Management Information Systems Commons^™

Understanding Product Interest Through Mouse-Cursor Tracking Analysis, Christopher Coors, Jeffrey Jenkins, Joseph S. Valacich, Markus Weinmann

Faculty Publications

With third-party cookies being banned, alternative methods to assess users’ interests online are necessary. We propose that analyzing mouse cursor movements can help address this need. Based on the response activation model, we hypothesize that interest in a product will decrease the user’s movement speed and increase the number of submovements. We conducted an online study that monitored users’ mouse movements while they were presented with several products and navigated to a button to indicate purchase intention (yes/no). Following this, participants ranked their interest in each product. Contrary to our prediction, we found that product interest increased speed and decreased …

Technological Health: A New Perspective On Individual Well-Being In The Digital Era, Tanner Skousen, J. Andrew Lear

Faculty Publications

An individual’s well-being encompasses various facets, including physical, mental, and social health. This paper proposes that in a technology-dependent world, practitioners and researchers must adopt a “technological health” perspective. Through conceptual inquiry and extensive literature review, we propose the concept of technological health, drawing from related concepts. We present an initial framework that explicates technological health through the dimensions of access to technology, ability to use technology, and autonomy over technology. Practically, this new perspective refocuses our understanding of technological challenges and invites an ideology of diagnoses and treatments to comprehensively address individual-level concerns associated with personal technology use. Academically, …

Student Interaction With Generative Ai: An Exploration Of An Emergent Information-Search Process, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Justin Scott Giboney, Taylor M. Wells, Benjamin Richardson, Tom Meservy, Cole Sutton, Clay Posey, Jacob Steffen, Amanda Lee Hughes

Faculty Publications

ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence, is one of the fastest-adopted tools in history and has quickly become a valued tool in education. This study seeks to understand how generative artificial intelligence has changed the information search process. We collected prompts submitted to ChatGPT and thoughts about ChatGPT responses through a survey of 455 students at a US university. Using thematic analysis, we identified ways that ChatGPT changes the information search process of students by supporting diverse information needs, allowing cycling of prompt adjustments, and promoting easy adoption of results.

An Integrated Model For Information Adoption & Trust In Mobile Social Commerce, Fulya Acikgoz, Abdelsalam Busalim, James Gaskin, Shahla Asadi

Faculty Publications

Despite the growing importance of mobile social commerce (ms-commerce), little research has been conducted on the effects of informational and social factors on users’ post-adoption behavior. We, therefore, build on the understanding of mobile social commerce in the UK market and how it affects users’ post-adoption behaviors. Our theoretical model leverages the information adoption model, social support theory, and social influence theory. Data was gathered from 377 ms-commerce users from the UK and analyzed via Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM). The research findings show that both informational and social factors have a positive impact on information adoption in ms-commerce apps. Furthermore, …

How Can Chatbots Improve The Gender Gap In Information Systems?, Rebecca Berthelsen, Cherileigh L. Chandler, Lauren Dean, Mark Keith, Ryan M. Schuetzle, Degan Kettles, Greg Anderson

Faculty Publications

The underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, including information systems (IS), is an ongoing issue that warrants our efforts to understand why a gender gap exists in this domain and what can be done to mitigate it. Prior research shows that women often have lower levels of self-efficacy than men regarding information systems tasks, which may explain the discrepancy between genders. In a previous study, we explored the effectiveness of a chatbot programming tutor in building self-efficacy of IS students and found that chatbot usage, which was self-reported, improved self-efficacy for all students but had a greater effect on self-efficacy …

Risk Perception, Cooperation, And Emotional Distress During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Exploring Adaptive Risk Perception, Haiping Liao, Rebecca L. Monk, James Gaskin, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, while risk perception may promote public cooperation with pandemic prevention, it may also increase emotional distress and thus endanger mental health. This study aimed to examine whether there is an adaptive risk perception pattern that fits both needs of pandemic control and mental health protection. Two waves of Chinese participants (N sample 1 = 1633, N sample 2 = 1899) completed the Scale of Pandemic Risk Perception, the Scale of Public Cooperation with Pandemic Prevention, the Epidemic Worry Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule during Feb 3rd to 5th, and during Feb 18th to …

