optimal for the platform, depending on the qualities of PADS and CADS. Unlike the literature where the relationship between the platform offerings and the third-party participation is exogenous, we show that the strategic relationship between PADS and CADS can be substitutable, complementary, or independent from each other, which is endogenously determined by the platform.
Multimodal Negative Sentiment Recognition of Online Public Opinion on Public Health Emergencies Based on Fusion Strategy
ABSTRACT. Social media is used as a front for online mapping of offline public opinion on public health emergencies, and multimodal information with images and texts becomes the main way of public sentiment expression. To make full use of the relevance and complementarity among different modalities and improve the accuracy of multimodal negative sentiment recognition of online public opinion for public health emergencies, we construct a two-stage, hybrid fusion strategy-driven multimodal fine-grained negative sentiment recognition model (THFMFNSR). This model comprises BERT and ViT-based multimodal feature representation, GCN-based feature fusion, multiple classifiers, and rule-based decision fusion. By collecting image-text data about COVID-19 from Sina Weibo, this paper verifies the effectiveness of the model and extracts the best sentiment decision fusion rules and classifier configurations. The results show that compared with the optimal sentiment recognition model with text, image, and image-text feature fusion, the accuracy of this model in sentiment recognition and fine-grained negative sentiment recognition is improved.
ABSTRACT. 本文选取中国大陆31个省级行政区的数据构建关系矩阵,利用UCINET软件进行网络图谱、中心性、块模型、差异性和相关性分析,借助二次指派程序分析地域及疫情的调节作用。研究发现区域民间借贷风险网络存在风险中心,网络结构和位置特征均影响借贷风险传导。P2P平台表现出更明显的集聚效应,和实体借贷协同加剧民间借贷风险传导。东部省级行政区位于更核心的位置,疫情的调节作用不明显。相关部门应提前防范借贷风险,以进行公共危机管理。
We selected the data of 31 provincial-level administrative regions in mainland China to construct a relationship matrix, analyzed the network map, centrality, block model, difference and correlation by UCINET. Through the quadratic assignment procedure, we verified the moderating effects of regions and the COVID-19. Major findings include that there are risk centers in the regional private lending risk network and the network structure characteristics affect the transmission of lending risk; P2P (Peer-to-Peer) platforms show a more obvious agglomeration effect, and synergize with physical lending to exacerbate private lending risk transmission; the eastern provincial administrative regions are located in a more central position, and the moderating effect of the COVID-19 is not obvious. Relevant departments should prevent private lending risks in advance for public crisis management.
Research on the Impact of Government Epidemic Prevention and Control Policies on Public Sentiment and Risk Perception
ABSTRACT. This paper uses quasi natural experiments and breakpoint regression methods to conduct empirical research based on Weibo behavior data, aiming to explore the impact of major government prevention and control policies on public sentiment and risk perception. The study found that the city closure policy exacerbated the negative, anxiety, fear and anger of the public in Wuhan and Beijing, and improved the risk perception level of the public in both places; The policy of blocking residential areas not only alleviates the anxiety and fear of the public in both places, but also reduces the level of risk perception in Wuhan; The unsealing policy did not have a significant impact on the public sentiment and risk perception of the two places. The research results provide reference for the government to formulate prevention and control policies to stabilize public sentiment.
Research on freshness-keeping investment decision of two-echelon cold chain considering freshness and survival rate
ABSTRACT. In this paper, we investigate a two-echelon fresh product supply chain composed of a supplier and a distributor. The expression of preservation effort and order quantity are obtained under three kinds of preservation investment methods, as well as the intrinsic correlation mechanism among these decisions. With the aim of maximizing profit, the optimal preservation decision is made. This study shows that, joint investment in preservation is always the best way for both parties. When the gap between wholesale price and produce cost is small, the joint investment of supplier and distributor can be approximately equivalent to the investment of distributor alone. Therefore, distributors should take the initiative to undertake the preservation investment in order to maximize profits, while suppliers should avoid undertaking the investment alone.
