Internet Research最新文献

Purpose

This study is based on the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) to dynamically examine the effect of review variance on sales and the boundary conditions that mitigate this effect.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the theoretical domain of HSM, a conceptual model is proposed that analyzes the nonlinear relationship between review variance and sales and the interaction and motivation factors that moderate these relationships. Review data from websites targeting the film industry in the USA and South Korea (Korea) were collected to empirically analyze the authors' hypothesis, and panel regression analysis was used for confirmation.

Findings

Moderated by interactive and motivational factors, review variance exhibits an inverse-U-shaped relationship with review variance. Specifically, as an interaction factor, review valence and owned social media (OSM) resulted in positive interaction effects, and as a motivation factor, the number of alternatives exhibited a positive interaction effect with review variance. The effect of review variance was less pronounced in the USA than in Korea.

Originality/value

The study outcomes reveal a nonlinear relationship between review variance and sales, thus supporting the contradictory findings of previous studies. This study contributes to the literature by using the HSM as a theoretical framework to verify various HSM mechanisms using online review data. This exploratory study also contributes to the international marketing literature by showing that the effects of review variance vary across cultures.

Purpose

Drawing upon social cognitive theory, this study aims to investigate the potential predictors and consequences of social media health-misinformation seeking behavior during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of 230 international students studying at Wuhan University and Beijing Language and Cultural University, China, this study employs structural equation modeling to analyze the collected data.

Findings

The results indicate that personal factors such as lack of health information literacy, environmental factors, information overload and social media peer influence have a significant effect on behavior, namely social media health-misinformation seeking behavior, which further influences outcomes, namely social media users' anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, both lack of health information literacy and social media peer influence have significant and direct effects on social media users' anxiety. However, the direct effect of information overload on social media users' anxiety is insignificant.

Originality/value

First, this study contributes to the literature on the individuals' social media health-misinformation seeking behavior, its precursors and its consequences, specifically on their mental healthcare during a pandemic situation. Second, this research is one of the pioneer studies that extend social cognitive theory to the context of social media health-misinformation seeking behavior and users' anxiety relationship.

Purpose

Doctor–medical institution collaboration (DMIC) services are an emerging service mode in focal online health communities (OHCs). This new service mode is anticipated to affect user satisfaction and doctors' engagement behaviors. However, whether and how DMIC occurs is still ambiguous because the topic is rarely examined. To bridge this gap, this study explores doctors' participation in DMIC services and its effects on their online performance, as well as its effect on patients' evaluation of them on OHC platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose hypotheses based on structural holes theory. A unique dataset obtained from one of the most popular OHCs in China is used to test the hypotheses, and difference-in-differences estimation is adopted to test the causality of the relationship.

Findings

The results demonstrate that providing DMIC services improves doctors' online consultation performance and patients' evaluations of them but has no significant effect on doctors' knowledge-sharing performance on OHC platforms. Doctors' knowledge-sharing performance and consultation performance mediate the relationship between participation in DMIC services and patients' evaluation of doctors. Regarding doctors' participation in DMIC services, its impact on doctors' consultation performance and patients' evaluation of them is weaker for doctors with higher professional titles than for doctors with lower professional titles.

Originality/value

The findings clarify the value creation mechanisms of online collaboration between doctors and medical institutions and thereafter facilitate doctors' participation in DMIC services and enhance the sustainable development of OHCs.

Purpose

The boom in live streaming has intensified competition among streamers for viewers' gifts, which makes it meaningful to study the factors that affect the viewers’ gifting behavior. Given the emotional attachment between streamers and viewers, the authors set out to elucidate a new driver on viewer gifting: expressions of the streamer. This research aims to explore the impact of streamer emotions on the viewer gifting behaviors, including free and paid gifting. The loyalty level of the viewers is also introduced as a moderating factor to investigate the heterogeneous effect of streamer emotions on gifting behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

The dataset the authors collected consists of two parts, including 1809.69 h of live streaming videos and 358,002 gift giving records. Combined with deep learning methods and regression analysis, the authors performed empirical tests on the 81,110 valid samples. Several robustness checks were also conducted to ensure the reliability of main results.

Findings

The empirical results show that streamer emotions do have effects on viewers' free and paid gifting behavior. The authors’ findings show that positive streamer expressions, such as happiness and surprise, have a positive influence on viewer gifting behavior. However, some negative expressions, like sadness, can also have a positive impact. Moreover, the authors discovered that higher viewer loyalty amplifies the positive effect of streamer emotions and reduces the negative effect.

Originality/value

This research contributes to the study about streamer emotions and viewers' consumption behavior, which extends the application of emotion as social information model (EASI model) in the live streaming setting. The authors carefully divide the gifting behavior into two types: free and paid, and study how these two types are affected by streamer emotions. Besides, these effects are analyzed within viewers of different loyalty levels. This study offers practical emotion management strategies for streamers and live streaming platforms to gain more economic profits.

Purpose

Purveyors of fake news perpetuate information that can harm society, including businesses. Social media's reach quickly amplifies distortions of fake news. Research has not yet fully explored the mechanisms of such adversarial behavior or the adversarial techniques of machine learning that might be deployed to detect fake news. Debiasing techniques are also explored to combat against the generation of fake news using adversarial data. The purpose of this paper is to present the challenges and opportunities in fake news detection.

Design/methodology/approach

First, this paper provides an overview of adversarial behaviors and current machine learning techniques. Next, it describes the use of long short-term memory (LSTM) to identify fake news in a corpus of articles. Finally, it presents the novel adversarial behavior approach to protect targeted business datasets from attacks.

Findings

This research highlights the need for a corpus of fake news that can be used to evaluate classification methods. Adversarial debiasing using IBM's Artificial Intelligence Fairness 360 (AIF360) toolkit can improve the disparate impact of unfavorable characteristics of a dataset. Debiasing also demonstrates significant potential to reduce fake news generation based on the inherent bias in the data. These findings provide avenues for further research on adversarial collaboration and robust information systems.

Originality/value

Adversarial debiasing of datasets demonstrates that by reducing bias related to protected attributes, such as sex, race and age, businesses can reduce the potential of exploitation to generate fake news through adversarial data.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the beliefs and attitudes toward the use of information and communication technology (ICT). The study examines the challenges of implementing ICT-based training and provides insights for promoting the acceptance of online training in volunteer sports communities.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses an action design research methodology that combines the implementation of ICT-based training, interviews, and a survey of 523 participants to examine the influence of online training on beliefs and attitudes.

Findings

The study shows that before the COVID-19 pandemic, soccer referees had negative beliefs about the use of ICT for learning. However, the experience of being forced to use ICT for training during the pandemic led to a positive shift in their beliefs about ICT.

Research limitations/implications

The study offers four lessons learned for promoting the use of ICT-based training in voluntary sports. Future research should investigate the influence of blended learning approaches on affective, cognitive, and skill-based learning outcomes.

Practical implications

The study has practical implications for those responsible for implementing ICT-based training in voluntary sport. The findings suggest that design features such as usefulness, ease of use and enjoyment should be emphasized to increase the acceptance of online training.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the challenges of implementing ICT-based training in voluntary sport contexts. The findings suggest that the experience of being forced to use ICT can promote the acceptance of online training in volunteer sports communities.