• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.41-72
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is the investigation of the effects of user participation, network effect, social influence, and usefulness on stickiness and continued use on Internet communities. In this research, stickiness refers to repeat visit and visit duration to an Internet community. Continued use means the willingness to continue to use an Internet community in the future. Internet community-based companies can earn money through selling the digital contents such as game, music, and avatar, advertizing on internet site, or offering an affiliate marketing. For such money making, stickiness and continued use of Internet users is much more important than the number of Internet users. We tried to answer following three questions. Fist, what is the effects of user participation on stickiness and continued use on Internet communities? Second, by what is user participation formed? Third, are network effect, social influence, and usefulness that was significant at prior research about technology acceptance model(TAM) still significant on internet communities? In this study, user participation, network effect, social influence, and usefulness are independent variables, stickiness is mediating variable, and continued use is dependent variable. Among independent variables, we are focused on user participation. User participation means that Internet user participates in the development of Internet community site (called mini-hompy or blog in Korea). User participation was studied from 1970 to 1997 at the research area of information system. But since 1997 when Internet started to spread to the public, user participation has hardly been studied. Given the importance of user participation at the success of Internet-based companies, it is very meaningful to study the research topic of user participation. To test the proposed model, we used a data set generated from the survey. The survey instrument was designed on the basis of a comprehensive literature review and interviews of experts, and was refined through several rounds of pretests, revisions, and pilot tests. The respondents of survey were the undergraduates and the graduate students who mainly used Internet communities. Data analysis was conducted using 217 respondents(response rate, 97.7 percent). We used structural equation modeling(SEM) implemented in partial least square(PLS). We chose PLS for two reason. First, our model has formative constructs. PLS uses components-based algorithm and can estimated formative constructs. Second, PLS is more appropriate when the research model is in an early stage of development. A review of the literature suggests that empirical tests of user participation is still sparse. The test of model was executed in the order of three research questions. First user participation had the direct effects on stickiness(${\beta}$=0.150, p<0.01) and continued use (${\beta}$=0.119, p<0.05). And user participation, as a partial mediation model, had a indirect effect on continued use mediated through stickiness (${\beta}$=0.007, p<0.05). Second, optional participation and prosuming participation significantly formed user participation. Optional participation, with a path magnitude as high as 0.986 (p<0.001), is a key determinant for the strength of user participation. Third, Network effect (${\beta}$=0.236, p<0.001). social influence (${\beta}$=0.135, p<0.05), and usefulness (${\beta}$=0.343, p<0.001) had directly significant impacts on stickiness. But network effect and social influence, as a full mediation model, had both indirectly significant impacts on continued use mediated through stickiness (${\beta}$=0.11, p<0.001, and ${\beta}$=0.063, p<0.05, respectively). Compared with this result, usefulness, as a partial mediation model, had a direct impact on continued use and a indirect impact on continued use mediated through stickiness. This study has three contributions. First this is the first empirical study showing that user participation is the significant driver of continued use. The researchers of information system have hardly studies user participation since late 1990s. And the researchers of marketing have studied a few lately. Second, this study enhanced the understanding of user participation. Up to recently, user participation has been studied from the bipolar viewpoint of participation v.s non-participation. Also, even the study on participation has been studied from the point of limited optional participation. But, this study proved the existence of prosuming participation to design and produce products or services, besides optional participation. And this study empirically proved that optional participation and prosuming participation were the key determinant for user participation. Third, our study compliments traditional studies of TAM. According prior literature about of TAM, the constructs of network effect, social influence, and usefulness had effects on the technology adoption. This study proved that these constructs still are significant on Internet communities.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.45-63
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• 2009

China has the largest number of the user of web 2.0 such as messengers and blogs, as of 2008 year. Chinese Internet digital market will grow from $85 billion in 2007 to $264 billion in 2015. The importance of Chinese Internet business is increasing, because of its size and growth potential. This research is focused on following two questions. First, what are the major characteristics of social networking services in China? In order to find out the answer about this question, the case study on Tencent QQ and Sina Poco, the most representative social networking services company in China, was done. And the reason of the use of social networking services, their contents, and the attitude toward the paid service were identified. Second, what are the major factors influencing the use of social networking services in China. User participation, network effect, usefulness, and system quality were inferred as the factors influencing the use. These factors were based on motivation theory, technology acceptance model, and the related research papers. This research model was proved by data analysis using Partial Least Square. As results, the use of social networking services was influenced by usefulness, network effect, user participation, and system quality. But social influence was not significant of the use of social networking services.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.585-592
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• 2015

In this study, by applying mobile based GIS and image analysis of particulate matter ($PM_{10}$) concentration in Seoul and Ulsan in Korea, to identify the user's location and also implemented the application to information exchange. It strengthened citizens' access to air quality information through the application and derived the expanded environment information sharing through real-time user participation. Through atmospheric concentrations image analysis, it showed a new environmental information construction possibility. It had the effect of expanding the information collecting through the local user participation on the limited information collected area which place is not yet constructed atmospheric monitoring network. Location-based particulate matter information service application provides a user location's $PM_{10}$ information from the 25 urban air monitoring network real-time database of the Ministry of Environment. Furthermore, if the user sent a picture of the atmosphere to the server, should match the image density values of the database and express on Seoul's maps through the IDW interpolation. And then a $PM_{10}$ concentration result is transmitted to user in real time.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.65-87
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• 2013

The development and expansion of communication technology in the field of information technology (IT) have changed the method and culture of communication, mediating communication among people. In particular, since social network service (SNS) has the attributes of information delivery and processing, it has a more powerful dissipating effect and influence than other existing communication methods. The role of users in SNS is important because it has the communication structure of producer-consumer, which consists of sharing, connection and participation of users. In this line, the purpose of this study is to investigate the intention for continued use of SNS by user ability. In order to explain the motivation and behavior for continued use of SNS by users, this study employed the motivation theory and post-adaptation model. The study applied 'media literacy' to the characteristics of SNS media and environment and expanded it into the concept of 'SNS literacy' to identify the moderating effect by user ability. Referred to as 'user's ability that is required to use SNS,' the SNS literacy was verified for its moderating effect with the three sub-dimensions: 'technical accessing ability,' 'understanding ability' and 'creative ability.' The major findings of this study are as follows. First, the perceived usefulness and playfulness were found to have a significant effect on the intention for continued use of SNS, showing the same result with previous studies on technology acceptance. In other words, usefulness and playfulness are variables with an explanatory power in the SNS environment as well. Second, the conceptualization of SNS literacy with accessing ability, understanding ability and creative ability was found to be valid. Third, it was verified that there was a significant difference in the SNS literacy between perceived usefulness and continued use, indicating that users with higher ability respond sensitively to usefulness and affect continued behavior. The moderating effect of SNS literacy was also verified in the relationship between perceived playfulness and intention for continued use. The results above confirm the difference in post-adaptation behavior of individuals, and are expected to provide several implications.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.169-194
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• 2008

Recently, the concept of web site stickiness receives attention as a measure of strategy to influence user's visit and behavior on web sites. Web site stickiness means site visit frequency and stay duration. This study investigates the moderating effect of espoused national cultural values on Internet community stickiness with the assumption that dimensional values of national culture can be internalized as individual’s espoused values. Espoused values (i.e., espoused national cultural values) are defined as the degree to which an individual embraces the values of his or her national culture. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, femininity and power distance moderate the influence of user participation on Internet community stickiness. Second, uncertainty avoidance and power distance moderates the effect of social influence on Internet community stickiness. However, femininity and collectivism do not moderate the effect of social influence on Internet community stickiness. Third, uncertainty avoidance, femininity, and collectivism moderate the influence of network effect on Internet community stickiness. Fourth, masculinity does not moderate the influence of usefulness on Internet community stickiness.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.15-28
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• 2022

Recently, government agencies are actively adopting the platform model as a means of public policy. However, existing studies on the public platform are minimal and have focused on user experiences or the possibility of public usage of the platform model. Now the research concerning building governance structure and utilizing network effects of the platform after adopting the platform model in the public sector is keenly required. This study intended to ignite academic dialogue on the governance of public platforms in the context of digital transformation. This study focused on a case of the 'Special delivery,' a public delivery app established by Gyeonggi-do. In order to analyze the characteristics of the public platform and its governance structure, data were collected from press releases, policy reports, and news articles. Data was analyzed using the frame of Hagui's platform design factors and Ansell & Gash's collaborative governance model. The results of the public platform analyses showed 1) incompleteness in the value trade-off accounting, which was designed for platform business based on general cost-benefit analysis, and 2) a closed governance structure that limits direct participation of diverse user groups(i.e., service provider, customer) in order to enhance providers' utility by preventing customers' excessive online activities. The results of this study provided theoretical and policy implications regarding designing the strategy for accounting for value trade-offs and functioning governance structure for public platforms.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.125-148
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• 2009

UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.58-66
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• 2015

