Kewen Wu

A meta-analysis of the impact of trust on technology acceptance model: Investigation of moderating influence of subject and context type

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has proven to be one of the most powerful theories to explain users technology adoption. Among many external variables incorporated into TAM, trust is considered to be an important factor that influences the users online behavior, especially in the e-commerce context. This study conducts a meta-analysis based on the previous TAM studies in an attempt to make well-grounded statements on the role of trust. Furthermore, the paper examines those TAM studies by considering moderating effects of subject type (students or non-students) and context type (commercial or non-commercial). Results indicate a significant influence of trust on TAM constructs. Moderating effects are found for most pair-wise relationships. The findings yield implications for both researchers and service providers.

Collaboration technology in teams and organizations: Introduction to the special issue

Information technology advances in recent years have facilitated new forms of information and knowledge sharing. Teams and organizations are increasingly exploring and adopting new technologies to support collaborative work. Such technologies range from collaboration and communication technologies that connect members of virtual teams across national and international boundaries to social media technologies that allow teams and organizations to disseminate and gather information from within and outside their institutional boundaries. The widespread availability of smart phones has given whole societies opportunities to participate in large-scale sensemaking, problem solving, and efforts to organize collaborative action. Some of the more popular modern collaboration technologies that have been widely employed in organizations include wikis, social networks, crowdsourcing, tagging plugins, and mashups (Andriole 2010; Van Osch et al. 2015; Go and You 2016). Awiki is a web-based application that allows users to collaboratively develop and modify web pages. The most wellknown example of a wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that has been developed and maintained by thousands of volunteers for over 15 years. A wiki system can facilitate knowledge acquisition and support collaboration and communication among members of an organization. Specifically, wikis have the potential to serve as dynamically evolving organizational knowledge repositories by harvesting fragmented knowledge contributed by users. Compared to traditional knowledge management systems (KMSs), wiki systems put less emphasis on centralized control, strict discipline, and extensive monitoring, while users do not need to possess significant technical expertise to participate in the contribution process (Hasan and Pfaff 2006). Experiences with the organizational application of wikis have shown that although wikis require constant contributions to ensure sustainability, they provide a low-cost solution to knowledge management in terms of the creation and deployment of knowledge repositories (Almeida and Rocha 2011; Standing and Kiniti 2011; Arazy and Gellatly 2012). Furthermore, studies suggest that wikis are more effective in facilitating tacit and informational knowledge sharing among organization members than traditional KMSs (Cress and Kimmerle 2008; Standing and Kiniti 2011). Organizations can employ social network technologies both internally and externally. Using internal social networks, individuals can shorten their learning cycle by exploring shared experiences of colleagues (Lin and Hsueh 2006). * Kewen Wu kew259@mail.usask.ca

Using a Delphi method and the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate Chinese search engines

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop an evaluation criteria system for search engines using the Delphi method and the analytic hierarchy process, and to conduct an empirical study on Chinese search engines to verify it. This is because the evaluation criteria in current research rarely considers expert opinions and experience, and seldom calculates the weight of each criterion by quantitative methods.Design/methodology/approach – Expert investigation of the web‐based Delphi method was employed to develop the evaluation criteria, and the analytic hierarchy process based on an exponential scale was adopted to calculate the weight of each criterion. An empirical study was designed to test the evaluation criteria system. A total of 12 study participants were invited to evaluate six popular Chinese search engines by means of e‐mail questionnaires. All the calculation processes were executed automatically by Java programming.Findings – The indexing structure and search method were the core criteria...

