Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

Why Consumers Disclose Their Tourism Experiences On Tourism Social Networking Sites: Multiple Theoretical Perspectives, Junshu Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tourism social networking sites (SNSs) are websites that provide users with templates for describing their travel experiences and an infrastructure to share such travel posts with a network of like-minded individuals. Tourism SNSs represent an important advertising channel for the tourism industry, as they may assist travelers in selecting destinations and planning vacations on the basis of other travelers’ experiences, which may further stimulate travel and generate income for the tourism industry (Yazdanifard & Yee, 2014). User-generated content (UGC) in the form of travel posts is the core offering and key success factor of tourism SNSs. Travel posts constitute a …

Blind And Visually Impaired Users Adaptation To Web Environments: A Qualitative Study, Raneem Saqr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although much research exists on human behavior in online environments, research on users with disabilities is still rare. To draw more attention to this population, this dissertation explored browsing patterns and adaptive behaviors of people with visual disability across different online environments common in daily activities: social network, e-commerce, online information, and search engines’ websites. The main objective of this study is to propose a conceptual framework of how blind and visually impaired users browse and adapt to different web environments. We achieve this objective using a qualitative approach through three studies. In the first study, the researchers collect data …

Predictive Analytics Of Organizational Decisions And The Role Of Rationality, Arash Barfar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How can we predict key decisions made by organizations in the presence of big data and on-demand information? In this dissertation we exploit a large repository of B2B real-time transactional data with service quality indicators and present evidence that organizational decision analytics apply both rational and boundedly-rational (i.e. behavioral) economic models. The dissertation’s findings demonstrate that both utility and heuristic models, respectively, play significant roles in predicting organizational decisions on churn, a key decision in this context. In the presence of a large data set the assumed rationality of organizations appears to provide accurate predictions in uncontrolled experiences and selected …

Information Technology & Sustainability: An Empirical Study Of The Value Of The Building Automation System, Daphne Marie Simmonds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the environmental and economic effects of green information technology (IT). Green IT describes two sets of IT innovations: one set includes innovations that are implemented to reduce the environmental impact of IT services in organizations; and the other IT to reduce the environmental impact of other organizational processes. The two sets respond to the call for more environmentally friendly or “greener” organizational processes.

I developed and tested a preliminary model. The model applied the resource based view (RBV) of the firm (Wernerfelt 1984) the stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984) and included four constructs: (1) BAS implementation; environmental …

Spatiotemporal Sensing And Informatics For Complex Systems Monitoring, Fault Identification And Root Cause Diagnostics, Gang Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to cope with system complexity and dynamic environments, modern industries are investing in a variety of sensor networks and data acquisition systems to increase information visibility. Multi-sensor systems bring the proliferation of high-dimensional functional Big Data that capture rich information on the evolving dynamics of natural and engineered processes. With spatially and temporally dense data readily available, there is an urgent need to develop advanced methodologies and associated tools that will enable and assist (i) the handling of the big data communicated by the contemporary complex systems, (ii) the extraction and identification of pertinent knowledge about the environmental …

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, And The Social Media Aftermath Of The Boston Marathon Bombing, Megan M. Mcintyre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Agency is a foundational and ongoing concern for the field of Rhetoric and Composition. Long thought to be a product and possession of human action, rhetorical agency represents the most obvious connection between the educational and theoretical work of the field and the civic project of liberal arts and humanities education. Existing theories of anthropocentric rhetorical agency are insufficient, however, to account for the complex technological work of digitally enmeshed networks of humans and nonhumans. To better account for these complex networks, this project argues for the introduction of new materialist theories of distributed agency into conversations about agency within …

The Use And Effectiveness Of Online Social Media In Volunteer Organizations, Amy J. Connolly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Volunteer organizations face two challenges not found in non-volunteer organizations: recruiting and retaining volunteers. While social media use is increasing amongst individuals, its use and effectiveness for volunteer recruitment and retention by volunteer organizations is unknown. The dissertation reports the results of three studies to investigate this important question. Using a mixed-methods approach, it addressed the dual nature of social media and its effectiveness by including volunteer organizations and social media users.

