Search results

The formation and corrosion processes of a conversion film on the AZ80 Mg alloy with different second phases were compared to clarify the effect of microstructure on the quality of protective coatings.

The size and distribution of second phases in the edge and central regions of the AZ80 cast ingot exhibit a great difference. The film growth processes and their corrosion resistance on the edge and central regions of the AZ80 cast ingot were investigated by scanning electron microscope observations, immersion tests and electrochemical measurements.

The results indicate that second phases act as micro-cathodes and hydrogen evolution reaction occurs on their surface, which is not beneficial for the deposition of the conversion film.

The conversion film formed on the central regions of AZ80 cast ingot with a low volume fraction of second phases exhibits a more uniform surface and higher corrosion resistance than that formed on the edge regions of the sample with a higher volume fraction of second phases.

Social recommendation has been recognized as a kind of e-commerce with large potential, but how social recommendations influence consumer decisions is still unclear. This paper aims to investigate how recommendations from different social ties influence consumers’ purchase intentions through both behavior and brain activity.

Utilizing behavioral (N = 70) and electroencephalogram (EEG) (N = 49) experiments, this study explored participants’ behavior and brain responses after being recommended by different social ties. The data were analyzed using statistical inference and event-related potential (ERP) analysis.

Behavioral results show that social tie strength positively impacts purchase intention, which can be fitted by a logarithmic model. Moreover, recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect mediate the effect of tie strength on purchase intention serially. EEG findings show that recommendations from weak tie strength elicit larger N100, N200 and P300 amplitudes than those from strong tie strength. These results imply that weak tie strength may motivate individuals to recruit more mental resources in social recommendation, including unconscious processing of consumer attention and conscious processing of cognitive conflict and negative emotion.

This study considers the effects of continuous social ties on purchase intention and models them mathematically, exploring the intrinsic mechanisms by which strong and weak ties influence purchase intentions through recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect, contributing to the applications of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model in the field of social recommendation. Furthermore, our study adopting EEG techniques bridges the gap of relying solely on self-report by providing an avenue to obtain relatively objective findings about the consumers’ early-occurred (unconscious) attentional responses and late-occurred (conscious) cognitive and emotional responses in purchase decisions.