• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.1-22
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• 2012

This study aims to investigate the effects of UCC parody content trait on user attitude and e-word of mouth. The conventional methods had two identified factors: UCC content factors - trust, usefulness, and information, and parody content factors - humor, satire, and mockery. It also analyzes the impacts gap in UCC attitude between a high-involvement user and a low-involvement user in UCC contents. In this study, our findings are broadly summarized as follows: first, both trust and information, of UCC content factors, showed a positive impact on UCC attitude; second, both humor and satire, of parody content factors, showed a positive impact on UCC attitude; third, UCC attitude showed a positive impact on e-word of mouth, and both humor and satire were highly correlated to UCC attitude in UCC involvement user groups. In conclusion, this study is expected to give useful suggestions on selecting variables for further studies on UCC parody contents.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.98-109
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• 2007

The era of Web 2.0, which is the web environment that offers end user oriented web platform, has arrived. Moreover, as the interest in UCC (User Created Contents) environment increases, it is a fact that the involvement of the users in multimedia contents is increasing rapidly. When the aim of Web 2.0, i.e. active involvement of the user, is considered, the necessity and the understanding about accessibility problem of the people who have difficulties about accessing web information, such as elderly and visually handicapped people, is increasing as well. This research analyzes the problems of virtually handicapped users to access web-based UCC services, and proposes an efficient implementation plan for a web-based UCC service that enables smooth access for them. Especially, the validity of the proposed method was verified by comparing the reaction time of the visually handicapped users with that when using the existing UCC services, through the implementation of the test page according to the plan proposed in this research.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.167-190
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• 2010

The research conducted here focuses on the effect of factors that affect the behavior of UCC (User Created Content) website users, other than user's rational recognition of how useful a UCC website can be. Most discussions in the existing literature on information systems have focused on users' evaluation how a UCC website can help to attain the users' own goals. However, there are other factors and this research pays attention to an individual's 'personality,' which is stable and biological in nature. Specifically, I have noted here that 'extroversion' and 'neuroticism,' the two common personality factors presented in Eysenck's most representative 'EPQ Model' and 'Big Five Model,' are the two personality factors that affect a site's 'usefulness,' by this I mean how useful does the user consider the website and its content. How useful a site is considered by the user is the other factor that has been regarded as the antecedent factor that influences the adoption of information systems in the existing MIS (Management Information System) research. Secondly, as using or creating a UCC website does not guarantee the user's or the creator's extrinsic motivation, unlike when using the information system within an organization, there is a greater likelihood that the increase in user's activities in relation to a UCC website is motivated by emotional factors rather than rational factors. Thus, I have decided to include the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable in the research model. Thirdly, when based on the S-O-R Paradigm of Mehrabian and Russell, the two cognitive factors and emotional factors are finally affected by stimulus, and thus these factors ultimately have an effect on an individual's respondent behavior. Therefore, this research has presented an assumption that the recognition of how useful the site and content is and what emotional pleasure it provides will finally affect the behavior of the UCC website users. Finally, the relationship between the recognition of how useful a site is and how pleasurable it is to useand UCC usage may differ depending on certain situational conditions. In other words, the relationship between the three factors may vary according to how much users are involved in the creation of the website content. Creation thus emerges as the keyword of UCC. I analyzed the above relationships through the moderating variable of the user's involvement in the creation of the site. The research result shows the following: When it comes to the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable it is extroverted users who have a greater likelihood to feel pleasure when using a UCC website, as was expected in this research. This in turn leads to a more active usage of the UCC web site because a person who is an extrovert likes to spend time on activities with other people, is sensitive to new experiences and stimuli and thus actively responds to these. An extroverted person accepts new UCC activities as part of his/her social life, rather than getting away from this new UCC environment. This is represented by the term 'Foxonomy' where the users meet a variety of users from all over the world and contact new types of content created by these users. However, neuroticism creates the opposite situation to that created by extroversion. The representative symptoms of neuroticism are instability, stress, and tension. These dispositions are more closely related to stress caused by a new environment rather than this creatingcuriosity or pleasure. Thus, neurotic persons have an uneasy feeling and will eventually avoid the situation where their own or others' daily lives are frequently exposed to the open web environment, this eventually makes them have a negative attitude towards the web environment. When it comes to an individual's personality and how useful site is, the two personality factors of extroversion and neuroticism both have a positive relationship with the recognition of how useful the site and its content is. The positive, curious, and social dispositions of extroverted persons tend to make them consider the future usefulness and possibilities of a new type of information system, or website, based on their positive attitude, which has a significant influence on the recognition of how useful these UCC sites are. Neuroticism also favorably affects how useful a UCC website can be through a different mechanism from that of extroversion. As the neurotic persons tend to feel uneasy and have much doubt about a new type of information system, they actively explore its usefulness in order to relieve their uncomfortable feelings. In other words, neurotic persons seek out how useful a site can be in order to secure their own stable feelings. Meanwhile, extroverted persons explore how useful a site can be because of their positive attitude and curiosity. As a lot of MIS research has revealed that the recognition of how useful a site can be and how pleasurable it can be to use have been proven to have a significant effect on UCC activity. However, the relationship between these factors reveals different aspects based on the user's involvement in creation. This factor of creationgauges the interest of users in the creation of UCC contents. Involvement is a variable that shows the level of an individual's mental effort in creating UCC contents. When a user is highly involved in the creation process and makes an enormous effort to create UCC content (classed a part of a high-involvement group), their own pleasure and recognition of how useful the site is have a significantly higher effect on the future usage of the UCC contents, more significantly than the users who sit back and just retrieve the UCC content created by others. The cognitive and emotional response of those in the low-involvement group is unlikely to last long,even if they recognize the contents of a UCC website is pleasurable and useful to them. However, the high-involvement group tends to participate in the creation and the usage of UCC more favorably, connecting the experience with their own goals. In this respect, this research presents an answer to the question; why so many people are participating in the usage of UCC, the representative form of the Web 2.0 that has drastically involved more and more people in the creation of UCC, even if they cannot gain any monetary or social compensation. Neither information system nor a website can succeed unless it secures a certain level of user base. Moreover, it cannot be further developed when the reasons, or problems, for people's participation are not suitably explored, even if it has a certain user base. Thus, what is significant in this research is that it has studied users' respondent behavior based on an individual's innate personality, emotion, and cognitive interaction, unlike the existing research that has focused on 'compensation' to explain users' participation with the UCC website. There are also limitations in this research. Firstly, I divided an individual's personality into extroversion and neuroticism; however, there are many other personal factors such as neuro-psychiatricism, which also needs to be analyzed for its influence on UCC activities. Secondly, as a UCC website comes in many types such as multimedia, Wikis, and podcasting, these types need to be included as a sub-category of the UCC websites and their relationship with personality, emotion, cognition, and behavior also needs to be analyzed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.43-72
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• 2009

