Three cases of food safety issue occurred in South Korea were chosen to test whether message frames influence on consumers’ purchasing intention. In addition, this study not only investigates the relationships among constructs, but also evaluates the path coefficients of rela-tionships. Empirical Results indicates that consumers’ intention to purchasing was negatively affected by message frames including negative headline, negative information and less amount of information. Also, knowledgeable group was more sensitive to prior-knowledge with respect to their attitude than other group when there are food risks around. Group received negative mes-sage reacted more sensitively to trust than group received relatively positive message.

Academic entitlement is defined as the belief that academic benefits, positive outcomes, or preferential treatment should be given regardless of individual effort (Chowning & Campbell, 2009; Greenberger, et al., 2008; Kopp et al., 2011). The current study investigated antecedent and outcome relationships of endorsing academic entitlement beliefs (AEBs) among undergraduate college students using structural equation modeling (SEM). Specific variables evaluated in the model as predictors of AEBs included students’ beliefs regarding achievement goals (i.e., mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance), control beliefs (i.e., internal, chance, and powerful others), consumerism, narcissism, and parental involvement; as well as the background characteristics of students’ age and exposure to community college. Outcome variables included in the model consisted of students’ beliefs regarding academic policies, in-class behaviors, and academic expectations. An email was sent to all undergraduate students at a large university in the south eastern region of the United States soliciting participation for an online questionnaire. The responses of 904 participants were randomly divided into two equal subsamples: one for model evaluation and modification, and one to evaluate model stability. Results of the SEM model gave indication of multiple relationships. Specifically, powerful others, chance, mastery-avoidance goals, performance-avoidance goals, beliefs in consumerism, and parental over-involvement were all observed to positively predict AEBs. Endorsements of AEBs and consumerism beliefs were observed to positively predict students’ beliefs in preferential academic policies regarding grading, scheduling, and personal accommodations. The findings of the current model present a contemporary perspective on how AEBs relates to an array of both general and specific student beliefs. The positive correspondence between students’ endorsements of AEBs and students’ beliefs in accommodating academic policies suggests that AEBs are potential precursors to maladaptive in-class beliefs. The positive relationships observed between students’ AEBs and students’ beliefs in powerful others, parental over-involvement, consumerism, and chance all indicate that AEBs are an externally oriented system of beliefs. Future recommendations include improving measures as well as investigating developmental changes, behavioral consequences, parental over-involvement and individual differences in academic entitlement.

The purpose of the present study is to make contributions to the area of behavioral information security in the field of Information Systems and to assist in the improved development of Information Security Policy instructional programs to increase the policy compliance of individuals. The role of an individual’s experience in the context of information security behavior was explored through the lens of protection motivation theory. The practical foundation was provided by the framework of Security Education, Training, and Awareness (SETA) programs which are typically used by organizations within the United States to instruct employees regarding information security. A pilot study and primary study were conducted with separate data collections and analyses. Both existing and new measures were tested in the study which used a Modified Solomon Four Group Design to accommodate data collection via a web-based survey that included a two-treatment experimental component. The primary contribution to academia proposed in this study was to expand the protection motivation theory by including direct and vicarious experience regarding both threats and responses to the threats. Clear definitions and valid and reliable reflective measures for each of the four experience constructs were developed and are presented in this dissertation. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that all four forms of experience play an important part in the prediction of the primary constructs in the protection motivation model, and as such ultimately play an important part in the prediction of behavioral intent in the context of information security. The primary contribution to practice was expected to be specifically related to the application of fear appeals within a SETA instructional framework. The contribution to practice made by this dissertation became instead the implications resulting from the strong performance of the experience constructs. Specifically, experience, both direct and vicarious, and with threats and with responses, are all important influences on individuals’ behavioral choices regarding information security and should continue to be explored in this context.

No description available.

