• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.57-70
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• 2009

Considerable advance has been made on research on effect of steel pipe Umbrella Arch Method (UAM) and mechanical reinforcement mechanism through numerical analyses and experiments. Due to long analysis time of three-dimensional analysis and its complexity, un-quantitative two-dimensional analysis is dominantly used in the design and application, where equivalent material properties of UAM reinforced area and ground are used, For this reason, development of reasonable, theoretical, quantitative and easy to use design and analysis method is required. In this study, both field UAM tests and laboratory tests were performed in the residual soil to highly weathered rock; field tests to observe the range of reinforcement, and laboratory tests to investigate the change of material properties between prior to and after UAM reinforcement. It has been observed that the increase in material property of neighboring ground is negligible, and that only stiffness of steel pipe and cement column formed inside the steel pipe and the gap between steel pipe and borehole contributes to ground reinforcement. Based on these results and concept of Convergence Confinement Method (CCM), two dimensional axisymmetric analyses have been performed to obtain the longitudinal displacement profile (LDP) corresponding to arching effect of tunnel face, UAM effect and effect of supports. In addition, modified load distribution method in two dimensional plane-strain analysis has been suggested, in which effect of UAM is transformed to internal pressure and modified load distribution ratios are suggested. Comparison between the modified method and conventional method shows that larger displacement occur in the conventional method than that in the modified method although it may be different depending on ground condition, depth and size of tunnel, types of steel pipe and initial stress state. Consequently, it can be concluded that the effect of UAM as a beam in a longitudinal direction is not considered properly in the conventional method.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.111-131
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• 2007

As a brand becomes a core asset in creating a corporation's value, brand marketing has become one of core strategies that corporations pursue. Recently, for customer relationship management, possession and consumption of goods were centered on brand for the management. Thus, management related to this matter was developed. The main reason of the increased interest on the relationship between the brand and the consumer is due to acquisition of individual consumers and development of relationship with those consumers. Along with the development of relationship, a corporation is able to establish long-term relationships. This has become a competitive advantage for the corporation. All of these processes became the strategic assets of corporations. The importance and the increase of interest of a brand have also become a big issue academically. Brand equity, brand extension, brand identity, brand relationship, and brand community are the results derived from the interest of a brand. More specifically, in marketing, the study of brands has been led to the study of factors related to building of powerful brands and the process of building the brand. Recently, studies concentrated primarily on the consumer-brand relationship. The reason is that brand loyalty can not explain the dynamic quality aspects of loyalty, the consumer-brand relationship building process, and especially interactions between the brands and the consumers. In the studies of consumer-brand relationship, a brand is not just limited to possession or consumption objectives, but rather conceptualized as partners. Most of the studies from the past concentrated on the results of qualitative analysis of consumer-brand relationship to show the depth and width of the performance of consumer-brand relationship. Studies in Korea have been the same. Recently, studies of consumer-brand relationship started to concentrate on quantitative analysis rather than qualitative analysis or even go further with quantitative analysis to show effecting factors of consumer-brand relationship. Studies of new quantitative approaches show the possibilities of using the results as a new concept of viewing consumer-brand relationship and possibilities of applying these new concepts on marketing. Studies of consumer-brand relationship with quantitative approach already exist, but none of them include sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship, which presents theoretical proofs for measurement. In other words, most studies add up or average out the sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. However, to do these kind of studies, precondition of sub-dimensions being in identical constructs is necessary. Therefore, most of the studies from the past do not meet conditions of sub-dimensions being as one dimension construct. From this, we question the validity of past studies and their limits. The main purpose of this paper is to overcome the limits shown from the past studies by practical use of previous studies on sub-dimensions in a one-dimensional construct (Naver & Slater, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Chang & Chen, 1998). In this study, two arbitrary groups were classified to evaluate reliability of the measurements and reliability analyses were pursued on each group. For convergent validity, correlations, Cronbach's, one-factor solution exploratory analysis were used. For discriminant validity correlation of consumer-brand relationship was compared with that of an involvement, which is a similar concept with consumer-based relationship. It also indicated dependent correlations by Cohen and Cohen (1975, p.35) and results showed that it was different constructs from 6 sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. Through the results of studies