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1 – 10 of over 5000The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model to investigate the determinants of continuance intention toward social networking sites (SNSs) by integrating the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model to investigate the determinants of continuance intention toward social networking sites (SNSs) by integrating the perspectives of the uses and gratifications theory, perceived interactivity and network externalities.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collected from 255 Facebook users in Taiwan were used to test the proposed model. The partial least squares method was used to test the measurement model and the structural model.
Findings
The findings reveal that emotional gratifications and social gratifications are the key predictors of users’ continuance intention toward SNSs. Further, the results indicate that perceived network size, perceived complementarity, machine interactivity and person interactivity influence information gratifications significantly, while perceived complementarity, machine interactivity and person interactivity exert positive effects on emotional gratifications. Finally, the results show that machine interactivity and person interactivity impact social gratifications positively, whereas perceived network size and perceived complementarity affect machine interactivity and person interactivity significantly.
Originality/value
This study is one of the earliest research inquiries to examine the effects of various types of gratifications on continuance intention. It is also one of the earliest studies to identify the antecedents of gratifications from social factors and technological attributes simultaneously.
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Kuanfang He, Wei Lu, Xiangnan Liu, Siwen Xiao and Xuejun Li
This paper aims to study acoustic emission (AE) propagation characteristics by a crack under a moving heat source, which mainly provides theoretical basis and method for the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study acoustic emission (AE) propagation characteristics by a crack under a moving heat source, which mainly provides theoretical basis and method for the actual crack detection during welding process.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper studied the AE characteristics in welding using thermoelastic theory, which investigates the dynamical displacement field caused by a crack and the welding heating effect. In the calculation model, the crack initiation and extension are represented by moment tensor as the AE source, and the welding heat source is the Gauss heat flux distribution. The extended finite element method (XFEM) is implemented to calculate and solve the AE response of a thermoelastic plate with a crack during the welding heating effect. The wavelet transform is applied to the time–frequency analysis of the AE signals.
Findings
The paper provides insights about the changing rule of the acoustic radiation patterns influenced by the heating effect of the moving heat source and the AE signal characteristics in thermoelastic plate by different crack lengths and depths. It reveals that the time–frequency characteristics of the AE signals from the simulation are in good agreement with the theoretical ones. The energy ratio of the antisymmetric mode A0 to symmetric mode S0 is a valuable quantitative inductor to estimate the crack depth with a certain regularity.
Research limitations/implications
This paper mainly discusses the application of XFEM to calculate and analyze thermoelastic problems, and has presented few cases based on a specified configuration. Further work will focus on the calculation and analysis under different plate configurations and conditions, which is to obtain more interesting and general conclusions for guiding practice.
Originality/value
The paper is a successful application of XFEM to solve the problem of AE response of a crack in the dynamic welding inhomogeneous heating effect. The paper provides an effective way to obtain the AE signal characteristics in monitoring the welding crack.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internal control weaknesses on accounting conservatism in Chinese listed firms. It also investigates the relationship…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internal control weaknesses on accounting conservatism in Chinese listed firms. It also investigates the relationship between the demand for external audit and accounting conservatism, and whether additional assurance of internal control reports (ICRs) can mitigate the negative impact of ICWs on accounting conservatism.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical research approach is taken through the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) models and hand-collected internal control weakness data from ICRs released by Chinese listed firms.
Findings
The results of this paper show that the existence of ICWs has a negative effect on accounting conservatism in China. Further, the results demonstrate that both accounting-related and non-accounting-related ICWs affect accounting conservatism. The authors also find that there is a complementary relationship between accounting conservatism and the demand for additional assurance of ICRs, and additional assurance of ICRs can mitigate the negative impact of ICWs on accounting conservatism.
Practical Implications
This study provides timely evidence to Chinese regulators of the possible economic consequences of the official implementation of internal control standard in China from 2012. The findings of this paper can also benefit regulators around the world and, in particular, the regulators in emerging markets that are considering implement regulations similar to the US SOX.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates that a wider scope of ICWs, including non-accounting-related ICWs, also has a significant impact on accounting conservatism. Therefore, this research provides a more general evidence on the relationship between internal control quality and accounting conservatism.
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Aihui Chen, Yaobin Lu and Bin Wang
Residing on social networking platforms, social games have unique characteristics distinguishing them from other digital games or online games. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
Residing on social networking platforms, social games have unique characteristics distinguishing them from other digital games or online games. The purpose of this paper is to explore both social and gaming factors of social games and investigate their roles on enhancing perceived enjoyment. The authors also examine the relationships between perceived enjoyment, subject norm, perceived critical mass, intention to play, and actual behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops a research model including nine hypotheses. Using a survey questionnaire, empirical data were collected from 169 actual social game players. Structured equation modeling was used to test the proposed research models.
Findings
Social identification, social interaction, and diversion significantly influence perceived enjoyment. Perceived enjoyment significantly influences the intention to play, which in turn significantly influences the actual behavior. Moreover, subject norm and perceived critical mass play different roles in determining the intention to play and the actual behavior.
Practical implications
The results of this study provide social game practitioners with a set of rich insights into guidelines on designing specific social and gaming characteristics to improve users’ perceived enjoyment and actual playing behavior.
Originality/value
Through analyzing characteristics of social games, The authors emphasize the difference between social games and other online games or computer games and recognize the enhancing role of social and gaming factors on perceived enjoyment. Findings of this study contribute to the literature on social games.
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Wei Lu, Xinghu Yue, Qikai Cheng and Rui Meng
The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of inverse local context analysis (ILCA) to obtain data from limited accessible data sources.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of inverse local context analysis (ILCA) to obtain data from limited accessible data sources.
