• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.131-146
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• 2015

The communications market can be characterized for its overflow of users, oligopoly business structure, 24/7 open service, incomplete sales, and operation of core platform function. These characteristics have lead users to continuously make complaints and suffer inconveniences, and thus the concept of user protection has come to receive attention. This study aims to propose solutions through communication channeling between businesses and users, based on website construction from the viewpoint of user protection. In particular, a research model was developed to display how the information symmetry of websites can be influential on the satisfaction, reliability, and continuous intention for using communication services. Total of 14 hypotheses were set to measure a significant degree of variables corelation and eight hypotheses were accepted finally. The analysis results showed that information symmetry of telecommunication service websites had a positive effect on intention for continuous usage. Through the research results, it is expected that communication service businesses will be able to consider important factors when constructing websites. Furthermore, the results are expected to be utilized as for ensuring users' continued usage of their communication services.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.590-599
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• 2010

Recently, efficient operation and practical management of power plants have become important issues in the nuclear industry. In particular, typical aging parameters such as stress and cumulative usage factor should be determined accurately for continued operation of a nuclear power plant beyond design life. However, most of the major components have been designed via conservative codes based on a 2-D concept, which do not take into account exact boundary conditions and asymmetric geometries. The present paper aims to suggest an effective fatigue evaluation methodology that uses a prototype of the integrated model and its transfer functions. The validity of the integrated 3-D Finite Element (FE) model was proven by comparing the analysis results of individual FE models. Also, mechanical and thermal transfer functions, known as Green's functions, were developed for the integrated model with the standard step input. Finally, the stresses estimated from the transfer functions were compared with those obtained from detailed 3-D FE analyses results at critical locations of the major components. The usefulness of the proposed fatigue evaluation methodology can be maximized by combining it with an on-line monitoring system, and this combination, will enhance the continued operations of old nuclear power plants.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.85-103
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• 2009

Web 2.0, characterized as openness, sharing, and participation, has enabled Internet users to easily generate a variety of contents, and to share them through Web 2.0 services. Knowledge search service (KSS) is positioning itself as one of typical Web 2.0 services. Yet, few studies have sharpened our understanding of users' knowledge sharing behavior in the KSS environment. In order to address this knowledge void, this paper attempts to explore antecedents of their usage behavior in the KSS environment. Typically, they utilize stored knowledge and share their knowledge simultaneously. Considering this characteristic, our study regards service usage intention and knowledge sharing intention as final dependent variables. This study advances a research model based on Bhattacherjee's expectation-confirmation model, which is expanded by incorporating trust belief. Because of the openness of KSS, trust belief is believed to play a critical role in forming users' service usage intention and knowledge sharing intention. Furthermore, this study examines the difference of the antecedents' effects in terms of users' gender. We collected data from 275 respondents who have experience in using KSS. PLS (partial least squares) was employed for the analysis of the data. Analysis results confirm the important role of user satisfaction and trust belief in the formation of users' service usage intention and knowledge sharing intention. More importantly, trust belief has a more salient effect on knowledge service usage intention than user satisfaction. This study also shows the moderating role of users' gender. Finally, this paper provides managerial guidance on strategic planning aimed at improving users' service usage intention and knowledge sharing intention in the KSS environment.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.119-145
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• 2015

The concept of attachment between users and Information Systems; specifically on mobile devices was examined in this study. Furthermore, the moderating effect of users' past experience also was investigated. The empirical study was done involving 240 university students; to investigate the participants' perceived value, perceived enjoyment, attachment and also continuous usage of mobile devices. Additionally, participants' past experience was also enquired to examine its moderating effects. The results show that attachment is mediating both perceived value and perceived enjoyment with continuous usage. Meanwhile, past experience negatively moderates perceived enjoyment with attachment and also negatively moderates attachment with continuous usage.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.135-155
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• 2008

This paper investigates the value of the expectation-confirmation model(ECM) of IT continuance in the internet shopping environments and attempts to expand the ECM with consideration of users diverse internet shopping factors and their preferences. Here, the extended ECM measures the users expectation-confirmation separately at the product, site and service levels, rather than treating it a single construct as measured in the original model. Further, AHP has been used for assessing the relative importance among the shopping factors, and the priority has been used for deriving weighted expectation-confirmation levels in the model. PLS analysis shows that there are significant differences in path coefficients between the ECM and a weighted ECM. This Indicates that users preferences among the diverse shopping factors need to be properly assessed to better understand the relationship between users expectation-confirmation and their continued usage behavior.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.25-53
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• 2007

The Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) of information systems investigates the continued information systems usage behavior. This paper expands the original post-adoption beliefs and searches the applications in the emerging hedonic information systems. Previous IS researches focused on the organizational environments. However as the information technology (especially internet) evolves, information systems have not only emerged for the organizations but also for the individual users, such as internet portals, internet communities, on-line games etc. These information systems so called Hedonic Information Systems aims to provide self-fulfilling value rather than instrumental value to the users. Researches in other disciplines, including marketing and consumer behavior research, illustrate that the hedonic and utilitarian perspective of goods and services have different influence on the consumer behavior. Goods and services used to be classified into either hedonic or utilitarian aspect but now they may belong to both aspects simultaneously. Moreover consumer's goals or tasks have both hedonic utilitarian aspects. When a consumer makes a decision to purchase or repurchase goods or services, he/she compares the hedonic and utilitarian perspectives of goods to find most suitable ones to satisfy their goals/tasks. Finally, consumer's behavior is determined by the trade-off between what the goods can provide to the consumers and in what extent the goods fulfill consumer's purchase behavior. Consumer also shows that the salience of hedonic perspective is relatively greater when consumer decides which of several items to give up (forfeiture choices) than the time when they decide which item to acquire (acquisition choices). Some researches in MIS discipline have found out that the information systems also have both hedonic and utilitarian perspectives. The decision process of whether to use information systems or not is similar to that of a consumer's decision of purchasing or repurchasing goods or services. However most of researches in MIS tend to focus on the extrinsic motivation variables which only cover the utilitarian perspective of information systems. It is only recent that researches start to investigate the intrinsic motivation variable - Perceived Enjoyment - for the hedonic perspective. Considering the consumer's purchasing decision process, users of information systems evaluate the systems through balancing between intrinsic (hedonic) and extrinsic (utilitarian) variables according to their main tasks or tendencies. This paper proposes a model that is based on the ECM of IS Continuance model modified from Expectation Confirmation Model to fit into the continued usage of information system. It first started from the decision process regarding hedonic and utilitarian perspectives in the consumer behavior literatures. The model deals with continued usage of information systems beyond the mere technology adoption as in most of the previous MIS researches. This research is particularly important to the hedonic information systems, because their business model depends on the frequent usages rather simple adoption at the beginning. Because the basic model only considered the extrinsic motivations (perceived usefulness) to explain the users' behavior and as the information systems can have both hedonic and utilitarian dimensions, it should consider both perspectives. Therefore, this newly proposed model considers intrinsic variable (perceived enjoyment) as well. Since the individual user can have a preference on either aspects that is between the hedonic and utilitarian perspective depending on his/her main tasks or goals, some variables (Hedonic Orientation and Utilitarian Orientation) meaning the extents of users' pursuing from the information system were additionally studied.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.193-212
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• 2011

Mobile instant messaging service is surfacing to an important keyword in the mobile market together with popularization of Smart phones. Mobile instant messaging service in Korea has become popular to the degree of 87.9% usages from total Smartphone holders, and it is expected that using populations will be more enlarged afterwards if considering a fact that its populations of Smartphone is continuously being increased after exceeding 10 million persons (Trend Monitor, June 2011). In the instant messaging market where competitions have been deepened day by day, raising customer's royalties will be the key for company's business survivals and goals of corporate marketing strategies. It could be said that understanding on which factors affect to customer retentions and royalties is very important. Specially, as changing status is being progressed very quickly in case of innovative mobile services like the instant messaging service, research necessities on how many do consumers use the services after accepting them, how much do consumers use them variously, and whether does it connect to long-term relations have been increased, but studies on such matters are in insufficient situations actually. Therefore, this study examined on which effects were affected to use-diffusion and loyalty factors from perceived customer vales' factors having been occurred after accepting the mobile instant messaging service, namely 'functional value', 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value'. Also, the study looked into what kind of roles do the service usage and using variety play to service's continued using intents as a loyalty index, recommending intents to others, and brand switching intents. And then the study laid the main purpose in trying to provide implications for enhancing customer securities and royalties on the mobile instant messaging service through research's results. The research hypotheses are as follows; H1: Perceived values will affect influences to royalties. H2: Use-Diffusion will affect influences to loyalty. H3: Perceived value will affect influences to loyalty. H4: The use-diffusion will play intermediating roles between perceived values and loyalty. Total 276 cases among collected 284 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. As the result of research, 'monetary value' and 'emotional value' affected to 'usage' among perceived value factors, and 'emotional value' was appeared as affecting the largest influence. Besides, the usage affected to constant-using intents and recommending intents to others, and using varieties were displayed as affecting to recommending intents to others. On the other hand, 'Using' and 'Using diversity' were appeared as not affecting to 'brand switching intentions'. Meanwhile, as the result of recognizing about effects of perceived values on the loyalty, it was appeared such like 'continued using intents' affected to'functional value', 'monetary value', and 'social value' first, and also 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value' affected to 'recommending intents to others'. On the other hand, it was shown such like only 'social value' affected influences to 'brand switching intents', and thus contrary results with the factor 'constant-using intents' were displayed. So, it seems that there are many applications to service provides who are worrying about marketing strategies for making consumer retains (constant-using) and new consumer's inductions (brand-switching intents). Finally, as a result of looking into intermediating roles of the use-diffusion factor in relations between conceived values and royalties at hypothesis 4, 'using' and 'using diversity' were displayed as affecting significant influences all together. Regarding to research result's implications, for expanding and promoting continued uses of the mobile instant messaging service by service providers: First, encouraging recognitions on the perceived value connected to users' service usage are necessary. Second, setting up user's use-diffusion strategies are required so as to enhance the loyalty after understanding a fact that use-diffusion patterns affecting to the service's loyalty are different. Finally, methods of raising customer loyalties and making constant relationships have to be grouped by analyzing on what are the customer value's factors that can satisfy users in competitive alterations.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.61-90
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• 2016