mentioned above, we were able to finalize that sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship can viewed from one-dimensional constructs. This means that the one-dimensional construct of consumer-brand relationship can be viewed with reliability and validity. The result of this research is theoretically meaningful in that it assumes consumer-brand relationship in a one-dimensional construct and provides the basis of methodologies which are previously preformed. It is thought that this research also provides the possibility of new research on consumer-brand relationship in that it gives root to the fact that it is possible to manipulate one-dimensional constructs consisting of consumer-brand relationship. In the case of previous research on consumer-brand relationship, consumer-brand relationship is classified into several types on the basis of components consisting of consumer-brand relationship and a number of studies have been performed with priority given to the types. However, as we can possibly manipulate a one-dimensional construct through this research, it is expected that various studies which make the level or strength of consumer-brand relationship practical application of construct will be performed, and not research focused on separate types of consumer-brand relationship. Additionally, we have the theoretical basis of probability in which to manipulate the consumer-brand relationship with one-dimensional constructs. It is anticipated that studies using this construct, which is consumer-brand relationship, practical use of dependent variables, parameters, mediators, and so on, will be performed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.63-82
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• 2016

Individuals gather information online to resolve problems in their daily lives and make various decisions about the purchase of products or services. With the revolutionary development of information technology, Web 2.0 has allowed more people to easily generate and use online reviews such that the volume of information is rapidly increasing, and the usefulness and significance of analyzing the unstructured data have also increased. This paper presents an analysis on the lexical features of expert product reviews to determine their influence on consumers' purchasing decisions. The focus was on how unstructured data can be organized and used in diverse contexts through text mining. In addition, diverse lexical features of expert reviews of contents provided by a third-party review site were extracted and defined. Expert reviews are defined as evaluations by people who have expert knowledge about specific products or services in newspapers or magazines; this type of review is also called a critic review. Consumers who purchased products before the widespread use of the Internet were able to access expert reviews through newspapers or magazines; thus, they were not able to access many of them. Recently, however, major media also now provide online services so that people can more easily and affordably access expert reviews compared to the past. The reason why diverse reviews from experts in several fields are important is that there is an information asymmetry where some information is not shared among consumers and sellers. The information asymmetry can be resolved with information provided by third parties with expertise to consumers. Then, consumers can read expert reviews and make purchasing decisions by considering the abundant information on products or services. Therefore, expert reviews play an important role in consumers' purchasing decisions and the performance of companies across diverse industries. If the influence of qualitative data such as reviews or assessment after the purchase of products can be separately identified from the quantitative data resources, such as the actual quality of products or price, it is possible to identify which aspects of product reviews hamper or promote product sales. Previous studies have focused on the characteristics of the experts themselves, such as the expertise and credibility of sources regarding expert reviews; however, these studies did not suggest the influence of the linguistic features of experts' product reviews on consumers' overall evaluation. However, this study focused on experts' recommendations and evaluations to reveal the lexical features of expert reviews and whether such features influence consumers' overall evaluations and purchasing decisions. Real expert product reviews were analyzed based on the suggested methodology, and five lexical features of expert reviews were ultimately determined. Specifically, the "review depth" (i.e., degree of detail of the expert's product analysis), and "lack of assurance" (i.e., degree of confidence that the expert has in the evaluation) have statistically significant effects on consumers' product evaluations. In contrast, the "positive polarity" (i.e., the degree of positivity of an expert's evaluations) has an insignificant effect, while the "negative polarity" (i.e., the degree of negativity of an expert's evaluations) has a significant negative effect on consumers' product evaluations. Finally, the "social orientation" (i.e., the degree of how many social expressions experts include in their reviews) does not have a significant effect on consumers' product evaluations. In summary, the lexical properties of the product reviews were defined according to each relevant factor. Then, the influence of each linguistic factor of expert reviews on the consumers' final evaluations was tested. In addition, a test was performed on whether each linguistic factor influencing consumers' product evaluations differs depending on the lexical features. The results of these analyses should provide guidelines on how individuals process massive volumes of unstructured data depending on lexical features in various contexts and how companies can use this mechanism from their perspective. This paper provides several theoretical and practical contributions, such as the proposal of a new methodology and its application to real data.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.191-210
