Beauty is more than screen deep: Improving the web survey respondent experience through socially-present and aesthetically-pleasing user interfaces

Web surveys are rapidly becoming standard issue in many researchers’ toolkits; however, measurement error has been shown to affect web surveys to a greater extent than paper-and-pencil surveys (Couper, 2000, Manfreda and Vehovar, 2002). Principles of aesthetic design and social presence have been applied to web surveys to reduce the prevalence of such error with promising results, which were further investigated in this research. A sample of 181 first-year psychology undergraduate students participated in this study. Participants were randomly allocated to view one of eight web survey interfaces, which varied by aesthetic quality and social presence. Exploratory structural equation modeling using the partial least squares method revealed that classical aesthetic quality and social presence were both positively related to perceived ease of use of the web survey interface and positive state affect; social presence and perceived ease of use were positively related to trust in the web survey researcher; classical aesthetic quality was negatively related to negative state affect; and, expressive aesthetic quality was negatively related to perceived ease of use and positively related to positive state affect. Interestingly, expressive aesthetic quality was also positively related to negative state affect. These relationships between aesthetic quality and social presence should inform best practice web survey design recommendations, and future empirical work should extend and test the generalizability of these findings.     

Trust assessment of security for e-health systems

The expansive connectivity of emerging information systems has set the stage for pervasive access to healthcare services via e-health systems for selecting the best possible healthcare services. Emerging systems are expected to be highly dynamic open environments connecting diverse number of healthcare services and autonomous entities that are autonomous agents or software applications representing patients. Entities in such dynamic environments may have different security needs from e-health systems raising the challenge of trust computations regarding security. In this research, we proposed a trust assessment model of an e-health service from the viewpoint of an entity. The model contains a comprehensive architecture applicable to different types of entities, and a novel set of trust assessment metrics may be used to assess a specific property of a security system (i.e. partial metrics) or all properties (i.e. total metrics). The simulation based evaluation of proposed model in the context of a Hospital Online Appointment Service has shown that the proposed model provides better trust computation results than existing trust models for e-health systems. Furthermore, the entities are also able to assess the trust even with incomplete security information.     

云计算环境下服务信任评估方法研究

云计算环境中,服务资源广域分布、复杂多变,服务实体之间的信任关系因不确定性强而难以有效建立与维护。传统的服务信任评估方法无法全面反映信任的随机性和模糊性特征。在研究云模型理论的基础上,提出一种基于加权多属性云的服务信任评估方法。引入时间衰减因子来反映服务信任的时效性,并以多属性信任云来细化信任评估的粒度。计算用户评价相似度,确定推荐实体的推荐可靠性和权重,防止不法分子的合谋欺骗和恶意攻击。通过云相似度计算确定服务的信任等级,为用户的服务选择提供安全决策。仿真结果表明,该方法明显提高了服务交互成功率,并能有效适用于云计算环境下的服务信任评估。     

基于推荐质量的信任感知推荐系统

推荐系统在解决信息过载方面已经取得了很大的成功,同时也存在数据稀疏、冷启动等问题。如何在评分数据稀疏的情况下获得满意的推荐成为推荐系统亟待解决的问题。将信任引入推荐系统成为解决上述问题的有效方法之一。已有的信任感知推荐系统大多基于布尔型信任关系,且没有考虑信任的领域相关性。在服务选择领域,服务请求者依据QoS(quality of service)选择服务。联想到在服务推荐领域推荐请求者可以依据推荐质量(quality of recommendation,QoR)选择推荐用户,提出了推荐质量(QoR)的概念和基于推荐质量的信任感知推荐系统。QoR的属性包含评价相似度、领域信任值、领域相关度和亲密程度,利用信息熵方法可确定各属性的权重。仿真表明该方法提高了推荐系统在数据稀疏情况下的精确度和评分覆盖率,有效提高了冷启动用户的召回率,在一定程度上解决了冷启动问题。     

基于信任的云计算身份管理模型设计与实现

随着云计算的发展,身份管理问题已经引起业界高度关注。基于群签名的身份认证机制保证了云服务提供者不能通过外包的数据回溯用户的身份信息,并广泛应用于云计算环境的身份管理中,但它无法阻止恶意用户对云服务的非法访问。针对此不足,改进了现有的身份管理模型,将信任管理与群签名机制相结合,设计了基于信任的身份管理模型。本模型首先计算用户信任度并将其作为群签名分组的依据,再利用群签名机制实现用户认证,在应用中既能保证用户隐私,又能帮助云计算提供者保护资源。实验结果表明,本模型能有效识别恶意用户,帮助云服务提供者阻止恶意用户对资源的访问。     

基于混合组合双向拍卖的网格资源分配方案

针对组合双向拍卖中节点或实体在单次拍卖中分别扮演资源提供者和资源需求者时所具有的不同特点,提出了混合组合双向拍卖模式,即在拍卖中节点本身不单是资源提供者同样也是资源需求者。在此前提下,结合信任度在资源分配安全性以及服务质量方面的作用,将信任度引入到定价调整中,从而优化资源的分配。仿真实验结果表明,所提出的资源分配方法在提高拍卖效率和单位效用正向激励以及防止恶意节点方面均优于已有方案。     

