Search results

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a big impact on organisations globally, leaving organisations with no choice but to adapt to the new reality of remote work to ensure business continuity. Such an unexpected reality created the conditions for testing new applications of smart home technology whilst working from home. Given the potential implications of such applications to improve the working environment, and a lack of research on that front, this paper pursued two objectives. First, the paper explored the impact of smart home applications by examining the factors that could contribute to perceived productivity and well-being whilst working from home. Second, the study investigated the role of productivity and well-being in motivating the intention of remote workers to use smart home technologies in a home-work environment in the future.

The study adopted a cross-sectional research design. For data collection, 528 smart home users working from home during the pandemic were recruited. Collected data were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach.

The results of the research confirmed that perceived productivity is dependent on service relevance, perceived usefulness, innovativeness, hedonic beliefs and control over environmental conditions. Perceived well-being correlates with task-technology fit, service relevance, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude to smart homes, innovativeness, hedonic beliefs and control over environmental conditions. Intention to work from a smart home-office in the future is dependent on perceived well-being.

The findings of the research contribute to the organisational and smart home literature, by providing missing evidence about the implications of the application of smart home technologies for employees' perceived productivity and well-being. The paper considers the conditions that facilitate better outcomes during remote work and could potentially be used to improve the work environment in offices after the pandemic. Also, the findings inform smart home developers about the features of technology which could improve the developers' application in contexts beyond home settings.

Consumers' perceptions of product intelligence affect their willingness to accept smart offerings. This paper explores how people perceive various smart products based on their smartness profiles, composed of five distinct smartness facets. Additionally, the study investigates how these perceptions of product intelligence impact consumers' evaluation of factors that either promote or impede the adoption of smart products. These factors are examined as potential mediators in the adoption process. This paper aims to determine if the value-based adoption model can be applied to a broad range of smart service systems.

Consumers assessed one of 28 smart products in a scenario-based quantitative study. Multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the conceptual model, taking the nested data structure into account.

The findings show that product smartness essentially enhances usage intention via adoption drivers (enjoyment and usefulness) and reduces usage intention via adoption barriers (intrusiveness). In particular, the ability to interact in a humanlike manner increases the benefits consumers perceive, which in turn increases consumer acceptance. Only the smartness characteristic of awareness impairs usage intention, mediated by the perceived benefits of enjoyment and usefulness.

In contrast to previous research, which usually focuses on single smart products, this work examines a variety of different products, which allows for better transferability of the results to other smart offerings. Furthermore, prior research has mainly focused on single facets of product smartness or researched smartness on an aggregated level. By considering the consumer perception of each smartness facet, the authors gain deeper insights into the perceptual differences regarding product smartness and how this affects technology adoption via conflicting key acceptance drivers and barriers.

Internet of things (IoT) involves the connection of various devices. IoT’s application ranges from wearables: Smart Home Application, Health Care, Smart Offices, Smart Cities, Agriculture, and Industrial Automation. While the number of connected devices grows by the day, so does the number of security risks and vulnerabilities that these devices face. Billions of the connected devices collect and transmit huge volumes of data making Data Security one of the most pressing technical concerns in IoT. Smart Office is one of the increasing IoT applications and Data Security has become today one of the most challenging areas in its application. It is important to identify data security threats. This chapter therefore presents a review of IoT Smart Office Data Security Threats based on existing research done.

Considering the growth of the at-home smart technology industry and the increasing power of social media influencers, this study aims to examine how influencer endorsements affect individuals’ attitudes and trial intentions toward smart technology products.

An online experiment was conducted to investigate the impact of follower number and expertise domain of influencers and the trust propensity of individuals on their attitudinal and behavioral responses to influencer endorsements of smart technology products. The moderated mediation effect of perceived credibility was further examined.

The results demonstrated that individuals with lower trust propensity responded more positively to a microinfluencer with fewer followers and a specific area of expertise, which led to favorable attitudes and increased intention to try a smart technology product. However, the expertise domain was not a significant factor for the megainfluencer condition with a more extensive follower base. Interestingly, the interaction effects were not observed for individuals with higher trust propensity.

The results of this research provide practical implications for marketers who look for effective strategies for influencer marketing by demonstrating the significant impact of source-related cues, including follower number and expertise domain.

Based on the modality, agency, interactivity and navigability; source credibility; and persuasion knowledge models, this research explains how source-related cues of influencers affect credibility judgment, attitude formation and trial intentions for new technology products and how trust propensity as a personal dispositional factor varies the relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a study carried out to identify and analyse which potential subject areas may have impact on developments in the field of building maintenance (BM). That is, it is intended to contribute to the integration of new approaches so that building maintenance management (BMM) becomes as automated, digital and intelligent or smartness as possible in the near future.

The research approach has resulted in a theory that is essentially based on a qualitative design. The route followed was a literature review, involving the collection, analysis and interpretation of carefully selected information, mostly from recently published records. The data assembled and the empirical experience itself made it possible to present a comprehensive viewpoint and some future outlooks.

Five thematic areas considered as potentially impactful for BM developments have been highlighted, analysed and generically labelled as thematic base words, which are monitoring, automation, digitalisation, intelligence and smart. It is believed that these may be aspects that will lay the groundwork for a much more advanced and integrated agenda, featured by a high-tech vision.