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• 2014

As mobile devices that can be connected to the Internet have spread and networking has become possible whenever/wherever, the Internet has become central in the dissemination and consumption of news. Accordingly, the ways news is gathered, disseminated, and consumed have changed greatly. In the traditional news media such as magazines and newspapers, expert editors determined what events were worthy of deploying their staffs or freelancers to cover and what stories from newswires or other sources would be printed. Furthermore, they determined how these stories would be displayed in their publications in terms of page placement, space allocation, type sizes, photographs, and other graphic elements. In turn, readers-news consumers-judged the importance of news not only by its subject and content, but also through subsidiary information such as its location and how it was displayed. Their judgments reflected their acceptance of an assumption that these expert editors had the knowledge and ability not only to serve as gatekeepers in determining what news was valuable and important but also how to rank its value and importance. As such, news assembled, dispensed, and consumed in this manner can be said to be expert-based recommended news. However, in the era of Internet news, the role of expert editors as gatekeepers has been greatly diminished. Many Internet news sites offer a huge volume of news on diverse topics from many media companies, thereby eliminating in many cases the gatekeeper role of expert editors. One result has been to turn news users from passive receptacles into activists who search for news that reflects their interests or tastes. To solve the problem of an overload of information and enhance the efficiency of news users' searches, Internet news sites have introduced numerous recommendation techniques. Recommendations based on popularity constitute one of the most frequently used of these techniques. This popularity-based approach shows a list of those news items that have been read and shared by many people, based on users' behavior such as clicks, evaluations, and sharing. "most-viewed list," "most-replied list," and "real-time issue" found on news sites belong to this system. Given that collective intelligence serves as the premise of these popularity-based recommendations, popularity-based news recommendations would be considered highly important because stories that have been read and shared by many people are presumably more likely to be better than those preferred by only a few people. However, these recommendations may reflect a popularity bias because stories judged likely to be more popular have been placed where they will be most noticeable. As a result, such stories are more likely to be continuously exposed and included in popularity-based recommended news lists. Popular news stories cannot be said to be necessarily those that are most important to readers. Given that many people use popularity-based recommended news and that the popularity-based recommendation approach greatly affects patterns of news use, a review of whether popularity-based news recommendations actually reflect important news can be said to be an indispensable procedure. Therefore, in this study, popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news portal was compared with top placements of news in printed newspapers, and news users' judgments of which stories were personally and socially important were analyzed. The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, content analyses were used to compare the content of the popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news site with those of the expert-based news recommendations of printed newspapers. Five days of news stories were collected. "most-viewed list" of the Naver portal site were used as the popularity-based recommendations; the expert-based recommendations were represented by the top pieces of news from five major daily newspapers-the Chosun Ilbo, the JoongAng Ilbo, the Dong-A Daily News, the Hankyoreh Shinmun, and the Kyunghyang Shinmun. In the second stage, along with the news stories collected in the first stage, some Internet news stories and some news stories from printed newspapers that the Internet and the newspapers did not have in common were randomly extracted and used in online questionnaire surveys that asked the importance of these selected news stories. According to our analysis, only 10.81% of the popularity-based news recommendations were similar in content with the expert-based news judgments. Therefore, the content of popularity-based news recommendations appears to be quite different from the content of expert-based recommendations. The differences in importance between these two groups of news stories were analyzed, and the results indicated that whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their recommendations of stories of personal importance, the expert-based recommendations ranked higher in social importance. This study has importance for theory in its examination of popularity-based news recommendations from the two theoretical viewpoints of collective intelligence and popularity bias and by its use of both qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative methods (questionnaires). It also sheds light on the differences in the role of media channels that fulfill an agenda-setting function and Internet news sites that treat news from the viewpoint of markets.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.20-40
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• 2018

