Benefits and consequences of controversial products are debated in the public arena for the protection of consumers and to evaluate the market decisions made by industry and government. The food industry continues to develop new foods as well as processes to bring food to the market. Some of these processes bring to issue the safety of the products or the impact on the market, workers, or environment. Such controversial products or processes include BSE (mad cow disease), genetically modified organisms (GMO), antibiotics, pesticides, carbon monoxide modified atmosphere packaging, and food irradiation. This thesis sets out with the objective of understanding, developing, and utilizing methodologies similar to those used in other contingent valuation studies to evaluate how consumers are influenced by varying information using food irradiation as a focus subject. Food irradiation is a technological food process that continues to be debated and much information favoring and opposing it is readily available to the public, making it a suitable subject about which to study information effects and consumer acceptance. To accomplish this objective, consumers were surveyed in grocery stores in the state of Texas during the spring of 2006. As irradiated foods are not currently widely available, a hypothetical product, irradiated mangoes, was used to elicit information from survey participants. The survey was comprised of two parts. First general information regarding consumer knowledge and trust of food irradiation as well as willingness to pay (WTP) was collected. Second, varying information regarding food irradiation (positive, negative, or mixed) was presented and questioning was reaccomplished. Evaluation of the survey data was made in three papers, each comprising its own chapter in this thesis. The first paper evaluates consumers’ initial trust and knowledge of food irradiation and how these factors interact with information in changing WTP. The second paper assesses responses for a “cheap talk” effect. Cheap talk is informing consumers of the existence of hypothetical bias in studies of this type with the goal being to reduce this bias to real life response equivalence. The third paper evaluates not only WTP, but also how consumer trust is affected by varying forms of information.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among religious coping, acceptance of diabetes, social support, diabetes management, and quality of life among individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Religious coping, acceptance of diabetes, and social support were hypothesized to encourage adherence to self - management behaviors thus enhancing quality of life. A convenience sample of 247 T2DM patients was recruited from local churches, clinics, a diabetes support group, and a diabetes education class. Participants completed a 10-page survey comprising the following reliable and valid scales: Religious Problem Solving Scale-Short Form, Ideas About Diabetes-Revised Scale (IAD-R), the PRQ2000, the Religious Support Scale, Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities-Revised, and the Diabetes Quality of Life Measure. The mean age of the respondents was 54 years, with the majority being female (68%), Caucasian (53%), and of Protestant religious affiliation (58%). Gender and ethnic differences were found for religious coping, acceptance of diabetes, and selfmanagement behaviors. African Americans and women were more religious and used more religious coping. African Americans also felt more inhibited by diabetes and women were more likely to regularly examine their feet. Gender, general social support, and feeling less inhibited by diabetes (subscale of acceptance) were significant predictors of quality of life in the multivariate (regression) analysis (F (19, 219) = 7.777, p < .001; adjusted R2 = .351). Results of this study support past research indicating the influence of gender, social support, and feeling inhibited by diabetes on respondents' quality of life. Attention to patients' level of social support and diabetes education that teaches patients how to integrate the disease into their life may be critical to improving quality of life.

The study aims to find key factors of information system success in a non-profit education and training institute. The institute under study has five centers providing on-job training and long-term cultivation in the area of information technology. Facing the pressure of continuing growth and increasing competition, the institute has begun the e-projects since many years ago. After several years of system development and implementation, a survey of users¡¦ satisfaction showed that only part of the systems was acceptable. This study adopts the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the primary research framework along with the service quality model and comes up with five success factors including perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, system quality, information quality and service quality. Moreover, user satisfaction is taken as dependent variable of the framework. In order to differentiate the successful system from the unsuccessful system, a curriculum management system and a knowledge management system was selected to represent the successful and unsuccessful systems respectively. The case study method and questionnaire survey wre both used as research method. In the case study, the development and implementation background, process and results were investigated. The survey method was used to verify the differences between the two systems using the five factors mentioned previously. The results of questionnaire survey and statistical test clearly distinguish the two systems and support case study findings. The results of this study can serve as guideline to improve the users¡¦ satisfaction as well as to improve the information system success.

While the low profit times is coming, most of the enterprises hope to strengthen the interior information construction to promote the ability of obtaining profit or enhancing the management skill. With the progress of information technology, descent of hardware price, more friendly user interface, fast computer processing speed and the simplification of information technology, all these factors will aid business management for the enterprises. Recently electronic-business has turned into the mainstream, to implement the information system and build the e-business enterprise nowadays are becoming the hot topic in business management. When the macroeconomic environment is changing quickly, now the state-owned enterprise is facing the unprecedented pressure of reformation. The reformation includes the simplification of manpower, the objective effect management and running the state-owned enterprise by the private stockholder. In order to face the changes and promote the efficiency, all enterprises step into implementing all kind of information systems to enhance the management efficiency. With the electronic trend, a state-owned enterprise has also implemented many information systems, however, the process turned out to have some success and some failure. What are the critical success factors and how do they work? It is worth to do research in depth. This thesis will take ¡§technology acceptance model¡¨ for basis and add something like ¡§computer self-efficacy¡¨ and ¡§task-technology fit theory¡¨ for external variance to discuss what the critical success factors are to implement the information systems for the state-owned enterprise. Besides, we hope the conclusion of the critical success factors will be the reference for other state-owned enterprises or government departments.

