Dave J. Hobbs

e‐Government in Jordan: challenges and opportunities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges encountered in e‐government implementation, as well as the potential opportunities available in the context of Jordanian society.Design/methodology/approach – A detailed examination and analysis of Jordans published e‐government vision and strategy is presented, together with a review of other relevant literature.Findings – The findings and implications of this study reveal Jordan is still lagging behind in utilising information and communication technologies for delivering government services online.Practical implications – An understanding of the current status of e‐government in Jordan can help policy makers in the country pursue development of the public sector organisations on the one hand, and would be of importance for Jordans economic future success on the other.Originality/value – This is believed to be the most up‐to‐date and comprehensive analysis of Jordans plans and assessment of its level of readiness for delivery of e‐gover...

A fuzzy logic-based system for assessing the level of business-to-consumer (B2C) trust in electronic commerce

The purpose of this paper is to present an application of fuzzy logic to human reasoning about electronic commerce (e-commerce) transactions. This paper uncovers some of the hidden relationships between critical factors such as security, familiarity, design, and competitiveness. We analyze the effect of these factors on human decision process and how they affect the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) outcome when they are used collectively. This research provides a toolset for B2C vendors to access and evaluate a users transaction decision process, and also an assisted reasoning tool for the online user.

The Human Face of E-Business: Engendering Consumer Initial Trust Through the Use of Images of Sales Personnel on E-Commerce Web Sites

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce suffers from consumers’ lack of trust. This may be partly attributable to the lack of face-to-face interpersonal exchanges that provide trust behavior in conventional commerce. It was proposed that initial trust may be built by simulating face-to-face interaction. To test this, an extensive laboratory-based experiment was conducted to assess the initial trust in consumers using four online vendors’ Web sites with a variety of still and video images of sales personnel, both Western and Saudi Arabian. Initial trust was found to be enhanced for Web sites employing photographs and video clips compared to control Web sites lacking such images; also the effect of culture was stronger in the Saudi Arabian setting when using Saudi photos rather than Western photos.

The role of cognitive style in educational computer conferencing

This paper reports an investigation of the impact of students’ cognitive style on their effective use of educational text-based computer-mediated conferences. The research centres on an empirical study involving students from three courses run by the British Open University. Statistical analysis of the data does not suggest that cognitive style has a strong influence on student participation in the conference, but does suggest that, contrary to expectations, ‘imagers’ may send more messages to conferences than ‘verbalisers’. The data also suggest a possible link between certain cognitive styles and course completion, and that the interaction of different styles within a group, as described by ) team roles, may have an indirect influence on task completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Close Encounters of the Virtual Kind: Agents Simulating Copresence

ABSTRACT Results of a field study of an open-access collaborative virtual environment in actual use suggested that awareness of others significantly increases the level of presence experienced by participants. Given the importance of copresence, this paper argues that, in the absence of other human collaborators in a collaborative virtual environment, copresence can potentially be simulated using agent technology. A controlled experiment deploying a prototype embodied conversational agent was conducted to investigate the potential of such agents to simulate copresence. This paper briefly introduces the concepts of presence and copresence, summarizes experiences drawn from the field study, reports on the controlled experiment, and discusses its results. Results suggest that even limited copresence as provided by the current prototype agent is sufficient to help users feel presence in the environment.

A Fuzzy Logic-Based Approach for Supporting Decision-Making Process in B2C Electronic Commerce Transaction

The purpose of this article is to present an application of fuzzy logic to human reasoning about electronic commerce (e-commerce) transactions. This article uncovers some of the hidden relationships between critical factors such as security, familiarity, design, and competitiveness. We analyze the effect of these factors on human decision process and how they affect the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) outcome when they are used collectively. This research provides a toolset for B2C vendors to access and evaluate a user’s transaction decision process and also an assisted reasoning tool for the online user.

Visual metaphors to enhance hypermedia

The paper argues that whilst hypermedia systems potentially have a major role to play in education, there is the danger that they tend to engender cognitive and navigational overhead in their users, which in turn detracts from their educational value. A potentially valuable means of ameliorating this difficulty is to use metaphors to aid the user as they interact with the system. The value of metaphors in overcoming the problems of cognitive overloading and navigational overhead is discussed and an experimental study proposed to investigate the design and deployment of suitable metaphors in this context.