Scholarly Works, Business Information Technology

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Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Trade-offs Between Equity and Efficiency in Prioritizing Critical Infrastructure Investments: A Case of Stormwater Management Systems
Baghersad, Milad; Zobel, Christopher W.; Farahani, Mehdi H.; Behara, Ravi S. (Sage, 2024-03)
Critical infrastructures in many countries face the problem of aging and, thus, require significant upgrades to continue serving their purpose for the next few decades, especially in the face of extreme weather events caused by global climate change. Given the urgent need for such improvements and the substantial funding gaps being experienced, prioritizing investments in critical infrastructures is a challenging task for governments. Furthermore, the need to assure equitable solutions, as well as to consider deep uncertainty due to climate change, adds to the complexity of the problem. We seek to address this complexity by developing a set of models that explicitly consider both horizontal and vertical equity, along with efficiency, in prioritizing stormwater infrastructure improvement projects. While horizontal equity seeks to provide equal resources to everyone, vertical equity aims to allocate relatively more resources to vulnerable groups who are disproportionately susceptible to shocks and are more likely to fall into chronic poverty. By differentiating between losses in horizontal equity and vertical equity due to efficiency considerations, the models provide a practical approach to find the right balance among efficiency, horizontal equity, and vertical equity. The initial models are then extended into regret-based optimization models to help address the issue of deep uncertainty. A case study of stormwater infrastructure improvement in the City of Miami is presented, through which the performance of the models is explored both with and without the projected sea-level rise scenarios. The findings highlight the value of the proposed approach in promoting equity while maintaining efficiency.
Innovative research directions on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles in the context of intelligent computing technologies
Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2024-07-07)
In his keynote speech, Prof. Lowry addresses the pressing issues of global environmental, social, and governance challenges and presents ESG as a critical framework for sustainable development. He outlines the interconnected nature of these challenges, emphasizing the need for integrated and intelligent approaches to tackle them effectively. • Environmental Issues: Prof. Lowry highlights the urgency of addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and resource depletion. Climate change is driven by rising greenhouse gases, resulting in global temperature rise, increased CO2 levels, and sea-level rise. Biodiversity is under threat due to habitat destruction and species extinction. Pollution affects air, water, and soil, leading to severe health and ecological consequences. Resource depletion, particularly of water, minerals, and fossil fuels, threatens global sustainability. • Social Issues: Key social challenges include poverty, inequality, health crises, and educational disparities. Poverty affects millions, with COVID-19 exacerbating the situation. Inequality manifests in economic, gender, and racial disparities, limiting access to resources and opportunities. Health crises, such as pandemics and lack of healthcare access, undermine global well-being. Educational disparities hinder development, with significant numbers of children and adults lacking access to quality education. • Governance Issues: Governance challenges, including corruption, lack of transparency, political instability, and weak rule of law, impede sustainable development. Corruption diverts public resources and erodes trust in institutions. Transparency is essential for accountability and informed citizen participation. Political instability disrupts governance and economic development, while weak rule of law leads to injustice and human rights abuses. ESG and Intelligent Computing: Prof. Lowry argues for integrating ESG principles with intelligent computing technologies, such as AI, machine learning, data analytics, and IoT, to enhance ESG practices. These technologies can predict environmental impacts, optimize resource management, ensure fair labor practices, enhance transparency, and engage stakeholders. He presents case examples of Unilever and Singapore's Smart Nation Initiative, demonstrating successful applications of intelligent computing in addressing ESG issues. Research Opportunities: Prof. Lowry concludes by calling for trans-disciplinary collaboration and innovative research to harness intelligent computing for ESG, driving sustainable and equitable global development. In doing so, he identifies research opportunities in AI for climate change mitigation, sustainable supply chain management, environmental monitoring, social impact analysis, governance enhancement, and circular economy promotion. By advancing research in these areas, intelligent computing can significantly contribute to sustainable development and address critical ESG challenges.