Design/methodology/approach
The experimental results show that the method the authors proposed can obtain all retrieved documents from the limited accessible data source using the least number of queries.
Findings
The experimental results show that the method we proposed can obtain all retrieved documents from the limited accessible data source using the least number of queries.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper provides the first attempt to gather all the retrieved documents from limited accessible data source, and the efficiency and ease of implementation of the proposed solution make it feasible for practical applications. The method the authors proposed can also benefit the construction of web corpus.
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Xiaojuan Zhang, Shuguang Han and Wei Lu
The purpose of this paper is to predict news intent by exploring contextual and temporal features directly mined from a general search engine query log.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to predict news intent by exploring contextual and temporal features directly mined from a general search engine query log.
Design/methodology/approach
First, a ground-truth data set with correctly marked news and non-news queries was built. Second, a detailed analysis of the search goals and topics distribution of news/non-news queries was conducted. Third, three news features, that is, the relationship between entity and contextual words extended from query sessions, topical similarity among clicked results and temporal burst point were obtained. Finally, to understand the utilities of the new features and prior features, extensive prediction experiments on SogouQ (a Chinese search engine query log) were conducted.
Findings
News intent can be predicted with high accuracy by using the proposed contextual and temporal features, and the macro average F1 of classification is around 0.8677. Contextual features are more effective than temporal features. All the three new features are useful and significant in improving the accuracy of news intent prediction.
Originality/value
This paper provides a new and different perspective in recognizing queries with news intent without use of such large corpora as social media (e.g. Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs) and news data sets. The research will be helpful for general-purpose search engines to address search intents for news events. In addition, the authors believe that the approaches described here in this paper are general enough to apply to other verticals with dynamic content and interest, such as blog or financial data.
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Hana Kim, Daeho Lee and Jun-Seok Hwang
Even though network externality plays an important role in users’ motivations to use services or products, the implications of this are not clear because previous studies did not…
Abstract
Purpose
Even though network externality plays an important role in users’ motivations to use services or products, the implications of this are not clear because previous studies did not distinguish between the number of peers and the number of total users. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there is a difference between the two network externalities, i.e., the number of peers and the total number of users. To accomplish this, the perception of quality of life is considered to have an impact on the effects of the two different network externalities.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from a survey that covered 508 online game players in South Korea, and the two hypotheses of “player experience of need satisfaction” from self-determination theory as well as user gratification theory (UGT) were assessed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The results indicate that people consider the total number of users and the number of peers differently. In addition, the effects of the total number of users and the number of peers vary according to respondents’ perceived life quality in four dimensions: loneliness, happiness, satisfaction with life (SWL), and escapism. In particular, people’s offline tendencies are reflected online in terms of loneliness, whereas online life compensates for a lack of enjoyment offline.
Originality/value
The authors verify that UGT can affect the network externality by considering perceived quality of life (loneliness, SWL, happiness, and escapism) as a moderating effect.
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Liu Meng, Zhang Chonghui, Yu Chenhong and Ye Yujing
The purpose of this article is to conduct a main path analysis of 627 articles on the theme of Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) in the Web of Science (WoS) from 2013 to 2020, to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to conduct a main path analysis of 627 articles on the theme of Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) in the Web of Science (WoS) from 2013 to 2020, to provide a conclusive and comprehensive analysis for researchers in this field, and to provide a study on preliminary understanding of PFSs.
Design/methodology/approach
The research topic of Pythagorean fuzzy fields, through keyword extraction and describing the changes in characteristic themes over the past eight years, are firstly examined. Main path analysis, including local and global main paths and key route paths, is then used to reveal the most influential relationships between papers and to explore the trajectory and structure of knowledge transmission.
Findings
The application of Pythagorean fuzzy theory to the field of decision-making has been popular, and combinations of the traditional Pythagorean fuzzy decision-making method with other fuzzy sets have attracted widespread attention in recent years. In addition, over the past eight years, research interest has shifted to different types of PFSs, such as interval-valued PFSs.
Research limitations/implications
This paper implicates to investigate the growth in certain trends in the literature and to explore the main paths of knowledge dissemination in the domain of PFSs in recent years.
Originality/value
This paper aims to identify the topics in which researchers are currently interested, to help scholars to keep abreast of the latest research on PFSs.
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Keywords
Wei Lu, Heng Ding and Jiepu Jiang
The purpose of this paper is to utilize document expansion techniques for improving image representation and retrieval. This paper proposes a concise framework for tag-based image…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to utilize document expansion techniques for improving image representation and retrieval. This paper proposes a concise framework for tag-based image retrieval (TBIR).
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed approach includes three core components: a strategy of selecting expansion (similar) images from the whole corpus (e.g. cluster-based or nearest neighbor-based); a technique for assessing image similarity, which is adopted for selecting expansion images (text, image, or mixed); and a model for matching the expanded image representation with the search query (merging or separate).
Findings
The results show that applying the proposed method yields significant improvements in effectiveness, and the method obtains better performance on the top of the rank and makes a great improvement on some topics with zero score in baseline. Moreover, nearest neighbor-based expansion strategy outperforms the cluster-based expansion strategy, and using image features for selecting expansion images is better than using text features in most cases, and the separate method for calculating the augmented probability P(q|RD) is able to erase the negative influences of error images in RD.
Research limitations/implications
Despite these methods only outperform on the top of the rank instead of the entire rank list, TBIR on mobile platforms still can benefit from this approach.
Originality/value
Unlike former studies addressing the sparsity, vocabulary mismatch, and tag relatedness in TBIR individually, the approach proposed by this paper addresses all these issues with a single document expansion framework. It is a comprehensive investigation of document expansion techniques in TBIR.
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