A Framework for standardizing enterprises’ systems engineering processes
ABSTRACT. The liberalization of trade and globalization bring challenges as well as opportunities to companies, especially for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). In order to reduce time and costs, while increasing the quality of products, an efficient implementation of systems engineering process is necessary. However, even if a few systems engineering standards especially address SMEs, surveys show that SMEs hardly use formalized processes, resulting in poor process reproducibility and monitoring, among other drawbacks. Indeed, because of strong resource limitation, SMEs have difficulty to estimate any short-term benefit in spending time formalizing their processes. Against this background, this paper explores a methodology to support project managers in fostering the progressive deployment and standardization of engineering processes in SMEs starting from the perspective of their own experience and referring to the international systems engineering standards. Our proposal stands by the companies’ side to help companies to make their engineering processes evolve by progressively aligning them with the systems engineering standards without disrupting the entire organization and practices of the company.
Are You Really Texting the Right Promotional Messages? Evidence from the Probability Distance and Construal Level Theory
ABSTRACT. Although mobile promotions are still a major marketing method in recent years, conversion rates for mobile promotions are not very high. How to improve the effectiveness of mobile promotion is still a challenge for company. Based on probability distance and construal level theory, this paper explores the influence of construal-matching effect on consumer repurchase behavior by using the large-scale field experiment in a low-cost airlines. The results show that the matching between low probability distance and high construal level has a significant negative effect on consumer repurchase behavior, while the matching between high probability distance and low construal level has a significant positive effect on consumer repurchase behavior. The differences of this result and the construal-matching effect are discussed. Furthermore, the moderating effects of probability distance and individual characteristics on matching effect also are discussed. This research has guiding significance for marketing, consumer relationship management, and customized service strategy.
Versioning Player-versus-Player Online Games: A Tournament Design Perspective
ABSTRACT. A large number of players purchase superior virtual gear to increase their chances of winning a battle. However, the design of PvP games, particularly the design of the competitive balance among players, remains largely unexplored. We consider an optimal product line design problem that allows the developer to design the competitive balance. Results indicate that tournament design enables the developer to alleviate the well-known cannibalization effect caused by the release of free versions through multi-dimensional versioning, which renders the freemium strategy optimal for the game developer. Second, tournament design allows the developer to overcome players' budget constraints. Specifically, the developer can effectively monetize the participation of players who play the game for free by handicapping them through tournament design and charging the paying players a higher price. Counterintuitively, tournament design results in a Pareto improvement in the sense that it increases the developer's profits and benefits every player.
Heterogenous Cross-Side Network Effects in Two-Sided Platform: Implications of Individual Suppliers and Professional Suppliers
ABSTRACT. A substantial body of platforms literature has primarily characterized two-sided platforms as markets with cross-side network effects (CNEs). Most literature investigates how to attract more suppliers to leverage CNEs but ignores that CNEs driven by different suppliers may be heterogenous. To fill this gap, we identify two distinct suppliers i.e., individual hosts and professional hosts with three key differences in a set of housing rental platforms and examine how CNEs are influenced by different suppliers. Our results suggest that the quantity of individual hosts (vs. professional hosts) has larger CNEs on the renter size. In turn, renter size has larger CNEs on the quantity of individual hosts (vs. professional hosts), while renter size has weaker CNEs on the quality of individual hosts (vs. professional hosts). These findings generate important implications regarding how two-sided platforms may better govern ecosystems with different participants.
A Market-based Framework for Enterprise Applications Migration to the Cloud in the Digital Economy Era: A Cross-layer Resource Allocation View
ABSTRACT. Cloud migration is a crucial step in enterprise digitalization. Enterprises migrate applications into the cloud for faster processing time, more access and lower energy consumption than deploying locally. However, the existing works do not consider the efficient utilization of cloud resources when maximizing the enterprises’ utility. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer cloud migration framework for efficiently allocating cloud resources to multiple competing enterprises. We divide the cloud migration system into two layers: enterprise layer and cloud layer. We introduce a Fisher market in economics to obtain optimal service allocation strategy and equilibrium price at the enterprise layer. In the cloud layer, we consider the optimal resource provisioning and formulate the problem as a convex function. Then, we propose a gradient-based algorithm for cross-layer resource allocation. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the algorithm by simulation.
