Long waits online undermine users' evaluations of Web sites and their providers, triggering abandonment behaviors. Yet e-business researchers and practitioners have not perfected mechanisms to respond to online wait issues. A filler interface that runs during the wait for search results may influence online users' perceived waiting time (PWT); however, no scientific investigation has attempted to design effective filler interfaces for managing online waits. By adopting resource allocation theory, cognitive absorption theory, and human computer interaction (HCI) theories (competition for attention, visual search, and motion effect), we design diverse filler interfaces and investigate their effects on antecedents of PWT. The proposed research model considers cognitive absorption factors such as temporal dissociation, focused immersion, and heighteneden joyment as antecedents of PWT, which in turn triggers three outcomes: affective appraisals, cognitive appraisals, and Web site use intention. A multistage, multimethod approach is used to test the research hypotheses. In the first stage, we compare a filler interface condition with a no-filler interface condition, and find the superiority of a filler interface with respect to inducing focused immersion and temporal dissociation.In the second stage, we conduct two controlled experiments to examine whether filler interfaces with various designs (varying the presence and relevance of image, text, and image motion) distinctly influence antecedents of PWT and confirm their distinctive effects on focused immersion, temporal dissociation, and heighteneden joyment. In addition, by conducting a structural equation modeling analysis, we find that our research model explains 51 percent, 51 percent, 44 percent, and 45 percent of the variance in PWT, affective appraisals,cognitive appraisals, and Web site use intention respectively. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are provided..
Virtual worlds, immersive three-dimensional virtual spaces where users interact with projected identities of other users (avatars) and objects, are becoming increasingly popular and continue to grow as highly interactive, collaborative, and commercial cyberspaces. However, extant research in this context has not paid much attention to usability design of a virtual world and corresponding effects on users' psychological desire to own and control the space and objects within it and subsequent behavior intention. In this study, we apply concepts of Web site usability and psychological ownership to develop a model that illustrates the relationships between seven usability factors (legibility, firmness, coherence, variety, mystery, classic, and expressive visual aesthetics), four antecedents of psychological ownership (cognitive appraisals, perceived control, affective appraisals, and self-investment), psychological ownership, and use intention. A cross-sectional study with 239 Second Life users was conducted. The results demonstrate that designing a usable virtual world that induces strong psychological ownership is crucial to attract users to spend more time, participate in more activities, and revisit the virtual world. This is an important finding for forward-looking e-business managers looking to invest their limited resources in designing a usable virtual world. In addition, by using our model and corresponding survey items, designers can benchmark and evaluate the usability of their current virtual worlds, compare the results to the designs of competitors, and upgrade the offerings of virtual worlds, as needed, by allocating available resources to the most influential design factors to suit their specific needs.
To maintain competitive advantage, a firm's investment decisions related to knowledge creation are likely to be strategic in nature. However, strategic investments usually have an element of risk linked to uncertain and deferred investment benefits. To date, such investment decisions relating to knowledge workers have not been extensively researched. In this paper, we explore the following research question: How do we strategically assess knowledge creation over time giving consideration to complex decision criteria in order to improve organizational value? We develop a model based on economic and organization theory for assessing organizational value with regard to knowledge creation investments. Our model prototype provides managers with a learning tool relating to the timing and selection of knowledge creation investments. Our own use of the tool in simulation experiments yielded several insights which suggest that the decisions typically made by managers may dilute knowledge creation investments. Our results demonstrate that the organizational benefit of knowledge creation processes should be well aligned with near-term tasks. Under instances of high knowledge depreciation, however, it is unlikely that individual workers can optimize knowledge creation process decisions without organizational involvement in matching skills to task complexities. The organizational benefits of consistent and frequent knowledge creation process participation increase over time as the match of skills and task complexities improve.
The need for timely information in the e-business world provides the impetus to develop a flexible database system with the capability to adapt and maintain performance levels under changing queries and changing business environments. Recognizing the importance of providing fast access to a variety of read-only applications in today's e-business world, we introduce the systems architecture for developing and implementing a flexible database system to achieve considerable gains in processing times of read queries. The key component of a flexible database system is query mining, the concept of determining relationships among query properties, alternative database structures, and query processing times. We validate the flexible database system concept through extensive laboratory experiments, where we embed learning tools to demonstrate the implementation of query mining.