The New Marshmallow: The Effects Of Screen Use On Children's Ability To Delay Gratification, Benjamin Richardson, P. Thomas Fife, Joseph Steed, Caroline Crane, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

In a digital age where screens are as ubiquitous as crayons once were, the relationship between screen use and a child’s development necessitates examination. This study investigates the effect of screen use—both by children and their parents—on children’s ability to delay gratification, a key predictor of future success. Utilizing an experimental design modeled after the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, we found that children’s screen use did not significantly affect their ability to delay gratification. However, parental screen use for entertainment purposes was negatively associated with children’s capacity to delay gratification. Additionally, screens proved to be a more potent temptation than traditional …

Detecting Social Desirability Bias With Human-Computer Interaction: A Mouse-Tracking Study, Paul A. Weisgarber, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, David Kim, Manasvi Kumar

Faculty Publications

Social desirability bias undermines self-report accuracy, necessitating novel approaches to detect and mitigate its impact. This study aimed to investigate the influence of social desirability on questionnaire responses by analyzing mouse cursor movements and answering behaviors. Respondents (n=238) completed a health and wellness questionnaire while their mouse cursor data was recorded. The results revealed that individuals under a higher social desirability treatment exhibited significantly longer response times and slower mouse cursor speeds, supporting the hypothesis that they may engage in more cautious and deliberate responding. However, no significant differences were found in terms of mouse cursor deviations or answer switches …

Intermittent Digital Fasting: The Mental Health Benefits Of A One-Hour Daily Social Media Hiatus, Austin Lahue, James Gaskin, Kennedy Daniel

Faculty Publications

In an era where social media ubiquity persists, concerns over its impact on mental health have escalated. This preliminary study investigates the effects of a one-hour daily social media hiatus on the mental wellbeing of 60 college students over two weeks. Unlike common interventions demanding prolonged abstinence, this research explores a more feasible, short-term avoidance approach. The experimental design, including treatment and control groups, illuminates the potential mental health benefits of brief, yet regular, digital disengagements. Preliminary results suggest that even minimal breaks from social media can yield significant improvements in users' mental health. Interestingly, these benefits come not from …

Did I Buy The Right Gadget? A Methodological Replication Study, Paul A. Weisgarber, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

This study is a methodological replication of Valacich et al.’s (2018) experiment, which investigated the evaluability hypothesis in the context of technology product assessment. The evaluability hypothesis suggests that the evaluation context significantly influences how users assess and perceive technology features. More specifically, it posits that the perception of technology features, as well as the ultimate selection of a technology product, is likely to differ depending on whether a single technology is evaluated in isolation or multiple technologies are evaluated simultaneously. Our replication study consisted of 310 participants who evaluated two wireless internet products with two product features – connection …

Influencing Air Force Logisticians' Information Seeking During The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Role Of Organizational Meetings In An Expanded Prism Framework, Matthew D. Roberts, Christopher T. Price, Seong-Jong Joo

Faculty Publications

Purpose: This research aims to understand how organizational workplace meetings surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic impacted logistics Airmen across the United States Air Force and how these meetings impacted their risk seeking behavior on social media.

Design/methodology/approach: This survey research tested an extended Planned Risk Information Risk Seeking Model (PRISM) with organizational meetings as an antecedent to determine if current meetings influenced an Airman's perceived behavioral control, attitude toward seeking, subjective norms, knowledge sufficiency and intention to seek information regarding COVID-19.

