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The technological choices facing the manufacturing industry are vast and complex as the industry contemplates the increasing levels of digitization and automation in readiness for the modern compet...

This study investigates the factors influencing customers’ intention and adoption of telebanking in Jordan. The proposed model integrated perceived risk with the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. The results show that behavioral intention is significantly influenced by performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, price value, and perceived risk. Implications for practitioners, research limitations, and future directions are also discussed further in this article.

Ever since the announcement that UK higher education (HE) fees were to increase up to £9000, many universities have expressed concern about how to attract the best students while offering choice and promoting student mobility through broader access. This in turn has led to questioning how such complexity might be modelled using sophisticated operational research (OR) techniques. Because higher education institutions (HEIs) are now beginning to compete ‘against’ rather than ‘with’ each other, potential students are paying increased attention to where and what they will study, as well as graduate opportunities after their degree. Hence, the quality of education services becomes increasingly vital for HEIs in order to attract potential students. This study seeks to develop a framework of those factors affecting international (non-EU) students’ choice of institution. A number of factors were identified and collated from the existing literature providing a solid foundation on which to base this researc...

The widespread penetration of proximity mobile payment (MP) systems could drastically change the methods in which consumers purchase goods and services. However, earlier forecasts of the success of these systems have been substantially reduced due to lower than anticipated uptake of the supporting near field communication technology. This study explores the potential of a new model of consumer technology adoption, and its extension with trust and risk constructs, in explaining non-users' adoption of proximity MPs. Analysis of data collected from 244 UK consumers reveals that the extended model explains more variance in behavioural intention, but performance expectancy remains the strongest predictor across both models. The findings provide new and important theoretical and practical contributions, particularly for strategic development and marketing of proximity MPs in the UK.

Service quality of Mobile Government (mGov) is an important concept; however, to date, there has been relatively little work conducted in this emerging area. Based on an empirical study conducted among 1404 users of mGov in Mumbai, India, this study conceptualizes and identifies four service-quality dimensions—connectivity, interactivity, understandability, and authenticity—as the formative constructs of mGov service quality, and 16 measuring items to evaluate those dimensions as the reflective indicators.

Broadband offers several benefits to consumers over its preceding technology ‘narrowband’. Despite it offering such benefits, many countries are still experiencing low levels of adoption of broadband technology by consumers. This study presents an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that integrates perceived resources, self-efficacy and social influence into the TAM in order to investigate factors determining consumer adoption of broadband. The model was empirically tested employing data collected from a survey of broadband consumers in the United Kingdom. A regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of predictive constructs on behavioural intention to adopt broadband and actual adoption behaviour. Findings of the study indicated that all variables significantly affected consumers' behavioural intention to adopt broadband. The outcomes of the paper will be useful for the stakeholders such as internet service providers and governments interested in encouraging the adoption of broadband. The implications of this work to both researchers and practitioners is discussed.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed geospatial applications to plan and train for response to terrorist attacks involving aerosolized biological agents and for rapid post-event analysis and impact assessment. The planning applications have been used to assist with the deployment of air samplers in U.S. cities across the country as part of BioWatch and other federal programs. Post-event analytical applications are used to help identify where and how much biological agent might have been released, and who may have been exposed to the bioagent. The applications integrate atmospheric dispersion and source inversion models within a geographic information systems framework. To provide both a full-featured interactive user environment and a rich extensible development framework, the mature capabilities of commercial geospatial technologies are employed. The biodefense applications and some of their unique features, such as sensor siting, source inversion models, and the diurnal population datab...

Many studies of workplace accommodations have primarily focused on a particular disability or functional limitation. The need exists for a broad-based study of the types and frequency of accommodations recommended for a variety of functional limitations, including multiple limitations. The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of 266 persons who received vocational rehabilitation assessment to determine the frequency and types of recommended workplace accommodations. Computer systems/components and special tools/furnishings were the most frequently reported types of recommendations, regardless of functional limitation, whereas adaptive strategies were least likely to be suggested. In general, most job accommodation recommendations targeted the individual work space and were intended to assist in the completion of specific job tasks. Findings indicate that recommendations for workplace accommodations were surprisingly similar across all functional limitation groups.

