Ample evidence underscores the deleterious effects of loneliness on health and mortality. Therefore, it is important that loneliness risks are identified across all ages and appropriate measures are devised to address those risks. Although almost a third of the US older adult population lives alone, there is limited research on the social connectedness (or its lack thereof) in this subset of older adults. This dissertation specifically focused on understanding loneliness (its extent, variance, and sources of variance) in older adults who live alone and do not use the Internet. The results indicate that the loneliness reported in this subset of older adults is greater than that found in general older adult samples. Social isolation (measured by social network variables) and emotional well-being emerged as significant predictors of loneliness in this group. Demographics, personality, and technology experience did not predict variance in loneliness beyond that predicted by social isolation and emotional well-being. To understand if Internet adoption can provide greater opportunities for connectedness, a qualitative study was also conducted. This study focused on the subjective experiences of living alone, relationships with friends, family, and groups in the context of living alone, and the role of technology in supporting connectedness needs. Loneliness was the most commonly reported challenge associated with living alone and was often described in terms of lack of companionship or someone to share one’s feelings with. The older adult Internet users perceived usefulness of Internet-based social media as a compensatory tool for communication, but valued in-person interactions more. Together these studies provided insights into the social connectedness of older adults who live alone. The findings advanced the understanding of the complexities of living alone in older age and helped identify directions to best address social connectedness needs while also supporting older adults’ desire to continue to age in the living arrangement of their choice. Finally, the gaps in research on older adults’ use of social media and its potential to support connectedness for an aging population were also addressed.

The advancement of Information Technology (IT) has changed the business landscape in many industries and especially the airline sector. Modern Information Communication Technologies (ICT) provide powerful tools for organizations and can significantly influence their operation, structure, and strategy. The emergence of mobile technologies has created a new innovation for airline companies by increasing the availability, frequency, and speed of communication between the company and their customers. This research aims to investigate the factors influencing the customers behavioural intention to adopt and utilize mobile services during their travel process. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) provide the theoretical basis for explaining how consumers perceive mobile services which they access and operate by their mobile handset. To achieve that, this research employed a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches with a dominant quantitative method. A consumer web-based survey was conducted in the Saudi Arabia travel sector with respect to mobile services usage in airline sector , 307 valid questionnaires were received and analyzed by using SPSS (V.18), correlation, regression and factor analysis tests were conducted . The findings of this research revealed that, perceived usefulness, mobility and compatibility are loaded to be one predictor of behavioural intention to use mobile services in Saudi Arabia. The reason behind it may be interpreted as customers nowadays have seen mobility and compatibility as attributes of perceived usefulness. Further, social influence, perceived ease of use and personal innovativeness were found to significantly influence the behavioural intention .whereas, perceived risk was found not to be a predictor to the behavioural intention to use mobile services in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the model analysis and survey evaluation enable airline companies to make mobile commerce service provision decision, these findings contribute to a road map for airline companies to encourage their customers to adopt mobile services and keep them engaged during the overall travel life cycle.

The environmental concern has become a well discussed topic within today’s society and as a result awareness of the impact human behaviour has on the environment is continuously increasing. This concern is something companies take advantage of when marketing, as for instance by promoting their products or services as eco-labelled. Eco-labelled products have further shown to involve a lot of consumer opinions, and are thus common to study in relation to consumer attitudes. Theories also show that eco-labelled goods have been idealised in favour of conventional ones, referred to as a marketing placebo effect. In connection to this, companies have started to point interest at eco-labelled technology, which has become a recent phenomenon attracting attention. Nonetheless, the existing theory regarding this phenomenon has been mainly applied on specific areas, such as the food industry. The purpose of this study was therefore to explain the marketing placebo effect on eco-labelled technology. 162 experiments were conducted using one experiment group and one control group, in order to be able to detect an eventual marketing placebo effect when implementing an eco-label, using attitudes as an influencer. Based on the results, it was revealed that attitudes are crucial to take into consideration when applying an eco-label in a technology context. This as it was concluded that attitudes act as a trigger evoking a marketing placebo effect. The findings from this study contradicts current theories on how different factors cooperate in the process of a marketing placebo effect, and advances has thus been made in how the marketing placebo effect works when applied in a technology context.

