• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.133-159
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• 2007

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effects of perceived characteristics on user satisfaction and continuous usage intention in personal communities. We developed a research model based on the literature reviews of personal communities, TAM, perceived risks, and satisfaction. The research model includes perceived playfulness, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived risk as perceived characteristics in personal communities. For validation of this theoretical model, we survey the users of 'Mini-hompy', one of the most popular personal communities in Korea. The research model was empirically verified by structural equation model analysis with data collected from 407 samples. Analysis of the results indicates that perceived ease of use is positively related perceived playfulness and perceived usefulness. Perceived playfulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived risks are significantly related to satisfaction. User's satisfaction has positive relationship with continuous usage intention in personal communities.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.348-364
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• 1999

The objectives of this study were: (a) to measure the level of rural community residents' environmental preservation consciousness, (b) to identify the variables related to their level of environmental preservation consciousness, and (c) to provide suggestions to improve their environmental preservation consciousness. The major findings of this study were as follows; 1) Personal characteristics- gender, years of education, age, and income- were related to the rural communities residents' the environmental preservation consciousness. 2) Social characteristics- membership in environmental organizations, participation in environmental preservation campaigns, environmental dispute within their communities, experiences of participation in environmental dispute in their communities, participation in environmental education-were related to the rural community residents' the environmental preservation consciousness. Based on the above findings, the following suggestions are offered: 1) To improve rural community residents' environmental preservation consciousness, residents in rural community should be motivated and encouraged to participate in environmental and agriculture-related organizations. 2) To effectively solve environmental disputes among rural community residents and between rural communities, central and local governments should provide opportunities for rural residents to acquire their sound environmental consciousness. 3) Environmental preservation consciousness should be assessed including affective domain, cognitive domain, and behavioral domain. Appropriate environmental education programs should be developed after considering rural residents' personal characteristics including education level, income, gender, years of residency, and are.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.133-148
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• 2014

People enthusiastic about human brands eagerly engage in fan communities to share their common interests with others. Although sharing one's enthusiasm towards the same celebrities can give thempositive senses of we-ness (in-group identity, togetherness, camaraderie) and belongingness, negative sides also exist such as schadenfreude and trash talk. Even though the studies addressing the negative sides of fan community are gaining significance, no prior studies formally examined the negative consequences of engaging in a fan community and their effect on one's well-being. Therefore, this current study aims to investigate how engaging in fan community negatively affects members' psychological well-being through schadenfreude and trash talk. Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that engaging highly in a fan community leads members to feel malicious pleasure at rivals' misfortunes and share negative opinions of rival human brands and fan communities. These negative consequences of fan community engagement ultimately lead to a lower level of psychological wellbeing, especially in the area of personal growth whereas fan community engagement has a direct positive effect on personal growth. By showing the negative influences of engaging in fan communities on members' well-being through schadenfreude and trash talk, the results of this study are expected to add depth to the existing literature.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.313-330
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to study alliance managers' knowledge exchange in cyber communities. The ranges of people participating in various kinds of cyber communities has changed. While some communities require members to have particular skills or qualification, there are millions of open communities in which anyone with internet and web access can participate. Consequently, the majority of users in these open communities and many others are not technical people or skilled office workers. Through participating in the interpersonal knowledge exchange process, alliance managers save time, and are provided with opportunities to confirm their personal knowledge as up-to-date and relevant to the specific context. By using the interpersonal process, they conform with and confirm the community's social etiquette, which dictates its preference for the identified exchange mechanism.

• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.3 s.65
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• pp.131-142
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to develop an online community construct, which proposes an inclusive illustration of the structure of online communities, for online community designers. This study reviewed researches from psychology, sociology, management engineering, and practical reports to understand the characteristics and dynamics of online communities. The proposed online community construct visualizes the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of online community. As the notion of community originates from geographical groups, and with the assumption that geographical community shares identical characteristics with online community, this study reviewed researches about geographical communities as a starting-point. Then the study went through three main perspectives (1) online community attributes, (2) sense of online community and (3) challenges of online community. Then this study proposed an online community construct that encompasses the reviewed frameworks. The online community can be seen as a congregation of members from two sources. One is from the 'Shared Goal' that meets the personal needs. Given the shared goal, members gather into the community without personal relationship and have more chances to feel the sense of belonging to their needs fulfillment or benefit. This befitting tendency leads to strengthening of membership. Public online forums fall under this classification. The other source is from the emotional connections that are already initiated by personal and casual contacts in the real world. The network of emotional connection can evolve into an online congregation of people under faint boundaries. Although there is no (or weak) shared goal, members are strongly bound to other members. Personal homepage or web log (blog) can be classified as an example of relationship-oriented community.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.22-33
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• 2018

