Browsing by Author "James, Tabitha L."

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Consumer-Centric Innovation for Mobile Apps Empowered by Social Media Analytics
    Qiao, Zhilei (Virginia Tech, 2018-06-20)
    Due to the rapid development of Internet communication technologies (ICTs), an increasing number of social media platforms exist where consumers can exchange comments online about products and services that businesses offer. The existing literature has demonstrated that online user-generated content can significantly influence consumer behavior and increase sales. However, its impact on organizational operations has been primarily focused on marketing, with other areas understudied. Hence, there is a pressing need to design a research framework that explores the impact of online user-generated content on important organizational operations such as product innovation, customer relationship management, and operations management. Research efforts in this dissertation center on exploring the co-creation value of online consumer reviews, where consumers' demands influence firms' decision-making. The dissertation is composed of three studies. The first study finds empirical evidence that quality signals in online product reviews are predictors of the timing of firms' incremental innovation. Guided by the product differentiation theory, the second study examines how companies' innovation and marketing differentiation strategies influence app performance. The last study proposes a novel text analytics framework to discover different information types from user reviews. The research contributes theoretical and practical insights to consumer-centric innovation and social media analytics literature.
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    How Facebook's newsfeed algorithm shapes childhood vaccine hesitancy: An algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT) perspective
    Villacis Calderon, Eduardo D.; James, Tabitha L.; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (Elsevier, 2023-06)
    Vaccine hesitancy is the delay or refusal of vaccination when vaccines are available. Over the last decade, many reports have suggested that the proliferation of vaccine disinformation and misinformation on social media has aggravated the vaccine-hesitancy problem. Access to vaccine dis(mis)information on social media is deemed partly responsible for the resurfacing of vaccine-preventable diseases (e.g., measles). Although studies have examined social media dis(mis)information, including that related to vaccines, the newsfeed algorithm, which determines the content social media users see, has received scant attention in the literature. We examine how people’s perceptions of the fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT) of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm influence their intention to vaccinate their children. We find that people’s perceptions of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm’s FAT increase their negative attitudes toward vaccination (fairness and transparency). However, they decrease users’ perceptions of antivaccination norms on Facebook (fairness, accountability, and transparency). Negative attitudes toward vaccination decrease the intention to vaccinate, as do perceptions of Facebook antivaccination norms. Our findings demonstrate that to decrease the effectiveness of vaccine dis(mis)information, it is critical to educate the public about how social media newsfeed algorithms make content-display decisions.
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    A Jagged Little Pill: Ethics, Behavior, and the AI-Data Nexus
    Kormylo, Cameron Fredric (Virginia Tech, 2023-12-21)
    The proliferation of big data and the algorithms that utilize it have revolutionized the way in which individuals make decisions, interact, and live. This dissertation presents a structured analysis of behavioral ramifications of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in contemporary society. It offers three distinct but interrelated explorations. The first chapter investigates consumer reactions to digital privacy risks under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an encompassing regulatory act in the European Union aimed at enhancing consumer privacy controls. This work highlights how consumer behavior varies substantially between high- and low-risk privacy settings. These findings challenge existing notions surrounding privacy control efficacy and suggest a more complex consumer risk assessment process. The second study shifts to an investigation of historical obstacles to consumer adherence to expert advice, specifically betrayal aversion, in financial contexts. Betrayal aversion, a well-studied phenomenon in economics literature, is defined as the strong dislike for the violation of trust norms implicit in a relationship between two parties. Through a complex simulation, it contrasts human and algorithmic financial advisors, revealing a significant decrease in betrayal aversion when human experts are replaced by algorithms. This shift indicates a transformative change in the dynamics of AI-mediated environments. The third chapter addresses nomophobia – the fear of being without one's mobile device – in the workplace, quantifying its stress-related effects and impacts on productivity. This investigation not only provides empirical evidence of nomophobia's real-world implications but also underscores the growing interdependence between technology and mental health. Overall, the dissertation integrates interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and robust empirical methods to delineate the profound and often nuanced implications of the AI-data nexus on human behavior, underscoring the need for a deeper understanding of our relationship with evolving technological landscapes.