Findings: Results of the CFA showed that the expanded PRISM model had good model fit. Additionally, using …

Human Or Ai? Using Digital Behavior To Verify Essay Authorship, David W. Wilson, Parker Burnett, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT-4 have transformed natural language processing with their ability to understand context and generate human-like text. This has led to considerable debate, especially in the education sector, where LLMs can enhance learning but also pose challenges to academic integrity. Detecting AIgenerated content (AIGC) is difficult, as existing methods struggle to keep pace with advancements in generation technology. This research proposes a novel approach to AIGC detection in short essays, using digital behavior capture and follow-up questioning to verify text authorship. We executed a controlled experiment as an initial evaluation to test the prototype …

Climate Change Risk Perception And Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Environmental Values And Psychological Contract Breach, Badar Latif, James Gaskin, Nuwan Gunarathne, Robert Sroufe, Arshian Sharif, Abdul Hanan

Faculty Publications

Purpose – Debates regarding climate change risk perception (CCRP), particularly its scale and impact on social and environmental sustainability, have continued for decades. CCRP is experiencing a renaissance with an increased focus on environmentally relevant behaviors to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, CCRP lacks investigation from the employee perspective. Supported by the social exchange and value–belief–norm theories, this study aims to address the impact of employees’ CCRP on their proenvironmental behavior (PEB) via the moderating roles of environmental values and psychological contract breach.

Design/methodology/approach – The nonprobability convenience sampling technique was used to collect survey data froma sample …

The Impact Of Weibo Features On User’S Information Comprehension: The Mediating Role Of Cognitive Load, Ying Xu, Jia-Qiong Xie, Fu-Xing Wang, Rebecca L. Monk, James Gaskin, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

Social media, such as Microblogs, have become an important source for people to obtain information. However, we know little about how this would influence our comprehension over online information. Based on the cognitive load theory, this research explores whether and how two important features of Weibo, which are the feedback function and information fragmentation, would increase cognitive load and may in turn hinder users’ information comprehension in Weibo. A 2 (feedback or non-feedback) × 2 (strong-interference or weak-interference information) between-participants experimental design was conducted. Our results revealed that the Weibo feedback function and interference information exerted a negative impact over …

Charting A Course To The Top: Insights From The Fortune 500 Cios And How They Differ From Other C-Suite Executives, Benjamin Richardson, Degan Kettles, Daniel Mazzola

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Barriers To A Cybersecurity Career: Analysis Across Career Stage And Gender, Justin Scott Giboney, Bonnie Brinton Anderson, Geoffrey A. Wright, Shayna Oh, Quincy Taylor, Megan Warren, Kylie Johnson

Faculty Publications

The demand for cybersecurity professionals is high—especially for women. Efforts to attract women to cybersecurity careers are not meeting goals of equal representation. Researchers have not yet identified a theoretical rationale for the differences. To provide a theoretical rationale, we investigate barriers to a cybersecurity career based on career stages defined by Super (1957) and gender. Concerns about a cybersecurity career differ between girls, young adult women, and mid-career women. Girls feel an un- awareness of opportunity and requisite training, whereas adult women are concerned that they will be undervalued in a male-dominated field, and mid-career women are concerned about …

The Critical Need For Human Capital Measurement Standards And Transparency In Healthcare, Heather Whiteman, Solange Charas, Hieu Bui, Lee S. Webster, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Despite long histories, the disciplines of healthcare performance analytics and human capital analytics followed parallel but separate tracks during the 19th and 20th centuries. Little has been done to integrate these two analytic disciplines to improve the delivery of medical care and the sustainability of healthcare organizations. Today, there is an increased demand for healthcare to meet the aging world population, spiraling healthcare costs, and a shortage of human resources to meet patient needs. It is imperative that healthcare professionals apply innovations to explore and optimize value from a combined discipline of healthcare human capital measurement and reporting.

The Association Of Childhood Maltreatment With Internet Addiction: The Serial Mediating Effects Of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies And Depression, Yuan-Yuan Guo, Jing-Jing Gu, James Gaskin, Xue-Qin Yin, Yu-Han Zhang, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

Objectives: Childhood maltreatment, cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERSs), and depression can be important in adolescents’ Internet addiction. The current study aims to investigate the direct effect of childhood maltreatment on Internet addiction and its indirect effects via CERSs and depression.

Participants and setting: 4091 adolescents (age M = 13.64, SD = 1.59; 48.9 % males) were recruited from a public school in China.

