ABSTRACT
This paper shines the light on how the critical outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic affected restaurant consumer's purchase behaviour. With a focus on omnichannel food ordering technology the context captures the rapid development of online sales channels for restaurants in Hong Kong. Particularly focusing on integrated ordering technologies with digital payment capabilities, such as: mobile applications, website, QR code self-service ordering applications. We conduct a longitudinal field experiment between June 2020 and January 2022 in cooperation with one of the vendors for omnichannel point of sale systems (OPOSS) in Hong Kong. The result captures a panel dataset with the total number of 23 restaurants that have been opened in a continuous order throughout the pandemic. The fixed effect regression model employs an additional dataset on Covid-19 daily cases obtained from census Hong Kong SAR Government data. We apply a moderating effect based on the type of sales channel used in the restaurants. The results show that during the pandemic, some restaurants implemented omnichannel technology to sustain restaurant sales. We observe that consumers start to use omnichannel restaurant ordering technologies during the pandemic outbreak. More importantly, we find supporting evidence that after the outbreak, the omnichannel technology use behaviour among consumers remains continuous. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of information communication technology-enabled work during non-working hours (ICT-enabled WNWHs), as a source of stress, on employee behavioral outcomes -in-role job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) that benefit organizations and OCBs that benefit individuals, through emotional responses - work exhaustion, nonwork exhaustion and organization-based self-esteem. As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdowns demonstrated that employees frequently engage in ICT-enabled WNWHs, studying stress induced by ICT-enabled WNWHs is essential for understanding employee adaptation to the work-from-home trend that emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative survey comprising 1,178 employees in China was conducted, and the data reliability and validity were confirmed. Partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis was employed to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe study results empirically proved that, although ICT-enabled WNWHs had significant effects on employee behavioral outcomes, the related emotional responses were the mediators of the stress transmission mechanism that directly affected employee behavioral outcomes. Notably, work exhaustion and organization-based self-esteem partially mediate the stress transmission mechanism, while nonwork exhaustion exerts a full mediating effect.Originality/valueThis study proposes the stress transmission mechanism of ICT-enabled WNWHs and delineates emotional responses regarding the work environment attributes of ICT-enabled WNWHs, an approach rarely seen in prior IS studies. To our best knowledge, this study is the first to identify and empirically demonstrate organization-based self-esteem as one among the emotional responses to ICT-enabled WNWHs. Furthermore, it expands understanding of the holistic impacts of ICT-enabled WNWHs, which is lacking in information systems (IS) literature.
ABSTRACT
Objectives: A 36-year-old Caucasian woman developed acute hepatitis and morbilliform eruption arising ten days after the first dose of the mRNA BNT162b2 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Materials and Methods: The patient was asymptomatic apart from the skin rash. Liver function tests showed predmoninantly severe transaminitis (AST 523 U/L, ALT 1550 U/L, GGT 151 U/L, ALP 128 U/L, bilirubin 12 umol/L). Only the ANA 1:160 was abnormal. Other serology for autoimmune and infectious diseases were negative. Multiphase computed tomography of the abdomen was unremarkable. The SARS-CoV-2 anti-spike IgG titre was 67.5 AU/mL (cut-off[15 AU/mL). The skin histology revealed spongiotic reaction pattern with focal interface lymphocytic inflammation. Multiple eosinophils and a few plasma cells were present. The epidermal lymphocytes were composed of CD2, CD3, C4, CD5, CD7 and CD8-positive T cells, with a CD4:CD8 ratio of 1:5. A small number stained positive with TIA1, PD1 and granzyme B. CD56 staining was negative. A liver biopsy was performed after 2 days of steroids. Liver histology showed mild steatosis and mild inflammatory portal infiltrate comprising mainly of small lymphocytes that were CD3 positive with retained staining for CD7 and CD8. Lobular architecture was preserved with inconspicuous interface hepatitis or piecemeal necrosis. Results: The patient was treated with intravenous hydrocortisone (400 mg/day) followed by prednisone (50 mg/day). There was rapid improvement in her liver function tests and cutaneous manifestations (Fig. 1). Conclusion: mRNA COVID-19 vaccine induced hepatitis is a rare phenomenon that is steroid-responsive and has associations with cutaneous eruptions. Our patient's lack of hepatic histological abnormalties is most likely due to early immunosuppression. She had epidermal lymphocytosis with predominance of CD8-positive T cells that were not of cytotoxic phenotype and we are uncertain as to their significance. There is limited guidance on the safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in those who have had developed significant hepatic and cutaenous reactions. Further work is needed.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of online learning. As learner autonomy is relatively high in online environments, learners must engage in self-regulated learning (SRL) to achieve optimal learning outcomes. Because most learners are unable to consistently engage in SRL, gamification interventions are being implemented to improve SRI, engagement;however, mixed results cast doubt on the efficacy of this approach. Massively open online courses (MOOCs), a type of online learning environment, are currently experiencing rapid growth due to widespread adoption by many institutions. In MOOCs, there is no instructor intervention;hence, students have difficulty regulating their own learning and are easily distracted. Therefore, this study investigates whether mixed-research results regarding the efficacy of gamification can be attributed to lack of attention to individual learner traits during design. For this purpose, the study analyzes MOOCs as an instance of online learning by applying SRL theory and gamification principles. We altered a traditional MOOC platform to provide different types of gamified performance feedback to facilitate learners' SRI, engagement. We then examined whether this matched with goal orientation, an individual learner trait to influence SRL and learning outcomes. Using learning-analytics tools, we tracked 760 college students' SRI, engagement on a MOOC platform over five weeks. As theorized, SRL engagement and learning outcomes of participants who had a strong performance-avoidance goal orientation increased with positively framed performance feedback that involved no social comparisons;however, the same feedback had a negative impact on participants with a strong mastery goal orientation. Our findings add to SRL theory by demonstrating that gamification designs can enhance SRL engagement and learning outcomes in online learning, but with a caveat-this occurs only when there is a match with learner traits-confirming the gamification principle stating that task improvements and meaningful engagement can only occur through thoughtful gamification design.
ABSTRACT
Due to line-of-sight communication links and distributed deployment, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have attracted substantial interest in agile Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) service provision. In this paper, by clustering multiple users into independent communities based on their geographic locations, we design a 5G-enabled UAV-to-community offloading system. A system throughput maximization problem is formulated, subjected to the transmission rate, atomicity of tasks and speed of UAVs. By relaxing the transmission rate constraint, the mixed integer non-linear program is transformed into two subproblems. We first develop an average throughput maximization-based auction algorithm to determine the trajectory of UAVs, where a community-based latency approximation algorithm is developed to regulate the designed auction bidding. Then, a dynamic task admission algorithm is proposed to solve the task scheduling subproblem within one community. Performance analyses demonstrate that our designed auction bidding can guarantee user truthfulness, and can be fulfilled in polynomial time. Extensive simulations based on real-world data in health monitoring and online YouTube video services show that our proposed algorithm is able to maximize the system throughput while guaranteeing the fraction of served users.