Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

Analytics For Novel Consumer Insights (A Three Essay Dissertation), Utkarsh Shrivastava

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both literature and practice have investigated how the vast amount of ever increasing customer information can inform marketing strategy and decision making. However, the customer data is often susceptible to modeling bias and misleading findings due to various factors including sample selection and unobservable variables. The available analytics toolkit has continued to develop but in the age of nearly perfect information, the customer decision making has also evolved. The dissertation addresses some of the challenges in deriving valid and useful consumer insights from customer data in the digital age. The first study addresses the limitations of traditional customer purchase measures …

An Effectual Approach For The Development Of Novel Applications On Digital Platforms, Onkar Shamrao Malgonde

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The development of novel software applications on digital platforms differs from traditional software development and provides unique challenges to the software development manager and team. Application producers must achieve application-platform match, application-market match, value propositions exceeding platform’s core value propositions, and novelty. These desired properties support a new vision of the software development team as entrepreneurs with a goal of developing novel applications on digital platforms. Digital platforms are characterized by an uncertain, risky, and resource-constrained environment, where existing approaches—plan-driven, ad-hoc, and controlled-flexible—have limited applicability. Building on the theoretical basis of the theory of effectuation from the entrepreneurship domain, this …

Multi-Step Tokenization Of Automated Clearing House Payment Transactions, Privin Alexander

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its beginnings in 1974, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network has grown into one of the largest, safest, and most efficient payment systems in the world. An ACH transaction is an electronic funds transfer between bank accounts using a batch processing system.

Currently, the ACH Network moves almost $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. With the increasing movement toward an electronic, interconnected and mobile infrastructure, it is critical that electronic payments work safely and efficiently for all users. ACH transactions carry sensitive data, such as a consumer's name, account number, tax identification number, account holder …

Constructing A Clinical Research Data Management System, Michael C. Quintero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical study data is usually collected without knowing what kind of data is going to be collected in advance. In addition, all of the possible data points that can apply to a patient in any given clinical study is almost always a superset of the data points that are actually recorded for a given patient. As a result of this, clinical data resembles a set of sparse data with an evolving data schema. To help researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center better manage clinical data, a tool was developed called GURU that uses the Entity Attribute Value model to handle …

Healthcare It In Skilled Nursing And Post-Acute Care Facilities: Reducing Hospital Admissions And Re-Admissions, Improving Reimbursement And Improving Clinical Operations, Scott L. Hopes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Health information technology (HIT), which includes electronic health record (EHR) systems and clinical data analytics, has become a major component of all health care delivery and care management. The adoption of HIT by physicians, hospitals, post-acute care organizations, pharmacies and other health care providers has been accepted as a necessary (and recently, a government required) step toward improved quality, care coordination and reduced costs: “Better coordination of care provides a path to improving communication, improving quality of care, and reducing unnecessary emergency room use and hospital readmissions. LTPAC providers play a critical role in achieving these goals” (HealthIT.gov, 2013).

Though …

Enhancing The Internet Of Things Architecture With Flow Semantics, Allen Ronald Deserranno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Internet of Things (‘IoT’) systems are complex, asynchronous solutions often comprised of various software and hardware components developed in isolation of each other. These components function with different degrees of reliability and performance over an inherently unreliable network, the Internet. Many IoT systems are developed within silos that do not provide the ability to communicate or be interoperable with other systems and platforms. Literature exists on how these systems should be designed, how they should interoperate, and how they could be improved, but practice does not always consult literature.

The work brings together a proposed reference architecture for the IoT …

Essays On Crowdfunding: Exploring The Funding And Post-Funding Phases And Outcomes, Onochie Fan-Osuala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the recent years, crowdfunding (a phenomenon where individuals collectively contribute money to back different goals and projects through the internet) has been gaining a lot of attention especially for its socio-economic impact. This dissertation explores this phenomenon in three distinct but related essays. The first essay explores the nature and dynamics of backers’ contributions and uses the insights generated to develop a forecasting model that can predict crowdfunding campaign outcomes. The second essay investigates how creators’ crowdfunding campaign design decisions impact their funding and post-funding outcomes. Interestingly, the essay highlights that certain crowdfunding campaign design decisions have differential effects …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …

Applying Ahp And Clustering Approaches For Public Transportation Decisionmaking: A Case Study Of Isfahan City, Alireza Salavati, Hossein Haghshenas, Bahador Ghadirifaraz, Jamshid Laghaei, Ghodrat Eftekhari

Journal of Public Transportation

The main purpose of this paper is to define appropriate criteria for the systematic approach to evaluate and prioritize multiple candidate corridors for public transport investment simultaneously to serve travel demand, regarding supply of current public transportation system and road network conditions of Isfahan, Iran. To optimize resource allocation, policymakers need to identify proper corridors to implement a public transportation system. In fact, the main question is to adopt the best public transportation system for each main corridor of Isfahan. In this regard, 137 questionnaires were completed by experts, directors, and policymakers of Isfahan to identify goals and objectives in …

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 …

Image Use In Social Network Communication: A Case Study Of Tweets On The Boston Marathon Bombing, Jungwon Yoon, Eunkyung Chung

School of Information Systems and Management Faculty Publications

Introduction. This study aimed to understand how images are used in communication practices in the Twitter environment. Method. 1,428 Boston marathon bombing related Twitter messages with embedded images were collected, and content analysis was conducted. Analysis. Characteristics of image use were examined and were analysed by type of Twitter messages. Results. People used diverse types of images in Twitter messages including: direct photos, captured images, computer graphics, and maps. Depending on the content of Twitter messages, uses of images were categorised into four types: 1) to illustrate news, information, and anecdotes, 2) to disseminate visual information that cannot be provided …

Data To Decisions For Cyberspace Operations, Steve Stone

Military Cyber Affairs

In 2011, the United States (U.S.) Department of Defense (DOD) named cyberspace a new operational domain. The U.S. Cyber Command and the Military Services are working to make the cyberspace environment a suitable place for achieving national objectives and enabling military command and control (C2). To effectively conduct cyberspace operations, DOD requires data and analysis of the Mission, Network, and Adversary. However, the DOD’s current data processing and analysis capabilities do not meet mission needs within critical operational timelines. This paper presents a summary of the data processing and analytics necessary to effectively conduct cyberspace operations.

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 …

Evaporite Geo-Hazard In The Sauris Area (Friuli Venezia Giulia Region - Ne Italy), Chiara Calligaris, Stefano Devoto, Luca Zini, Franco Cucchi

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Evaporite sinkholes represent a severe threat to many European countries, including Italy. Among the Italian regions, of the area most affected is the northern sector of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (NE Italy). Here chalks had two main depositional periods first in the Late Permian and then during the Late Carnian (Late Triassic). Evaporites outcrop mainly in the Alpine valleys or are partially mantled by Quaternary deposits, as occur along the Tagliamento River Valley. Furthermore, evaporites make up some portions of mountains and Alpine slopes, generating hundreds of karst depressions. This paper presents the preliminary results of the research activities carried …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …