Susan A. Brown’s research while affiliated with University of Arizona and other places

Data breaches are a major threat to organizations from both financial and customer relations perspectives. We developed a nomological network linking post-breach compensation strategies to key outcomes, namely continued shopping intentions, positive word-of-mouth, and online complaining, with the effects being mediated by customers' justice perceptions. We conducted a longitudinal field study investigating Target's data breach in 2013 that affected more than 110 million customers. We examined customers' expectations toward compensation immediately after the breach was confirmed (survey 1) and their experiences after reparations were made (survey 2). Evidence from polynomial regression and response surface analyses of data collected from 388 affected customers showed that customers' justice perceptions were influenced by the actual compensation provided as well as the type and extent of compensation an organization could and should have provided, i.e., customers' compensation expectations. Interestingly, both positive and negative expectation disconfirmation led to less favorable justice perceptions compared to when expectations were met. Justice perceptions were, in turn, associated with key outcomes. We discuss implications for research on data security, information systems, and justice theory.

This study aims to identify and investigate the various trust targets and their transfer mechanism in a blockchain-enabled healthcare mutual aid platform. We first conduct a qualitative online interview toward initial users in the platform and identify three types of trust (i.e., trust in technology, trust in members, and trust in platform) that play salient roles in promoting users' usage intentions. We then develop a preliminary theoretical model based on the interview findings and conduct a survey to test our research model. The empirical results suggest that three platform mechanisms, namely member credibility, blockchain certificate, and structural assurance, significantly facilitate the three trust targets, which subsequently enhance individuals' behavioral intentions. A mediation analysis further demonstrates that the three trust targets partially or fully mediate the influences of three platform mechanisms on behavioral intentions through different path relationships. Our study contributes to the extant literature by uncovering the nomological network among three specific trust targets and explicating their antecedents as well as behavioral outcomes in the emerging context of blockchain-enabled applications.

Social media (SM) has evolved into a common technology to establish and maintain relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. Yet, recently SM users have used the platforms less for their personal relationship management. Thus, the opportunities for companies to interact with their customers were reduced. This paper conceptualizes how companies need to approach a commercial friendship with SM users so that the user provides access for the firm representative to their personal sphere online. The focus is on understanding the heuristics users would apply based on certain decision factors. We build on the relationship marketing literature that suggests the willingness of SM members to engage in relationships with business representatives is tied to social, psychological, economic, and customization benefits. Our short paper presents the research model and describes the proposed research method to aid in understanding the factors motivating SM users to accept commercial representatives as a real friend.

This research examines the relationship between service design and citizen satisfaction with e‐government services. Based on a multidimensional conceptualization of service, we define three key service perceptions, each comprising different design characteristics, that jointly influence perceived service quality and citizen satisfaction with e‐government services. The service perceptions and their corresponding design characteristics are: (1) perceptions of a core service—accuracy, completeness, self‐service capability, and convenience; (2) perceptions of facilitating services—accessibility, privacy protection, security protection, and user support; and (3) perceptions of supporting services—personalization capability and transparency. We tested our research model using data from a two‐stage survey of 3,065 users of three e‐government services. The results showed that all design characteristics contributed to their respective service perceptions that influenced perceived service quality that in turn influenced citizen satisfaction. The finding of a three‐way interaction among the service perceptions supported their complementary role in influencing perceived service quality.

Past years have seen rising engagement among caregivers in online health communities. Although studies indicate that this caregiver-generated online health information benefits patients, how such information can be perceived easily and correctly remains unclear. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring mechanisms to improve the perceived helpfulness of online health information. We propose a multi-method framework, including a novel Medical-Enriched DEep Learning (MEDEL) feature extraction method, econometric analyses, and a randomized experiment. The results show that when the medical language of health information is informal, the senior care information is more helpful. Our findings provide a theoretical foundation to understand the influence of language formality on many other business communications. Our proposed multi-method approach can also be generalized to investigate research questions involving complex textual features. Forum sites could leverage our proposed approach to improve the helpfulness of online health information and user satisfaction.

Information overload has been an important issue in today’s big data era where a huge amount of unstructured user-generated content in different languages is being created on the Web in every minute. Social media search systems could help with it by effectively and efficiently collecting, storing, organizing and presenting user-generated content across the Web in an organized and timely manner. However, little research has been done to examine factors that could influence user acceptance on this new type of systems. To address it, this study develops a research model by integrating Mental Workload (MWL), Task-Technology Fit (TTF), and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The model is tested on a security-related social media search system. The results indicate that both MWL and TTF can significantly influence user acceptance. We also operationalize the multi-dimensional latent construct of MWL by developing survey-based measurement items for different dimensions.

Nearly 100% of Americans aged 18 to 29 own a cell phone of some kind, and there has been a move toward using mobile devices for financial services; however, such a move also implies increased opportunities for fraud. Although technology has traditionally been blamed for showing some vulnerabilities, individuals are in a better position to deter technology-based fraud when they are concerned about revealing their personal information. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of protection motivation theory (PMT) on privacy concerns (PC) and the consequences of this influence in trust, specifically in the context of mobile banking (m-banking). We tested our research model in an online survey with 351 American m-banking users from Amazon Mechanical Turk. We addressed one literature gap that is the omission of fear in PMT as an antecedent of PC, and one opportunity that is to reuse the most recent PC scale (Internet Privacy Concerns – IPC) as initially conceptualized. We found that the fear of losing information from m-banking activates PC and induces the user to have less trust in this platform. In addition, we proposed an improvement to the IPC scale by adding a new second-order factor named exposure management (individuals’ consciousness about the control users feel they have over their personal information).