The aim of the research study is to carve sustainable business strategies for the fashion communities in Ethiopia and Ukraine which are suffering today due to ever-increasing share of fast fashion consumerism. Fashion houses and international brands propagandize sustainability and consumption for better consumer base, where as originally sustainable local-based craftsmen still stay in the shade. Four communities/local designers are selected from the countries through the method of purposive sampling. Qualitative analysis is the basis of the research as we performed personal interviews and in-depth analysis of the communities to diagnose the problems and subsequently devise the solutions. In this research, we have studied and analyzed the problems faced by hereditary communities and ethnic designers in small and medium scale enterprise sector from two emerging economies. After the grounding the difficulties faced we advised strategies for sustainable future growth to the companies. The current academic literature on small and medium scale enterprises highlights the problems and solutions for general industry sectors. This paper brings attention to fashion communities and designers who promote national heritage and are struggling to survive in emerging economies due to industrialization and globalization. Moreover the comparison of the two geographies is unique in nature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.28-35
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• 2002

Automatic identification of Chinese personal names in unrestricted texts is a key task in Chinese word segmentation, and can affect other NLP tasks such as word segmentation and information retrieval, if it is not properly addressed. This paper (1) demonstrates the problems of Chinese personal name identification in some If applications, (2) analyzes the structure of Chinese personal names, and (3) further presents the relevant processing strategies. The geographical differences of Chinese personal names between Beijing and Hong Kong are highlighted at the end. It shows that variation in names across different Chinese communities constitutes a critical factor in designing Chinese personal name Identification algorithm.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.53-74
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• 2012

A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.208-217
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• 2014

This study focuses on analyzing a subset of consumer activities (especially social medium) in their wedding preparation. The focus of this study is on wedding online communities and understanding the impact of communities on selective behavior for information-acceptance. Data was compiled based on female consumers in their 20s and 30s who actively participate in online community forums. It included female consumers preparing for their weddings and individuals interested in weddings. A total of 211 questionnaires were collected from January $10^{th}$ to $23^{rd}$ in 2012. The online communities were identified from Naver, Yahoo, and online search portals; subsequently, they were rank-sorted based on number of members, visitors, and forum posts. We identified four different characteristic based on the findings from the analysis of on-line wedding communities. The characteristic of these communities were divided into sharing experience, functionality of the webpage, informativeness, and interactivity; consequently, use of these online communities is based on trust and significant personal relationships between the members online. Out of the four different community characteristics, sharing experience was found to have a greater impact for the selective behavior of wedding dresses and information- acceptance than the functionality of the webpage, interactivity, and informativeness. We conclude that trust in information provided by members with marriage process experience is the foremost important factor in the behavior of individual consumers wit iexplore.exe -extoff hout marriage process experience. Therefore, the impact of these online communities catering to would-be brides is based on the trust of posters and how well it is articulated.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.57-79
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• 2010

In a virtual community, one can possess multiple identities and pretend to be different by creating self-identity in contrast with his or her actual self. Does false identity undermine the qualitative growth of a virtual community by reducing members' accountability? Or does it stimulate their contributive behaviors by ensuring freedom of speech? It is imperative to understand the effects of multi-identity considering the distinct properties of a virtual community in which people easily change their identities at little or no cost. To answer these questions, we adopted the concept of self-discrepancy from the social psychology theory rooted in the concept of the self and developed a theoretical model to predict quality of contribution of the individual member in virtual communities. Based on the self-discrepancy theory, we first identified two different domains of the self: (1) an "actual self" that consists of attributes that the person believes he or she currently possesses in real life and (2) a "cyber self" that consists of attributes the person believes he or she possesses in a virtual community. Next, we derived an index for two different types of self-discrepancy by using the differences between the actual and the cyber identities: Personal Self-discrepancy and Social Self-discrepancy. Personal Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's intelligence, education, and expertise. Social Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's morality, sociability, and accordance with social norms. Finally, we linked them with sense of virtual community, perceived privacy rights, and quality of contribution to examine how having a multi-identity influences an individual's psychological state and contributive behaviors in a virtual community. The results of the analysis based on 266 respondents showed that Social Self-discrepancy negatively influenced both the Sense of Virtual Community and Perceived Privacy Rights, while Personal Self-discrepancy negatively influenced only Perceived Privacy Rights, thereby resulting in reduced quality of contribution in virtual communities. Based on the results of this analysis, we can explain the dysfunctions of multi-identity in virtual communities. First, people who pretend to be different by engaging in socially undesirable behaviors under their alternative identities are more likely to suffer lower levels of psychological wellbeing and thus experience lower levels of sense of virtual community than others. Second, people do not perceive a high level of privacy rights reflecting catharsis, recovery, or autonomy, even though they create different selves and engage in socially undesirable behaviors in a virtual community. Third, people who pretend to be different persons in terms of their intelligence, education, or expertise also indirectly debase the quality of contribution by decreasing perceived privacy rights. The results suggest that virtual community managers should pay more attention to the negative influences exercised by multi-identity on the quality of contribution, thereby controlling the need to create alternative identities in virtual communities. We hope that more research will be conducted on this underexplored area of multi-identity and that our theoretical framework will serve as a useful conceptual tool for all endeavors.