Bulimia is often viewed as an extreme expression of eating concerns and body image disturbances that afflicts many adolescent and adult women. The cognitive strategies employed by individuals to inhibit eating and facilitate bingeing and purging are thought to include disattending internal sensations of hunger and satiety while sustaining attention on food, distorted beliefs, and interoceptive experiences (e.g., Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991). To the extent that these attentional and perceptual shifts mediate bulimic symptomatology, individuals with bulimic tendencies should exhibit certain cognitive attributes. Because hypnotizability, dissociation, and absorption have each been invoked (either directly or indirectly) as explanatory constructs for clinical and subclinical bulimia, the present study evaluated the absolute and relative effects of these factors on bulimic symptomatology in a large sample of undergraduate women (N = 309) using structural equation modeling. Following 2 assessments of hypnotic susceptibility (Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A [Shor & Orne, 1962] & Group Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C [Crawford & Allen, 1982]), participants completed measures of eating disorder symptomatology (Eating Disorders Inventory-2 [Garner, 1991]; Three Factor Eating Questionnaire [Stunkard & Messick, 1985]), dissociation (Dissociative Experiences Scale [Carlson & Putnam, 1986]; Dissociation Questionnaire [Vanderlinden et al., 1993]), and absorption (Tellegen Absorption Scale [Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974]; Differential Attentional Processes Inventory [Crawford, Brown, & Moon, 1993; Grumbles & Crawford, 1981]). A final model including the latent constructs Hypnotizability, Dissociation, Absorption, and Bulimic Symptomatology provided a very good fit to the data (X 2 (58, N = 309) = 31.09, NFI = .932, CFI = .967, & RMSEA = .053). As hypothesized, dissociation was found to a have moderate effect (Standardized coefficient = .32, p < .01) on Bulimic Symptomatology when controlling for Hypnotizability and Absorption. Moreover, contrary to past research, the path between Hypnotizability and Bulimic Symptomatology and the path between Absorption and Bulimic Symptomatology were not significant. Based on these finding, we can now speak with increased confidence of a meaningful link between dissociation and the continuum of bulimic symptomatology. A pathological dissociative style appears to contribute to the development of bulimia. / Ph. D.

Submitted by Irene Nascimento (irene.kessia@ufpe.br) on 2016-06-22T16:21:14Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE DSGJ 2016.pdf: 2318693 bytes, checksum: e8012a43981a095edc7d9351635ed184 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-22T16:21:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE DSGJ 2016.pdf: 2318693 bytes, checksum: e8012a43981a095edc7d9351635ed184 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-02 / A mensuração da qualidade em serviços é uma fronteira da literatura de marketing em serviços e qualidade em serviços que vem recebendo constantes contribuições teóricas nas últimas décadas. Desde as primeiras iniciativas, tem-se buscado identificar os determinantes da qualidade em serviços e sua relação com o desempenho das organizações. Brady e Cronin (2001) a partir de uma síntese de modelagens anteriores (Gronroos, 1982; Parasuraman, Zeithaml e Berry, 1988; Cronin e Taylor, 1992; Rust e Oliver, 1993; e Dabholkar, Thorpe & Rentz, 1996) propõe uma modelagem hierárquica e multidimensional para qualidade em serviços. Tal construto se deriva de dimensões primárias (qualidade de interação, qualidade de ambiente e qualidade de resultado) e subdimensões associadas as dimensões primárias (atitude, comportamento, expertise, condições ambientais, design, condições sociais, tempo de espera, tangíveis e valor). A aplicação de tal modelagem é proposta para o setor de saúde suplementar brasileiro, que apresenta expansão no número de segurados e receita nas últimas décadas. No entanto, tal setor é alvo de crescentes reclamações dos clientes sobre a qualidade dos serviços prestados junto ao agente regulador do setor. Os resultados do estudo confirmam a relação da qualidade percebida no serviço de saúde suplementar com a qualidade de resultado. As demais dimensões primárias foram consideradas não significantes. As variáveis significantes para a qualidade de resultado foram: condições sociais, tempo de espera e elementos tangíveis. Assim, o estudo concluiu que na amostra avaliada, o importante para avaliação de um serviço de qualidade superior é a rapidez do atendimento, o sistema insaturado e os elementos tangíveis adequados. Após o incremento no nível de serviço nas referidas dimensões podem ganhar relevo outras dimensões da qualidade em serviços. / The measurement of service quality is a frontier in services marketing literature and service quality that has received constant theoretical contributions in recent decades. Since the first initiatives have tried to identify the determinants of service quality and its relationship to the performance of organizations. Brady and Cronin (2001) from a synthetic previous modeling (Grönroos, 1982; Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988; Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Rust and Oliver, 1993; and Dabholkar Thorpe & Rentz, 1996) proposes a hierarchical and multidimensional model for service quality. This construct derives from primary dimensions (quality of interaction, environmental quality and quality of results) and sub-dimensions associated primary dimensions (attitude, behavior, expertise, environmental, design, social conditions, waiting time, tangible and value). The application of such modeling is proposed for the Brazilian private health sector, which has shown expansion in the number of insured in the last decades. However, this sector is growing target customer complaints about the quality of services provided by the regulator of the sector. The study results confirm the relationship of perceived quality in the supplementary health service with quality results. The other primary dimensions were considered not significant. The significant variables for the quality of results were: social conditions, waiting time and tangible. In other wordsmatter for evaluation of a higher quality service speed of service, unsaturated system and adequate tangible. After the increase in the level of service in these dimensions can gain relief other dimensions of service quality.