Topic Recognition of Frontiers of Scientific Research
ABSTRACT. Accurately excavate and identify the potential research topics and current research hotspots of the library and information subject, so as to grasp its development trend, dig out the core research hotspots, point out the characteristic research direction at this stage, and then promote the development of the library and information field research. This paper proposes a topic mining analysis model based on social network analysis and LDA. First, combine the co-word analysis algorithm to analyze the relationship between the subject words of different documents; combine the social network analysis algorithm to improve the coupling degree of the co-word network subject words; use the implicit space model to reduce the dimensionality of the co-word network to improve the coupling of social networks; Finally, the hidden location clustering algorithm is used to explore potential communities and improve the topic recognition effect. The method proposed in this paper optimizes the effect of the topic mining algorithm in identifying short text topics to a certain extent, eliminates subjective wishes, and is classified and predicted by the computer itself. Reveal the research hotspots in frontier fields, and provide a certain degree of reference value for emerging scholars who are committed to researching frontier disciplines.
Identifying the Combinations of Question-related Characteristics for Acquiring Better Answer Outcomes in Academic Social Q&A: An FsQCA Approach
ABSTRACT. Academic social networking sites provide a simple avenue for researchers to exchange information. However, the mechanism by which question-related characteristics affect the answer outcome in academic social Q&A (SQA) is still unclear. This study focuses on how different combinations of question-related characteristics affect answer outcomes in ResearchGate based on a configurational perspective. The study adopts fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze complex causal relationships among variables of question-related characteristics and answer outcomes extracted from the log under the “Artificial Intelligence” topic in ResearchGate. The results show that, when questions contain a high degree of emotion and the questioner is often involved in SQA activities, even if the question text is not highly readable, they will receive high-quality answers; while questions with low answer quantity and quality are often difficult-to-read or from novice academics. In addition, the study proposed a particular pattern of communication in academic SQA: emotion-led communication.
Could you please write down my name? An investigation of a new strategy of merchant review manipulation
ABSTRACT. With increasing online review manipulation on various transactional platforms, a new merchant manipulation strategy arises – manipulating the reviews by inducing consumers to praise employees’ names in reviews and give high ratings. To explore the effect of this new manipulation strategy on eWOM, this study constructs machine learning models for average rating and rating distribution prediction, using review text related features and name-related feature reflecting the manipulation. Our results indicate that the manipulation of reviews does improve average rating of merchants but leads to sharper J-shaped distribution and low-quality reviews, which will reduce reference value and reliability of reviews, further weakening the positive impact of average rating.
Research on the factors influencing users' willingness to reward in live knowledge streaming
ABSTRACT. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theoretical framework, this paper develops a theoretical model of how live knowledge features affect users' willingness to reward by influencing their viewing experience. The main findings are that the live knowledge feature variables of host professionalism, richness of materials, responsiveness, and quality of knowledge all have significant and positive direct effects on the reward willingness. The mediating variable social presence plays a significant and positive mediating role in the effect of all independent variables on the reward willingness. Cognitive load only mediates significantly and negatively in the effect of anchor professionalism and responsiveness on the reward willingness.
An algorithm paradox: Are gig workers full to enjoy job flexibility advertised by and then identify with the platform?
ABSTRACT. There exists an algorithm paradox which scholars have still not paid attention to in the gig economy. This paper builds a moderated-mediation model to explore and validate the specific boundary condition and impact mechanism of such an algorithm paradox. Results based on 314 data collected from Chinese gig workers find that, algorithmic monitoring can enhance gig workers’ organizational identification, but through the mediating effect of job flexibility, algorithmic monitoring can indirectly decrease gig workers’ organizational identification. Criteria control can not only mitigate the negative relationship between algorithmic monitoring and job flexibility, but also mitigate the negative relationship between algorithmic monitoring and organizational identification mediated by job flexibility. These findings prove the reality of the algorithm paradox and discuss theoretical and practical implications about how to enhance gig workers to identify with the platform.