The authority of domestic construction industry, the construction and planning agency, is in view of the behind degree than other industry in the wave of electronic business. The government especially has budgeted to subsidize and encourage the construction industries to combine the upper and lower supplier to cooperate and share the information with each other through the electronic business and then promote the competition. The research mainly takes technology acceptance model for basis to discuss the acceptance degree of the lower supplier and the utilization in ¡§electronic business information system construction industries¡¨. It is useful to understand and mobilize the success factors and the influential degree for ¡§the electronic business of construction industries¡¨. The conclusion of this thesis shows that the critical success factors of the electronic business of the construction industries are orderly external computer support and training, internal computer support and training, user experience, website quality, technology and task-technology fit theory. When the construction industries are implementing the relative information systems, the above influential factors could be used as the strategy reference of adjustment.

In the ever-changing environment, the mobile business market is burgeoning nowadays.In order to extend their management to end users, most enterprises decide to adopt mobility.During adoption, the greatest challenge happens to employees who are forced to make use of mobile equipment. What will affect employees when they are to accept new technological equipment? What is the implication of management? How should enterprises assist their employees when introducing new technology? Against the backdrop, more emphasis should be put on the study of user acceptance in order to enhance the benefits of new systems. At present, studies and theories concerning information technology acceptance are mostly applied to personal computers and systems, but seldom to mobility. In the filed of technology acceptance, numerous theoretical models have been established; however, each model is different from one another in constructs, variables and factors. As a result, based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this Study discusses those factors that influence mobile staffers of the case study about PDA mobile system and equipment adoption. By means of literature collection and sorting, this Study adopts questionnaires to inspect a total of 185 mobile staffers of the case study. Because this Studyhas included all mobile staffers of the case study, the findings will make great contributions toboth the case study and relevant industries. According to the findings, Performance Expectancy, Social Influence, and Facilitating Conditions prove to be major influential factors of Behavioral Intention, while Effort Expectancy is not directly related to Behavioral Intention. In the analysis of moderators, this Study finds out that experience, educational background and age of users have apparent moderating effects on various paths of the model. As for the implication of management, in order to strengthen mobile staffers¡¦ intention to use new systems and to increase system benefits, enterprises should first promote the usage of new systems, communicate with and encourage their employees when introducing new systems. Second, enterprises should better the quality and quantity of vocational trainings.Third, new systems should be equipped with functions which help mobile staffers improve their performance. Fourth, new systems should be easy to use and learn according to different designs for usage. In addition, mobile staffers should realize those benefits which new systems offer, and have more opportunities to practice using new systems. Therefore, mobile staffers can have higher perception of Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, and Facilitating Conditions concerning new systems. As for the analysis of moderators, this Study finds out that the variable of Social Influence has a strong indirect relationship to mobile staffers who are older, graduated from senior high school, or have worked for over 12 years. Hence, the management level should educate and encourage the above-mentioned staffers, in order to enhance their intention to use new systems.

As the continuous waves of new technology, there has been an explosion of electronic access to government information. It has undeniably not only led to a dramatic change in the way people communicate, but also increased the ability of institutions, businesses and individuals to channel information. Among various formats of electronic access, the World Wide Web (WWW) is the most powerful way to disseminate information. Governments are well placed to take advantage of the Internet's ability to disseminate electronic documents quickly, cheaply and efficiently. Moreover, as new communication technologies make it possible to establish a closer relationship between citizens and their governments, it is increasingly likely that the Internet's role in the political process will evolve beyond the mere dissemination of information. The intention of this study is to compare the Technology Acceptance Model to a traditional version and a decomposed version of the Theory of Planned Behavior in terms of their contribution to the understanding of the government web sites usage. Data from a field study of 207 students are used to test these models using structural equation modeling. The results are concluded as follows: The coefficient of determination R2BI of the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior is about 0.4, in other words, approximately 40% of the variation in behavioral intention is explained by linear regression of behavioral intention on attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. In the view of behavioral intention, the explanatory power of the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior is equivalent to the Technology Acceptance Model, and is moderately better than the Theory of Planned Behavior. There are several managerial implication. First, the designers of the government web sites should pay more attention to understand the information need of users, not just put effort on technical level. Second, Ease of use with readable format is the best discipline of the government web sites design. Third,. The designers may have to enrich the content of the government web sites so as to enhance intention of users.

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study is to investigate the usage of web-based teachers' training in elementary and high school. This study adopts motivational orientations and TAM to explore the related factors that affect the usage of web-based teachers' training. The study depends on literature analysis and uses the questionnaire to collect data. A total of 658 subjects attending teachers' training courses are from K12 Digital School. The collected data is processed and analyzed with SPSS for Windows 10.0, and statistical methods adopted in this study are descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, regression analysis and so on. The main findings show that there are 8 motivational orientations for web-based teachers' training and motivational orientations are significant differences among subjects in different age, status, school level and teaching years. Furthermore, computer self-efficacy, social relationships and attitude toward using will significantly affect the usage of web-based teachers' training positively, and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use toward web-based training system will significantly affect attitude. As for perceived ease of use toward web-based training system, it will significantly affect perceived usefulness toward web-based training system and be affected by computer self-efficacy positively. Finally, based on the research findings, this study proposes conclusions and suggestions for the related organizations and the follow-up research.

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