• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.4279-4295
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• 1977

Two types of model were established in order to product the soil moisture content by which information on irrigation could be obtained. Model-I was to represent the soil moisture depletion and was established based on the concept of water balance in a given soil profile. Model-II was a mathematical model derived from the analysis of soil moisture variation curves which were drawn from the observed data. In establishing the Model-I, the method and procedure to estimate parameters for the determination of the variables such as evapotranspirations, effective rainfalls, and drainage amounts were discussed. Empirical equations representing soil moisture variation curves were derived from the observed data as the Model-II. The procedure for forecasting timing and amounts of irrigation under the given soil moisture content was discussed. The established models were checked by comparing the observed data with those predicted by the model. Obtained results are summarized as follows: 1. As a water balance model of a given soil profile, the soil moisture depletion D, could be represented as the equation(2). 2. Among the various empirical formulae for potential evapotranspiration (Etp), Penman's formula was best fit to the data observed with the evaporation pans and tanks in Suweon area. High degree of positive correlation between Penman's predicted data and observed data with a large evaporation pan was confirmed. and the regression enquation was Y=0.7436X+17.2918, where Y represents evaporation rate from large evaporation pan, in mm/10days, and X represents potential evapotranspiration rate estimated by use of Penman's formula. 3. Evapotranspiration, Et, could be estimated from the potential evapotranspiration, Etp, by introducing the consumptive use coefficient, Kc, which was repre sensed by the following relationship: Kc=Kco$.$Ka＋Ks‥‥‥(Eq. 6) where Kco : crop coefficient Ka : coefficient depending on the soil moisture content Ks : correction coefficient a. Crop coefficient. Kco. Crop coefficients of barley, bean, and wheat for each growth stage were found to be dependent on the crop. b. Coefficient depending on the soil moisture content, Ka. The values of Ka for clay loam, sandy loam, and loamy sand revealed a similar tendency to those of Pierce type. c. Correction coefficent, Ks. Following relationships were established to estimate Ks values: Ks=Kc-Kco$.$Ka, where Ks=0 if Kc,=Kco$.$K0$\geq$1.0, otherwise Ks=1-Kco$.$Ka 4. Effective rainfall, Re, was estimated by using following relationships : Re=D, if R-D$\geq$0, otherwise, Re=R 5. The difference between rainfall, R, and the soil moisture depletion D, was taken as drainage amount, Wd. {{{{D= SUM from { {i }=1} to n (Et-Re-I+Wd)}}}} if Wd=0, otherwise, {{{{D= SUM from { {i }=tf} to n (Et-Re-I+Wd)}}}} where tf=2∼3 days. 6. The curves and their corresponding empirical equations for the variation of soil moisture depending on the soil types, soil depths are shown on Fig. 8 (a,b.c,d). The general mathematical model on soil moisture variation depending on seasons, weather, and soil types were as follow: {{{{SMC= SUM ( { C}_{i }Exp( { - lambda }_{i } { t}_{i } )+ { Re}_{i } - { Excess}_{i } )}}}} where SMC : soil moisture content C : constant depending on an initial soil moisture content $\lambda$ : constant depending on season t : time Re : effective rainfall Excess : drainage and excess soil moisture other than drainage. The values of $\lambda$ are shown on Table 1. 7. The timing and amount of irrigation could be predicted by the equation (9-a) and (9-b,c), respectively. 8. Under the given conditions, the model for scheduling irrigation was completed. Fig. 9 show computer flow charts of the model. a. To estimate a potential evapotranspiration, Penman's equation was used if a complete observed meteorological data were available, and Jensen-Haise's equation was used if a forecasted meteorological data were available, However none of the observed or forecasted data were available, the equation (15) was used. b. As an input time data, a crop carlender was used, which was made based on the time when the growth stage of the crop shows it's maximum effective leaf coverage. 9. For the purpose of validation of the models, observed data of soil moiture content under various conditions from May, 1975 to July, 1975 were compared to the data predicted by Model-I and Model-II. Model-I shows the relative error of 4.6 to 14.3 percent which is an acceptable range of error in view of engineering purpose. Model-II shows 3 to 16.7 percent of relative error which is a little larger than the one from the Model-I. 10. Comparing two models, the followings are concluded: Model-I established on the theoretical background can predict with a satisfiable reliability far practical use provided that forecasted meteorological data are available. On the other hand, Model-II was superior to Model-I in it's simplicity, but it needs long period and wide scope of observed data to predict acceptable soil moisture content. Further studies are needed on the Model-II to make it acceptable in practical use.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.479-485
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• 2004

The interest of ACT (Automated Container Terminal) is increasing because of expansion of container's transportation quantity, appearance of large-sized and. high-speed vessel, high labor cost of container terminal and the change of technical level. Therefore, the ACT had been developed in several ports in the world, such as ECT (Europe Combined Terminals) and CTA (Container Terminal Altenwerder). They have studied detailed technique for the operation of ACT. In Korea, it also has increased not only expansion and improvement of container terminal, but also necessity of ACT. Now, many projects related to the development of ACT are working in Korea. And the technical improvement of operating system, automated equipments and information system has accomplished by the projects. The ACT consists of the basic equipment and the integrated information system for operating and controlling automated equipments. The productivity of ACT is maximized through efficient connection between them. Thus, the automated degree of container terminal is dependent on the developing time of operating system, reliability, transportation quantity of container, investment amount and technical level. In this paper, we propose important strategy in developing ACT through analyzing the property of each ACT.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.65-70
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• 2008

The mechanical shear strength of BGA(Ball Grid Array) solder joints under high impact loading was investigated. The Sn-37Pb solder balls with a diameter of $500{\mu}m$ were placed on the pads of FR-4 substrates with ENIG(Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold) surface treatment and reflowed. For the High Temperature Storage(HTS) test, the samples were aged a constant testing temperature of $120^{\circ}C$ for up to 250h. After the HTS test, high speed shear tests with various shear speed of 0.01, 0.1, 1, 3 m/s were conducted. $Ni_3Sn_4$ intermetallic compound(IMC) layer was observed at the solder/Ni-P interface and thickness of IMC was increased with aging process. The shear strength increased with increasing shear speed. The fracture surfaces of solder joints showed various fracture modes dependent on shear speed and aging time. Fracture mode was changed from ductile fracture to brittle fracture with increasing shear speed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.253-259
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• 2004

The sheetwise cadastral map data needs to become a Serial Cadastral Map (SCM) database for the promotion of the reliability of cadastral surveying, for the efficient operation of the Parcel Based Land Information System, and for the convenient use of land information as well. A large amount of money and time are required for the editing process of producing SCM DB in accordance with the $\ulcorner$Guideline for the Production of Serial Cadastral Maps$\lrcorner$ by the Ministry of Construction & Transportation if any of field surveying techniques is accompanied by. In addition, a boundary line that extends to a neat line does not meet the counterpart of the neighboring map sheet at a point. Such cases frequently occur and are much dependent upon the decisions of individuals in charge of editing or inspecting. The core processes of the research, firstly overlay SCM produced by the edition of the sheetwise cadastral maps with Autodesk Map on orthophoto images, secondly adjust the parcel boundaries which are delineated over more than one map sheet, and lastly compare the original boundary coordinates and areas with the corresponding adjusted ones and calculate root mean square errors (RMSEs). The research aims at promoting the quality of SCM by minimizing the inconsistency of parcel boundaries by means of the comparative analysis of the calculated RMSEs.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.103-120
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• 2009

As business incubation centers (BICs) have been operating for more than 10 years in Korea, many early stage startups tend to use the services provided by the incubating centers. BICs in Korea have accumulated the knowledge and experience in the past ten years and their services have been considerably improved. The business incubating service has three facets : (1) business infrastructure service, (2) direct service, and (3) indirect service. The mission of BICs is to provide the early stage entrepreneurs with the incubating service in a limited period time to help them grow strong enough to survive the fierce competition after graduating from the incubation. However, the incubating services sometimes fail to foster the independence of new startup companies, and raise the dependence of many companies on BICs. Thus, the dependence on BICs is a very important factor to understand the survival of the incubated startup companies after graduation from BICs. The purpose of this study is to identify the main factors that influence the firm's dependence on BICs and to characterize the relationships among the identified factors. The business incubating service is a core construct of this study. It includes various activities and resources, such as offering the physical facilities, legal service, and connecting them with outside organizations. These services are extensive and take various forms. They are provided by BICs directly or indirectly. Past studies have identified various incubating services and classify them in different ways. Based on the past studies, we classify the business incubating service into three categories as mentioned above : (1) business infrastructure support, (2) direct support, and (3) networking support. The business infrastructure support is to provide the essential resources to start the business, such as physical facilities. The direct support is to offer the business resources available in the BICs, such as human, technical, and administrational resources. Finally, the indirect service was to support the resource in the outside of business incubation center. Dependence is generally defined as the degree to which a client firm needs the resources provided by the service provider in order to achieve its goals. Dependence is generated when a firm recognizes the benefits of interacting with its counterpart. Hence, the more positive outcomes a firm derives from its relationship with the partner, the more dependent on the partner the firm must inevitably become. In business incubating, as a resident firm is incubated in longer period, we can predict that her dependence on BICs would be stronger. In order to foster the independence of the incubated firms, BICs have to be able to manipulate the provision of their services to control the firms' dependence on BICs. Based on the above discussion, the research model for relationships between dependence and its affecting factors was developed. We surveyed the companies residing in BICs to test our research model. The instrument of our study was modified, in part, on the basis of previous relevant studies. For the purposes of testing reliability and validity, preliminary testing was conducted with firms that were residing in BICs and incubated by the BICs in the region of Gwangju and Jeonnam. The questionnaire was modified in accordance with the pre-test feedback. We mailed to all of the firms that had been incubated by the BICs with the help of business incubating managers of each BIC. The survey was conducted over a three week period. Gifts (of approximately ₩10,000 value) were offered to all actively participating respondents. The incubating period was reported by the business incubating managers, and it was transformed using natural logarithms. A total of 180 firms participated in the survey. However, we excluded 4 cases due to a lack of consistency using reversed items in the answers of the companies, and 176 cases were used for the analysis. We acknowledge that 176 samples may not be sufficient to conduct regression analyses with 5 research variables in our study. Each variable was measured through multiple items. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis to assess their unidimensionality. In an effort to test the construct validity of the instruments, a principal component factor analysis was conducted with Varimax rotation. The items correspond well to each singular factor, demonstrating a high degree of convergent validity. As the factor loadings for a variable (or factor) are higher than the factor loadings for the other variables, the instrument's discriminant validity is shown to be clear. Each factor was extracted as expected, which explained 70.97, 66.321, and 52.97 percent, respectively, of the total variance each with eigen values greater than 1.000. The internal consistency reliability of the variables was evaluated by computing Cronbach's alphas. The Cronbach's alpha values of the variables, which ranged from 0.717 to 0.950, were all securely over 0.700, which is satisfactory. The reliability and validity of the research variables are all, therefore, considered acceptable. The effects of dependence were assessed using a regression analysis. The Pearson correlations were calculated for the variables, measured by interval or ratio scales. Potential multicollinearity among the antecedents was evaluated prior to the multiple regression analysis, as some of the variables were significantly correlated with others (e.g., direct service and indirect service). Although several variables show the evidence of significant correlations, their tolerance values range between 0.334 and 0.613, thereby demonstrating that multicollinearity is not a likely threat to the parameter estimates. Checking some basic assumptions for the regression analyses, we decided to conduct multiple regression analyses and moderated regression analyses to test the given hypotheses. The results of the regression analyses indicate that the regression model is significant at p < 0.001 (F = 44.260), and that the predictors of the research model explain 42.6 percent of the total variance. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 address the relationships between the dependence of the incubated firms and the business incubating services. Business infrastructure service, direct service, and indirect service are all significantly related with dependence (β = 0.300, p < 0.001; β = 0.230, p < 0.001; β = 0.226, p < 0.001), thus supporting Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3. When the incubating period is the moderator and dependence is the dependent variable, the addition of the interaction terms with the antecedents to the regression equation yielded a significant increase in R2 (F change = 2.789, p < 0.05). In particular, direct service and indirect service exert different effects on dependence. Hence, the results support Hypotheses 5 and 6. This study provides several strategies and specific calls to action for BICs, based on our empirical findings. Business infrastructure service has more effect on the firm's dependence than the other two services. The introduction of an additional high charge rate for a graduated but allowed to stay in the BIC is a basic and legitimate condition for the BIC to control the firm's dependence. We detected the differential effects of direct and indirect services on the firm's dependence. The firms with long incubating period are more sensitive to indirect service positively, and more sensitive to direct service negatively, when assessing their levels of dependence. This implies that BICs must develop a strategy on the basis of a firm's incubating period. Last but not least, it would be valuable to discover other important variables that influence the firm's dependence in the future studies. Moreover, future studies to explain the independence of startup companies in BICs would also be valuable.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.65-82
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• 2015

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in finding core issues and analyzing emerging trends for the future. This represents efforts to devise national strategies and policies based on the selection of promising areas that can create economic and social added value. The existing studies, including those dedicated to the discovery of future promising fields, have mostly been dependent on qualitative research methods such as literature review and expert judgement. Deriving results from large amounts of information under this approach is both costly and time consuming. Efforts have been made to make up for the weaknesses of the conventional qualitative analysis approach designed to select key promising areas through discovery of future core issues and emerging trend analysis in various areas of academic research. There needs to be a paradigm shift in toward implementing qualitative research methods along with quantitative research methods like text mining in a mutually complementary manner. The change is to ensure objective and practical emerging trend analysis results based on large amounts of data. However, even such studies have had shortcoming related to their dependence on simple keywords for analysis, which makes it difficult to derive meaning from data. Besides, no study has been carried out so far to develop core issues and analyze emerging trends in special domains like the aviation industry. The change used to implement recent studies is being witnessed in various areas such as the steel industry, the information and communications technology industry, the construction industry in architectural engineering and so on. This study focused on retrieving aviation-related core issues and emerging trends from overall research papers pertaining to aviation through text mining, which is one of the big data analysis techniques. In this manner, the promising future areas for the air transport industry are selected based on objective data from aviation-related research papers. In order to compensate for the difficulties in grasping the meaning of single words in emerging trend analysis at keyword levels, this study will adopt topic analysis, which is a technique used to find out general themes latent in text document sets. The analysis will lead to the extraction of topics, which represent keyword sets, thereby discovering core issues and conducting emerging trend analysis. Based on the issues, it identified aviation-related research trends and selected the promising areas for the future. Research on core issue retrieval and emerging trend analysis for the aviation industry based on big data analysis is still in its incipient stages. So, the analysis targets for this study are restricted to data from aviation-related research papers. However, it has significance in that it prepared a quantitative analysis model for continuously monitoring the derived core issues and presenting directions regarding the areas with good prospects for the future. In the future, the scope is slated to expand to cover relevant domestic or international news articles and bidding information as well, thus increasing the reliability of analysis results. On the basis of the topic analysis results, core issues for the aviation industry will be determined. Then, emerging trend analysis for the issues will be implemented by year in order to identify the changes they undergo in time series. Through these procedures, this study aims to prepare a system for developing key promising areas for the future aviation industry as well as for ensuring rapid response. Additionally, the promising areas selected based on the aforementioned results and the analysis of pertinent policy research reports will be compared with the areas in which the actual government investments are made. The results from this comparative analysis are expected to make useful reference materials for future policy development and budget establishment.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.93-108
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• 2014

To support business decision making, interests and efforts to analyze and use transaction data in different perspectives are increasing. Such efforts are not only limited to customer management or marketing, but also used for monitoring and detecting fraud transactions. Fraud transactions are evolving into various patterns by taking advantage of information technology. To reflect the evolution of fraud transactions, there are many efforts on fraud detection methods and advanced application systems in order to improve the accuracy and ease of fraud detection. As a case of fraud detection, this study aims to provide effective fraud detection methods for auction exception agricultural products in the largest Korean agricultural wholesale market. Auction exception products policy exists to complement auction-based trades in agricultural wholesale market. That is, most trades on agricultural products are performed by auction; however, specific products are assigned as auction exception products when total volumes of products are relatively small, the number of wholesalers is small, or there are difficulties for wholesalers to purchase the products. However, auction exception products policy makes several problems on fairness and transparency of transaction, which requires help of fraud detection. In this study, to generate fraud detection rules, real huge agricultural products trade transaction data from 2008 to 2010 in the market are analyzed, which increase more than 1 million transactions and 1 billion US dollar in transaction volume. Agricultural transaction data has unique characteristics such as frequent changes in supply volumes and turbulent time-dependent changes in price. Since this was the first trial to identify fraud transactions in this domain, there was no training data set for supervised learning. So, fraud detection rules are generated using outlier detection approach. We assume that outlier transactions have more possibility of fraud transactions than normal transactions. The outlier transactions are identified to compare daily average unit price, weekly average unit price, and quarterly average unit price of product items. Also quarterly averages unit price of product items of the specific wholesalers are used to identify outlier transactions. The reliability of generated fraud detection rules are confirmed by domain experts. To determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, normal distribution and normalized Z-value concept are applied. That is, a unit price of a transaction is transformed to Z-value to calculate the occurrence probability when we approximate the distribution of unit prices to normal distribution. The modified Z-value of the unit price in the transaction is used rather than using the original Z-value of it. The reason is that in the case of auction exception agricultural products, Z-values are influenced by outlier fraud transactions themselves because the number of wholesalers is small. The modified Z-values are called Self-Eliminated Z-scores because they are calculated excluding the unit price of the specific transaction which is subject to check whether it is fraud transaction or not. To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, a prototype of fraud transaction detection system is developed using Delphi. The system consists of five main menus and related submenus. First functionalities of the system is to import transaction databases. Next important functions are to set up fraud detection parameters. By changing fraud detection parameters, system users can control the number of potential fraud transactions. Execution functions provide fraud detection results which are found based on fraud detection parameters. The potential fraud transactions can be viewed on screen or exported as files. The study is an initial trial to identify fraud transactions in Auction Exception Agricultural Products. There are still many remained research topics of the issue. First, the scope of analysis data was limited due to the availability of data. It is necessary to include more data on transactions, wholesalers, and producers to detect fraud transactions more accurately. Next, we need to extend the scope of fraud transaction detection to fishery products. Also there are many possibilities to apply different data mining techniques for fraud detection. For example, time series approach is a potential technique to apply the problem. Even though outlier transactions are detected based on unit prices of transactions, however it is possible to derive fraud detection rules based on transaction volumes.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.99-124
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• 2012

Our society has long been talking about necessity for innovation. Since companies in particular need to carry out business innovation in their overall processes, they have attempted to apply many innovation factors on sites and become to pay more attention to their innovation. In order to achieve this goal, companies has applied various information technologies (IT) on sites as a means of innovation, and consequently IT have been greatly developed. It is natural for the field of IT to have faced another revolution which is called cloud computing, which is expected to result in innovative changes in software application via the Internet, data storing, the use of devices, and their operations. As a vehicle of innovation, cloud computing is expected to lead the changes and advancement of our society and the business world. Although many scholars have researched on a variety of topics regarding the innovation via IT, few studies have dealt with the issue of could computing as IT. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to set the variables of innovation attributes based on the previous articles as the characteristic variables and clarify how these variables affect "Performance Expectancy" of companies and the intention of using cloud computing. The result from the analysis of data collected in this study is as follows. The study utilized a research model developed on the innovation diffusion theory to identify influences on the adaptation and spreading IT for cloud computing services. Second, this study summarized the characteristics of cloud computing services as a new concept that introduces innovation at its early stage of adaptation for companies. Third, a theoretical model is provided that relates to the future innovation by suggesting variables for innovation characteristics to adopt cloud computing services. Finally, this study identified the factors affecting expectation and the intention to use the cloud computing service for the companies that consider adopting the cloud computing service. As the parameter and dependent variable respectively, the study deploys the independent variables that are aligned with the characteristics of the cloud computing services based on the innovation diffusion model, and utilizes the expectation for performance and Intention to Use based on the UTAUT theory. Independent variables for the research model include Relative Advantage, Complexity, Compatibility, Cost Saving, Trialability, and Observability. In addition, 'Acceptance for Adaptation' is applied as an adjustment variable to verify the influences on the expected performances from the cloud computing service. The validity of the research model was secured by performing factor analysis and reliability analysis. After confirmatory factor analysis is conducted using AMOS 7.0, the 20 hypotheses are verified through the analysis of the structural equation model, accepting 12 hypotheses among 20. For example, Relative Advantage turned out to have the positive effect both on Individual Performance and on Strategic Performance from the verification of hypothesis, while it showed meaningful correlation to affect Intention to Use directly. This indicates that many articles on the diffusion related Relative Advantage as the most important factor to predict the rate to accept innovation. From the viewpoint of the influence on Performance Expectancy among Compatibility and Cost Saving, Compatibility has the positive effect on both Individual Performance and on Strategic Performance, while it showed meaningful correlation with Intention to Use. However, the topic of the cloud computing service has become a strategic issue for adoption in companies, Cost Saving turns out to affect Individual Performance without a significant influence on Intention to Use. This indicates that companies expect practical performances such as time and cost saving and financial improvements through the adoption of the cloud computing service in the environment of the budget squeezing from the global economic crisis from 2008. Likewise, this positively affects the strategic performance in companies. In terms of effects, Trialability is proved to give no effects on Performance Expectancy. This indicates that the participants of the survey are willing to afford the risk from the high uncertainty caused by innovation, because they positively pursue information about new ideas as innovators and early adopter. In addition, they believe it is unnecessary to test the cloud computing service before the adoption, because there are various types of the cloud computing service. However, Observability positively affected both Individual Performance and Strategic Performance. It also showed meaningful correlation with Intention to Use. From the analysis of the direct effects on Intention to Use by innovative characteristics for the cloud computing service except the parameters, the innovative characteristics for the cloud computing service showed the positive influence on Relative Advantage, Compatibility and Observability while Complexity, Cost saving and the likelihood for the attempt did not affect Intention to Use. While the practical verification that was believed to be the most important factor on Performance Expectancy by characteristics for cloud computing service, Relative Advantage, Compatibility and Observability showed significant correlation with the various causes and effect analysis. Cost Saving showed a significant relation with Strategic Performance in companies, which indicates that the cost to build and operate IT is the burden of the management. Thus, the cloud computing service reflected the expectation as an alternative to reduce the investment and operational cost for IT infrastructure due to the recent economic crisis. The cloud computing service is not pervasive in the business world, but it is rapidly spreading all over the world, because of its inherited merits and benefits. Moreover, results of this research regarding the diffusion innovation are more or less different from those of the existing articles. This seems to be caused by the fact that the cloud computing service has a strong innovative factor that results in a new paradigm shift while most IT that are based on the theory of innovation diffusion are limited to companies and organizations. In addition, the participants in this study are believed to play an important role as innovators and early adapters to introduce the cloud computing service and to have competency to afford higher uncertainty for innovation. In conclusion, the introduction of the cloud computing service is a critical issue in the business world.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.141-170
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• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.71-110
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• 2010

1. Introduction Today Internet is recognized as an important way for the transaction of products and services. According to the data surveyed by the National Statistical Office, the on-line transaction in 2007 for a year, 15.7656 trillion, shows a 17.1%(2.3060 trillion won) increase over last year, of these, the amount of B2C has been increased 12.0%(10.2258 trillion won). Like this, because the entry barrier of on-line market of Korea is low, many retailers could easily enter into the market. So the bigger its scale is, but on the other hand, the tougher its competition is. Particularly due to the Internet and innovation of IT, the existing market has been changed into the perfect competitive market(Srinivasan, Rolph & Kishore, 2002). In the early years of on-line business, they think that the main reason for success is a moderate price, they are awakened to its importance of on-line service quality with tough competition. If it's not sure whether customers can be provided with what they want, they can use the Web sites, perhaps they can trust their products that had been already bought or not, they have a doubt its viability(Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra, 2005). Customers can directly reserve and issue their air tickets irrespective of place and time at the Web sites of travel agencies or airlines, but its empirical studies about these Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets are insufficient. Therefore this study goes on for following specific objects. First object is to measure service quality and service recovery of Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets. Second is to look into whether above on-line service quality and on-line service recovery have an impact on overall service quality. Third is to seek for the relation with overall service quality and customer satisfaction, then this customer satisfaction and loyalty intention. 2. Theoretical Background 2.1 On-line Service Quality Barnes & Vidgen(2000; 2001a; 2001b; 2002) had invented the tool to measure Web sites' quality four times(called WebQual). The WebQual 1.0, Step one invented a measuring item for information quality based on QFD, and this had been verified by students of UK business school. The Web Qual 2.0, Step two invented for interaction quality, and had been judged by customers of on-line bookshop. The WebQual 3.0, Step three invented by consolidating the WebQual 1.0 for information quality and the WebQual2.0 for interactionquality. It includes 3-quality-dimension, information quality, interaction quality, site design, and had been assessed and confirmed by auction sites(e-bay, Amazon, QXL). Furtheron, through the former empirical studies, the authors changed sites quality into usability by judging that usability is a concept how customers interact with or perceive Web sites and It is used widely for accessing Web sites. By this process, WebQual 4.0 was invented, and is consist of 3-quality-dimension; information quality, interaction quality, usability, 22 items. However, because WebQual 4.0 is focusing on technical part, it's usable at the Website's design part, on the other hand, it's not usable at the Web site's pleasant experience part. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2002; 2005) had invented the measure for measuring on-line service quality in 2002 and 2005. The study in 2002 divided on-line service quality into 5 dimensions. But these were not well-organized, so there needed to be studied again totally. So Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) re-worked out the study about on-line service quality measure base on 2002's study and invented E-S-QUAL. After they invented preliminary measure for on-line service quality, they made up a question for customers who had purchased at amazon.com and walmart.com and reassessed this measure. And they perfected an invention of E-S-QUAL consists of 4 dimensions, 22 items of efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, privacy. Efficiency measures assess to sites and usability and others, system availability measures accurate technical function of sites and others, fulfillment measures promptness of delivering products and sufficient goods and others and privacy measures the degree of protection of data about their customers and so on. 2.2 Service Recovery Service industries tend to minimize the losses by coping with service failure promptly. This responses of service providers to service failure mean service recovery(Kelly & Davis, 1994). Bitner(1990) went on his study from customers' view about service providers' behavior for customers to recognize their satisfaction/dissatisfaction at service point. According to them, to manage service failure successfully, exact recognition of service problem, an apology, sufficient description about service failure and some tangible compensation are important. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) approached the service recovery from how to measure, rather than how to manage, and moved to on-line market not to off-line, then invented E-RecS-QUAL which is a measuring tool about on-line service recovery. 2.3 Customer Satisfaction The definition of customer satisfaction can be divided into two points of view. First, they approached customer satisfaction from outcome of comsumer. Howard & Sheth(1969) defined satisfaction as 'a cognitive condition feeling being rewarded properly or improperly for their sacrifice.' and Westbrook & Reilly(1983) also defined customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction as 'a psychological reaction to the behavior pattern of shopping and purchasing, the display condition of retail store, outcome of purchased goods and service as well as whole market.' Second, they approached customer satisfaction from process. Engel & Blackwell(1982) defined satisfaction as 'an assessment of a consistency in chosen alternative proposal and their belief they had with them.' Tse & Wilton(1988) defined customer satisfaction as 'a customers' reaction to discordance between advance expectation and ex post facto outcome.' That is, this point of view that customer satisfaction is process is the important factor that comparing and assessing process what they expect and outcome of consumer. Unlike outcome-oriented approach, process-oriented approach has many advantages. As process-oriented approach deals with customers' whole expenditure experience, it checks up main process by measuring one by one each factor which is essential role at each step. And this approach enables us to check perceptual/psychological process formed customer satisfaction. Because of these advantages, now many studies are adopting this process-oriented approach(Yi, 1995). 2.4 Loyalty Intention Loyalty has been studied by dividing into behavioral approaches, attitudinal approaches and complex approaches(Dekimpe et al., 1997). In the early years of study, they defined loyalty focusing on behavioral concept, behavioral approaches regard customer loyalty as "a tendency to purchase periodically within a certain period of time at specific retail store." But the loyalty of behavioral approaches focuses on only outcome of customer behavior, so there are someone to point the limits that customers' decision-making situation or process were neglected(Enis & Paul, 1970; Raj, 1982; Lee, 2002). So the attitudinal approaches were suggested. The attitudinal approaches consider loyalty contains all the cognitive, emotional, voluntary factors(Oliver, 1997), define the customer loyalty as "friendly behaviors for specific retail stores." However these attitudinal approaches can explain that how the customer loyalty form and change, but cannot say positively whether it is moved to real purchasing in the future or not. This is a kind of shortcoming(Oh, 1995). 3. Research Design 3.1 Research Model Based on the objects of this study, the research model derived is