Who will be Your Target Customer: A Novel Approach to Predicting Consumer Repurchase Based on Evidence Theory in Airlines
ABSTRACT. Consumer purchase prediction is very important for strategy formulation and consumer segmentation. In particular, airlines have to target groups before implementing the operational strategy with the competition increases. However, due to the higher dimensions and a large number data missing in airlines, how to effectively predict the repurchase of consumers has become an urgent problem. This paper proposes a novel ensemble algorithm framework for predicting the binary classification based on evidence theory. The results show that the accuracy of the ensemble algorithm based on evidence theory is more than 90% using the public datasets. Further, this paper uses this algorithm model to predict the repurchase possibility of consumers in airlines. The results show that the performance and accuracy of this algorithm are improved compared with common used ensemble algorithms. This study has guiding and theoretical significance for consumer purchase prediction, the application of evidence theory and precision marketing
Additive Feature Attribution Explainable Methods to Craft Adversarial Attacks for Text Classification and Text Regression
ABSTRACT. Deep learning (DL) models have significantly improved the performance of text classification and text regression tasks. However, DL models are often strikingly vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Many researchers have aimed to develop adversarial attacks against DL models in realistic black-box settings (i.e., assumes no model knowledge is accessible to attackers) that typically operate with a two-phase framework: (1) sensitivity estimation through gradient-based or deletion-based methods to evaluate the sensitivity of each token to the prediction of the target model, and (2) perturbation execution to craft adversarial examples based on the estimated token sensitivity. However, gradient-based and deletion-based methods used to estimate sensitivity often face issues of capturing the directionality of tokens and overlapping token sensitivities, respectively. In this study, we propose a novel eXplanation-based method for Adversarial Text Attacks (XATA) that leverages additive feature attribution explainable methods, namely LIME or SHAP, to measure the sensitivity of input tokens when crafting black-box adversarial attacks on DL models performing text classification or text regression. We evaluated XATA’s attack performance on DL models executing text classification on three datasets (IMDB Movie Review, Yelp Reviews-Polarity, and Amazon Reviews-Polarity) and DL models conducting text regression on three datasets (My Personality, Drug Review, and CommonLit Readability). The proposed XATA outperformed the existing gradient-based and deletion-based adversarial attack baselines in both tasks. These findings indicate that the ever-growing research focused on improving the explainability of DL models with additive feature attribution explainable methods can provide attackers with weapons to launch targeted adversarial attacks.
ABSTRACT. The openness and convenience of intelligent media have led to the disturbance or "noise" of the network environment during the spreading of Internet rumors, which adds uncertainties to the spreading. In previous studies, the Wiener process in probability theory is often used to describe the disturbances in the spreading of rumors. However, it has been shown that there are shortcomings in the random rumor spreading equation. To solve the problem, the uncertainty theory is introduced in this study. Specifically, we construct an uncertain rumor spreading model, and then calculate the analytical solution and the inverse uncertainty distribution of the solution. Finally, a numerical simulation is carried out with the rumor spreading data from WeChat, Weibo and other intelligent media platforms to verify the validity of the uncertain rumor spreading equation.
ABSTRACT. The referral reward program (RRP) is a social marketing method by which firms reward existing users and encourage them to recommend products or services to their friends. Prior research has primarily focused on the impact of RRP design on users’ participation, however, the role of individuals’ characteristics is unexplored. Based on regulatory focus theory and self-efficacy theory, this research proposes and investigates the effect of users’ regulatory focus (promotion-focused vs. prevention-focused) on their referral intention and explores its mechanism and boundary condition. The results of three experiments show that compared to the prevention-focused user, the promotion-focused user has higher self-efficacy to complete the referral task; and thus, has higher referral intention. This effect will be attenuated when the tie strength between inviter and invitee is strong. The findings not only contribute to the research on RRP and regulatory focus but also can provide guidance for firms to optimize their RRPs.