Recently, user-created content (UCC) have emerged as popular medium of on-line participation among users. The Internet environment has been constantly evolving, attracting active participation and information sharing among common users. This tendency is a significant deviation from the earlier Internet use as an one-way information channel through which users passively received information or contents from contents providers. Thanks to UCCs online users can now more freely generate and exchange contents; therefore, identifying the critical factors that affect content-generating activities has increasingly become an important issue. This paper proposes a set of critical factors for stimulating contents generation and sharing activities by Internet users. These factors were derived from the theories of folklores such as tales and songs. Based on some shared traits of folklores and UCC content, we found four critical elements which should be heeded in constructing UCC contents, which are: context of culture, context of situation, skill of generator, and response of audience. In addition, we selected three major UCC websites: a specialized contents portal, a general internet portal, and an official contents service site, They have different use environments, user interfaces, and service policies, To identify critical factors for generating, sharing and transferring UCC, we traced user activities, interactions and flows of content in the three UCC websites. Moreover, we conducted extensive interviews with users and operators as well as policy makers in each site. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data, this research identifies nine critical factors that facilitate contents generation and sharing activities among users. In the context of culture, we suggest voluntary community norms, proactive use of copyrights, strong user relationships, and a fair monetary reward system as critical elements in facilitating the process of contents generation and sharing activities. Norms which were established by users themselves regulate user behavior and influence content format. Strong relationships of users stimulate content generation activities by enhancing collaborative content generation. Particularly, users generate contents through collaboration with others, based on their enhanced relationship and specialized skills. They send and receive contents by leaving messages on website or blogs, using instant messenger or SMS. It is an interesting and important phenomenon, because the quality of contents can be constantly improved and revised, depending on the specialized abilities of those engaged in a particular content. In this process, the reward system is an essential driving factor. Yet, monetary reward should be considered only after some fair criterion is established. In terms of the context of the situation, the quality of contents uploading system was proposed to have strong influence on the content generating activities. Among other influential factors on contents generation activities are generators' specialized skills and involvement of the users were proposed. In addition, the audience response, especially effective development of shared interests as well as feedback, was suggested to have significant influence on contents generation activities. Content generators usually reflect the shared interest of others. Shared interest is a distinct characteristic of UCC and observed in all the three websites, in which common interest is formed by the "threads" embedded with content. Through such threads of information and contents users discuss and share ideas while continuously extending and updating shared contents in the process. Evidently, UCC is a new paradigm representing the next generation of the Internet. In order to fully utilize this innovative paradigm, we need to understand how users take advantage of this medium in generating contents, and what affects their content generation activities. Based on these findings, UCC service providers should design their websites as common playground where users freely interact and share their common interests. As such this paper makes an important first step to gaining better understand about this new communication paradigm created by UCC.