The role of dissonant relational multiplexity in information system implementation failures: Insights from a grounded theory approach
Chatterjee, Sutirtha; Chakraborty, Suranjan; Fulk, H. Kevin; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2024)
In this study we investigate information system (IS) failures by leveraging a novel construct—dissonant relational multiplexity (RM)—to develop a unique perspective of these failures. Dissonant RM exists when two organizational stakeholders have multiple types of relationships that are in conflict. To investigate the salience of dissonant RM in IS failures, we use a case study combined with the analysis procedures of the grounded theory methodology (GTM) to examine a major failure in enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. Our analysis and theorization highlight that RM became increasingly dissonant in the relationships between key organizational stakeholders because of a shift in technological frames, which represent cognitive perceptions about technology. Further, a key insight from our findings is that the move to dissonant RM occurred through a process that we term relational unbalancing. In addition, we also find evidence of an opposing relational balancing process that was used by stakeholders to address dissonant RM. Such stakeholder efforts were often undermined by inherent constraints in the implemented technology. The relational balancing efforts were not productive, and the dissonant RM continued to exist, ultimately contributing to the failure of the ERP implementation. Our study shows that IS failures are characterized by elements of both determinism and indeterminism, are undoubtedly sociotechnical in nature, and are shaped by technological constraints and stakeholder perceptions of those constraints. From a practical standpoint, our study highlights the importance of managing multiplex stakeholder relationships in an IS implementation process, especially when the multiplexity is shaped by the technology.
Asymmetries in Potential for Partisan Gerrymandering
Goedert, Nicholas; Hildebrand, Robert; Travis, Laurel; Pierson, Matthew (2024)
This paper investigates the effectiveness of potential partisan gerrymandering of the U.S. House of Representatives across a range of states. We use a heuristic algorithm to generate district maps that optimize for multiple objectives, including compactness, partisan benefit, and competitiveness. While partisan gerrymandering is highly effective for both sides, we find that the majority of states are moderately biased toward Republicans when optimized for either compactness or partisan benefit, meaning that Republican gerrymanders have the potential to be more effective. However, we also find that more densely populated and more heavily Hispanic states show less Republican bias or even Democratic bias. Additionally, we find that in almost all cases we can generate reasonably compact maps with very little sacrifice to partisan objectives through a mixed objective function. This suggests that there is a strong potential for stealth partisan gerrymanders that are both compact and beneficial to one party. Nationwide, partisan gerrymandering is capable of swinging over one hundred seats in the U.S. House, even when compact districts are simultaneously sought.
How do consumers make behavioral decisions on social commerce platforms? The interaction effect between behavior visibility and social needs
Jia, Yanli; Liu, Libo; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2024)
The online phenomenon of social commerce (i.e., s-commerce) platforms has emerged as a combination of online social networking and e-commerce. On s-commerce platforms, consumers can observe others’ behavioral decisions and can distinguish those made by their friends from those made by their followees (i.e., the people a focal consumer follows but who do not follow that consumer back). Given this distinction, our study examines how consumers’ behavioral decisions—regarding, for example, purchases, ratings, or “likes”—are made on s-commerce platforms, with a focus on how they are influenced by prior decisions of friends and followees. Combining panel data from a large s-commerce platform and two controlled experiments, we identify a strong normative social influence pattern in which consumers tend to follow others’ prior decisions to gain social approval. Because the occurrence of normative social influence depends on both consumer behaviors with high public visibility and strong consumer needs to establish social ties, the unique information concerning behavior visibility and consumers’ social needs in the panel data allows us to identify normative social influence and to distinguish it from informational confounding mechanisms. Our panel data results show that on a friend network, where consumers’ behavioral decisions are visible, females exhibit a greater tendency to follow others’ prior decisions than males. We attribute this result to the stronger social needs of females. However, on a followee network, where behavioral decisions are invisible, these differences become less evident. Moreover, the two experiments demonstrate that making decision contexts private or activating social needs via a priming procedure can thwart (or even turn off) normative social influence. Our findings challenge prior research that identifies informational social influence as the predominant driver of conformity behaviors and thus have important implications for practice related to normative social influence, such as the development of techniques for satisfying consumers’ different social needs depending on their gender or any other situational factors on s-commerce platforms.
The influence of ERP-vendor contract compliance and transaction-specific investment on vendee trust: A signaling theory perspective
Li, Xiaolin; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Lai, Fujun (2024)
The successful implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is significantly predicated on establishing customer trust, a challenge particularly accentuated in mainland China due to its distinct business and legal environment and a noted high failure rate of ERP projects. Whereas contracts and transaction-specific investments are common strategies to build this trust, their effectiveness remains contested in the existing literature. Specifically, the underlying mechanisms through which detailed contracts influence trust are still not clearly understood. To address these gaps, our study employs signaling theory to conceptualize a model that elucidates how contract completeness, vendor contract compliance, and transaction-specific investment act as trust-building signals in ERP vendor–vendee relationships within the Chinese context. Furthermore, we introduce ownership type as an additional variable, evaluating its influence in shaping customer trust. Our empirical analysis draws on data from 208 Chinese organizations engaged in ERP implementations, revealing nuanced findings. Notably, the vendor’s ownership type, quantified by the degree of foreign ownership, negatively moderates both the results of contract completeness on contract compliance and the subsequent mediation effect on trust, thereby highlighting the critical influence of cultural factors. This study is among the pioneering empirical investigations into the synergistic roles of contract compliance and ownership type in mediating the relationship between contract completeness and trust. Our insights provide a robust foundation for understanding the complexities of contractual and relational governance in ERP vendor–vendee relationships, and we recommend targeted strategies for both vendors and customers to enhance trust in this critical business domain.
