The effects of actual human size display and stereoscopic presentation on users' sense of being together with and of psychological immersion in a virtual character.

This study examined the role of display size and mode in increasing users' sense of being together with and of their psychological immersion in a virtual character. Using a high-resolution three-dimensional virtual character, this study employed a 2×2 (stereoscopic mode vs. monoscopic mode×actual human size vs. small size display) factorial design in an experiment with 144 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Findings showed that stereoscopic mode had a significant effect on both users' sense of being together and psychological immersion. However, display size affected only the sense of being together. Furthermore, display size was not found to moderate the effect of stereoscopic mode.

The impact of online brand community type on consumer's community engagement behaviors: consumer-created vs. marketer-created online brand community in online social-networking web sites.

The current study proposed and tested a theoretical model of consumers' online brand community engagement behaviors, with particular attention given to online brand community type (consumer vs. marketer-created). By integrating attribution and social identity theories, this study investigated the causal linkages between intrinsic motives of altruism, social identification motivations, and online brand community engagement behaviors. The results showed that consumers' online brand community engagement intentions were indirectly influenced by the different types of communities through different levels of consumers' attributions to intrinsic motives of altruism. This study also found that, in the attribution processes, consumers' intrinsic motives of altruism motivated them to identify themselves socially with the online communities they join. Finally, this study demonstrated that the intrinsic motives of altruism and social identification motivations provided strong social incentives to motivate consumers to engage in subsequent online brand community behaviors.

The impact of personalized social cues of immediacy on consumers' information disclosure: a social cognitive approach.

This study examined how personalized social cues of immediacy can affect two types of information disclosure intentions (embarrassing information and descriptive information) directly and indirectly through two positive outcome expectations (social trust and customization outcome expectations) and two negative outcome expectations (embarrassment and information abuse outcome expectations) in the context of a personal health record (PHR) Web-site service. An online experiment was chosen and 252 participants were directed to visit a newly created PHR Web site. The results showed that, regardless of the two different type of information, participants' exposure to the high-immediacy level on the site increased their information disclosure intentions even when their privacy self-efficacy beliefs were controlled. Further, the results of path analyses suggest that such main effect on information disclosure is mediated by social cognitive variables of positive and negative outcome expectations.