Lixuan Zhang

Early Warning Signs of it Project Failure: The Dominant Dozen

Abstract The postmortem examination of failed IT projects reveals that long before the failure there were significant symptoms or “early warning signs.” This article describes the top 12 people-related and project-related IT project risks, based on “early warning sign” data collected from a panel of 19 experts and a survey of 55 IT project managers.

The Effect of Online Information Search on Image Development Insights from a Mixed-Methods Study

This study explores the potential effects of online information search on tourists destination image development. Specifically, the terms baseline image and enhanced image are proposed to distinguish the different stages of image development in tourists minds before and after active online information search. A mixed-methods study, which asked college students to develop a one-week travel plan in China via online search, was designed. Results show that participants overall image and affective image about China experienced significant and positive changes after online search, while cognitive image basically remained the same. Nevertheless, when asked to describe their image changes, most participants reported changes regarding their cognitive beliefs about China. Furthermore, the qualitative data evidenced the interaction between participants online information search process and image development.

Antecedents and consequences of trust in a social media brand: A cross-cultural study of Twitter

This study extends brand relationship theory to the context of the microblogging platform Twitter. The authors investigate the impact of Twitter trust on users intentions to continue using the platform and to follow brands that are hosted on Twitter (the trust transfer phenomenon). They also explore the role of perceived self-Twitter personality match in strengthening trust towards the Twitter brand. A cross-cultural American-Ukrainian sample allows to identify potential culture-based differences in brand personality and brand trust concepts. The results show that the positive effect of trust in Twitter on its users patronage intentions is robust across two cultures with diverse history and ideology. An important novel finding is the influence of trust in Twitter on patronage intentions towards the businesses hosted on Twitter. However, this relationship reaches statistical significance only in the Ukrainian sample, signaling potential differences in the trust transfer processes in different cultures. The study confirms the role of similarity in personality traits between Twitter users and the Twitter brand in engendering trust in Twitter. The salience of different personality traits in the personality match - Twitter trust link for different cultures suggests important implications for global marketers.

Motivations and Usage Patterns of Weibo

Referred to as Weibo, microblogging in China has witnessed an exponential growth. In addition to the Twitter-like functionality, Weibo allows rich media uploads into user feeds, provides threaded comments, and offers applications, games, and Weibo medals. This expanded functionality, as well as the observed differences in trending content, suggests potentially different user motivations to join Weibo and their usage patterns compared to Twitter. This pioneering study identifies dominant Weibo user motivations and their effects on usage patterns. We discuss the findings of an online survey of 234 Weibo users and suggest managerial implications and future research directions.

A Comparative Study of Internet Addiction between the United States and China

This study explored Internet addiction among university students in China and the United States to develop a better understanding of Internet addiction in a cross-national setting. Three hundred fourteen respondents were evaluated on 10 Internet addiction symptoms and five Internet addiction dimensions: negative outcomes, social escape, secretive behavior, virtual intimacy, and obsessive-compulsive behavior. The results indicate that Chinese students experience a higher rate of Internet addiction than their U.S. counterparts. Additionally, gender was found to be significantly related to Internet addiction for both the U.S. and Chinese sample, while Internet experience was found to not be significantly related to Internet addiction. We conclude that Internet addiction may result as an artifact of the stage of Internet adoption within a society.

Drivers and Outcomes of Brand Relationship Quality in the Context of Online Social Networks

This research adopts a brand relationship perspective to investigate how users of a social network site (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) perceive the quality of their relationship with those sites and their intention to continue to use them, as well as the intention to continue using the hosted brands that they follow through the social network site. In addition, the role of matching a users personality to the perceived personality of the social network site is explored as an antecedent to perceived relationship quality with the social network site. Survey responses from 284 Twitter and Facebook users were collected, and Smart PLS path modeling was used to test our hypotheses. Findings confirm that individuals join and form stronger ties with social networks that convey similar personality characteristics to themselves. Study findings also reveal that perceived strength of relationship quality with an online network brand not only facilitates future intentions to continue using this network and recommend it to others but also strengthens preferences for other brands utilizing this network for marketing purposes. A key implication of our findings is that social network sites and followed businesses may benefit from designing and implementing relationship-building-focused processes to strengthen participation in the social network site to increase user engagement with brands hosted on the social network site.

The complex matter of online hotel choice.

Hotels that appear near the top of the list of search results or an online travel agency page usually get more attention and hits than those showing up lower on the page, but other factors create exceptions to this rule. This study demonstrates that the complexities of the consumer decision process extend beyond mere page position. Other factors that influence consumers’ attention to options in a list of hotels include the number of options and the presence of images. The study underlines the principle that the position of a hotel in a list and on a web page fold helps determine subjects’ attention. Beyond that, presenting test subjects with a lengthy set of hotel options (twenty hotels in this case) seemed to overwhelm the subjects, who tended to reduce their consideration set using different strategies, notably by focusing on price. In addition to creating a more favorable consideration of a hotel, presenting images of the hotels meant that the subjects evaluated more hotels, and reviewed each option more carefully by paying more attention to both the images and the accompanying text. The presence of images not only helped to alleviate the perceived information overload problem but also induced more hedonic elements in decision making, including encouraging guests to consider a hotel that did not otherwise shine in the text description. As a result, we recommend reducing the number of options on one page, understanding web visitors’ conversion rates through a nonlinear formula of attention, and providing appealing and interesting images when a hotel is inferior in terms of other criteria.

Hacking into the Minds of Hackers

ABSTRACT This study presents results of a survey of self-proclaimed computer hackers about their perceptions in regards to illegal hacking. Results show that hackers continue to engage in illegal hacking activities despite the perception of severe judicial punishment. A closer look shows that hackers perceive a high utility value from hacking, little informal sanctions, and a low likelihood of punishment. These perceptions coupled with a high level of moral disengagement partially explain the hackers illegal behavior.

Am I Really at Risk? Determinants of Online Users' Intentions to Use Strong Passwords

By using the protection motivation theory, this article tests a model of password protection intentions for online users. Hypotheses are proposed concerning the intention to engage in good password practices. Data were collected from 182 college students of 3 universities in the southern United States. The results suggest that fear, response cost, and response efficacy are significantly related to online password protection intentions. However, perceived severity and vulnerability are not significant predictors. The study suggests that reducing cognitive costs for passwords is imperative.

Examining Digital Piracy: Self-Control, Punishment, and Self-Efficacy

Digital piracy is a persistent and pervasive problem for society. Based on both the general theory of crime and deterrence theory, this study investigates the role of self-control, perceived severity of punishment and perceived certainty of punishment in predicting digital piracy behavior as well as self-efficacy. The results of the study show that risk-taking and punishment certainty are strong predictors of digital piracy behavior. Self-efficacy is also significantly related to punishment certainty and digital piracy behavior. Implications of the study for research and practice are discussed.