The purpose of this article is to examine the success of the online public grievance redressal system from the perspective of the citizens of India. The empirical outcomes provided the positive significant connections between all 13 hypothesized relationships among the seven constructs. The empirical evidence and discussion presented in the study can help the Indian government to improve upon and fully utilize the potential of the online public grievance redressal system for transparent and corruption free country.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited’s (IRCTC) mobile ticketing was recently introduced in India. In this study of its adoption, three competing attribute-sets are compared. This study aims to reveal the attribute-set best predicting its adoption. The research model was empirically tested and validated using SPSS. Four attributes from the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, four from the PCI theory, and four from Tornatzky and Klein’s meta-analysis significantly affected behavioral intentions. Only complexity failed to influence use intentions, and behavioral intention and riskiness significantly impacted adoption.

The computer-supported Project Work classroom learning environment discussed in this paper represents a paradigm shift from teacher-centered to student-centered teaching and learning in Singapore schools. Besides the face-to-face weekly lessons in existing Project Work classrooms, the students engaged in computer-supported online forum discussions. Two hundred and sixty students and 26 teachers from seven high schools participated in this study. Their perceptions of this new learning environment were assessed using a modified version of the Web-based Learning Environment Instrument (WEBLEI). In addition, the instrument was also validated. The WEBLEI exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability and discriminant validity. Comparing the actual and preferred perceptions of the students and teachers revealed that there were differences between the actual and preferred perceptions for both students and teachers. With these in mind, the implications for using technology to support the face-to-...

Although motivation is an important aspect in instructional design, few studies have examined the effect of motivation in Web site design. Most of the existing Web site evaluation checklists evaluate for content accuracy but not the motivational quality of Web sites. For this study, we developed the Motivation Analysis Rating Kit (M@RK) to address motivational design elements and to assess children’s perception of Web design elements and the Web features they most prefer in “cool” Web sites. The research employed a repeated measures design on a single sample (N = 71) with two within-subjects factors (Web sites and motivational elements). Paired-sample t-tests were used to compare student ratings among the various motivational elements. Findings show that children are able to and do select Web sites critically. They seem to be most motivated by Web sites that are rated high for both content and design elements.

Ninety college juniors were randomly assigned to one of three treatments differentiated by access to feedback. In each treatment, subjects completed a computer-based tutorial that presented the five coordinate concepts defined as intellectual skills (Gagne, 1977). In the Early Adaptive Control treatment subjects were required to select from four types of available feedback, varying in amount of information, after responding to each of the first five practice items. The type of feedback to be displayed continued to be under the control of the learner for the remaining items if the learner’s performance score was at or above 70%. If learner performance dropped below criterion the most elaborative feedback was displayed until criterion was reached again. The Late Adaptive Control treatment used a similar strategy except that it began “adapting” feedback control after the tenth item. Subjects in the third treatment, Program Control, automatically received the most elaborated feedback after each respon...

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new approach for determining the relationship between aggregate pollutant emissions and ambient concentrations in an air basin. The approach is to use a detailed meteorological model to generate a large set of pseudodata on specific source-receptor relationships. This data is then statistically reduced to a simple relationship between aggregate emissions and pollution concentration averages or maxima. In the paper, we give a justification for the approach and an empirical application to the Petrified Forest region of Arizona.

Thirty-seven sixth graders were assigned to one of two computer-based treatments to learn about the propaganda coordinate concepts of bandwagon, transfer, testimonial, and repetition. In both treatments, students were allowed to choose to see additional instruction in the form of paraphrased definitions, additional expository and practice instances, and analytical feedback. In one treatment, general statements of encouragement to select options were included. In the second treatment, no such encouragement was included. Scores on the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test and the Internal Achievement Rating Survey were collected for all students. Students who were shown encouragement statements did elect to see more options than did those without encouragement statements. No differences were found on the posttest scores for the two groups. Consistent with findings from earlier studies, students who chose to see one type of option also chose to see other types.