• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.175-204
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• 2017

The existing innovation policies and strategies mainly focused on the influencing factors for improvement of innovation outcome. However, these strategies were not always successful in driving innovative activities that make technology innovation disseminated. In this regard, innovation ecosystems approach has recently been coming to the force to establish a successful innovation strategy. The innovation ecosystems concept describes that innovation processes are evolved through collaborative networks of economic actors. In an innovation ecosystem, different organizations collaborate for technology development and its use. They interact for value co-creation by sharing mutual resources. The organizational networks are re-organized by dynamic changes of actors' interactions, which drive innovation mechanism of the networks. Recent studies on innovation ecosystems mostly have paid attention on developing theoretical frameworks to describe dynamics of an innovation ecosystem. There have hardly been empirical tests on the theoretical ecosystem models. In this vein, we investigated dynamics of an innovation ecosystem by analyzing structural characteristics of a collaborative network among organizations which are involved in the use of innovative technologies. Particularly, we examined the longitudinal changes of the interaction patterns among the organizations. This test was performed by an analysis of structural equivalence on the network dataset transformed from the organizational interactions. This result provides a guideline for an organization in developing an innovation strategy under a systemic perspective.

• Korean Parent-Child Health Journal
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.253-276
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• 2002

Mother and infant relationship has a great influence on child's developments. Expecially, mother and infant relationship is affected by mother and infant interactions during one year after birth and an omen of mother-infant interaction after birth is mother-fetus interaction. This study was conducted to develop mother-fetus interaction promotion program of talking and tactual stimulation aimed at enhancing sensitivity of primiparas and to evaluate the effect of the nursing intervention program on mother-fetus interaction and mother-infant play interaction. Non-eguivalent control group posttest design was used, and Blumer's symbolic interaction theory and Barnard's mother-infant interaction model was used a conceptual framework of this study. Fifty primiparas and infant(26 mother-infant dyads for intervention group and 24 dyads for control group) were recruited from three general hospital and an OBGY clinic located in Kwang Nung city. Data was collected from January 30th to December 20th in 2001. For the intervention group, programed education which focused on mother-fetus interaction in the 1st trimester. Telephone counselling was provided with interval of two weeks. For two groups, home visiting for data collection of mother- fetus interaction was conducted at 36 to 38 weeks of gestational age. And mother-infant play interactions were assessed at 4 to 6 weeks after birth using videotapes. Play situations were videotaped and two trained observers analyzed the tapes. The data were analyzed using chi-square test and Fisher's Exact Test to test the equivalence of two groups, and the effect of intervention progrom was determined with t-test and Wilcoxon Rank Sum test. The results were as follows: 1. The significant difference was found in mother-fetus interaction between two groups(t=2.085, P=0.0425). It indicated that intervention progrom was effective in improving mother-fetus interaction. 2. The significant difference was found in mother-infant play interaction between two groups(W=347.5, P=0.0001). In subscale analysis, three subscales showed significant differences between the groups: interactional behavior of mother(t=5.921, P=0.0001), interactional behavior of infant(t=5.736, P= 0.0000), and synchronic interactional behavior of mother and infant(t=7.940, P= 0.0000). In conclusion, this study has shown that the applied nursing intervention aimed at enhancing sensitivity of primiparas promoted mother-fetus interaction and mother-infant play interaction. Therefore, this study suggests that this nursing interventions to increase maternal sensitivity to the fetus's movement should be broadly applied to primiparas, which can be beneficial for formation of mother - infant relationship, and for promotion the social, affective, and cognitive developments of their children.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.49-60
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• 2013

