Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies最新文献

Effectively using immersive multiuser environments for digital applications (via virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies) beckons the future of healthcare delivery in the metaverse. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of immersive multiuser environments used in health applications while identifying their design features. We systematically searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Emcare databases for peer-reviewed original reports, published in English, without date restrictions until 30 August 2023, and conducted manual citation searching in February 2024. All studies using fully immersive extended reality technologies (e.g., head-mounted displays and smart glasses) while engaging more than one participant in an intervention with direct health benefits were included. A qualitative synthesis of findings is reported. The quality of research was assessed using JBI Critical Checklists. The review was preregistered on PROSPERO (CRD42023479155). Of 2862 identified records, 10 studies were eligible, with high average quality ratings of quantitative (85%) and qualitative (74%) data analyses. Included studies were mostly conducted with young adults (five studies) and older adults (four studies). They were aimed at various well-being promotion, symptom reduction and skill acquisition applications. While they all used different models of Oculus/Meta headsets, their environments′ designs were distinctive and aligned with their objectives. Findings indicated varying degrees of positive health outcomes for engagement in rehabilitation, meaningful interactions across distances, positive affect, transformative experiences, mental health therapies and motor skill learning. Participants reported high usability, motivation, enjoyment, presence and copresence. They also expressed the need for more training time with technology. The heterogeneous methodologies prevent conclusions about the effectiveness of immersive collaborative virtual environments in health programs. However, adopting an intentional intervention design, considering factors affecting presence and copresence, as well as integrating cocreation of the program with participants, seems integral to achieving positive health outcomes.

Learning algorithmic skills is fundamental for computer science students, as it develops critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. These skills enable students to analyze real-world problems and design efficient, practical solutions. Designing algorithms requires abstract thinking, problem solving, and solid mathematical backgrounds making algorithm design challenging. More importantly, due to the lack of conceptual understanding, students usually find it difficult to relate different algorithms to solve a similar problem. Also, it is challenging to modify an algorithm designed for one problem to solve another. Although many pedagogies have been proposed for teaching algorithms, many students still find the subject difficult. The Decoding the Disciplines Paradigm (DDP) has been successfully employed to facilitate meaningful understanding in many disciplines. However, little attention has been given to employing DDP for teaching algorithms in large cohorts with hundreds of students from diverse backgrounds. This study evaluates the DDP from a student perspective in teaching algorithm design. To teach algorithms using the DDP first, the bottlenecks in learning algorithms are identified, and the thought processes are dissected. Then, the instructor models the thought processes to students, who are required to work through the bottleneck. For meaningful understanding, the instructor provides opportunities to help students practice through the modeled steps. This study evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of the DDP and traditional teaching in teaching algorithm design from a student perspective via a questionnaire in a large cohort of international students. Our results show that majority of students preferred the DDP method for learning algorithms in all aspects of teaching and learning.

Given the growing recognition of digital financial inclusion (DFI) and governance (GVN) systems in ensuring the proper dissemination of public funds, both variables can play a transformative role in enhancing the proper delivery of public health facilities. This study investigates the role of DFI and GVN in determining the health spending (HSP) across 22 Arab League countries over the period 1999 to 2023. The cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model was employed for empirical estimation, and robustness of findings was performed through FMOLS and 2SLS approaches. The empirical findings demonstrate that a 1% increase in DFI is associated with an estimated 0.11% rise in health expenditure, while a 1% improvement in GVN leads to a 1.19% increase in HSP in the long run. These results underscore the significant role that both factors play: better DFI enables faster and broader access to financial resources, supporting greater allocations toward healthcare, whereas improved GVN ensures effective policy execution and optimal resource utilization. The consistency of the finding across alternative estimation techniques and the inclusion of several control variables suggest that strengthening digital financial infrastructure and GVN mechanisms can significantly boost HSP in Arab countries. The study offers novel insights into the integration of DFI and GVN for a unified empirical framework to explain variations in health expenditure.

Academic writing has always been an arduous task, especially for postgraduate students at most African universities. Nonetheless, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools appears to have relieved postgraduate students of such supposed academic stress. Despite the concerns about the potential threat of AI to academic integrity, reports have indicated that postgraduate students are developing an increasing appreciation for the use of AI-powered tools in writing. This study, therefore, sought to uncover the potential determinants of postgraduate students′ use of AI tools in academic writing. A total of 339 postgraduate students from a Ghanaian higher educational institution participated in the study. Ajzen′s theory of planned behaviour was employed as a framework to investigate the determinants of AI use. The proposed hypotheses were all confirmed—that is, behavioural beliefs, control beliefs and normative beliefs were significant predictors of postgraduate students′ behavioural intention to use AI in academic writing. It was also revealed that postgraduate students′ behavioural intentions and their control beliefs had a significant direct effect on their actual use of AI in academic writing. The study contributes to global debates on AI in higher education by highlighting that postgraduate students′ readiness to adopt AI tools is shaped not only by individual attitudes but also by perceived academic norms and contextual constraints. These insights emphasise the need for policies and pedagogical frameworks that promote responsible, equitable and context-sensitive AI integration in postgraduate education.