This dissertation found that although volunteer organizations are not using social media effectively, they could virtualize requirements of the recruitment process by focusing on relatable events instead of …

Effects Of Virtual Reality On The Cognitive Memory And Handgun Accuracy Development Of Law Enforcement Neophytes, Richard A. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of virtual reality training on the development of cognitive memory and handgun accuracy by law enforcement neophytes. One hundred and six academy students from 6 different academy classes were divided into two groups, experimental and control. The experimental group was exposed to virtual reality training for a period of 8 hours. The control group was exposed to the traditional, non-interactive training that occurred on a gun range, also for a period of 8 hours. After exposing the groups to their respective training, a counter-balance technique was utilized to expose …

Do Personality Tests Have A Place In Academic Preparation Of Undergradute Hospitality Students, Gunce Malan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a descriptive study that poses the questions and discussion regarding use of personality tests in prediction of future job performance of the current undergraduate hospitality students. A gap exists between the perception of the skills and competencies of high performers and the perception of hospitality students (Berezina et al., 2011; Malan, Berezina & Cobanoglu, 2012). The purpose of this study is to investigate if personality tests will help in predicting the success of students in their preferred job setting as compared to current high performers (managers).

The use of personality tests increased substantially after 1988, when the government …

Dynamic Processes In Network Goods: Modeling, Analysis And Applications, Arnut Paothong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The network externality function plays a very important role in the study of economic network industries. Moreover, the consumer group dynamic interactions coupled with network externality concept is going to play a dominant role in the network goods in the 21st century. The existing literature is stemmed on a choice of externality function with certain quantitative properties. The utility function coupled with the network externality function is used to investigate static properties of rational equilibrium. The aim of this work is to systematically initiate a development of quantitative effects of the concept of network externality and its influence on the …

Applications Of Agent Based Approaches In Business: A Three Essay Dissertation, Shankar Prawesh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the enabling role that agent based simulation plays in business and policy. The aforementioned issue has been addressed in this dissertation through three distinct, but related essays. The first essay is a literature review of different research applications of agent based simulation in various business disciplines, such as finance, economics, information systems, management, marketing and accounting. Various agent based simulation tools to develop computational models are discussed. The second essay uses an agent-based simulation approach to study important properties of the widely used most popular news recommender systems (NRS). This essay highlights …

Consumer Acceptance Of Mobile Payments In Restaurants, Anna Shatskikh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Regardless all the advantages of MPs, it has not reach the sizable customer base. In this paper, we examined the core drivers of using mobile payments (MPs) in restaurant industry from the consumers' perspective. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), we developed a six factor model to reveal the determinants of consumers' intention to use MPs in restaurant. Security, subjective norm, compatibility with lifestyle, and previous experience with MPs were added to the traditional two factor TAM model (usefulness and ease of use). 300 respondents were recruited from an online survey agency and 258 valid responses were included in …

Economic Culture And Trading Behaviors In Information Markets, Khalid Nasser Alhayyan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are four main components for influencing traders' behaviors in an information market context: trader characteristics, organizational characteristics, market design, and external information. This dissertation focuses on investigating the impact of individual trader characteristics on trading behaviors. Two newly-developed constructs, highly relevant to information market contexts, were identified to increase our understanding about trading behaviors: trader's economic culture and trader independence. The theory of planned behavior is used as the theoretical basis to postulate hypotheses for empirical testing. Data collected from subjects through a series of web-based experiments shows that trader participation can be fostered through recruiting individuals who are …

Combining Natural Language Processing And Statistical Text Mining: A Study Of Specialized Versus Common Languages, Jay Jarman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on developing and evaluating hybrid approaches for analyzing free-form text in the medical domain. This research draws on natural language processing (NLP) techniques that are used to parse and extract concepts based on a controlled vocabulary. Once important concepts are extracted, additional machine learning algorithms, such as association rule mining and decision tree induction, are used to discover classification rules for specific targets. This multi-stage pipeline approach is contrasted with traditional statistical text mining (STM) methods based on term counts and term-by-document frequencies. The aim is to create effective text analytic processes by adapting and combining individual …