Understanding the Impact of Perceived Influencer-Product Congruence in Live Commerce: An Impression Management Perspective
ABSTRACT. Live commerce differs from the traditional social commerce in that influencers can engage potential buyers with instant impression management via the live channel. Our study draws on impression management theory and conceptualize influencer-product congruence as a novel construct that characterizes influencers’ impression management strategy in live commerce. We propose that perceived influencer-product congruence positively impact both functional and emotional value of the product, which consequently lead to purchase intention. In addition, male and female buyers display different purchase tendencies in response to different value perceptions of the product. We conducted a scenario-based survey with 239 participants who had recent live shopping experience on Douyin’s live commerce. The data analysis results supported our research hypotheses. Our study extends impression management theory in the live commerce context. The findings also yield practical insights for influencers and live commerce managers.
Competition or Promotion among Listings of the Multi-Listing Host - The Spillover Effects of Online Reviews
ABSTRACT. We aim to explore how listings owned by a multi-listing host affect each other, and the spillover effects of other listings’ online reviews on focal listing. Using a unique dataset of 1478 listings managed by 542 hosts ranging from October 2012 to June 2019 on Xiaozhu.com, we constructed two empirical models to examine the main effect of the number of other listings owned by the same host and the moderating effect of other listings’ online review on the focal listing performance, i.e., date difference between listing’s first sales and online date, and listing’s monthly sales. The results show that the number of other listings owned by the same host negatively affects listing performances, and online reviews have positive spillover effects. Our research contributes to both the home-sharing and spillover effect of online review literature and has substantial implications for the operators of home-sharing platform and multi-listing hosts on the platform.
Predicting Firm Risk with Investors’ Social Media Discussions Based on Textual Analysis
ABSTRACT. This paper seeks to investigate the predictive value of investors' intra-day social media discussions on firm risk. We conduct a textual analysis of user-generated content (UGC) to extract the volume (e.g., number of posts, comments, views) and valence (e.g., helpfulness, sentiment, opinion, topic dispersion) characteristics. Various predictive models based on machine learning methods are utilized to evaluate the predictive performance of UGC. The results indicate that both UGC valence and volume can provide additional predictive gains over the baseline model. More importantly, UGC valence can significantly outperform UGC volume in predicting firm risk. Besides, we find that UGC during the non-trading period of a day shows significantly better predictive performance as compared with UGC generated during the trading time. This suggests that social media discussions generated in the non-trading hours are more informative and value-relevant to investors, whereas there is excessive noise on social media during the trading hours.
ABSTRACT. The booming of online platforms has attracted academia’s increasing interest in cross-platform spillover of product consumption. This study investigates how physicians’ content creation in Tik Tok influences patients’ demands, comments and satisfaction towards the physicians on online health communities (OHCs). Using the difference-in-differences approach, we uncover asymmetric influences of cross-platform spillovers for high- and low-awareness physicians in Tik Tok. Specifically, low-awareness physicians do not enjoy the benefits (i.e., the increased volume of orders and comments on OHC) from content creation in Tik Tok, but their ratings turn to decline due to attention distraction caused by cross-platform activities. Conversely, for high-awareness physicians, we find a positive cross-platform spillover effect for orders and comments on OHC without decreasing their ratings. Despite the existence of attention distraction from cross-platform services for high-awareness physicians, the negative impact on feedbacks is offset by higher ratings from their cross-platform consumers.
How to Promote the Repurchasing Behavior of Members? Based on the Matching Consistency Effect and Construal level Theory
ABSTRACT. Despite members is high social identity and more loyalty to a product or brand, the existing marketing literatures offers little guidance on how to promote members’ actual purchase behavior based on the matching consistency and construal level theory. To address this gap, the current research examines that the matching consistency effect between predicted purchase probability and the construal level of promotions advertising on the repurchase behavior of members based on a large field experiment in airlines. The findings show that the matching effect between promotional messages with concrete or feasibility information and high purchase probability has more likely to promote members' repurchase behavior, while the matching effect between promotional messages with abstract or desirability information and low purchase probability has not any influence on members' repurchase behavior. This study has theoretical and practical guiding for the researches on marketing and customer management.