Theorizing with metaphors in OM/SCM Research: The case of supply chain resilience
Kwaramba, Christopher; Meyer-Goldstein, Susan; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Nottingham, Quinton; Cooper, Erica (2024)
Digitalization and network capability as enablers of business model innovation and sustainability performance: The moderating effect of environmental dynamism
Li, Ying; Cui, Li; Wu, Lin; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Kumar, Ajay; Tan, Kim Hua (2023)
In the face of relentless global competition and regulatory pressures, the imperative for firms to digitally transform has become critical. This is particularly salient for Chinese manufacturing firms as they strive for sustainability, a multidimensional construct comprising both economic and environmental performance. Leveraging dynamic capabilities theory, this study aims to unravel the intricate interplay between digitalization, network capability, business model innovation (BMI), and environmental dynamism in shaping a firm’s sustainability performance. Our research is driven by a compelling question: How do digitalization and network capabilities impact firms’ sustainability performance, and what roles do BMI and environmental dynamism play in this relationship? To answer this question, we employed a robust survey-based methodology encompassing 1,600 Chinese manufacturing firms, yielding 255 completed and validated responses. The findings reveal that network capability mediates the influence of digitalization on two types of BMI—novelty-centered and efficiency-centered. Further, these forms of BMI act as mediators between digitalization and network capability, and the two dimensions of sustainability: economic and environmental performance. Notably, environmental dynamism serves as a double-edged sword. It negatively moderates the impact of digitalization on efficiency-centered BMI, but positively moderates the influence of network capability on the same. Our study offers nuanced theoretical and practical implications. It extends dynamic capabilities theory by elucidating how digital and network capabilities can be leveraged for sustainable outcomes via business model innovation. Moreover, the research provides managerial insights, particularly for Chinese manufacturing firms, on navigating the complex landscape of digital transformation toward sustainability. Considering these insights, we recommend that firms prioritize network capabilities and strategically innovate their business models to harness the full potential of digital transformation. Simultaneously, organizations should be cognizant of the environmental dynamism within which they operate, as it can both hinder and enable their journey toward sustainability.
Proposing the dual-process model to better explain self-disclosure on online social networking sites
Zhang, Shanshang; Huang, Fengchun; Yu, Lingling; Wang, Jeremy; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2023-11)
Purpose – Researchers continue to address the concept of self-disclosure because it is foundational for helping social networking sites (SNS) function and thrive. Nevertheless, our literature review indicates that uncertainty remains around the underlying mechanisms and factors involved in the self-disclosure process. The purpose of this research is to better understand the self-disclosure process from the lens of dual-process theory (DPT). We consider both the controlled factors (i.e., self-presentation and reciprocity) and an automatic factor (i.e., social influence to use an SNS) involved in self-disclosure and broaden our proposed model to include the interactive facets of enjoyment. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed model was empirically validated by conducting a survey among users of WeChat Moments in China. Findings – As hypothesized, this research confirms that enjoyment and automatic processing (i.e., social influence to use an SNS) are complementary in the SNS self-disclosure process, and enjoyment negatively moderates the positive relationship between controlled factor (i.e., self-presentation) and self-disclosure. Originality/value – Theoretically, this study offers a new perspective in explaining the SNS self-disclosure by adopting DPT. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant SNS research by applying DPT to examine how the controlled factors and the automatic factor shape self-disclosure processes, and how enjoyment influences vary across these processes—enriching knowledge about SNS self-disclosure behaviors. Practically, we provide important design guidelines to practitioners concerning devising mechanisms to foster more automatic-enjoyable value-added functions to improve SNS users’ participation and engagement.