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    Knowledge Problems and Entrepreneurial Strategy
    Jin, Ju hyeong (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-01)
    Entrepreneurs formulate and implement strategies to tackle different knowledge problems over the entrepreneurial journey. This dissertation systematically disentangled and compared the value of two strategic decision logics that have been tested little in the extant entrepreneurship literature: the strategic decision logic that leverages speed advantages versus the logic that leverages comprehensive advantages. Using a pseudo-NK simulation method first in the management and entrepreneurship fields, the comparative effectiveness of new product development strategies that leverage speed (e.g., the lean method [paper one] and a modular strategy [paper two]) versus comprehensiveness (e.g., a more comprehensive method [paper one] and a parallel strategy [paper two]) was tested in the first and second essays of the dissertation. In the third essay, I systematically reviewed, analyzed, and disentangled two existing corporate strategy constructs of decision speed and decision comprehensiveness by investigating different ways these decision strategies could be effective within entrepreneurship. I also used a multilevel meta-analysis to synthesize and test the contingent role of decision speed and decision comprehensiveness in different entrepreneurial decision contexts. That is, I found that the value of these two entrepreneurial strategies would be contingent upon the external and internal conditions of ventures. Overall, this dissertation shows that strategies that leverage comprehensiveness might even be more effective in entrepreneurship than the strategies that leverage speed advantages, depending on the internal and external decision contexts.
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    The Mediating Role of Fitness Technology Enablement of Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration on the Relationship between Goals for Fitness Technology Use and Use Outcomes
    James, Tabitha L.; Bélanger, France; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2021-10-30)
    The aim of fitness technologies, a combination of wearables and associated applications, is to support users’ health and fitness regimes. The market for fitness technologies continues to increase, and the technologies themselves are quickly advancing. However, it is unclear how effective fitness technologies are in generating wellness outcomes, and there is concern regarding frequent discontinuance behaviors. Accordingly, we develop a model to explain how the perception that fitness technologies satisfy or frustrate the users’ basic psychological needs (BPNs) in exercise mediates the relationships between the users’ goals for fitness technology use and psychological well-being and continuance. We find that users who start using fitness technologies for enjoyment, challenge, revitalization, affiliation, or to make positive improvements to their health or strength and endurance are more likely to report that the fitness technologies are satisfying their BPNs, whereas users who start using them for stress management, social recognition, competition, or weight management are more likely to report BPNs frustration. Notably, users who start using fitness technologies for enjoyment and to make positive improvements to their health or strength and endurance are less likely to report BPNs frustration, and use driven by social recognition goals can decrease BPNs satisfaction. BPNs satisfaction is associated with both increased psychological well-being and continuance, whereas BPNs frustration is negatively associated with both. Fitness technologies must thus be perceived by users to satisfy their BPNs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) in exercise to ensure positive outcomes from use.
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    The Mediating Role of Group Dynamics in Shaping Received Social Support from Active and Passive Use in Online Health Communities
    James, Tabitha L.; Calderon, Eduardo D.; Belanger, France; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (Elsevier, 2022-04-01)
    Exchanging social support on online health communities (OHCs) can be beneficial to people's health, but the OHC characteristics that promote environments in which users feel socially supported are understudied. We develop a model that examines the mediating influence of OHC cohesiveness, altruism, and universality on the relationships between active and passive use and received OHC social support. Our findings indicate that social support can be derived from both active and passive use of the OHC. Although active use can directly stimulate received OHC social support, the relationship between passive use and social support is fully mediated by OHC group dynamics.
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    A Multiple-Motive Heuristic-Systematic Model for Examining How Users Process Android Data and Service Access Notifications
    James, Tabitha L.; Ziegelmayer, Jennifer L.; Schuler Scott, Arianna; Fox, Grace (ACM, 2021)
    Android access notifications are presented to users to obtain permission to access data and services on smartphones. The number of 'unsafe' apps in the Android marketplaces underscores the importance of understanding what factors influence whether users engage in more effortful systematic processing of access notifications. We propose a multiple-motive heuristic-systematic model to examine how different motives impact users' processing modes. We find that the need to be accurate in making decisions (accuracy), the desire to defend preferred positions (defense), and social pressure from others (impression) influence how users process Android access notifications, and they do so in different ways.
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    Online Communities and Health
    Villacis Calderon, Eduardo David (Virginia Tech, 2022-08-26)
    People are increasingly turning to online communities for entertainment, information, and social support, among other uses and gratifications. Online communities include traditional online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook but also specialized online health communities (OHCs) where people go specifically to seek social support for various health conditions. OHCs have obvious health ramifications but the use of OSNs can also influence people's mental health and health behaviors. The use of online communities has been widely studied but in the health context their exploration has been more limited. Not only are online communities being extensively used for health purposes, but there is also increasing concern that the use of online communities can itself affect health. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how such technologies influence people's health and health behaviors. The research in this dissertation centers on examining how online community use influences health and health behaviors. There are three studies in this dissertation. The first study develops a conceptual model to explain the process whereby the characteristics of a request from an OHC user for social support is answered by a wounded healer, who is a person leveraging their own experiences with health challenges to help others. The second study investigates how algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency of an OSN newsfeed algorithm influence the users' attitudes and beliefs about childhood vaccines and ultimately their vaccine hesitancy. The third study examines how OSN social overload, through OSN use, can lead to psychological distress and received social support. The research contributes theoretical and practical insights to the literature on the use of online communities in the health context.