Purpose Recently the usage of Mobile Instant Messenger(MIM) has been increased all over the world. With the development of Mobile Internet, a large amount of mobile application came into being, such as WeChat, the most popular MIM now in China. It has a huge number of registered users, but just only half of them are the "active users". This study intends to examine what factors affect MIM user's continuance intention and actual usage behavior. Design/Methodology/Approach Based on the framework of Perception/Emotion-Behavior and the extended ECM-ISC (Expectation Confirmation Model of IS Continuance), this research introduced some unique variables to a user satisfaction model focusing on perceived/emotional factors in WeChat. In this model, perceived/emotional factors have been divided into enabler factors and inhibitor factors to analyze the effect on continuance intention and actual usage behavior. Also, the moderate effect of the habits was discussed. An online questionnaire survey of 203 WeChat users was conducted and the empirical validation was employed to test the research model. Findings From the empirical results, perceived usefulness, expectation confirmation, and needs for affiliation significantly affected satisfaction. Also, satisfaction influenced continuance intention which led to actual usage behavior. We found that the habit moderates the relationship between satisfaction and continuance intention. The result of this study provides guidance to the developers and operators of WeChat on how to improve enhance users' satisfaction and loyalty.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.49-56
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• 1979

In Korean housing designs reflect uniqueness as a result of the influence of regional and atmospheric factors. In this regard, the early use of the hot floor (ondol) system is of special significance. This system is still in use today, not only for house-heating purposes in the homes of commoners, but also for cooking in the kitchen. The present study represents an investigation of the ondol structure since its earliest known usage. Methodology involves a documentary examination of the system. In point of time, this begins with the system's earliest usage and proceeds chronnologically down to the end of the Yi Dynasty. Research indicates that something very much like the ondol system appeared in the early tribal society of Mahan and its usage continued in the state of Koguryo (during the Three Kingdoms Period) in the homes of the poor. This unique system which had its origin in cold northern areas was utilized on a much broader basis during the Koryo Dynasty. Coming down to the Yi Dynasty it found acceptance and application in all parts of the peninsula. Variations in major component parts of the structure, such as the fuel hole, the flue, the draft , and the chimney, normally reflect regional dissimilarities. It is perhaps most significant that here-in contrast to other devices we have a system that serves concurrently for both heating and cooking purposes.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.19-43
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• 2013

The diffusion of new technology has traditionally focused on the adoption perspective. Researchers refer this use-diffusion paradigm to behaviors of use after adoption. This study intends to analyse the influential factors of use-diffusion and continual use of website and applications in medical service. To achieve this a use-diffusion model as a conceptual frame work is suggested. Medical information quality, personal innovativeness and subjective norm are assumed as antecedent variables medical website and application's rate of use, variety of use, and continued use intention as result variables. According to the empirical study results medical information quality, web based application usability, personal innovativeness, and subjective norm have a meaningful influence on medical service consumer's use-diffusion patterns. Also pattern of use influences the continued use intention. This study provides an opportunity to understand medical service consumer's behavior after website and application use adoption and suggests further directions for establishing medical service online marketing strategy by determining influential factors of use-diffusion and continued use of medical online marketing tools.