This is thought to be a different way of looking at the problem, as it addresses five current issues together. Trendy technological aspects are quite innovative and advantageous for BMM, providing opportunities not yet widely explored and boosting the paradigm shift.

The fourth industrial revolution and digital transformation have caused paradigm changes in the procedures of goods production and services through disruptive technologies, and they have formed new methods for business models. Health and medicine fields have been under the effect of these technology advancements. The concept of smart hospital is formed according to these technological transformations. The aim of this research, other than explanation of smart hospital components, is to present a model for evaluating a hospital readiness for becoming a smart hospital.

This research is an applied one, and has been carried out in three phases and according to design science research. Based on the previous studies, in the first phase, the components and technologies effecting a smart hospital are recognized. In the second phase, the extracted components are prioritized using type-2 fuzzy analytic hierarchical process based on the opinion of experts; later, the readiness model is designed. In the third phase, the presented model would be tested in a hospital.

The research results showed that the technologies of internet of things, robotics, artificial intelligence, radio-frequency identification as well as augmented and virtual reality had the most prominence in a smart hospital.

The innovation and originality of the forthcoming research is to explain the concept of smart hospital, to rank its components and to provide a model for evaluating the readiness of smart hospital. Contribution of this research in terms of theory explains the concept of smart hospital and in terms of application presents a model for assessing the readiness of smart hospitals.

In this study, the deployment of an integrated Quality Function Deployment (QFD) decision framework is presented to help cities design targeted strategies to become “smart”. Arguably smart cities leverage advanced technologies to enhance their smartness to improve everyday urban life. To this end, a QFD – Analytic Hierarchy Process – Analytic Network Process (QFD-AHP-ANP) framework is proposed to deliver guidance for selecting the appropriate mix of smart technologies based on the specific smart needs of each city.

The AHP and ANP methods are incorporated into QFD to enhance its methodological robustness in formulating the decision problem. AHP accurately captures and translates the “Voice of the Experts” into prioritized “Smart City” dimensions, while establishing inter-relationships between these dimensions and “Smart City Technologies”. Meanwhile, ANP explores tradeoffs among the technologies, enabling well-informed decisions. The framework’s effectiveness is evaluated through an illustrative application in the city of Thessaloniki.

Applying the framework to this real-world context confirms its practicality and utility, demonstrating its ability to particularize local, social, political, environmental and economic trends through the resulting mix of technologies in smart urban development strategies.

The importance of this study lies in several aspects. Firstly, it introduces a novel QFD decision framework tailored for smart city strategic planning. Secondly, it contributes to the operationalization of the smart city concept by providing guidance for cities to effectively adopt smart technologies. Finally, this study represents a new field of application for QFD, expanding its scope beyond its traditional domains.

Voice command and voice search are becoming increasingly popular in the hospitality and tourism industry, with many hotels and travel companies investing in voice-enabled technology to improve guest experiences and streamline operations. This technology allows travellers to manage their travel plans, request services and get information through natural voice commands on any voice-enabled device. Voice assistants are also multilingual, allowing hotels to customise responses to guests who do not speak the local language. Angie, a multilingual, in-room voice assistant, is an example of this technology. It can fulfil guest requests, answer common questions about the property and create streamlined access to a wide range of hotel amenities, such as ordering room service or requesting extra towels. Hotels can control questions and responses to assist stretched staff and provide upsell and advertising revenue through digital promotions or recommended onsite amenities or discounts. In addition, voice command technology can be used to book travel and find things to do at a destination. Google Assistant can help with travel plans like booking a hotel, checking flight status and finding things to do at a destination. In conclusion, voice command and voice search technology are transforming the hospitality and tourism industry by improving guest experiences, reducing operational costs and increasing revenue.

With the upgrade of natural language interaction technology, the simulation extension of intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) and the uncertainty of products and services have received more and more attention. However, most of the existing research focuses on investigating the application of theories to explain consumer behavior related to intention to use and adopt IVAs, while ignoring the impact of its privacy issues on consumer resistance. This article especially examines the negative impact of artificial intelligence-based IVAs’ privacy concerns on consumer resistance, and studies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness in the context of privacy cynicism and privacy paradox and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of IVAs’ companies. The demographic variables are also included.

Based on the theory of human–computer interaction (HCI), this study addresses the consumer privacy concerns of IVAs, builds a model of the influence mechanism on consumer resistance, and then verifies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived CSR of IVAs companies. This research explores underlying mechanism with three experiments.

It turns out that consumers’ privacy concerns are related to their resistance to IVAs through perceived creepiness. The servant (vs. partner) anthropomorphized role of IVAs is likely to induce more privacy concerns and in turn higher resistance. At the same time, when the company’s CSR is perceived high, the impact of the concerns of IVAs’ privacy issues on consumer resistance will be weakened, and the intermediary mechanism of perceiving creepiness in HCI and anthropomorphism of new technology are further explained and verified. The differences between different age and gender are also revealed in the study.

The research conclusions have strategic reference significance for enterprises to build the design framework of IVAs and formulate the response strategy of IVAs’ privacy concerns. And it offers implications for researchers and closes the research gap of IVAs from the perspective of innovation resistance.