Electronic Word-of-Mouth for Online Retailers: Predictors of Volume and Valence

The goal of this research was to build a model that evaluates the influence of affective commitment, high-sacrifice commitment, and satisfaction on the customers’ word-of-mouth concerning an online retailer. Two word-of-mouth dimensions were considered: volume and valence. A survey was administered to 282 respondents and structural equation modeling techniques were used to process the data and test the hypotheses. Our findings show that satisfaction and high-sacrifice commitment have an important impact on both word-of-mouth volume and valence, while affective commitment only influences word-of-mouth valence. This paper offers detailed explanations of these results in light of other theories and studies in the field.

Psychosocial factors influencing shared bicycle travel choices among Chinese: An application of theory planned behavior

The worldwide rise of shared bicycle use has changed the way people travel. Here we analyze shared bicycle use from the perspective of the theory of planned behavior, and propose a model to investigate factors influencing shared bicycle usage in China. A total of 211 shared bicycle users selected from 28 provinces throughout China completed a self-reported survey. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to delineate the pathway from shared bicycle usage. The SEM model demonstrated that: (1) shared bicycle use intention was significantly associated with four variables, namely travel attitude(β = 0.491, t = 24.569), social norms(β = 0.149, t = 6.771), travel habits(β = 0.146, t = 7.226) and perceived behavioral control (β = 0.190, t = 11.110); (2) shared bicycle use behavior was significantly affected by shared bicycle use intention(β = 0.406, t = 15.936), and also by travel habits(β = 0.320, t = 11.921); (3) shared bicycle use behavior was also affected by demographic variables (gender, age) and situational factors (distance). The conclusions of this study provide useful data for operators of bicycle services and government policy makers.

A Rule-Based Reasoner for Underwater Robots Using OWL and SWRL

Web Ontology Language (OWL) is designed to represent varied knowledge about things and the relationships of things. It is widely used to express complex models and address information heterogeneity of specific domains, such as underwater environments and robots. With the help of OWL, heterogeneous underwater robots are able to cooperate with each other by exchanging information with the same meaning and robot operators can organize the coordination easier. However, OWL has expressivity limitations on representing general rules, especially the statement “If … Then … Else …”. Fortunately, the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) has strong rule representation capabilities. In this paper, we propose a rule-based reasoner for inferring and providing query services based on OWL and SWRL. SWRL rules are directly inserted into the ontologies by several steps of model transformations instead of using a specific editor. In the verification experiments, the SWRL rules were successfully and efficiently inserted into the OWL-based ontologies, obtaining completely correct query results. This rule-based reasoner is a promising approach to increase the inference capability of ontology-based models and it achieves significant contributions when semantic queries are done.

Do Twitter phenomena check-in popular venues on Foursquare too?

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to figure out the visiting behaviors of the users who have different characteristics on Twitter.

Design/methodology/approach

The visit history of users who share their Foursquare check-ins on Twitter and the characteristics of visited venues (category, check-in count, tip count, like count, rating, and price tier) was collected with Foursquare API. In addition, the number of followers, friends, tweets and favorite-count were collected via Twitter API. First, users were clustered according to their Twitter related attributes. After that, profiling was applied on clusters according to the characteristics of the venues that were visited by the users.

Findings

Clustering analysis generated three clusters, namely, ordinary, talkative and popular. For each cluster, the visited venues were investigated according to the price classification, check-in, like, tip counts and the categories. The users in ordinary class prefer cheaper venues rather than talkative and popular users. On the other hand, popular users prefer the venues with the highest average number of check-ins, likes and tip counts. The top two categories for all clusters are cafe and shopping mall.

Originality/value

This study differentiates from the other studies in the literature by examining the data from Twitter with clustering and profiling these clusters with Foursquare data to understand venue preferences of Twitter users having various characteristics. The findings of this study will provide new insights for business owners to understand the customers more comprehensively and design better marketing strategies.

Institutional repositories: a bibliometric study of the social sciences citation index (SSCI)

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric study of journal articles related to institutional repositories in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) between January 1993 and August 2017. This study will provide researchers with a foundation for further research.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, articles published were analyzed; titles were searched using the term “institutional repositories.” The data were evaluated in response to four research questions on the following topics: publication trends, prolific authors, core journals and times cited.

Findings

The results indicate that 124 articles on institutional repositories were authored by 223 individuals. These articles were cited 722 times in 37 journals, and the h-index provided by the Web of Science was 14.

Research limitations/implications

This study only investigated articles titled with institutional repositories in the SSCI. Other items were not included.

Practical implications

This study shows that the implementation of institutional repositories has been limited to library and information science. If they can be used broadly in different disciplines, a better outcome can be expected.

Social implications

Based on the findings, the growth of institutional repositories as an academic subject is likely to continue. If such discussions can be conducted in other disciplines, institutional repositories may be able to provide a more promising outcome to academia.

Originality/value

This paper is valuable for researchers who wish to examine the trends of institutional repositories in the SSCI and seek possible areas for further research.

Optimizing Waiting Room Utilization in High Speed Railway Stations Based on an Information Integration Approach

The setting of railway station waiting room and waiting zones relates to passengers' feeling and satisfaction. In this article, the authors develop an optimization model for railway station waiting room assignment, as well as considering adjustment of platforms. With four types of improvement strategies: zone optimization, room optimization, time optimization and interactive priority policy, this optimal model aims to effectively and efficiently improve the railway service quality and security.