Factors Affecting Users' Behavior Intentions of Emotional Chatbot
ABSTRACT. Emotional chatbot is a kind of chat robot with the ability of emotional analysis and expression. At present, the technology of emotional chatbot is still in its infancy, and the academia lacks systematic and targeted theoretical re-search on the factors affecting the acceptance willingness of emotional chatbot. Based on the expanded valence the-oretical model, this paper takes users' perceived risk of emotional chatbot services and system quality defects as users' negative potency factors, human interaction, emotional competence and perceived pleasure as positive potency fac-tors, and personal innovation, efficiency expectation and self-efficacy as subjective psychological factors. We discuss the factors affecting users' behavior intentions of emotional chatbot, and takes gender, occupation, education level as adjustment variables to explore the differences of behavior intentions of different user groups for emotional chatbot. The research results provide suggestions for improving and promoting emotional chatbot, and lay a foundation for related research in the academia.
Rationality or Sensibility? The Effects of Relational Chatbots’ Conversational Styles and Anthropomorphic Avatars on Users’ Engagement
ABSTRACT. Although AI-based chatbots have burgeoned in multiple business practices and demonstrated emerging potential in emotional support, little knowledge about the mechanism underlying the relationship between AI-based relational chatbots’ anthropomorphic attributes and user engagement. Drawing from the social judgment theory, we integrated agentic-style and communal-style to build relational chatbots’ conversational styles and proposed that emotional judgement mediated the relationship between conversational styles and user engagement with relational chatbots. Two types of AI avatars (humanlike vs. cartoonlike) are employed to examine the possible boundary effect of the above relationship. Two studies involving several online and lab experiments are planned to conduct to examine our hypotheses further. It is expected that we could extend the existing theories involving social judgment theory and human reactivity to AI-based chatbots in the setting of emotional care, and identify the potential joint effects of different types of anthropomorphic attributes of AI-based relational chatbots on user behaviors.
Continue Staying in Online Health Platforms or Not: The Moderator Role of Threat Appraisal
ABSTRACT. User-friendliness and intuitive interface fostered user participation in online health platforms. People know their health status anytime and anywhere and consult doctors online instead of going to physical hospitals. This study takes an online health platform as the research object, proposes and tests a model to explain users’ continuance intention to participate in online health communities through user engagement and perceived benefit, and tests the moderating effect of perceived vulnerability and perceived severity. The results show that the technology affordance characteristics of online health platforms affect users’ perceived benefit and online engagement, which further influence users’ continuance intention. Perceived vulnerability and perceived severity moderate the relationship between perceived benefits, online engagement and users’ continuance intention. This study has theoretical and practical implications for the online health discipline.
Social Capital and Participant Retention in Online Mental Health Community: Quantifying the Relative Effect of Bridging and Bonding Social Capital
ABSTRACT. We examine the effect of social capital on participant retention in online mental health community, and disentangle the effect of bridging and bonding social capital on participant retention in this paper. Specifically, we derive participant profile data and activity data for 15 years from a Chinese online mental health community and construct social networks based on reply relationship for every half year. Following prior studies, bridging social capital and bonding social capital are measured by structural holes and network closure respectively. We conduct survival analysis to examine whether social capital has effect on participant retention, and use panel Logit model to capture the efficacy of different types of social capital. Results show that social capital significantly improves participant retention rate; bridging social capital has positive effect on participant retention, whereas bonding social capital has negative effect on participant retention
ABSTRACT. In the field of public health, suicide risk prediction is an urgent problem to be solved. According to psychological characteristics, it is valuable to consider users’ historical post in addition to current post for predicting suicide risk. Based on this rationale, this paper proposes a deep learning-based suicide risk prediction framework (DLDHI) considering dynamic historical information. To capture the dynamic and complicated information of historical post, this paper designs an improved unit based on long short-term memory. The importance and effectiveness of the prediction framework and its components are verified by comparison with the benchmark model and ablation ex-periments.