E-Government is the use of information technology particularly web applications to deliver convenient services for citizens, business and government. Governments worldwide spend billions of their budgets in order to deliver convenient electronic services to their citizens. There are two important points; government offers online services, and citizens consume these services. In order to maximize the benefits of these projects and to avoid possible failures, the gap between these points should be addressed. Yet there are few empirical studies that have covered the relevant issues of adoption from the citizen perspective in developing countries. This research study investigates citizens’ acceptance of e-government services in the context of Saudi Arabia. It posits an integrated model of the key elements that influence citizens’ adoption of e-government. The framework includes a combination of attitudinal, social, control and trust factors as well as the influence of gender. The model is validated by surveying 533 citizens and utilising the structural equation modeling technique for data analysis. Findings show that both measurement and structural models exhibit good model fit to data. The study shows that all constructs satisfy the criteria of constructs reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. The paths estimations show that of the sixteen designed casual relationships, eleven paths relationships were found to be significant while the other five paths remained unsupported.

Perceived quality in the context of e-commerce was defined and examined in numerous studies, but, to date, there are no consistent definitions and measurement scales. Instruments that measure quality in e-commerce industries primarily focus on website quality or service quality during the transaction and delivery phases. Even though some scholars have proposed instruments from different perspectives, these scales do not fully evaluate the level of quality perceived by customers during the entire decision-making process. This dissertation purports to provide five main contributions for the e-commerce, service quality, and decision science literature: (1) development of a comprehensive instrument to measure how online customers perceive the quality of the shopping channel, website, transaction and recovery based on the customer decision making process; (2) identification of the determinants of customer satisfaction and the key dimensions of customer behavioral intentions in e-commerce; (3) examination of the relationships among perceived quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty intention using empirical data; (4) application of different statistical packages (LISREL and PLS-Graph) for data analysis and comparison of how these methods impact the results; and (5) examination of the moderating effects of control variables. A survey was designed and distributed to a total of 1126 college students in a large southwestern university in the U.S. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling with both LISREL and PLS-Graph are used to validate the comprehensive instrument and test the research hypotheses. The results provide theoretical and normative guidelines for researchers and practitioners in the e-commerce domain. The research results will also help e-commerce platform providers or e-retailers to improve their business and marketing strategies by providing a better understanding of the most important factors influencing customer behavioral intentions.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / The current study tests a theoretical model exploring the relationship between hooking up and marital quality and whether this relationship is mediated by sexual satisfaction and communication using public-use data from currently married participants in Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, n = 1,729). Gender proved to significantly moderate the association between the variables in the model, but college education did not. The results indicate that hooking up has a direct negative relationship with marital quality for men that is not mediated by either sexual satisfaction or communication. The results for women revealed no direct relationship between hooking up and marital quality, but an indirect influence via communication.

The 24 items of the original English version of the Social Justice Scale (Torres-Harding et al., 2012) were translated into Korean by four translators, who discussed and agreed upon consensus versions. Four different translators then back translated this version into English. The resulting Korean version of SJS (K-SJS) was completed by 537 adult native Korean speakers. Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the K-SJS has high internal consistency, factors appropriately, fits the original model well, and demonstrates invariance across Korean men and women. Structural equation modeling indicated that the effects of attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms on behavioral intentions were positive and significant. In short, the K-SJS showed acceptable reliability and validity based on a large sample of South Korean adults and shows promise as a new tool to study social justice attitudes among Korean speakers.