This thesis investigated the effect of exergaming versus mirror matched gym based exercise with no virtual stimuli on technology acceptance, flow and postural control in healthy young adults. Firstly a review of literature was performed analysing the effects of technology acceptance and flow on exergaming, and the effects of exergaming on postural control. Results showed the plausible nature of exergaming as an immersive environment and the potential to improve postural control. However, some major gaps in the literatures were identified. Technology acceptance had never been applied in exergaming and flow had only partly been applied to exergaming in limited studies. Additionally the effects of exergaming on postural control had shown some potential benefits, however no study had truly analysed the effects of exergaming on postural control by analysing mirror matched exercise with no virtual stimulus. The purpose of this thesis was to address these important areas of research and contribute novel evidence to the field. In two separate studies, 38 non active and 50 active young healthy adults took part in either exergaming based training or mirror matched gym based exercise with no virtual stimuli. Technology acceptance (behavioural intention), flow and postural control were measured at pre and post exercise intervention. Technology acceptance results showed that performance expectancy was significantly higher in the exergaming group in both studies, as well as being a significant predictor of behavioural intention at both pre and post exercise testing. In the second study, only, performance expectancy, social influences, and behavioural intention where statistically significantly higher for the exergaming group compared to the mirror matched gym based exercise with no virtual stimuli on technology acceptance, highlighting greater levels of acceptance into the exercise environment. Flow results showed greater levels immersion in the exergaming groups, especially in terms of clear goals, unambiguous feedback, action awareness merging, transformation of time and loss of self- consciousness. The effects of exergaming on postural control showed significant improvements in anterior- posterior standard deviation and range for the exergaming group in study one, and improvements in medio-lateral range in study two. Study two also showed significant improvement over time (pre-post exercise) for medio-lateral SD, range and centre of pressure. Evidence from both studies suggests that exergaming may offer an immersive environment for exercise which has a positive effect on behavioural intention to keep using the exergaming system in the future. With regards to postural control evidence from both studies suggest that exergaming may offer a new method of exercise to improve static postural control.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study business clients’ technology acceptance of e-commerce within business-to-business in the work wear sector. In specific, develop and test a framework in order to analyze the antecedents of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use behind business clients’ behavioral intention to the usage of e-commerce. Problem: There is not sufficient research regarding industries and companies that are categorized as laggards (Del Aguila-Obra & Padilla-Melendez, 2006), and furthermore regarding clients’ technology acceptance in a business-to-business context (Doherty & Ellis-Chadwick, 2010). Actors within the work wear sector conduct their businesses in the most traditional way, with physical stores (Ekberg, Fraenkel, Gustavsson, Hamsten & Hedin, 2014). The question is whether this traditional way remain due to skepticism among the business clients’ and their level of technology acceptance. Method: A proposed framework is developed by the authors, adapted from Technology Acceptance Model (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000) and Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Rogers, 1983). This framework is tested through quantitative research, and more specific a questionnaire. Subsequently, the empirical data gathering is assembled, analyzed and concluded into a final proposed framework.  Findings: The final proposed framework incorporates antecedents from the proposed framework, but also new influences that are identified in the empirical findings as relevant. These influences are Age, Gender, Experience and Compliance. Further, the antecedents presented in the final proposed framework are the following: Subjective norm/Opinion leaders, Job relevance/Compatibility, Output quality, Result demonstrability/Observability and Trialability.

Services based on the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are present more and more in the lives of people. The advancement of ICT in technical and social acceptance terms has led the creation of new models of service provision. These provision models involve further integration with people's activities so that are not only present in their professions or civic space but also in a more intimate areas related to their own identity. So it is now common to find services aware of user's health, their domestic habits, ideology, etc. Therefore, the analysis of existing services must be open out to include other aspects related to the way of being and feeling of their members. This way is possible to ensure both the technical correctness of its features as promoting safe and respectful solutions both of civic rights as the way of being and feeling of its members. From the engineering point of view, the user perspective has historically encompassed under the concept of technological acceptance. Within this field can be interpreted as friendly solutions adapted to users will encourage the acceptance by them. Solution acceptance is desirable although it is difficult to ensure. This difficulty is due to the lack of the number of variables that affect the acceptance of technological solutions and the difficulty of optimizing the known variables. In this thesis it is studied and characterized one of the variables that affect the acceptance of existing services: confidence. Confidence is defined in psychological terms, providing its characterization with the aim of be used in typical methods of engineering. Also different tools are proposed to facilitate the optimization of this confidence in services whose complexity establishes this variable in a basic issue to improve acceptance. Health services deployed in a home have been chosen as working context for this thesis. This scenario presents a number of acceptance restrictions on the technology used to create services and how they manage the acquired user information. It comes to highly sensitive and delocalized services that can affect to the user's perception of the environment, the home, and generate fear or rejection to prevent final adoption as a valid solution. Once defined the generic framework, the main objective of this dissertation is focused on promote the acceptance of new pervasive and personalized health services and their deployment in domestic intelligent environments through a layout that promotes a psychological state of confidence in users. To achieve this goal, a set of results, both conceptual, technological and experimental, have been provided. In particular, it has offered a complete characterization of the feeling of confidence from a viewpoint of engineering and a definition of sensitive or delocalized