The antecedents of employees’ proactive information security behavior: The perspective of proactive motivation
Xu, Feng; Hsu, Carol; Wang, David; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2023)
Organizational information security (ISec) protection is undergoing a turbulent shift in the workplace environment. In an environment of ever-increasing risks of insider threats and external cyberattacks, individual employees are often expected to take the initiative to solve organizational security problems. This study therefore focuses on employees’ proactive information security behaviors (ISBs)—behaviors that are self-initiated, change-oriented, and future-focused—and the motivations that compel employees to protect organizational assets. We ground our study in Parker et al.’s (2010) proactive motivation theory (ProMT) and develop an integrated multilevel model to examine the respective effects of proactive motivational states, that is, can-do, reason-to, and energized-to motivations, on employees’ proactive ISBs. We also explore the roles of individual differences and contextual factors—namely, proactive personality and supervisory ISec support—and their influences on proactive motivational states. Data were collected from 210 employees situated in 55 departments distributed among multiple organizations located in China. The results show that supervisory ISec support positively influences employees’ proactive motivational states and thereby boosts employees’ proactive ISBs. Proactive personality negatively moderates the effect of supervisory ISec support on flexible security role orientation (reason-to motivation). By identifying the antecedents of employees’ proactive ISBs, we make key theoretical contributions to ISec research and valuable practical contributions to organizational ISec management.
The roles of user interface design and uncertainty avoidance in B2C ecommerce success: Using evidence from three national cultures
Hassna, Ghazwan; Rouibah, Kamel; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Paliszkiewicz, Joanna; Madra-Sawicka, Magdalena (Elsevier, 2023-09-01)
Most related previous studies have focused on measuring B2C ecommerce success instead of exploring its predictors, and even fewer studies have tested their models across diverse cultures, even though most ecommerce markets involve multiple cultures. Our study extends this line of research by newly identifying and incorporating three predictors of B2C ecommerce success's system-quality dimension: the formatting quality (FQ), picture quality (PQ), and third-party seal (TPS) user-interface-design factors (UIDFs). Given the uncertainty associated with online shopping, we also incorporated uncertainty avoidance's moderating influence on B2C ecommerce success as one of Hoftstede's national culture dimensions. Motivated by cross-cultural research suggesting that behavioral models often do not hold across different cultures, we tested our model using a sample of 768 B2C consumers from Kuwait, Poland, and Latvia. These countries represent three distinct and understudied national cultures: the Arab world, Central Europe, and Eastern Europe. Our results support our newly hypothesized model, suggesting that both picture quality and formatting positively affect system quality, while—surprisingly—TPSs do not. We also found that uncertainty avoidance moderates the relationship between user satisfaction and reuse intentions but not the relationship between perceived value and reuse intentions. Finally, we found that our newly expanded model is robust across the three national cultures we explored; therefore, it can explain reuse intentions in distinct cultures and a B2C ecommerce context. This study's findings present important implications for practitioners and researchers who seek to understand and improve B2C ecommerce success across distinct national cultures.
Balancing the commitment to sustainability and the protection of personal privacy: Consumer adoption of sustainable smart-connected cars
Choi, Daaen Daniel; Lowry, Paul Benjamin (2023-10)
Sustainable, smart connected cars (SSCCs) are one of the representative sustainable products that leverage smart technologies (e.g., the internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data). Although many studies have investigated consumers’ purchase decisions regarding sustainable products, little research has addressed SSCCs and the relationship between privacy, disclosure intentions, and purchase intentions in SSCCs. These relationships are important because the use of smart technology products requires large volumes of consumers’ personal information, which can lead to severe privacy issues when adopting SSCCs. Accordingly, consumers’ preferences for features of sustainable products could conflict with their privacy concerns when they disclose personal information. Thus, we investigate the relationship between the several benefits of SSCCs and privacy-related decisions when purchasing SSCCs. We propose an extended privacy trade-off model based on three critical assumptions: two types of privacy trade-offs, bidirectional privacy reduction, and anchoring effects. We also investigate the effects of government subsidies for purchasing SSCCs regarding the relationship between governments, companies, and consumers. To validate our model, we test the effects of interaction between privacy concerns and the benefits of SSCCs on disclosure intentions and purchase intentions. Our repeated tests for the various benefits of SSCCs demonstrate the robustness of the model. Our results indicate that when consumers consider purchasing SSCCs, sustainability plays the role of the common good in trading for privacy concerns. In addition, government subsidies to encourage companies’ sustainable products increase disclosure intentions and purchase intentions. We conclude that the status of sustainability as a common goal among governments, companies, and consumers represents an opportunity to balance the privacy tensions in the sale and purchase of SSCCs.