This study examined resilience and career decision-making among specialized technical high school students with the aim of proposing preliminary data to suggest ways to improve self-efficacy in career decision-making through establishing proper resilience. The specific research questions were set as; first, to define the resilience status in relation to the students' personal characteristics among students; second, to describe the status of self-efficacy in career decision-making related to the students' personal characteristics among students; and last, to examine the influence of resilience on self-efficacy in career decision-making among specialized technical high school students. To accomplish such research objectives, the assessment survey was developed after reviewing the theoretical literature on specialized technical high school students' background, ego identity, and self-efficacy in career decision-making. The survey was comprised of 54 items including personal characteristics (3 items), resilience (27 items), and self-efficacy in career decision-making (24 items). A total of 990 students from industrial specialized high schools across the country completed the survey, and the responses from 775 students were used for the final analyses after excluding the surveys with unanswered items or untrustworthy responses. Results were as follows: The group with higher levels of school adaptation and satisfaction showed higher resilience and career decision-making than those with lower levels of school adaptation and satisfaction. Furthermore, for the influence of resilience on self-efficacy in career decision-making, the results showed that resilience had positive associations with self-efficacy in career decision-making, and all correlations and coefficients of determination showed a robust statistical significance. Therefore, to enhance self-efficacy in career decision-making, education that could help students better adapt to school, increase satisfaction with the school, and create positive resilience must precede.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.414-429
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• 1990

Numerous research reports have substantiated the role of stressful life events in relation to the onset of health changes. The relationship tends to hold across different age groups. Theoretically, adolescence has been considered a developmental crisis period of great stress, impoverished coping skills and high vulnerability to biological, social and psychological demands. The research problem addressed by this study was to examine the relationships between stressful life events and health symptom patterns, and the effect of two variables, coping and social, support, theoretically considered to mediate the relationship between stress and health symptoms in adolescents. The following five hypotheses were tested in this research : 1. Health symptoms are positively related to stressful life events in adolescents, 2. Health symptoms are negatively related to coping in adolescents, 3. Health symptoms are negatively related to social support in adolescents, 4. When coping is controlled, the relationship between health symptoms and stressful life events will decrease, and 5. When social support is controlled, the relationship between health symptoms and stressful life events will increase. The study subjects consisted of 1090 high school students of the metropolitan city of Seoul. The following sampling procedure was used : 1. Of the 169 high schools in nine school administrative districts in the city, a proportional sample of ten schools was selected. 2. One class from each of the freshman and sophomore was randomly selected and all the students who were in the sampled class were used as the study sample. The study was limited to freshman and sophomore adolescents, aged 15 to 18(mean＝16.6). Of the 1090 subjects 688(63%) were boys and 402(37%) were girls. An Adolescent Inventory of Stressful Life Events, a Health Symptom Questionnaire and an Adolescent Coping Inventory were adapted for this study. The Norbeck Social Support questionnaire was utilized to collect the data on perceived social support. Five high school teachers in the areas of school health and counselling reviewed the items of each questionnaire for content validity. A pilot study was undertaken to ascertain reliability. Fifty three high school students responded to the questionnaires and gave their opinions on the items. For stressful life events, health symptoms, coping, and social support, the Cronbach's alpha's on the study were .70, .94, .77, and .76, respectively. Research assistants attended all the sampled classes with the school proctor to explain the purpose and procedures of the study to the students. The questionnaires along with a ballpoint pen were distributed to the students who were asked to complete each item. The research assistants left the ballpoint pen with the students as a gift for their cooperation. An average of 50 minutes was required to complete the questionnaires. Using an SPSS, the first, three hypotheses were tested using Gamma, a measure of association for ordinal variables. Partial gamma was used to test the fourth and fifth hypotheses. Patterns of elaboration described by Babbie were selected to interpret the relationship of the three variable analyses. The significance of gamma was determined by Chisquare at a .05 level of significance. There was a positive relationship between health symptoms and stressful life events(Gamma＝.35, p＝.000). Thus the first hypothesis was supported. Unexpectedly, coping was positively related with health symptoms(Gamma＝.13, p＝.000). That is, the higher the coping levels, the greater number of health problems. The third hypothesis, the higher the level of social support, the fewer the health symptoms, was not accepted in this adolescent study group. When coping was controlled, under the condition of low coping the association between health symptoms and stressful life events increased significantly to a partial gamma of .39, and under the condition of high coping it was .30. According to the elaboration model, when one partial relationship is the same or greater than the original and the other is smaller, the control variable should be considered to be specifying the conditions. When social