Internet addiction in children has been widely recognised as a substantial health and well-being issue that needs further studies and interventions. Existing literature suggests that behaviours related to children’s internet use and parental mediation may influence their online risks. However, there is a lack of research exploring how those factors may be associated with internet addiction risk, particularly in the context of developing regions with a higher risk and prevalence. The present study aims to investigate parental perspectives on the meaningful characteristics of children’s online behaviour and parental mediation that may contribute to protecting children from internet addiction. We conducted qualitative descriptive research involving 22 parents of Indonesian primary school children with diverse internet addiction risk assessed using the Parent-Child Internet Addiction Test (PCIAT). The data were collected using a 7-day parental diary followed by a post-diary interview and analysed using content analysis. This study found that children with a lower risk (PCIAT ≤ 30) were more likely to have less mobile screen time, engage in positive online activities, show transparency about online activities, prioritise essential activities over internet use and show interests in various real-world activities. Their parents were more likely to enforce strict screen time and content restrictions, provide adequate supervision, demonstrate consistent internet parenting, maintain open communication about internet use and show adequate awareness in educating and role-modelling healthy internet use. Three domains of parental challenges were also identified: determining effective parental mediation strategies, maintaining positive attitudes in internet parenting and managing external influences. These findings suggest that families should improve children’s online behaviour to protect them from internet addiction, such as managing online activities, encouraging positive internet use, promoting transparency and balancing the day with various activities. Parents should also be supported in providing appropriate regulations, educating their children about healthy internet use and serving as role models.

An employee’s understanding of the social context, which is formed through interactions with colleagues and managers, influences their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors at work. Social information processing theory (SIPT) posits that an individual’s perception of their social environment significantly determines their behavior. In this regard, the cues employees receive from their workplace are pivotal in shaping their attitude toward their job. This study seeks to assess the impact of being phubbed on turnover intention using a moderated (voice) mediation (ostracism) model grounded in SIPT. This model measures the effect of being phubbed on the intention to quit and determines how organizational ostracism and voice play a role in the relationship between these two variables. The research model was tested using Hayes’ Model 14 in SPSS. The sample included 143 participants from tour operators through convenience sampling. The results showed that being phubbed positively correlated with intention to quit and ostracism. Being phubbed also affected the intention to quit through partial mediation of ostracism, and organizational voice moderated this conditional indirect effect.

N. Sukma and A. Leelasantitham, “Factors Affecting Adoption of Online Community Water User Participation,” Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies 2022 (2022): 1732944, https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1732944.

In the article, there is an error in the IRB approval number stated. The correct approval number given by the Institutional Review Board of Mahidol University is “COE No. MU-CIRB 2021/249.2709.”

We apologize for this error.

Emoji are frequently used in digital communication to convey or heighten emotions and visualize text. Despite the prevalence of online content about food and the crucial role of visuals therein, little attention has been paid to food emoji. This article presents three empirical studies that investigate the persuasive effects of emoji in social media food posts. The first two studies quantitatively analyzed a large corpus of Instagram influencers′ actual emoji use, finding that food and drinks emoji, while commonly used, do not significantly boost user engagement, whereas facial emoji (i.e., smileys) and emotional nonface emoji (e.g., hearts and certain gestures) do. The third study was an online experiment which examined emoji effects across generational cohorts. Depending on the type of emoji and the consumer′s age group, we found different effects of emoji on the persuasiveness of the communication. Results showed that food and drinks emoji complementing text improved attitudes towards the food and drinks in the posts as well as following intentions among older participants, but in fact negatively affected younger participants′ (Gen Z′s) attitudes and intentions. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that emoji assist people with literacy challenges in message processing. The findings show that emojis can effectively express emotions and visually support text in social media food content, but also that their communicative effects are complex, in particular when targeting different age groups. This research has broader implications for digital (influencer) marketing and online communication aimed at persuading particular audiences.

Metaphors are a fundamental tool for shaping human understanding and interaction with the world. Indeed, they play a crucial role in cognitive and emotional processes, enabling individuals to comprehend one domain of experience in terms of another. Grounded in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this scoping review emphasizes the significant role of the body in metaphorical cognition and examines how technology may enhance cognitive and emotional abilities through metaphorical embodiment and enactment. Additionally, the review proposes the theoretical frameworks of active inference and Bayesian brain to provide a deeper understanding of how embodied metaphors shape cognitive and emotional experiences by integrating past experiences with current sensory inputs to make predictions about the future. Searches were conducted in the PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science databases to extract relevant articles. Out of the 2648 articles retrieved, a total of 19 studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising 15 studies concerning the effect of metaphors on different cognitive abilities (i.e., learning, creative cognition, and perception) and 4 studies regarding emotions (i.e., emotional regulation, arousal, and psychophysiological correlates). Data from these studies were systematically extracted, tabulated, and subjected to a narrative synthesis. Overall, findings suggest that the embodiment and enactment of metaphors, facilitated by immersive technologies, significantly influence cognitive processes and emotional experiences. This enhancement is observed across diverse demographic groups, indicating broad applicability. Despite promising implications, the review identifies a need for further research, especially among clinical populations and in exploring metaphors not traditionally framed within the Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

This study examines determinants of smart city technologies adoption in the United Arab Emirates′ regional cities by extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The pertinent literature has been thoroughly examined. Trust has been integrated as a central mediating construct, and personal innovativeness and financial cost were also added to the UTAUT original model. In addition, a cross-sectional survey of 224 IT professionals was used to collect quantitative data from the regional cities of UAE. The model under research was evaluated and confirmed using a structural equation modeling approach. Reliability and validity met conventional thresholds, and a bootstrapped mediation test was applied. The empirical research findings showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, personal innovativeness, and financial cost each positively influence trust and trust in turn significantly predicts adoption attention. Further, the model explains 58.2% of the variance in trust and 27.9% in adoption intention. Besides, mediation analysis indicates that trust mediates the impacts of the six antecedents on adoption intention, highlighting trust as the principal mechanism translating into functional, social, and economic perception into adoption behavior. The findings also suggest that policymakers and government officials should prioritize trust-building measures, for instance, transparent data practices, clear value-for-money communication, and sustained user support and training alongside continued investments in enabling infrastructure. Finally, the study contributes an empirically by validating a trust-centered extension of UTAUT tailored to the government-led smart city context in emerging urban settings.