An analysis of interlibrary loan services: a case study of a university in South Africa

Purpose

The landscape of teaching, learning and research has changed requiring the need for diverse information resources. Given the current budgetary constraints and financial conditions prevailing in many universities, sharing of information resources has become a necessity. The Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services have thus become an important service to meet the immediate needs of library users. The aim of this paper is to analyse the ILL services of the North-West University in South Africa from 2006 to 2016. Using statistical data, the paper shows the emerging pattern in borrowing and lending between institutions as well as determines the existence of correlations between borrowing and lending libraries. The results of this study show that ILL amongst libraries has decreased in the past 11 years. A need exists for increased awareness of ILL and there is need for technological innovations that will ensure that library users are able to request for information resources seamlessly.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a quantitative study that uses ILL data from the North-West University. Data were downloaded from the SABINET ILL system using the three NWU JC codes. They were then collated and uploaded on excel spreadsheets. In the main, the excel spreadsheets were used to interpret the data. Further, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, in particular Spearman’s Correlation Analysis, was used to test correlations between data from libraries that requested information resources from NWU and data from libraries that supplied information resources to NWU during this period using Rumsey’s guidelines to interpret the correlations.

Findings

The findings of the study reveal that ILL among libraries in South Africa had generally declined owing mostly to the proliferation of online resources resulting to changes in user information-seeking behaviour. The decline is despite the challenges of low budgets received by most libraries for the acquisition of information resources. It can also be concluded that public university libraries still value ILL as demonstrated by the high number of items requested from other libraries. The findings also reveal that most ILL activities were conducted by public universities.

Research limitations/implications

It was not possible to obtain the list of titles that have been requested and also to obtain the user’s details. This would have enabled the authors to determine the type of titles that are being requested, and the users that request them.

Practical implications

ILL should continue to be enhanced in view of the challenge of dwindling library budgets against the escalating prices of information resources. There is also a need for user education so that they become aware of the ILL service. From experience, library users normally give up once they realize that what they wanted is not available through the local catalogue and this calls for librarians to create an awareness to users that ILL could help solve their frustrations.

Social implications

These results show that ILL can play a significant role to level the playing field between the well-resourced libraries in urbanized regions or provinces and the poorly resourced ones in rural regions or provinces. This social justice aspect of ILL is probably the reason why better resourced libraries in South Africa have decided to remain in the scheme unlike other countries where better resourced libraries opted out of reciprocal arrangements with small and medium-sized institutions.

Originality/value

The study adds to a very limited number of studies emanating from Africa. A study of this nature has never been conducted in Africa, as previous studies were nationwide studies. As far as the authors know, this is the first study that uses ILL data to research the impact of the global financial crisis on libraries in Africa.

The impacts of knowledge sharing-based value co-creation on user continuance in online communities

Purpose

Though online communities offer unprecedented opportunities to involve people in knowledge sharing, the reasons why users would like to participate in those activities in online communities have still been under-explored. In this research, the authors aim to use the value co-creation theory to build and test a continuance usage model, which focuses more on experiential values resulted from the knowledge sharing behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

An integrative research model is built to investigate how knowledge sharing behavior affects users’ co-creation value and then drives their continuance usage in online communities. Online survey data collected from 239 Sina Microblog users in China are utilized to validate the proposed model and hypotheses.

Findings

Empirical results indicate that the knowledge sharing behavior helps improve users’ co-creation value, including customer learning value, social integrative value and hedonic value. This co-creation value can subsequently affect users’ future participation intention in online communities.

Originality/value

This paper seeks to fill the research gap by examining customers’ motivations or perceptions underlying their knowledge sharing behavior at the usage-stage, instead of the pre-usage stage mainly concentrated on by previous studies. The managerial implications can be utilized for policy making to encourage customers’ participation and operate a better online community.

Public opinion dissemination on mobile internet- a case of Ebola

Purpose

This study aims to improve disaster management. Social media, particularly microblog, has become a new platform for public opinion dissemination. However, few studies have been conducted to explore the structure of public opinions, the approaches for facilitating the spread of public opinions and the results of public opinion dissemination in the context of mobile internet for the purpose of improving disaster management.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper chooses Ebola as the research topic and extracts 14,735 Ebola-related data items from Sina Microblogs to examine the information nodes of public opinion and the characteristics of propagation paths on mobile internet. Particularly, nodes of public opinion between mobile terminals and non-mobile terminals are compared.

Findings

The results of this paper reveal the characteristics of public opinion propagation on mobile internet and verify the effectiveness of public opinion propagation on mobile internet. This study shows that public opinions propagate quickly, widely and efficiently and further generate great impacts on mobile internet.

Research limitations/implications

The methods used in this study can be useful for the government agencies and other relevant organizations to monitor public opinions, identify issues and problems proactively and develop strategies in a more efficient manner to improve disaster management.

Practical implications

The results of this paper are helpful for related departments to monitor public opinions and to further improve disaster management.

Originality/value

This paper explores the mechanism of public opinion dissemination on mobile internet and further investigates how to improve disaster management through a case study related to Ebola.