Towards a trust,reputation and recommendation meta model

New trust, reputation and recommendation (TRR) models are continuously proposed. However, the existing models lack shared bases and goals. For this reason, in this work we define an innovative meta model to facilitate the definition and standardization of a generic TRR model. Following the meta model, researchers in the field will be able to define standard models, compare them with other models and reuse parts of them. A standardization is also needed to determine which properties should be present in a TRR model.In accordance with the objectives we were seeking, following our meta model, we have defined a pre-standardized TRR model for e-commerce, identified the fundamental concepts and the main features that contribute to form trust and reputation in that domain, respected the dependence on the context/role of trust and reputation, aggregated only homogeneous trust information; listed and shown how to defend from the main malicious attacks.     

A maximum self-esteem degree based feedback mechanism for group consensus reaching with the distributed linguistic trust propagation in social network

This paper focuses on consensus reaching process (CRP) under social network in which the trust relationship expressed by linguistic information. A new feedback mechanism in social network group decision making (SN-GDM) is proposed, which mainly consists of the following two aspects: (1) The propagation of distributed linguistic trust is investigated to study trust relation among experts; (2) A maximum self-esteem degree based feedback mechanism is developed to produce personalized advice for reaching higher group consensus. To do so, a novel linguistic trust propagation method is proposed to obtain the complete trust relationship among group. The self-esteem degree is used to define the extent that an individual makes concessions. Then, a maximum self-esteem degree based optimal feedback mechanism is built to produce personalized advice to help inconsistent experts make change of their opinion. Its novelty lies in the establishment of an optimization model with the nonlinear group self-esteem degree function as the objective function while group consensus threshold as the restrictions. Therefore, the inconsistent experts will reach a group consensus with the minimum loss of self-esteem degree, and then, it achieves the optimal balance between individual self-esteem and group consensus. Finally, a ranking process is applied to derive the appropriate consensus solution.     

Understanding consumers’ continuance intention towards mobile purchase: A theoretical framework and empirical study – A case of China

Although mobile purchase is convenient in the age of mobile commerce, many consumers still do not utilize mobile purchase to its full potential. From the mobile vendor’s perspective, retaining current customers and facilitating their continued purchase are crucial to create profitability and achieve a sustainable development. An understanding of the continuance intention towards mobile purchase can provide insights into mobile vendors’ marketing campaigns. Therefore, it is important to examine the determinants that impact continuance intentions of consumers for mobile purchase. Drawing upon information success model, flow theory and trust, this study proposed and empirically tested an integrated model to better understand the determinants of consumers’ continued intention to purchase on mobile sites. Empirical data from 462 users who had experience with mobile purchase were tested against the proposed research model by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results indicated that information quality, and privacy and security concerns are the main factors affecting trust, whereas service quality is the main factor affecting flow. System quality, and privacy and security concerns affect satisfaction. Trust affects flow, which in turn affects satisfaction. These three factors together affect continued intention towards mobile purchase. The findings of this study provide several important implications for mobile commerce research and practice.     

Conflict resolution effectiveness on the implementation efficiency and achievement of business objectives in IT programs: A study of IT vendors

ContextThe information technology (IT) field presents a unique context for the management of multiple projects because of the variety of stakeholders involved, the complexity of interdependencies among projects, and the frequent use of external vendors. In practice, IT vendors typically employ advanced project governance techniques such as program management to work effectively with the numbers and variety of clients while still pursuing the benefits of a single oversight. These structural features lend themselves to conflict across teams with individual requirements. However, little research exists on program management, much less in the IT context, that represents conflict across IT project teams.ObjectiveIn this study, the effectiveness of conflict resolution on the implementation efficiency and fulfillment of business objectives is studied through the lens of constructive controversy theories. A number of hypotheses are derived by tailoring the constructive conflict resolution concepts to IT context and making a comprehensive literature review to identify the mediator and dependent variables. A model is developed to consider the management of conflict across multiple projects combined into a single program.MethodA quantitative questionnaire related to the program environment was developed for five variables to include conflict resolution, cognition-based trust, interpersonal cooperation, business objectives and implementation efficiency. The hypotheses were tested by performing a survey study, where a number of well-established measures in the literature were used. 92 paired responses from program teams in 38 organizations located in India were obtained and represent a variety of individual characteristics, and program sizes.ResultsThis study identified the composite role of constructive conflict resolution and cognition-based trust in improving interpersonal cooperation. The impacts of constructive conflict resolution on business objectives were not fully mediated by cognition-based trust and interpersonal cooperation, although implementation efficiency is fully mediated.ConclusionThe management of conflict promotes trust and interpersonal cooperation necessary to improve the efficient completion of the program and benefits to the organization.