Evacuation process has been considered as one of the most important elements to be managed in public facilities. Although the importance is highlighted through numerous literatures, disaster evacuation planning, particularly fire accidents, faces a number of human behavior related limitations for a similar application to different types of facilities/occupants. To overcome the obstacles including complexity in human behaviors, a number of simulation techniques with limited consideration on human behaviors are utilized to predict foreseeable problems in evacuation process. Therefore, this research aims to propose system dynamics models incorporating human behaviors considering different types of occupants under disaster evacuation events. Analysis on emergent human behaviors such as group forming and interactions under urgent situation are conducted based on the main stream theories in social science field. The results suggest the influences of human behavior factors including cooperative intention, information sharing, and mobility change to evacuation behavior. The implications are expected to provide safety consideration at planning/designing phase of buildings and help facility safety managers for evacuation planning with more realistic management approaches.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.695-707
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• 2012

This study focuses on the importance of macro socio-economic factors to explain the successes of Hallyu(Korean Wave). Studies of Hallyu have mainly discussed the contents of Hallyu products, emphasizing the excellence of Korean culture or cultural similarities in the East Asia. Analyzing cultural industrial factors, the study purports to contribute to more comprehensive explanations of Hallyu. To do so, the study analyzes the Japanese case, because Japan is considered as society where Hallyu is most institutionalized. The study suggests the importance of cultural exchanges between Korea and Japan as the background factors for Hallyu's success in Japan. In addition, the study shows the interactions of 'push factors' in Korea and 'pull factors' from Japan. As for push factors in Korea, this paper suggests the decline of music records(CD and DVD) industry and growing competition in broadcasting industry in Korea. Regarding the pull factors from Japan, robust music industry and changing broadcasting system are discussed. Although this paper try to suggest as many evidences as possible, the macro data suggested are not fully comprehensive enough to explain the importance of cultural industrial factors. In addition, micro-level analyses on the interactions among people who are working in the cultural industries are also necessary, and thus remained for the future studies.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.49
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• pp.677-696
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• 2017

Cartoons and consequently animation are an effective way of visualizing futuristic scenarios. Here we look at how animation is becoming ubiquitous and an integral part of this future today: the cybernetic and mediated society that we are being transformed into. Animation therefore becomes a form of speech between humans and this networked reality, either as an interface or as representation that gives temporal form to objects. Animation or specifically animated films usually are associated with character based short and feature films, fiction or nonfiction. However animation is not constricted to traditional cinematic formats and language, the same way that design and communication have become treated as separate fields, however according to $Vil{\acute{e}}m$ Flusser they aren't. The same premise can be applied to animation in a networked culture: Animation has become an intrinsic to design processes and products - as in motion graphics, interface design and three-dimensional visualization. Video-games, virtual reality, map based apps and social networks constitute layers of an expanded universe that embodies our network based culture. They are products of design and media disciplines that are increasingly relying on animation as a universal language suited to multi-cultural interactions carried in digital ambients. In this sense animation becomes a discourse, the same way as Roland Barthes describes myth as a type of speech. With the objective of exploring the role of animation as a design tool, the proposed research intends to develop transmedia creative visual strategies using animation both as narrative and as an user interface.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2015

Climate change caused by elevated greenhouse gases would affect crop production through different pathways in agricultural ecosystems. Because an agricultural ecosystem has complex interactions between societal and economical environment as well as organisms, climate, and soil, adaptation measures in response to climate change on a specific sector could cause undesirable impacts on other sectors inadvertently. An integrated system, which links individual models for components of agricultural ecosystems, would allow to take into account complex interactions existing in a given agricultural ecosystem under climate change and to derive proper adaptation measures in order to improve crop productivity. Most of models for agricultural ecosystems have been used in a separate sector, e.g., prediction of water resources or crop growth. Few of those models have been desiged to be connected to other models as a module of an integrated system. Threfore, it would be crucial to redesign and to refine individual models that have been used for simulation of individual sectors. To improve models for each sector in terms of accuracy and algorithm, it would also be needed to obtain crop growth data through construction of super-sites and satellite sites for long-term monitoring of agricultural ecosystems. It would be advantageous to design a model in a sector from abstraction and inheritance of a simple model, which would facilitate development of modules compatible to the integrated prediction system. Because agricultural production is influenced by social and economical sectors considerably, construction of an integreated system that simulates agricultural production as well as economical activities including trade and demand is merited for prediction of crop production under climate change.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.61-88
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• 2023

