Qiuzhen Wang

How do social-based cues influence consumers' online purchase decisions? An event-related potential study

Product rating and sales are two important social-based cues in online shopping. This study applies the event-related potential (ERP) approach to explore the underlying neural mechanism of the joint influence of these two cues on consumers’ decision-making. Behavioral data show that product rating has a greater impact on the purchasing rate than sales, which positively moderates the latter’s effect and supports cue-diagnosticity theory. Electrophysiological data provide further explanations for the observed behavioral pattern. Analyses of main ERP components suggest that consumers go through a series of cognitive processes from processing of perceived risk (N2) and informational conflict (N400) to evaluative categorization (LPP) before making the final purchasing decision. Specifically, product rating significantly influences the risk perception while the combination of high rating and low sales elicits significant cognitive conflict. Both cues are adopted by consumers to make an overall evaluation based on their similarity to the criterion.

Seller reputation or product presentation? An empirical investigation from cue utilization perspective

This study investigates the joint effects of seller reputation and product presentation on perceived product quality.The way of cues utilization in customers product quality assessment is contingent on the product involvement.The effect of product presentation on product evaluation is weakened by seller reputation under low-involvement situations.High rich product presentation can capture more attention and the effect is also contingent on the level of product involvement. This study examines the interaction effects of two types of cues in different scopes (i.e., seller reputation as a high-scope cue and product presentation as a low-scope cue) on consumer product quality evaluation, under different involvement situations. Drawing on the cue utilization theory and involvement-related literature, we propose that cues used in peoples decision making processes are contingent on product involvement. Through the conduction of behavioral experiments with eye-tracking technology, the findings show that, under high-involvement situations, both seller reputation and product presentation significantly and independently influence product quality evaluation while their interaction effect does not. While under low-involvement situations, seller reputation significantly influences the product evaluation and moderates the effect of product presentation on consumer product quality evaluation. The effect of product presentation on product evaluation is weakened by seller reputation. The findings, to some extent, are reinforced by the eye-tracking data through the trace and analysis of fixation count and fixation time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Pedestrians’ behavior in emergency evacuation: Modeling and simulation*

The social force model has been widely used to simulate pedestrian evacuation by analyzing attractive, repulsive, driving, and fluctuating forces among pedestrians. Many researchers have improved its limitations in simulating behaviors of large-scale population. This study modifies the well-accepted social force model by considering the impacts of interaction among companions and further develops a comprehensive model by combining that with a multi-exit utility function. Then numerical simulations of evacuations based on the comprehensive model are implemented in the waiting hall of the Wulin Square Subway Station in Hangzhou, China. The results provide safety thresholds of pedestrian density and panic levels in different operation situations. In spite of the operation situation and the panic level, a larger friend-group size results in lower evacuation efficiency. Our study makes important contributions to building a comprehensive multi-exit social force model and to applying it to actual scenarios, which produces data to facilitate decision making in contingency plans and emergency treatment.

The effect of human image in B2C website design: an eye-tracking study

On B2C shopping websites, effective visual designs can bring about consumers’ positive emotional experience. From this perspective, this article developed a research model to explore the impact of human image as a visual element on consumers’ online shopping emotions and subsequent attitudes towards websites. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to collect both eye movement data and questionnaire data to test the research model. Questionnaire data analysis showed that product pictures combined with human image induced positive emotions among participants, thus promoting their attitudes towards online shopping websites. Specifically, product pictures with human image first produced higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence, thus stimulating higher levels of enjoyment and subsequent positive attitudes towards the websites. Moreover, a moderating effect of product type was demonstrated on the relationship between the presence of human image and the level of image appeal. Specifically, human image significantly increased the level of image appeal when integrated in entertainment product pictures while this relationship was not significant in terms of utilitarian products. Eye-tracking data analysis further supported these results and provided plausible explanations. The presence of human image significantly increased the pupil size of participants regardless of product types. For entertainment products, participants paid more attention to product pictures integrated with human image whereas for utilitarian products more attention was paid to functional information of products than to product pictures no matter whether or not integrated with human image.

The Application of Cognitive Neuroscience Methods in IS Research: A Retrospect of NeuroIS Research Using the fMRI Technology

Cognitive neuroscience methods have been used increasingly in IS research, this new field termed NeuroIS hold great potential for IS research. This paper first introduced the overall background of NeuroIS research, and then reported some recent research progress in NeuroIS. And in the third part of this paper, the advantage, potential of neuroIS research and the possible implications were discussed. The last part further discussed possible limitations and future research directions of NeuroIS study.

Moderating Effects of Uncertainty on the Relationship between Risk Management and Information Systems Project Performance

The structural contingency perspective has been widely used in IS research. Researchers suggest that managers should use proper risk management approaches to manage IS development projects according to the degree of uncertainty of the projects environment. This paper develops an integrative model to explore the moderating effects of project uncertainty on the relationship between risk management factors and project performance and carries out an empirical analysis on the research model with a Partial Least Square (PLS) modeling approach.

Neural Features of Processing the Enforcement Phrases Used during Occupational Health and Safety Inspections: An ERP Study

The appropriate enforcement phrases used during occupational health and safety (OHS) inspection activities is a crucial factor to guarantee the compliance with OHS regulations in enterprises. However, few researchers have empirically investigated the issue of how enforcement phrases are processed. The present study explored the neural features of processing two types of enforcement phrases (severe-and-deterrent vs. mild-and-polite phrases) used during OHS inspections by applying event-related potentials (ERP) method. Electroencephalogram data were recorded while the participants distinguished between severe-and-deterrent phrases and mild-and-polite phrases depicted in written Chinese words. The ERP results showed that severe-and-deterrent phrases elicited significantly augmented P300 amplitude with a central-parietal scalp distribution compared with mild-and-polite phrases, indicating the allocation of more attention resources to and elaborate processing of the severe-and-deterrent phrases. It reveals that humans may consider the severe-and-deterrent phrases as more motivationally significant and elaborately process the severity and deterrence information contained in the enforcement phrases for the adaptive protection. The current study provides an objective and supplementary way to measure the efficiency of different enforcement phrases at neural level, which may help generate appropriate enforcement phrases and improve the performance of OHS inspections.