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The concept of ubiquitous assimilation in e-commerce, denoting the seamless integration of technologies into customer shopping experiences, has played a pivotal role in aiding e-satisfaction and, consequently, fostering patronage intention. Among these, text-based chatbots are significant innovations. In light of this, the paper aims to develop a conceptual framework and comprehend the patronage behaviour of artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot users by using chatbot usability cues and to determine whether the social presence and flow theories impact e-satisfaction, which leads to users’ patronage intention. The current research provides insights into online travel agencies (OTAs), a crucial segment within the travel and tourism sector. Given the significance of building a loyal clientele and cultivating patronage in this industry, these insights are of paramount importance for achieving sustained profitability and growth.

The research framework primarily focused on the factors that precede e-satisfaction and patronage intention among chatbot users, which include social presence, flow, perceived anthropomorphism and need for human interaction. The researchers collected the data by surveying 397 OTA chatbot users by using an online questionnaire. The data of this cross-sectional study were analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

Findings reveal that e-satisfaction is positively linked with patronage intention and the variables of social presence and flow impact e-satisfaction along with chatbot usability cues. There were direct and indirect relations between chatbot usability and e-satisfaction. Moreover, the personal attributes, “need for human interaction” and, “perceived anthropomorphism” were found to moderate relations between chatbot usability cues, social presence and flow.

The impact of chatbot’s usability cues/attributes on e-satisfaction, along with perceived attributes – social presence and flow in the realm of OTAs contributes to the human–chatbot interaction literature. Moreover, the interacting effects of perceived anthropomorphism and the need for human interaction are unique in the current contextual relations.

Distance learning has proliferated significantly in the last 20 years. This chapter considers some of the issues and implications when teaching and learning moves from an in-person to a distance mode. It begins with a brief history of distance learning, considering both the technologies used and the dominant pedagogical approaches employed. This is followed by a survey of the impact of Michael Moore's theory of transactional distance, which considered the consequences of separating the learner from peers and instructor. Contemporary work on Moore's contribution includes transaction and participation, activity theory, and transactional presence. A second major aspect of distance learning has been the attempt to introduce social presence into learning environments. The history of social presence is explored, as are its levels and consequences for the learner. Contemporary aspects of social presence reviewed include communities of inquiry. While Web 2.0 has spectacularly resulted in connectivity, it remains unclear as to whether this automatically resulted in more strongly connected learners. Connectivist approaches are considered and distinctions made between technological connectivity and pedagogical engagement. It is argued that the full and exciting potential of Web 2.0 in distance learning requires a commitment to the distanced learner, balancing learner autonomy and teacher presence, promoting meaningful social engagement, and meeting the specific needs of the distance learner.

This study's purpose is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to examine whether gamification and social interaction as environmental stimulus antecedents to learners' perceptions of presence can affect their continuance intention of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Sample data for this study were collected from learners who had experience in taking gamified MOOCs provided by the MOOC platform launched by a well-known university in Taiwan, and 353 usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study demonstrated that learners' perceived gamification, learner–instructor interaction and learner–learner interaction in MOOCs positively affected their cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence elicited by MOOCs, which jointly expounded their continuance intention of MOOCs. The results support all proposed hypotheses, and the research model accounts for 72.6% of the variance in learners' MOOCs continuance intention.

This study employs the S-O-R model as a theoretical umbrella to frame learners' MOOCs continuance intention as a series of the internal process, which is influenced by gamification and social interaction. Noteworthily, three psychological constructs of the community of inquiry model (i.e. cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence) are adopted to represent learners' internal experiences of MOOCs usage. To date, hedonic/utilitarian concepts are more commonly adopted as organisms in prior studies based on the S-O-R model, whereas psychological constructs have received lesser attention. Hence, this study enriches the S-O-R model into an invaluable context.

This study investigates how Danmu (danmaku) technological features (DTFs) of recommendation vlogs (rec-vlogs) impact consumer experiences and decisions.

The authors adopt the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with a sample of 422 viewers of Danmu-enabled rec-vlogs to examine the proposed model.

The DTFs positively affect consumer loyalty intentions through the mediation of social presence and immersion. Also, vlogger-product congruency significantly moderates the relationship between social presence and immersion.

With the increasing popularity of vlogs, retailers have adopted the vlog as a new marketing channel to connect with consumers. Although a growing body of studies focuses on this phenomenon, little is known about how DTFs help to increase consumer loyalty toward using rec-vlogs as product information sources. Anchored on the stimulus–organism–response framework, this study investigates how pseudo-synchronicity, Danmu-content congruency and parallelism, three DTFs used in rec-vlogs, impact consumer experiences of social presence and immersion, eventually influence the consumers' loyalty intentions toward rec-vlogs. The authors also examine whether the effect of social presence on immersion is contingent on vlogger-product congruency. These findings have implications for both researchers and practitioners to understand the effect of DTFs in the context of rec-vlogs.

Mobile instant messaging (MIM) apps could provide rich and instant information in employees’ communication. However, how media richness impacts MIM user loyalty is unknown. The purpose of this paper is to adopt media richness and social presence theories as theoretical foundations to address this insufficiency.

Collecting 247 responses from an online survey, the authors use structural equation modelling for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The authors found that immediate feedback and personal focus are the main aspects of media richness that are positively related to social presence, relatedness need satisfaction and user loyalty to MIM.

This is the first study using two pertinent theories to explain how aspects of media richness affect user loyalty to MIM. The present findings suggest that firms developing MIM apps focus on immediate feedback and personal focus as effective means to encourage user loyalty.

