This paper examines the role of contextual factors and negative critical incidents as drivers of wearable discontinuance. We adopt a process perspective to understand wearable discontinuance by collecting data from long-time wearable users who have permanently discontinued their use and have no intention of reusing them. We adopt a multistage research design and collect data through the critical incident technique. Inductive data analysis reveals that both critical incidents and contextual factors impact wearable discontinuance, and the former is tethered to the purpose of wearable use. The study proposes pathways in the volitional information systems discontinuance process model and offers theoretical and practical contributions.
Mobile massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) effectively motivate players to purchase in-game items, but the factors underlying purchase behavior in mobile MMORPGs remain inadequately understood. Utilizing the Wixom and Todd framework, our study explores how technological characteristics, gameplay experience, and attitudes drive players’ purchase behavior. Through online surveys and interviews, we found that advancement motivation and immersion significantly influence purchase intentions, with immersion being impacted by aesthetic design, customization, and sociability. This research expands the application of the Wixom and Todd framework into the realm of gaming and refines the immersion concept in the mobile MMORPG context.
Drawing on chasm theory and perceived value theory, this study investigated user participation behavior differences at different stages of online communities to understand two stage-related threats: the cold-start problem (i.e., creating conditions for the establishment of an initial mass of content) and the chasm problem (i.e., user motivational change as an online community evolves). Analysis of survey data from 657 TikTok users revealed changes in user participation motivation that can be associated with the online community's development, providing evidence for the existence of a chasm in the online community context. This research has implications for both theorists and practitioners looking to build sustainable online communities.
Online health information varies, as well as what people choose to consume and believe. Previous research finds that hesitancy to follow health advice is often due to suspicion about credibility. The elaboration likelihood model suggests credibility assessments use both argument quality and source credibility. One important facet for understanding how and why people cling to misinformation about health advice is uncovering what drives their credibility assessment in the first place. Yet, little research focuses on what peripheral cues influence source credibility in online health information. Our mixed-method study, which combines an online experiment and qualitative analysis, explores how source, tone, and format affect credibility perceptions in health contexts. The results confirm ELM relationships and indicate credibility increases when information is physician-authored and objectively presented. Our findings address a gap in the literature by exploring what influences a person's credibility assessment of online health information, offering insights that could inform the design of future online health resources.
Platform-based ecosystems dominate e-commerce, generating value through participant growth and resulting network effects. However, research has lacked any conceptualization of value creation in e-commerce ecosystems. This paper fills this gap by providing a theoretically grounded and empirically validated conceptualization of value creation and exchange, including roles, value creation activities, and value flows among participants. The model integrates insights from a systematic literature review and a multi-case study of ten leading e-commerce ecosystems. Furthermore, an extension to the e3-value notation is proposed by introducing ecosystem segments, allowing for a higher level of abstraction of meta-roles and individual ecosystem participants.
With rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), more employees are benefiting from or being replaced by AI. Nevertheless, we know little about the extent to which AI affects employees’ occupations positively. This study improves the methodologies for quantifying employees’ occupational AI benefits and risks. We propose three mechanisms by which AI may benefit employees’ careers: productivity-enhanced AI jobs, intelligence-augmented AI jobs, and AI-enabling jobs. We also conduct employee-level analyses regarding how employees’ skills, educational backgrounds, and demographics may correlate with occupational risk and AI benefits. Our results suggest that these key factors have distinct effects on different AI benefits.
Intelligent conversational agents (ICAs) are revolutionizing how humans interact with information systems. Designed to provide human-like service, ICAs are generally evaluated by users in comparison to their human counterparts, often resulting in less-than-expected user experiences. Our research investigates user acceptance of ICAs in this suboptimal condition of commercial customer service. Drawing from the dual perspectives of expectancy confirmation theory and task technology fit theory, we theorize and test an integrated research model on the collective impact of user expectancy confirmation regarding ICA capabilities and their assessment of service-ICA fit on user acceptance. Results from a field survey of 350 users of five ICAs deployed by major Canadian telecom service providers reveal the significant influence of both user expectancy confirmation with ICA capabilities and their assessment of ICA fit-to-service, with the latter playing a more prominent role in shaping user acceptance. Even though ICA performance may not always meet user expectations, users are still willing to engage with ICA services when they perceive the ICA as a fitting solution for their specific service complexity and availability requirements.
Information Systems (IS) research paradigms, models and findings are largely developed in the context of the United States and Western Europe and thus are largely applicable to the Western world and have limited relevance elsewhere. One area of IS research interest to both practitioners and academics is the elicitation of organizational/management issues related to the use of information technology (IT). The US-based Society for Information Management conducts an annual survey on these issues, but its findings are limited to the US. Given the current ethnocentric approach, the World IT Project, among other topics, examined the organizational IS issues in 37 countries and found that, as expected, the organizational IS issues varied widely from one organization to another and from one country to another. To better understand the nature of these issues and their driving factors, we have developed a multitiered theoretical framework to unravel these factors. This framework comprises three layers: an outer layer with three national-level factors, a middle layer with two macro-IT factors, and an inner layer with three organizational-level factors. Furthermore, 17 propositions are supported by the World IT Project data and secondary data. Such a framework has been long overdue and offers both practitioners and researchers value in understanding the global IS landscape.