Methods: In a cross-sectional design, participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-Short version (CERQ-Short), the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), and the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). A latent structural equation model was …

How Certain Robot Attributes Influence Human-To-Robot Social And Emotional Bonds, James Gaskin, P. Thomas Fife, Warren Rosengren

Faculty Publications

A growing population of humans are feeling lonely and isolated and may therefore benefit from social and emotional companionship. However, other humans cannot always be available to fulfill these needs, and such in-need individuals often cannot care for pets. Therefore, we explore how robot companions may be designed to facilitate bonds with humans. Our preliminary examination of 115 participants in a scenario based quasi-experimental study suggests that humans are more likely to develop social and emotional bonds with robots when those robots are good at communicating and conveying emotions. However, robots’ anthropomorphic attributes and responsiveness to external cues were found …

Student Engagement In The Hyflex And Online Classrooms: Lessons From The Covid‑19 Pandemic, Karoly Bozan, James Gaskin, Claire Stoner

Faculty Publications

Student engagement is determined by the degree to which students perceive that their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met as prescribed. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its sudden and dramatic shift to mandatory HyFlex (alternating online and face-to-face student attendance) or online learning only, meant less or no faceto- face interactions with peers and faculty, which had an impact on student motivation and engagement in the classroom, as reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement. This new educational landscape will likely remain in effect to a certain extent, and, thus, there is a need for a deeper …

Measuring State And Trait Attention Control Using Mouse Movements, David W. Wilson, Jeffrey Jenkins, J. S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Attention is a scarce resource in an increasingly distracting world. Although computing devices might well be blamed for much of the distraction we experience, these devices also afford an opportunity for feedback and improvement, as seen in a variety of contexts. This paper provides initial evidence that mouse movement data can be used to measure users’ attention control. Attention control refers to the ability to maintain top-down attention to goal-relevant stimuli and resist the distracting influence of irrelevant stimuli competing for attention. During a controlled experiment with conditions of varying levels of distraction, we captured participants’ mouse movements to determine …

Typing Fast Versus Typing Slow: Using Typing Dynamics To Reveal Authentic And Imposter Users, David Kim, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Manasvi Kumar

Faculty Publications

Real-time assessment of users' cognitive states has practical importance, allowing organizations to infer user behaviors. Realizing its importance, prior studies – specifically those using mouse cursor movements – have applied various theories to answer a similar question, i.e., how does a high cognitive load influence the users' device usage behavior? While numerous activities can increase cognitive load, we argue that the mechanisms behind how humans process information can more holistically be explained using Dual Process Theory (DPT) (i.e., when cognitive load is either low or high) and can be applied under a broad range of usage contexts. Using a within-participant …

Key Success Factors For “Real World” Projects: A Principal- Agency Theory Perspective, Degan Kettles, Dan Mazzola, Mary Sumner, Mahesh Raisinghani

Faculty Publications

“Real world” projects are an important component of MIS academic programs. These “real world” projects provide students with problem-based learning opportunities which enable them to address “real world” problems and opportunities. The purpose of this research-in-progress is to determine the key success factors for “real world” projects. The concept of Principal-Agency Theory provides a theoretical lens for understanding these success factors from the viewpoint of students, faculty, and industry sponsors. The SIM academic research team will collect data from project teams across ten universities and for over 250 projects. Having multiple perspectives will contribute to an understanding of how to …

Improving Data-Driven Infrastructure Degradation Forecast Skill With Stepwise Asset Condition Prediction Models, Kurt R. Lamm, Justin D. Delorit, Michael N. Grussing, Steven J. Schuldt

Faculty Publications

Organizations with large facility and infrastructure portfolios have used asset management databases for over ten years to collect and standardize asset condition data. Decision makers use these data to predict asset degradation and expected service life, enabling prioritized maintenance, repair, and renovation actions that reduce asset life-cycle costs and achieve organizational objectives. However, these asset condition forecasts are calculated using standardized, self-correcting distribution models that rely on poorly-fit, continuous functions. This research presents four stepwise asset condition forecast models that utilize historical asset inspection data to improve prediction accuracy: (1) Slope, (2) Weighted Slope, (3) Condition-Intelligent Weighted Slope, and (4) …

Too Fast? Too Slow? A Novel Approach For Identifying Extreme Response Behavior In Online Surveys, Manasvi Kumar, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, David Kim