support was controlled the relationship between stressful life events and health symptoms increased under the condition of low social support, but with high social support, the relationship decreased. Both partial gamma were statistically significant at .05 level(.43 and .26 relatively). It can be interpreted that stressful life events are strongly and positively related to health symptoms under the condition of low social support, however this relationship can not be expected with high social support. Thus, the last two hypotheses were conditionally sustained. In this study, the relationships between stressful life events and health symptoms, and the specified me diating roles of coping and social support were found to have statistical interaction. This finding supports the theoretical position of this study. It suggests that stressful life events would create high susceptability to biological social and psychological health symptoms and coping and social support buffering the relationship between stressful life events and health symptom. The findings of this study have implications for nursing practice. When adolescents are confronted with non-developmental life events that are perceived as stressful, nurses should recognize the evidence of the stress-buffering effect of coping and social support on health symptoms and utilize the diverse sources of social support that are readily available to adolescents.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.71-96
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• 2011

Within the traditional medical delivery system, patients residing in medically vulnerable areas, those with body movement difficulties, and nursing facility residents have had limited access to good healthcare services. However, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provides us with a convenient and useful means of overcoming distance and time constraints. ICT is integrated with biomedical science and technology in a way that offers a new high-quality medical service. As a result, rapid technological advancement is expected to play a pivotal role bringing about innovation in a wide range of medical service areas, such as medical management, testing, diagnosis, and treatment; offering new and improved healthcare services; and effecting dramatic changes in current medical services. The increase in aging population and chronic diseases has caused an increase in medical expenses. In response to the increasing demand for efficient healthcare services, a telehealth service based on ICT is being emphasized on a global level. Telehealth services have been implemented especially in pilot projects and system development and technological research. With the service about to be implemented in earnest, it is necessary to study its overall acceptance by consumers, which is expected to contribute to the development and activation of a variety of services. In this sense, the study aims at positively examining the structural relationship among the acceptance factors for telehealth services based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Data were collected by showing audiovisual material on telehealth services to online panels and requesting them to respond to a structured questionnaire sheet, which is known as the information acceleration method. Among the 1,165 adult respondents, 608 valid samples were finally chosen, while the remaining were excluded because of incomplete answers or allotted time overrun. In order to test the reliability and validity of the assessment scale items, we carried out reliability and factor analyses, and in order to explore the causal relation among potential variables, we conducted a structural equation modeling analysis using AMOS 7.0 and SPSS 17.0. The research outcomes are as follows. First, service quality, innovativeness of medical technology, and social influence were shown to affect perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the telehealth service, which was statistically significant, and the two factors had a positive impact on willingness to accept the telehealth service. In addition, social influence had a direct, significant effect on intention to use, which is paralleled by the TAM used in previous research on technology acceptance. This shows that the research model proposed in the study effectively explains the acceptance of the telehealth service. Second, the research model reveals that information privacy concerns had a insignificant impact on perceived ease of use of the telehealth service. From this, it can be gathered that the concerns over information protection and security are reduced further due to advancements in information technology compared to the initial period in the information technology industry, and thus the improvement in quality of medical services appeared to ensure that information privacy concerns did not act as a prohibiting factor in the acceptance of the telehealth service. Thus, if other factors have an enormous impact on ease of use and usefulness, concerns over these results in the initial period of technology acceptance may become irrelevant. However, it is clear that users' information privacy concerns, as other studies have revealed, is a major factor affecting technology acceptance. Thus, caution must be exercised while interpreting the result, and further study is required on the issue. Numerous information technologies with outstanding performance and innovativeness often attract few consumers. A revised bill for those urgently in need of telehealth services is about to be approved in the national assembly. As telemedicine is implemented between doctors and patients, a wide range of systems that will improve the quality of healthcare services will be designed. In this sense, the study on the consumer acceptance of telehealth services is meaningful and offers strong academic evidence. Based on the implications, it can be expected to contribute to the activation of telehealth services. Further study is needed to assess the acceptance factors for telehealth services, such as motivation to remain healthy, health care involvement, knowledge on health, and control of health-related behavior, in order to develop unique services according to the categorization of customers based on health factors. In addition, further study may focus on various theoretical cognitive behavior models other than the TAM, such as the health belief model.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.9-24