This paper aims to examine how presence (the social presence of live streaming platforms, of viewers, of live streamers and telepresence) affects consumer trust and flow state, thus inducing impulsive buying behaviors, personal sense of power as moderator.

Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the conceptual model covers social presence, telepresence, consumer trust, flow state, personal sense of power and impulsive buying behavior. An online survey was conducted from 405 consumers with the experience of live streaming shopping in China; structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for data analysis.

Results find that three dimensions of social presence (the social presence of live streaming platforms, of viewers, of live streamers) and telepresence have a positive and significant influence on consumer trust and flow state, thus triggering consumers’ impulsive buying behavior. Furthermore, consumers’ sense of power moderates the process from consumer trust, flow state to impulsive buying behavior.

This study will help live streamers and e-retailers to have a further understand on how to stimulate consumers’ buying behavior. Furthermore, it also provides reference for the development of live streaming commerce in other countries.

This research examines the effect of social presence and telepresence on impulsive buying behavior in live streaming commerce, which is inadequately examined in extant literature.

This paper aims to describe the results of four studies that examine the interaction effects between locus of causality and social presence on consumers’ emotional response to a service failure and how they subsequently cope with the negative emotional experiences through support-seeking or vindictive negative word-of-mouth (NWOM).

To evaluate the research hypotheses, one online content analysis study and three experiments were conducted.

The results of the four studies show that when locus of causality information is not available (Studies 1 and 2), consumers are more likely to engage in support-seeking NWOM when there is social presence (versus no social presence). When a service failure is externally/internally attributed, social presence leads to less/more vindictive NWOM (Studies 3 and 4). The results clarify the underlying affective processes (frustration, anger and embarrassment) that account for the unique interaction effects involving locus of causality and social presence on NWOM.

Despite promising progress in both social presence and service failure research, scholarly attempts aiming to draw the theoretical linkages between these two streams are relatively scarce, and it remains unknown regarding whether and how social presence influences NWOM in the event of service failure. Against this backdrop, this research examines the effects of social presence on consumer NWOM in service failure. The authors further contribute to both research streams by testing the effects of an important set of emotions as mediators, as well by exploring the conditions under which a particular emotion is more predictive of its corresponding outcomes. These findings offer important insights that help service managers effectively mitigate customer NWOM at the point of service delivery.

Existing literature affirms that almost half of the young generation has remained unemployed worldwide. On the contrary civic engagement can be a powerful tool in combating this problem. However, the influencing factors that encourage the active participation of young adults yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap by creating and validating a research model by including three motives social presence commitment and online offline civic engagement.

The study took a quantitative approach to conduct a cross-sectional study. In total, 214 data were collected from the member of a Facebook group of Bangladesh named Foodbank, a restaurant review page through the online questionnaire. After that structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyse the data, test the model validity and hypothesis.

The result shows that both commitment and social presence influence offline and online civic engagement. Excitement motives have a higher effect than information and convenience motive. Besides, 8 out of 10 hypotheses have shown significant results, with only the convenience motive not having any positive influence and effect on social presence and commitment.

Almost 47.6 out of 158.5 million are young people who are incapable of contributing fully to national development due to a lack of civic engagement. The outcome of this study will be useful for the Government of Bangladesh, as well as for non-governmental organisations and decision-making authorities to form assessments and develop policy on how to engage the young generation in civic activities to achieve further socio-economic development in the country.

This study contributes to existing literature with newly developed relationships between social presence-civic engagement and commitment-civic engagement. These unique relationships have been empirically tested and resulted insignificant. The study also identifies that it is vital to engage young people more in social works and increase their participation in offline and online activities.

The perception of an inferior learning experience is the main challenge for online learning, which leads to higher dropout rates in online courses. The purpose of this paper focuses on investigating how the multi-dimensional construct of social presence would affect the behavior of online learners.

A conceptual model that describes online learner behaviors is proposed by including the four social presence variables, learning satisfaction and continuance intention, which is examined via the data collected by a survey of 237 online learners from a typical online learning platform in China. The relationships between variables were tested via structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that the intimate and immersive social factors have positive impacts on learning satisfaction, which in turn results in continuous intention in online learning. Thus, online learning platform providers should seriously consider building an intimate and immersive online environment for learners. Furthermore, this research provides a more comprehensive understanding of online learning from a social presence perspective for researchers and practitioners.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the social presence which is conceptualized as a four-dimensional construct, and shows how social factors influence learning satisfaction and continuous intention, providing a deeper understanding of the core relationship between social aspects and learning performance in online learning.

This study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations on how brand chatbots' anthropomorphic design and social presence communication strategies may improve consumer evaluation outcomes via the mediators of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.

This study employs a 2 (high vs. low social presence communication) by 2 (anthropomorphic vs. non-anthropomorphic bot profile) between-subject experimental design to evaluate how chatbots' high social presence communication and anthropomorphic profile design may enhance perceptions of parasocial interactions and dialogue with the chatbot, which in turn drive user engagement, interaction satisfaction and attitude toward the represented brand.

The influences of chatbots' high social presence communication on consumer engagement outcomes are mediated by perceived parasocial interaction and dialogue. Additionally, chatbots' anthropomorphic profile design can boost the positive effects of social presence communication via the psychological mediators.

This study advances the interactive marketing literature by focusing on an emerging interactive technology, chatbots. Additionally, distinct from prior chatbot studies that focused on the utilitarian use of chatbots for online customer support, this study not only examines which factors of chatbot communication and profile design may drive chatbot effectiveness but also examines the mechanism underlying the messaging and design effects on consumer engagement. The findings highlight the mediating role of interpersonal factors of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.