Antecedents and Risk Perception of Mental Health Information Disclosure on Social Media
ABSTRACT. Covid 19 has killed people and significantly increased mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. However, the cost of seeking professional help, limited availability of mental health service, and stigma associated with the disease is considered the most significant barrier to seeking help. Digital technologies such as social networking sites could bridge the gap by providing opportunities for patients to disclose their condition and seek social support. Nonetheless, Privacy risk perception has greatly hampered patients’ intention to seek help. Utilizing the privacy calculus theory, the study aims to fill this gap by providing the antecedents and their impact on patients’ risk perception of disclosing mental health information on social networking sites. The survey method will be adopted to conduct the study. Participants will be recruited through an online questionnaire on Facebook. The result will be analyzed using Amos software; afterward, theoretical and practical implications will be provided.
How to use government short videos to promote policy compliance: evidence from China in times of COVID-19
ABSTRACT. Understanding how government short videos promote citizens’ policy compliance in times of epidemic outbreaks is worthy of attention. Based on grounded theory, this study constructs a theoretical model of government short videos influencing policy compliance taking China's interview data as evidence. Results show that government short videos have significant effects on citizens’ policy compliance through four cognitive appraisals: epidemic, policy, government-public relationship, and social influence. In addition, resilience as an individual feature moderate the relationship between these cognitive appraisals and compliance. Findings contribute to the study of COVID-19 policy compliance and enrich the literature on policy compliance antecedents from the perspective of information sources and cognitive appraisals. In addition, this study provides targeted theoretical guidance and increases the understanding of how government short videos may be used to promote policy compliance during pandemics in and beyond COVID-19.
A Study of Component Factors and Patterns of Elderly Travel Information Practice at the Background of Data-Intelligence Empowerment – A Perspective from Activity Theory
ABSTRACT. Older adults use digital intelligence to generate rich information practices during their travels, yet the specific shaping process of this information practice remains understudied. In current paper, we conducted in-depth interviews with 24 older travelers, using activity theory as a framework and grounded theory for exploratory coding of interview content. The results of the study show that the information practices of older adults involve eight core elements such as technology affordance, social support, and digital literacy; meanwhile, according to the differentiated information behaviors of older adults in different stages of travel, older adults' travel information practices can be divided into two distinctive patterns, information input and information output.
Navigating Ethical Complexities in Blockchain-Enabled Food Supply Chains in Developing Countries
ABSTRACT. Blockchain has been touted as a game changer in supply chains. While the technology can greatly improve the overall supply chain management, there are ethical challenges, and its ethical nature fundamentally implicates issues associated with sustainable development goals (SDGs). We are therefore yet to know the underlying ethical dilemmas as well as how to navigate the varied ethical complexities while creating value through blockchain-powered supply chains. Using the theoretical lens of normative ethics, this study detects various ethical complexities faced by blockchain in a developing country. The study identifies four types of ethical challenges, and proposes a proper balance between four types of ethical dualisms: balancing design efficiency with ease of use, balancing transparency with privacy, balancing open sharing with adequate data protection, and balancing user concerns with environmental concerns. The study offers rich contextual insights for developing countries and emerging markets, and has both theoretical and practical implications.
Institutional Trust in C2C E-commerce Platforms from the Sellers' Perspective
ABSTRACT. With the development of online retailing on C2C e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, the loss of individual shops is becoming increasingly severe. How to retain high-quality sellers and enhance sellers' e-commerce platforms trust becomes an eager to learn for platform operators. Based on institutional trust theory, this study investigates how functional value, security value, and institutional value in structural assurance, as well as social media performance, perceived behavioral control, interactive value in situational normality can affect sellers' institutional trust. To test the hypotheses suggested by our conceptual framework, we collected 2970 valid questionnaires from individual sellers in Taobao, which is the most representative C2C e-commerce platform in China. The results show that functional value, security value, institutional value, perceived behavioral control and interactive value have a significant positive effect on platform trust, while social media performance has no significant impact on platform trust.