This case study examined whether a cooperative musical instrument playing could enhance interactions between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their neurotypical (NT) siblings. It involved three children with ASD aged 7-12 years and three NT siblings aged 6-11 years. Each group, comprising a child with ASD and their NT sibling, participated in a 40-minute sessions twice weekly for eight sessions over four weeks. The intervention included three stages: simultaneous action, complementary action, and achieving a joint goal. Evaluation criteria included the initiation and response behaviors of each child, and sequential interactive behaviors and cooperative behaviors between pairs were measured. Additionally, before and after the intervention, parents and NT sibling assessed their perceived sibling relationships. Results showed increased interactive and cooperative behaviors. Post-intervention, both parents and NT siblings rated the sibling relationship highly, despite little change in sibling conflict and competition consciousness. These findings indicate that interactive instrument playing can enhance perceptions of siblings as cooperative play partners and aid in teaching them how to collaborate during interactions.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.15-31
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• 2024

This study employs photovoice research methodology to investigate adolescents' experiences in sibling relationships and to analyze the impact of sibling interactions on their development and growth. The participants comprised eight high school students with one sibling (four males and four females) residing in the Incheon region. The research process encompassed several stages: participant recruitment, orientation, photovoice activity (focus group interviews), data analysis, and conclusion derivation. During the photovoice activity, participants engaged in a narrative process of photographing, interpreting, and discussing their experiences. The narratives were categorized into four primary themes: structure and environment, emotional interactions, roles, and parental subsystems. The conclusions drawn from the study are as follows: First, the similarity formed in sibling relationships during adolescence contributes to psychological stability. Second, roles and expectations based on birth order can cause stress for adolescents, indicating the need for equitable role adjustments within the family. Third, conflict in sibling relationships is crucial for enhancing problem-solving and social relationship skills. Lastly, consistent parenting attitudes significantly affect the emotional well-being of siblings. This study emphasizes the significance of fostering a deeper understanding of human development and family relationships through an exploration of adolescent sibling dynamics within home economics education.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.189-224
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• 2010

Nowadays Korean society has a fast growing population of North Korean immigrant youth. Especially, North Korean immigrant youth, who are discontinuing formal education, experience difficulties in social exclusion and adaptation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of adaptation and social support of North Korean immigrant youth discontinuing formal education, and to seek affirmative supporting plans and solutions for their adaptation. The methodology utilized for this study was a case study research. On the basis of the results and categorization, 'a network between overall categories and of early adaptation' was derived. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, the participants of this study experienced major difficulties during 'economical adaptation', and their economical adaptation was strongly interrelated with their 'educational adaptation'. The discontinuing of their education resulting from their fleeing period caused 'academic differential and age disparity.' Thus they could not enroll in the formal education system, and their insufficient educational background resulted in low wages and overwork due to manual labor jobs. Second, participants recognized 'interpersonal relations' as the most essential factor in adaptation, and 'social support' from the interpersonal relations played an important role in adaptation to and comfort in Korean society. 'Interactions with South Koreans' was recognized as a significant resource for gaining informational and appraisal support, but was not activated satisfactorily. On the other hand, interaction with North Korean immigrants was avoided by the reason that 'there's nothing to learn', however emotional support from North Korean immigrants of close relationship played an important role in participants' adaptation, especially in all aspects of psychological adaptation. Third, participants experienced a lot of difficulties and stresses in their 'physical health and psychological adaptation'. Their chronic diseases worsened by remaining untreated, and female perceived symptoms were observed more often than in male. Meanwhile, excessive 'stresses' from the unfamiliar environment of South Korea negatively affected their psychological adaptation. However, they were satisfied with sense of liberty and security from living in a democratic society.