How can firms unlock successful implementation of digitalisation? Firm-level evidence from manufacturing companies
Lu, Lixu; Ye, Fei; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Kumar, Ajay (2023-10)
Although starting the process of digitalisation is not difficult for many global companies, successful implementation of digitalisation is much more elusive. Our study thus addresses the following research question: How can companies manage and sustain the positive outcomes of digitalisation, particularly in a volatile environment? We developed a new framework based on dynamics capability theory. Through an investigation of 203 Chinese manufacturing companies that have achieved varying degrees of digitalisation, we found that two primary types of strategic flexibility—resource and coordination flexibility—fully mediated the positive relationship between digitalisation and firm performance. Moreover, market turbulence enhanced the positive mediation effects of strategic flexibility (i.e. resource and coordination flexibility) on the digitalisation–performance relationship. This result suggests that when a company faces a highly uncertain market environment but seeks to maintain the performance boost resulting from digitalisation, it needs to place increased emphasis on the flexibility with which it manages and updates its resource portfolios. Our proposed moderated-mediation mechanisms contribute to strategic IS research on digitalisation by elucidating how companies can manage and sustain successful digitalisation outcomes. Our findings also provide insights managers can use to unlock successful implementation of digitalisation.
The importance of theory at the Information Systems Journal
Díaz Andrade, Antonio; Tarafdar, Monideepa; Davison, Robert M.; Hardin, Andrew; Techatassanasoontorn, Angsana A.; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Chatterjee, Sutirtha; Schwabe, Gerhard (Wiley, 2023-07-01)
Cross-Country Determinants of Citizens’ E-Government Reuse Intention: Empirical Evidence from Kuwait and Poland
Mirkovski, Kristijan; Rouibah, Kamel; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Paliszkiewicz, Joanna; Ganc, Marzena (2023)
Purpose: Despite the major IT investments made by public institutions, the reuse of e-government services remains an issue as citizens hesitate to use e-government websites regularly. In this study, we investigate the cross-country determinants of e-government reuse intention by proposing a theoretical model that integrates constructs from (1) the Delone and McLean IS success model (i.e., system quality, service quality, information quality, perceived value, and user satisfaction); (2) the trust and risk models (i.e., citizen trust, overall risk, time risk, privacy risk, and psychological risks); and (3) Hofstede’s cultural model (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and cross-cultural trust and risk). Design/methodology/approach: Based on data from interviews with 81 Kuwaiti citizens and surveys of 1,829 Kuwaiti and Polish citizens, we conducted comprehensive, cross-cultural, and comparative analyses of e-government reuse intention in a cross-country setting. Findings: The results show that trust is positively associated with citizens’ intention to reuse e-government services, whereas risk is negatively associated with citizens’ perceived value. We also found that masculinity–femininity and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with the intention to reuse e-government services and that individualism–collectivism has no significant relationship with reuse intention. This study’s findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and improve e-government success in cross-country settings. Originality/value: We developed a parsimonious model of quality, trust, risk, culture, and technology reuse that captures country-specific cultural contexts and enables us to conduct a comprehensive, cross-cultural, and comparative analysis of e-government reuse intention in the cross-country setting of Kuwait and Poland.
Achieving entrepreneurial growth despite resource and capability constraints: the role of service intermediaries
Mirkovski, Kristijan; von Briel, Frederik; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Liu, Libo (Springer, 2023-05)
Entrepreneurial growth—firm growth via the introduction of new market offerings or expansion into new markets—is an important topic for entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners alike. Any firm that wants to exploit opportunities for entrepreneurial growth needs resources and capabilities that it can use to develop new market offerings or to enter new markets. However, many firms face resource and capability constraints, and research has shown that strategic partnerships can provide external pathways for firms to exploit growth opportunities despite their resource and capability constraints. All the extant external growth pathways have in common that they require firms to have some resources and capabilities, which are valuable for partners and can be jointly appropriated with them. An alternative pathway for firms to leverage external resources and capabilities—especially knowledge-based ones—that has received little attention in the literature on growth is short-term contracting of professional service firms such as accounting firms, marketing agencies, or R&D consultancies. Hence, we investigate the role of service intermediaries—professional service firms that facilitate the exchange of services among other firms—as external managers who support their clients to access and leverage a broad range of required resources and capabilities from third parties. We conducted a nested multi-case study of two service intermediaries that enabled two small, wineries from North Macedonia to successfully seize entrepreneurial growth opportunities in markets abroad despite their resource and capability deficits. We identify seven support mechanisms—need articulating, social embedding, linking, governing, clarifying, renegotiating, and mediating—through which the service intermediaries orchestrated complementary external resources and capabilities on behalf of the wineries, thereby enabling the two firms to successfully develop two new product lines for and enter two new geographic markets each. We also identify process differences depending on the stage of the opportunity evaluation process, target market characteristics, and external stakeholder involvement for which we postulate three propositions about the influence of mechanisms on the growth opportunity development. Our study offers novel insights and makes a contribution to research on entrepreneurial growth and resource orchestration.
