Vasiliki Vrana

A framework for the evaluation of hotel websites: the case of Greece.

It is essential for hotel companies to evaluate and improve website performance in order to keep and increase their online presence and competitiveness in the marketplace. This article proposes an evaluation framework for hotel websites, which categorizes web information services into six information dimensions and also uses managers’ and users’ views. Based on the relative literature, the model proposes some improvements, taking into account certain aspects of the evaluation procedure. An application compares the performance of the top 25 hotel brand websites with the Greek hotel websites. Top hotels lead in Facilities, Guest contact, Reservation/prices, and Surrounding area information provision, while Greek hotel websites fall back especially in providing online reservation and prices information.

Service quality assessment in a Greek higher education institute

Education service quality, even though it has become a major issue in higher education worldwide, in Greece it has gained attention only in the last few years. The paper analyzes how students and staff shape opinion about quality of education in a HE institute in Greece. This is one of the few analyses of the perceptions about quality of educational services, viewed both by students and staff of Higher Education Institute in Greece. The study uses the SERVQUAL instrument, adjusted in the educational context. It finds the gaps within students’ and staffs attitudes and reveals possible differences between students’ and staffs views. Gaps exist among some students’ attitudes regarding perceived and expected quality. Staff presents greater gaps than students in every SERVQUAL dimension. Although staffs scores about perceived and expected quality differentiate significantly from students’ scores, no statistically significant difference exists regarding the final SERVQUAL scores. The SERVQUAL instrument presents high reliability indices, however its validity is questioned. The issue has important strategic and managerial implications because it relates to the ability of the institution to bridge staffs and students attitudes. Although SERVQUAL presents some limitations regarding applicability it still may be used as a complementary research instrument for assessing service quality. In the educational context SERVQUAL can be used to reveal differentiation among views of the key stakeholders, such as students and staff. Managers should take steps to ensure that both parts form a realistic view of the educational process.

Extending TAM to Understand E-Governance Adoption by Teachers in Greece

The study uses the Technology Acceptance Model, the Diffusion of innovation model and constructs of trust, risk and personal innovativeness in order to build a model for teachers’ adoption of e-governance in Greece. Primary and secondary education teachers responded to an online survey resulting to 230 questionnaires. A SEM validation of the proposed model reveals that Personal Innovativeness, Compatibility and Relative advantage are stronger predictors of intention to use, compared to trust, and perceived risk. Even though the study offers the first piece of evidence on e-governance website adoption by teachers, the recommendations would be helpful in developing and implementing new e-governance plans.

Bloggers' Community Characteristics and Influence within Greek Political Blogosphere

This paper investigates the properties of central or core political blogs. They can be located as clusters of blogs whose members have many incoming links. Other blogs form clouds around them in the sense that they link the core blogs. A case study records Greek political blogs and their incoming links reported through their blogrolls. The adjacency matrix from the blogs’ social network is analyzed and clusters are located. Three of them, those with the larger numbers of incoming links, may be considered to be central. Next, four measures of influence are used to test the influence of the central blogs. The findings suggest that there are many kinds of central blogs, influential and non-influential, and high influence does not always involve high hyperlinking.

Assessing the Adoption of e-Government Services by Teachers in Greece

Technological developments and governments’ understanding of what citizens need usually determine the design of public online services. For successful implementation of e-Government services, governments have to place the user in the center of future developments, understand what citizens need and measure what increases citizens’ willingness to adopt e-government services. The paper uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the extended TAM, the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory and the important determinants of user acceptance perceived risk and trust, in order to describe teachers’ behavioral intensions to adopt e-Government services. A model containing trust and risk, along with cognitive, social and intrinsic factors is used to study the intentions of e-Government use by Greek primary and secondary education teachers. Two hundred and thirty teachers responded to an online survey. Findings reveal that cognitive and intrinsic factors have significant effects on intentions to use e-Government websites.

A Method for Assessing the Performance of e-Government Twitter Accounts

This paper introduces a method for assessing the influence of Twitter accounts of central e-government agencies. It first stresses the importance of activity and popularity of the e-government accounts, and also the importance of community formation among followers-citizens, as the two main stages of e-government adoption. The proposed approach combines activity and popularity of the accounts and followers’ community characteristics in a ranking system, using an idea originally introduced to measure blogosphere authority. A Twitter Authority Index is produced. The method is demonstrated through an extended example: 56 Twitter accounts of ministries of EU countries are sorted according to their indexes in the proposed ranking system. Detailed values for the ministries’ accounts and average values for the countries that the ministries belong to are reported and commented.

A Model for Investigating E-Governance Adoption Using TAM and DOI

As governments around the world move toward e-governance, a need exists to examine citizens’ willingness to adopt e-governance services. In this paper, the authors identify the success factors of e-governance adoption by teachers in Greece, using the Technology Acceptance Model, the Diffusion of Innovation model and constructs of trust, risk and personal innovativeness. Two hundred thirty primary and secondary education teachers responded to an online survey. LISREL then analyzed the data. Model estimation used the maximum likelihood approach, with the item covariance matrix as input. A SEM validation of the proposed model reveals that personal innovativeness, compatibility and relative advantage are stronger predictors of intention to use, compared to trust, and perceived risk. Findings may enhance policymakers’ capacities by presenting them with an understanding of citizens’ attitudes.

Sharing Followers in e-Government Twitter Accounts: The Case of Greece

The recent emergence of e-government and online social media offers opportunities for governments to meet the demands and expectations of citizens, to provide value-added services and overcome barriers of reduced public budgets. Twitter is the most popular microblogging platform that can facilitate interaction and engagement. It is widely used by government agencies, public affairs practitioners, non-government organizations, members of Parliament and politicians. The paper aims to explore the use of Twitter by government agencies in Greece and record Twitter followers’ preferences regarding which accounts they follow. The paper records 27 Greek e-government Twitter accounts and their 107,107 followers. It uses a data mining technique, association rules and two multivariate statistical methods, multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis and proposes the use of a similarity measure, suitable for describing Twitter account proximity. In this way, the paper locates accounts that share followers. Groups of Twitter accounts are located, and their common orientation is described. The analysis not only describes Twitter account similarities and group formation, but to some extent, the followers’ preferences and habits of obtaining information through Twitter, as well.

Authority Groups among Popular Wine Blogs

Blogging in the wine industry has become widespread. This article explores linkage patterns of the Top 100 Wine Blogs. The analysis aims at finding the central wine-blog groups among them. Central blog groups are located using blog inter-linkages through blogrolls. Because of the methodology used, they may be considered to be authority blogs, in terms of search engine optimization. They serve as focal points where interesting conversation and exchange of information takes place. The article describes the features of these blogs in an attempt to explore the characteristics that distinguish these blogs and make them appreciated and worth visiting.

Exploring potential communities of followers in governmental Twitter accounts of EU countries

The Twitter accounts of 56 ministries of 17 EU countries are recorded along with their followers. The mentions/replies (m/r) network of the followers for each account is constructed in order to study whether it demonstrates community characteristics. Clustering coefficient, assortativity and degree skewnness are used as network indexes to explore whether m/r networks constitute small-worlds and scale-free networks. These indexes are then associated with Twitter performance and activity indexes to explore how m/r networks differentiate across accounts of different popularity and performance. Findings are provided for both the individual accounts and for the aggregate data of the countries which the accounts belong to. The m/r networks could be scale-free networks but not small-worlds. Skewnness is high but assortativity and clustering coefficient are, on average, equal to zero. M/r networks cannot be considered to form communities of followers. Accounts and countries with accounts of high Twitter performance offer even less evidence that followers constitute communities.