Faculty Publications

Some participants of online surveys engage in extreme answering behavior while generating responses (i.e., they respond too fast or too slow) relative to population norms. Here, we demonstrate how participants’ navigation behaviors can be used to potentially identify such responses. We administered an online survey where students (who were earlier instructed to complete a task) report lenience scores towards non-appropriate behavior while completing the task. We draw on cognitive dissonance theory to posit that failure to follow instruction predicts lenience scores. We then created different datasets by excluding data from participants flagged by our metrics and generated predictive models. We …

What Makes Health Data Privacy Calculus Unique? Separating Probability From Impact, Mark Keith, Autumn Clark, Tamara Masters, Curtis Wigington

Faculty Publications

Patient health data is heavily regulated and sensitive. Patients will sometimes falsify data to avoid embarrassment resulting in misdiagnoses and even death. Existing research to explain this phenomenon is scarce with little more than attitudes and intents modeled. Similarly, health data disclosure research has only applied existing theories with additional constructs for the healthcare context. We argue that health data has a fundamentally different cost/benefit calculus than the non-health contexts of traditional privacy research. By separating the probability of disclosure risks and benefits from the impact of that disclosure, it is easier to understand and interpret health data disclosure. In …

Embracing Brain And Behaviour: Designing Programs Of Complementary Neurophysiological And Behavioural Studies, C. Brock Kirwan, Anthony Vance, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Bonnie Brinton Anderson

Faculty Publications

NeuroIS—the methods and knowledge of neuroscience applied to the information systems (IS) domain—has become an established research field within the IS discipline. A key advantage of NeuroIS is its ability to provide insights into human cognition beyond those obtained using behavioural techniques alone. Nevertheless, in neuroscience, there is renewed interest in examining behaviour together with neurophysiological methods to better inform our understanding of neural processes. In this research opinion article, we argue that in the field of NeuroIS, there is an opportunity for hybrid programs of study that combine neurophysiological and behavioural methods in a complementary manner. We outline four …

The Path Of The Righteous: Using Trace Data To Understand Fraud Decisions In Real Time, Markus Weinmann, Joe Valacich, Christoph Schneider, Jeffrey Jenkins, Martin Hibbeln

Faculty Publications

Trace data—users’ digital records when interacting with technology—can reveal their cognitive dynamics when making decisions on websites in real time. Here, we present a trace-data method—analyzing movements captured via a computer mouse—to assess potential fraud when filling out an online form. In contrast to incumbent fraud-detection methods, which analyze information after submission, mouse-movements traces can capture the cognitive dynamics of a decision to be fraudulent as it is happening. We report two controlled studies using different tasks, where participants could freely commit fraud to benefit themselves financially while we captured mouse-cursor movement data. We found that participants who entered fraudulent …

Digital Behavioral Biometrics And Privacy: Methods For Improving Business Processes Without Compromising Customer Privacy, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, D. Čišić

Faculty Publications

To enable people to interact with online websites and systems, browsers capture a variety of events that occur on the page—such as how a person is moving the computer mouse, what a person clicks on, what a person types, and whether a person is scrolling. These events represent a user’s behavior on a page, referred to as the DOM or Document Object Model, and are recorded at a millisecond precision rate (e.g., the exact millisecond timestamp when a key goes down and when it comes back up). Research and practice alike have found that these behavioral events can provide powerful …

An Institutional Theory Perspective On Ehr Engagement: Mandates, Penalties, And Enforcement, Mark J. Keith, Elina Chun Stewart, Tevin Stewart, Mitchell Josephson, Bob Cash, Connor Bice

Faculty Publications

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are the predominant information system (IS) used by healthcare clinicians and have been the source of both great success and pain. User engagement with EHR systems is unique from traditional IS contexts in significant ways. Prior research explains EHR usage and success primarily on traditional technology acceptance research (i.e., TAM, UTAUT). However, these models assume that EHR engagement is no different from IS systems in general business domains. Yet, the healthcare context is far more regulated than most. Based on qualitative focus group sessions with a leading healthcare analytics firm (KLAS Research), we identify the …