How buyers perceive the credibility of advisors in online marketplace: review balance, review count and misattribution

In an online marketplace, buyers rely heavily on reviews posted by previous buyers (referred to as advisors). The advisor’s credibility determines the persuasiveness of reviews. Much work has addressed the evaluation of advisors’ credibility based on their static profile information, but little attention has been paid to the effect of the information about the history of advisors’ reviews. We conducted three sub-studies to evaluate how the advisors’ review balance (proportion of positive reviews) affects the buyer’s judgement of advisor’s credibility (e.g., trustworthiness, expertise). The result of study 1 shows that advisors with mixed positive and negative reviews are perceived to be more trustworthy, and those with extremely positive or negative review balance are perceived to be less trustworthy. Moreover, the perceived expertise of the advisor increases as the review balance turns from positive to negative; yet buyers perceive advisors with extremely negative review balance as low in expertise. Study 2 finds that buyers might be more inclined to misattribute low trustworthiness to low expertise when they are processing high number of reviews. Finally, study 3 explains the misattribution phenomenon and suggests that perceived expertise has close relationship with affective trust. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The development of social network analysis research in mainland China: a literature review perspective

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been introduced to mainland China since the end of last century. Now it is a hot research field and can also be applied to study other disciplines as a research method or analysis tool. It is often stated that SNA research has experienced rapid growth in mainland China these years, but few studies have been conducted to prove the statement. This paper aims at exploring the research status and development of SNA in mainland China by a critical assessment of journal articles. Through selecting papers from China Academic Journals Full-text Database (CAJFD), a literature review is conducted to get an overview framework about SNA research both as a research object and a method in mainland China by bibliometric analysis and classification scheme based approach. Finally a discussion is made from the systematical data analysis, and an interesting finding is that the iSchool community in mainland China plays a leading role in the SNA related researches. Furthermore, some implications are put forward to explore how SNA can be applied to or fit with the IS-related disciplines or topics in the future.

Motivating Wiki-Based Collaborative Learning by Increasing Awareness of Task Conflict: A Design Science Approach

Wiki system has been deployed in many collaborative learning projects. However, lack of motivation is a serious problem in the collaboration process. The wiki system is originally designed to hide authorship information. Such design may hinder users from being aware of task conflict, resulting in undesired outcomes (e.g. reduced motivation, suppressed knowledge exchange activities). We propose to incorporate two different tools in wiki systems to motivate learners by increasing awareness of task conflict. A field test was executed in two collaborative writing projects. The results from a wide-scale survey and a focus group study confirmed the utility of the new tools and suggested that these tools can help learners develop both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to contribute. This study has several theoretical and practical implications, it enriched the knowledge of task conflict, proposed a new way to motivate collaborative learning, and provided a low-cost resolution to manage task conflict.

Exploiting the Use of Wikis to Support Collaborative Writing: A Case Study of an Undergraduate Computer Science Class

Use of wikis in education reflects a shift in the education paradigm from lecture and individual homework-based to a paradigm emphasizing student engagement and the construction of knowledge through collaboration and peer-help. Existing research work on the use of wiki in collaborative writing had given mixed results. The goals of this research are to investigate whether wiki supports learning of writing and argumentation skills, and whether the students are motivated to use it and see it as a useful learning tool. Our participants comprise ten senior undergraduate students of a Computer Science class, who engaged in collaborative writing using wiki for four weeks. Their contributions were graded by a designated TA. The grades assigned to both their final articles and individual contributions, and the wiki logs were analyzed to determine the quality and volume of their weekly contributions, while feedback was taken from them using questionnaire to sample their perception of the use of wiki in writing. Our results showed that the use of wiki is helpful in improving their writing skill. However, participants are not happy with the further use of wiki in their course work. Also, we found that they require extrinsic motivation, in form of feedback (grades) from the TA and acceptance of their contribution by their peers, to increase their participation in wiki writing.

Notice of Retraction A complexity analysis and visual modeling on credit evaluation for e-commerce

As the current study on credit evaluation for e-commerce did not take into account the system incomplete problem caused by the complexity of the transaction participants and asymmetric information problem, the complexity analysis on credit evaluation for e-commerce is necessary. Based on diamond model and the complex systems theory, the complexity analysis model on credit evaluation for e-commerce was constructed. Next, the method using UML for visual modeling of the complexity was proposed, and the specific implementation of the process was described. It will contribute to the standardization of credit evaluation process for e-commerce.