This study was conducted to determine a 'platform' as a mean of interactions between users in contemporary spatial design and network(web) and to verify the similarity between the platform and space of Rem Koolhaas, one of the leading contemporary architects of our time. A platform, referring to tangible or intangible structures designed for common use in a variety of ways, is activated by the networking effect of participants. Aided by the recent development of the IT industry encompassing computers and smart phones, the concept of platforms is extending to all areas of modern life, in general. In this study, the similarity between architectural space and platforms after reviewing the computer-related platforms, ecological features that refer to virtuous circulation, and various cases applied with platform thinking. Through this process, the platform feature of architectural platforms is defined as the 'open spatial system combined with control and freedom that acts more than one function and facilitates direct/indirect exchanges between users regardless of its type or size'. Establishing the criteria for spatial analysis based on this definition, analysis was conducted on interior design projects that were planned and conducted by Rem Koolhaas after 2000. As a result of this analysis, it was learned that Rem Koolhaas designs space using dual space structures where the extension and mixture of the user group, mixture of various functions defined by users, loose control that induces voluntary participation, community reinforcement, and inducement of accidental events, and opening and closing coexist. In addition, this design approach was found to be a design strategy similar to the concept of platforms that began to be developed in the IT field.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Industrial Systems Conference
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• 2008.10b
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• pp.218-234
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• 2008

중국은 2008년 현재 메신저 이용자 수와 블로그 등의 웹 2.0 이용자 수에 있어서 세계 1위이다. 그리고 중국의 2007년 850억 달러의 인터넷 디지털 시장은 2015년에 2640억 달러로 성장할 전망이다. 이와 같이 인터넷 시장의 규모와 성장 가능성으로 인해 중국 인터넷 비즈니스의 중요성이 높아지고 있다. 이러한 필요성에 따라서 본 연구에서는 중국의 인터넷 동향 중에서 가장 큰 주목을 끌고 있는 웹 2.0 기반의 사회 연결망 서비스 분야에서 다음 세 가지의 연구 질문을 설정하고 그 답을 찾아보았다. 첫째, 중국 사회 연결망 서비스의 주요 특징은 무엇인가? 이러한 질문에 답하기 위해 본 연구에서는 문헌연구를 바탕으로 중국의 대표적인 사회 연결망 서비스 업체로 Tencent QQ와 Sina Poco를 살펴보았고, 중국 사회 연결망 서비스 이용자의 가입 이유, 갱신 이유, 주요 내용, 유상 서비스에 대한 태도 등을 살펴보았으며, 중국 인터넷 사용자의 집단별 특징에 대해 살펴보았다. 둘째, 중국 사회 연결망 서비스의 이용에 영향을 미치는 주요 요인들은 무엇인가? 이러한 질문에 답하기 위해 동기부여이론, TAM 이론. 관련 선행연구 등을 검토하여 중국 사회 연결망 서비스의 이용에 영향을 미치는 요인들로서 사용자 참여, 사회적 영향, 네트워크 효과, 유용성, 시스템 품질 등을 도출하였고 PLS를 이용한 데이터 분석을 통해 검증하였다. 검증결과, 사회 연결망 서비스 이용에 유용성이 가장 큰 영향을 미치고, 다음으로 네트워크 효과, 사용자 참여, 시스템 품질 순으로 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 반면, 사회적 영향은 유의하지 않은 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 중국과 한국은 어떠한 점에서 차이가 있는가? 가장 두드러진 차이는 사회적 영향에 있어서 한국은 유의 적인데 비해 중국이 유의적이지 않다는 점이다. 이는 한국과 중국 사이에 국가 문화적 차이가 존재하기 때문에 발생했다고 생각할 수도 있고, 중국이 인터넷 성장기에 있는데 비해 한국은 인터넷 성숙기에 있는 등의 기술적, 사회적, 경제적 발달 과정상의 차이에 의한 것이라고도 볼 수 있다.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.119-135
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• 2014

This study is aimed at understanding the factors behind deciding to accept a social network service (SNS) from the viewpoint of tourists who are users of tourism SNS. The study also seeks to clarify the effects these deduced factors have on the intention of users to continuously use SNS. To this end, individual properties (such as self-efficacy, socio-cultural effects, social presence and people's innovativeness), systematic properties (like system quality and information quality)and usefulness/availability were used as factors with regard to the decision to accept tourism SNS based on previous studies and efforts were made to structurally clarify the effects of such previous factors on people's intention to continuously use SNS through perceived value and satisfaction. SNS had significant effects on satisfaction and, furthermore, significantly affected tourists' intention to continuously use it. Based on such study results, factors behind deciding to accept SNS from the viewpoint of tourists affected customers' perceived value and satisfaction and ultimately affected their intention to continuously use SNS. To achieve the purpose of the study, a survey was conducted on about 250 Busan residents who had used SNS in relation to tourist activities, such as exhibitions, conventions, accommodation, trips, aviation service and transportation. According to an empirical study, factors behind deciding to accept tourism SNS, including individual properties, systematic properties and usefulness/availability had statistically significant effects on perceived value. The usefulness/availability factor had the largest influence, in particular, followed by the systematic factor and individual factor. The value perceived in the process of using tourism SNS had significant effects on satisfaction and, furthermore, significantly affected tourists' intention to continuously use it. Based on such study results, factors behind deciding to accept SNS from the viewpoint of tourists affected customers' perceived value and satisfaction and ultimately affected their intention to continuously use SNS.