pervasive service. Furthermore, a method for the inclusion of the Interaction Design discipline in engineering processes of such services through a set of patterns of interaction is offered. Finally, this thesis provides the development of a software architecture to ensure proper deployment of these pervasive sensitive services in intelligent environments in a confident way. Discussion of the results suggests the extension of the deployment model to different services of the Information Society that handle sensitive data both in the context of the digital home and other settings where the user perform everyday activities such as work spaces or schools. The future work lines include the imminent need to apply the results to ongoing developments, within research projects in those the author takes part, and the development of new research lines aimed at creating new spaces and interaction technologies as advanced accessible interfaces, toys of the future, confident visualization systems or security systems based on the condition of the user. / Tjänster baserade på informations- och kommunikationsteknik (IKT) blir allt mer vanligare i människors liv. För att främja acceptansen för IKT i både tekniska och sociala aspekter av människors liv har nya modeller för dessa tjänster skapats. Dessa modeller har en närmare knytning till människors verksamhet så att de inte bara förekommer i deras yrken eller fritid men också i mer intima områden som anknyter till individens egen identitet. Det är nu därför vanligt att hitta tjänster som tar hänsyn till användarens hälsa, vanor, ideologi, etc.  En analys av befintliga tjänster måste inkludera dessa aspekter men även användarnas känsla av identitet och medlemskap. På detta sätt är det möjligt att säkerställa den tekniska riktigheten hos dessa funktioner som i sin tur borgar för säkra och respektfulla lösningar som tar hänsyn till medlemmarnas medborgerliga rättigheter likväl som deras känsla av identitet och medlemskap. Historiskt sett, och ur ett tekniskt perspektiv, har användarperspektivet omfattats under begreppet teknisk acceptans. Inom detta område har användarvänliga lösningar anpassade till användarna själva uppmuntrat acceptans av dem. Acceptans av lösningar är önskvärt även om det är svårt att säkerställa. Denna svårighet beror på avsaknaden av antalet variabler som påverkar acceptansen av tekniska lösningar och svårigheten att optimera de kända variablerna. I denna avhandling studeras och karaktäriseras en av de variabler som påverkar acceptansen av befintliga tjänster: förtroende. Förtroendet definieras i psykologiska termer med syftet att kunna använda termen i typiska metoder för teknik. Det föreslås också olika verktyg för att underlätta optimering av detta förtroende inom tjänstesektorn. Hälso- och sjukvård i hemmet har valts som scenario för denna avhandling. Detta scenario presenterar ett antal restriktioner med avseende på acceptansen av den teknik som används för att skapa tjänster och hur dessa tjänster hanterar den förvärvade användarinformationen. För användaren är situationen mycket känslig och de erbjudna tjänsterna kan påverka användarens uppfattning av miljön och hemmet och/eller generera rädsla eller avsmak för att acceptera lösningen. När den generiska ramen är etablerad är det huvudsakliga syftet med denna avhandling att främja acceptans av nya tjänster för personlig hälsovård och deras användning i hemmet. Detta skall uppnås genom en layout som främjar ett psykologiskt förtroende hos användarna. För att uppnå detta mål har en uppsättning resultat, både begreppsmässiga, tekniska och experimentella, analyserats. Framför allt har en fullständig karaktärisering gjorts av känslan av förtroende från en teknologisk synvinkel och en definition av en känslig och allomfattande tjänst. Dessutom framläggs en metod för införandet av interaktionsdesign i de aktuella tjänsterna genom ett antal interaktionsmönster. Slutligen behandlar denna avhandling utvecklingen av en mjukvaruarkitektur för att säkerställa en korrekt användning av dessa känsliga tjänster. Resultaten pekar på att distributionsmodellen även kan användas för andra tjänster i informationssamhället där användaren utför vardagliga sysslor, såsom i det digitala hemmet eller andra miljöer (t.ex. skolor och arbetsplatser), där känsliga uppgifter hanteras. De framtida arbetsuppgifterna omfattar det överhängande behovet av att tillämpa resultaten på den pågående utvecklingen av forskningsprojekt som författaren är involverad i. Detta omfattar även utveckling av ny forskning som syftar till att skapa ny interaktionsteknik t.ex. avancerade gränssnitt, framtida leksaker, säkra visualiseringssystem eller säkerhetssystem baserat på användarens hälsa/tillstånd. / <p>This PhD research has been conducted under a double PhD agreement degree between the School of Telecommunications Systems and Engineering (ETSIST) at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) in Spain and the School of Technology and Health (STH) at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden.</p><p>QC 20160129</p>

Technology acceptance research is a constantly developing field. The disciplines that contributed to its development are either beliefs focused or system focused. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) combined both. The current research model proposes an extension to the UTAUT that accounts for online usage behaviour. The proposed research model is tested in two countries (UK and Jordan) to investigate the viability of the unified model of technology acceptance in different boundaries as a model of individuals’ discretionary usage of Internet banking. The study also questions the roles of other determinants and moderators in this context. Results found support for the effect of the proposed extension, website quality perceptions, on usage behaviour in both countries’ models; the total effect of this extension exhibited website quality perceptions the most influential determinant of usage behaviour in both models and performance expectancy construct was second in effect. Social influence had no impact on the usage behaviour in both models, which is consistent with previous research that advocates a declining role of social influence under discretionary usage and increased experience conditions. Furthermore, the moderating role of performance expectancy previously established in TAM’s research was supported in the UTAUT model in both countries’ models. Moreover, both models reported a non-moderating effect of gender, which, is also in line with recent research findings that suggest declining gender differences under voluntary usage conditions and advanced experience. Education and income were moderators only for the UK model. Although the research findings demonstrated that both countries’ models were “configurally” similar with respect to model specifications, the models’ explanatory power for usage behaviour was dissimilar: the UK’s model explanatory power exceeded that of Jordan’s model presenting an opportunity for future research. The current research contributes to knowledge in the field of technology acceptance research. It demonstrated that website quality perceptions, as a multidimensional concept, play an important role in the online usage context. It also demonstrated that the unified model of technology acceptance established in the western culture can be transferred to a non-western culture although with varying degrees of explanation power.

