Swee-Hoon Chuah

Industry Self‐Regulation: A Game‐Theoretic Typology of Strategic Voluntary Compliance

We analyse the possibility of successful industry self‐regulation in terms of the strategic interactions between industry members and government. In particular, this article presents a game‐theoretic typology of generic self‐regulatory scenarios and evaluates these in terms of the resulting likelihood of collective compliance. We discuss the advertising, press and life insurance industries in the UK as examples of the scenarios. Conclusions for corporate and public policy are offered.

Behavioural economics and financial services marketing: a review

Purpose – It has been argued that the insights provided by behavioural economics have profound implications for the study and practice of marketing. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of how such insights help enhance understanding of aspects of marketing and consumer behaviour in financial services markets.Design/methodology/approach – This paper looks at various facets of behavioural economics which it is felt provide particularly important and salient insights in the context of financial services. In particular, it studies loss aversion and prospect theory, status quo bias and defaults, framing and anchoring effects, hyperbolic discounting, availability effect and salience and over‐confidence. In doing so, it provides a number of examples from the financial services context which provide insightful and informative insights for both commercial practitioners and policymakers. In each case, relevant phenomena are introduced and explained before providing a number of applications a...

Information richness and trust in v-commerce: implications for services marketing

Purpose The potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. This study aims to examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional Web-based e-tailing environments. Design/methodology/approach Rather than focusing on stated intentions, the authors adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing Web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail. Findings The authors find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to the hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade. Research limitations/implications The authors extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. This research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes. Practical implications The findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments. Originality/value Much of the work in this space considers purchase intentions and attitudes around trust, whereas this study looks at actual trust behaviour in the virtual space.

A study of gamer experience and virtual world behaviour

This paper reports a study which examined the impact of computer game experience on behaviour observed inside a virtual world. A social networking world was used, which was owned and run by the research team and a dataset capturing the behaviour of 195 subjects was extracted from the worlds event logs. Four broad areas were analysed: communication, movement, avatar creation and world customization. Highly significant differences were found in text communication. Less significant differences were found in movement and avatar creation, and none were found in the customization of the world.

Do Human Values Explain Economic Behaviour? An Experimental Study

In contrast to current literature which mainly identifies relationships between particular economic behaviours and specific attitudes suggestive of those behaviours, we explore the potential of general human values for explaining economic behaviour. In particular, we investigate whether behaviours observed in binary-choice lotteries, time discounting, public good, ultimatum, dictator and trust game experiments can be explained by Schwartz’s theory of universal human values. We find that the values have explanatory power in relation to strategic, but not parametric, behaviours. We discuss this finding in terms of the sociology of values and suggest that situations involving human interactions provide the most conducive context for the expression of values. We also find that different subsets of the values relate to different strategic behaviours, indicating that there is no redundancy in their explanatory power.

The influence of influence

We investigate how the experience of influencing and of being influenced impacts on a subsequent, immediate attempt to influence and be influenced. We conduct an experiment using participant dyads matched in a round-robin design which systematically measures the influence one individual has on another in a decision task using a short, anonymous, computer mediated, text based exchange. Findings show that being influenced in a round of the task tends to be positively related to being influenced in the subsequent two rounds with the effect weakening each time. We find no impact on the ability to influence. We investigate how influencing and being influenced impacts on a subsequent immediate attempt to influence and be influenced.We conduct an incentivised experiment to systematically measure the influence one person has on another in a decision task.Findings show that influence in Round i is positively related to influence in Round i+1.The effect last for two rounds, weakening each time, before it disappears.We found no impact on the ability to influence.

How user personality and social value orientation influence avatar-mediated friendship

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of user personality and vlaues on the number of connections users make, the number of requests for connections that users give out, and the number of connections invitations users receive. Design/methodology/approach This is a field study of 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The world’s server logs are used to capture sociometrics about the users and their interaction. Findings Findings suggest that personality and values influence the number of friends users make and the number of friendship requests users give out, but not the number of friendship invitations users receive. Only one personality trait – conscientiousness – exhibits homophily. Originality/value Perosnality and social value orientation have rarely been studied together in information systems (IS) research, despite research showing the two have an impact on IS relevant constructs. The use of server logs for data capture is novel. Avatar friendship is an under-researched concept in IS.