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• 1997

Surfactant-aided in situ soil flushing has been proposed as an alternative for the expensive and time consuming 'pump and treat' technology in remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater Injected surfactants can effectively solubilize contaminants sorbed to the soil matrix or nonaqueous phase liquids(NAPLs) in residual saturation. The contaminants solubilized in groundwater are recovered and treated further. The theoretical background of the technology and the results of the field operations, mostly in the US. were summarized. In addition, the factors crucial to the successful application of the technology were discussed. Cost analyses and technical limitations in current applications were also discussed. In conclusion, it is likely that in situ surfactant flushing become a viable option for soil remediation in limited cases. Currently, further advances with respect to operation cost and to treatment efficiency are required for more extensive application of the technology. However, the current trends in soil remediation, specially the growing emphasis on risk based corrective action and natural attenuation, will increase the competitiveness of the technology. For example, removal of easily washable contaminants by short term soil flushing followed by long term monitoring and natural attenuation can greatly reduce the operation cost and time.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.217-244
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• 2008

Consumers' overall satisfaction on a specific library use is inferred to be primarily accrued from their performance perception and use satisfaction on the library information service system as recent information technology is being rapidly improved and more libraries are being equipped with advanced information technologies. However, prior research has been conducted only on general library service quality and visitors' satisfaction, leaving the important aspects of visitors' library use and information performance perception. Thus, the objectives of this research are to examine the effect of library use patterns such as general visit for book reading and more professional information search, coupled with service quality, on the library users' performance perception on the information system that in turn, affects library use satisfaction on the same information system. More specifically, this study examines whether library visitors perceive differenltly the information system performance according to their library use patterns such that professional library users may have less positive on information system service due to their higher expectation or more positive perception on it due to variety of information uses and positive judgment on advanced information system. Next, three dimensions of service quality, consisting of interaction, outcome, and physical evidence quality in visitors' library use situations, are hypothesized to affect performance perception on library information system. Thirdly, the performance perception on library information system is hypothesized to influence the system use satisfaction while these two constructs are to affect visitors' overall satisfaction. we develop the following research model in accordance with the above theoretical reasoning. All variables used in this study(General Use Patterns, Professional Use Patterns, Interaction Quality, Outcome Quality, Physical Evidence Quality, Information Performance Perception, Information Use Satisfaction, Overall Satisfaction) were defined operationally based on the underlying prior studies. A survey was conducted with prepared questionnaires to about 400 visitors of a specific university library. Among them, 353 proper questionnaires were finally used for the analyses. Two-step approach was used to test the hypotheses. First, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to guarantee the validity and reliability of variables. The results showed that all variables had not only convergent and discriminant validity, but also reliability. Then, research model was examined with a structural equation using LISREL 8.30 version. The fitness of the research model was found to be within the acceptable level. The findings of this study are as follows. The professional library use pattern was found to affect the users' performance perception on the library information system while the general library use pattern was not. Second, three dimensions of service quality (interaction, outcome, physical evidence) were found to influence the information system performance respectively while none of them was not to information use satisfaction. Third, library users' performance perception on the information system operation was found to affect the information system use satisfaction, both of which also influence users' overall satisfaction of the library. The findings of this study suggest that contemporary libraries strengthen their advanced information system operation in a way of user orientation and more importantly maximize their visitors' utilization of information system, accompanying proper material and various program development. This study conceptualized the new constructs of library users' performance perception on the information system and information use satisfaction which could better explain library users' overall satisfaction. Thus, furture study related with library service could utilize the constructs of information system performance and satisfaction as well as the variety of library use patterns in the users' viewpoints.