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.
Formal definition of the MARS method for quantifying the unique target class discoveries of selected machine classifiers
Restrepo, Felipe; Mali, Namrata; Abrahams, Alan; Ractham, Peter (F1000 Research, 2022-07)
Conventional binary classification performance metrics evaluate either general measures (accuracy, F score) or specific aspects (precision, recall) of a model's classifying ability. As such, these metrics, derived from the model's confusion matrix, provide crucial insight regarding classifier-data interactions. However, modern- day computational capabilities have allowed for the creation of increasingly complex models that share nearly identical classification performance. While traditional performance metrics remain as essential indicators of a classifier's individual capabilities, their ability to differentiate between models is limited. In this paper, we present the methodology for MARS (Method for Assessing Relative Sensitivity/ Specificity) ShineThrough and MARS Occlusion scores, two novel binary classification performance metrics, designed to quantify the distinctiveness of a classifier's predictive successes and failures, relative to alternative classifiers. Being able to quantitatively express classifier uniqueness adds a novel classifier-classifier layer to the process of model evaluation and could improve ensemble model-selection decision making. By calculating both conventional performance measures, and proposed MARS metrics for a simple classifier prediction dataset, we demonstrate that the proposed metrics' informational strengths synergize well with those of traditional metrics, delivering insight complementary to that of conventional metrics.
Examining the differential effectiveness of fear appeals in information security management using two-stage meta-analysis
Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Moody, Gregory D.; Parameswaran, Srikanth; Brown, Nicholas J. (Taylor & Francis, 2023-12-11)
Most of the information security management research involving fear appeals is guided by either protection motivation theory or the extended parallel processing model. Over time, extant research has extended these theories, as well as their derivative theories, in a variety of ways, leading to several theoretical and empirical inconsistencies. The large body of fragmented, and sometimes conflicting, research has muddied the broader understanding of what drives protection- and defensive motivation. We provide guidance to the security discourse by offering the first study in the literature to employ two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling (TSSEM), which combines covariance-based structural equation modeling and meta-analysis. IS researchers have traditionally used meta-analysis for structural equation modeling for such purposes—an approach that has several serious statistical flaws. Using 341 systematically selected empirical security articles (representing 383 unique studies) and TSSEM, we pool a large series of five datasets to test six models, from which we examine the effects of constructs and paths in the security fear-appeals literature. We compare and test six versions of models inspired by issues in the broader fear-appeals literature. We confirm the importance of both the threat- and coping-appraisal processes; establish the central role of fear and that it has greater importance than threat; show that efficacy is a stronger predictor of protection motivation than is threat; demonstrate that response costs as currently measured are ineffective but that maladaptive rewards have a strong negative effect on protection motivation and a positive effect on defensive motivation; and provide evidence that dual models of danger control and fear control should be used.
“Do as I say but not as I do”: Influence of political leaders’ populist communication styles on public adherence in a crisis using the global case of COVID-19 movement restrictions
Liu, Libo; Mirkovski, Kristijan; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Vu, Quan (Elsevier, 2023)
This paper explores the influence of political leaders’ populist communication styles on public adherence to government policies regarding COVID-19 containment. We adopt a mixed-methods approach that combines: theory building with a nested multicase study design for Study 1 and an empirical study in a natural setting for Study 2. Based on the results from Studies 1 and 2, we develop two propositions that we further explain theoretically: (P1) countries with political leaders associated with engaging or intimate populist communication styles (i.e., the UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Ireland) exhibit better public adherence to their governments’ COVID-19 movement restrictions than do countries with political leaders associated with communication styles that combine the champion of the people and engaging styles (i.e., the US); (P2) the country whose political leader is associated with a combination of engaging and intimate populist communication styles (i.e., Singapore) exhibits better public adherence to the government’s COVID-19 movement restrictions than do countries whose political leaders adopted solely engaging or solely intimate styles, namely, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. This paper contributes to the research on political leadership in crises and populist political communication.

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