This thesis presents a research model to investigate university-students’ acceptance and behaviour in relation to social-networking sites (SNS). In order to carry out this investigation, the research project was divided into two phases using qualitative and quantitative data based on a diverse sample of university students. Phase One used a think-aloud technique to explore the interaction experiences associated with students’ use of Facebook, a popular social-networking site. Twenty-six participants from Teesside University took part in the first study and six categories of experience (communication, gratification, inquisitiveness, evocation, interconnection, apprehension, and ambience) were identified. Subsequently conceptual similarities were found between all six categories of experience and six psychological human needs (relatedness, pleasure, popularity, security, competence and meaning). In Phase Two, a research model was constructed, based on existing literature on technology acceptance and the psychological needs identified in Phase One. Results from an online survey of 766 university students in the United Kingdom, who were also SNS users, provided evidence for the proposed model. The model explained and predicted students’ adoption of SNS, accounting for half of the variance in behavioural intention and almost a quarter of the variance in actual use behaviour. The results showed that students’ personal beliefs, social identity and psychological human needs influenced their decision to adopt SNS. Specifically, user-perceived usefulness, ease of use, enjoyment and credibility were found to iv be important factors in students’ adoption of SNS. The influence of social identity on students’ behavioural intention was also found to be mediated by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Furthermore, the findings emphasise the importance of psychological human needs in students’ adoption of SNS. In particular, the need for relatedness was found to be a significant independent predictor of behavioural intention. Based on the results of this study, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Even though the development of business intelligence is moving forward rapidly, a substantial number of organizations are yet to implement business intelligence. Therefore, this thesis aims at investigating what internal organizational obstacles that could be hindering the implementation of business intelligence and how these obstacles could be overcome. In order to answer this, the Technological Acceptance Model combined with the notion IT identity, is used as the theoretical framework. This thesis is of an interpretivist nature and data was collected through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with six experts within the field of business intelligence, consisting of consultants and business intelligence managers. The identified obstacles could be connected to employees’ perceived usefulness being too low in relation to the perceived non-pecuniary cost. The proposed solutions aims at raising the perceived usefulness and lower the non-pecuniary cost through different methods presented in this thesis.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper to fill the research gap of lack ofcross-country studies in Germany, Hungary and Sweden in thecontext of online and mobile payment adaption and usage. Research Questions: The authors of this study aim at answering the followingquestion: What are the main similarities and differences in onlineand mobile payment acceptance in Germany, Hungary andSweden in the age group of 18-35?Theoretical Framework:The theoretical framework presents prevalent theories aboutfactors which are connected to online and mobilepayment. In addition, the Technical Acceptance Model wasused as a base for the conceptual framework developed by theauthors.Methodology: This study includes both qualitative and quantitative primarydata. The conducted survey resulted in 1016 answers; out of these869 answers were eligible. In addition, 150 companies wereasked and 30 qualitative interviews (10 per each country) wereconducted.Analysis: The analysis aimed at investigating how the acceptance of theusage of online and mobile payment differs among Germany,Hungary Sweden. Thereby, the following factors wereinvestigated: (1) perceived ease of use, (2) perceived usefulness,(3) perceived security, (4) perceived risk, (5) social influence, (6)information asymmetry and (7) intention to use. Conclusion: The findings of this cross-country study showed that Germany,Hungary and Sweden show a relatively similar level ofacceptance in online payment. In contrast, the acceptance in thecontext of mobile payment differed greatly. Whereas Swedenshowed a high level of acceptance, Germany and Hungaryshowed a relatively moderate level of acceptance.