scholarly journals “Touching” services: tangible objects create an emotional connection to services even before their first use

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 741-766
Author(s):  
Nora Nägele ◽  
Benjamin von Walter ◽  
Philipp Scharfenberger ◽  
Daniel Wentzel

Abstract Although research suggests that physical elements of the servicescape play an important role in the service process, there is little research on the impact of tangible objects that companies give to consumers such as membership cards, pens, mugs, or fashion articles. Drawing on research about embodied cognition, this paper investigates how and under which conditions the provision of tangible service objects affects consumers. Three experimental studies were conducted, in which participants received different objects they could either touch or just see. These studies indicate that touching a service object metaphorically translates into a perceived mental connection towards the service. More specifically, physically connecting to a service object leads to a stronger psychological connection to the corresponding service, which, in turn, increases behavioral intentions. The results also demonstrate that providing a tangible object only has an impact when the object is of high aesthetic appeal. These findings suggest that providing tangible service objects is an effective way for service providers to build an emotional connection with potential customers and to strengthen the emotional connections of existing customers.

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 967-981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaylan Azer ◽  
Matthew Alexander

Purpose This study aims to show the impact of direct and indirect customers’ negatively valenced influencing behavior (NVIB) on other actors in online social networks. Design/methodology/approach Four experiments were conducted in an online review setting that encompasses both restaurant and hotel reviews. The first study compares the impact of direct and indirect NVIB. The second, third and fourth studies measure this impact moderated by aggregate ratings, the volume of positive reviews and managerial responses. Findings Drawing on recent literature of customer engagement behavior, online reviews and social influence theory, this paper provides the first empirical results of the impact of direct and indirect NVIB, revealing the significant difference in their impact and the moderating role of the aggregate ratings, number of positive reviews and managerial responses on the cause-effect relationship between direct and indirect NVIB and other actors’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward service providers. Research limitations/implications TripAdvisor reviews were selected for the reason of appropriateness rather than representativeness, using two service providers, hotels and restaurants. Practical implications This paper provides managers with new insights, which capture not only what customers say about service providers but also the impact of how they say it, suggesting that managers move beyond framing NVIB in generalized terms to considering the differences in the impact of its direct and indirect facets. Originality/value This paper is the first to provide empirical results about the significant difference in the impact of direct and indirect NVIB on other actors’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward service providers, moderated by different heuristics, namely, ratings, volume of positive reviews and managerial responses.


Author(s):  
P. Vikulin ◽  
K. Khlopov ◽  
M. Cherkashin

Enhancing water purification processes is provided by various methods including physical ones, in particular, exposure to ultrasonic vibrations. The change in the dynamic viscosity of water affects the rate of deposition of particles in the aquatic environment which can be used in natural and wastewater treatment. At the Department Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal of the National Research Moscow State University of Civil Engineering experimental studies were conducted under laboratory conditions to study the effect of ultrasound on the change in the dynamic viscosity of water. A laboratory setup has been designed consisting of an ultrasonic frequency generator of the relative intensity, a transducer (concentrator) that transmits ultrasonic vibrations to the source water, and sonic treatment tanks. Experimental studies on the impact of the ultrasonic field in the cavitation mode on the dynamic viscosity of the aqueous medium were carried out the exposure time was obtained to achieve the maximum effect.Интенсификация процессов очистки воды осуществляется с помощью различных методов, в том числе и физических, в частности воздействием ультразвуковых колебаний. Изменение динамической вязкости воды влияет на скорость осаждения частиц в водной среде, что может быть использовано в процессах очистки природных и сточных вод. На кафедре Водоснабжение и водоотведение Национального исследовательского Московского государственного строительного университета в лабораторных условиях проведены экспериментальные исследования по изучению влияния ультразвука на изменение динамической вязкости воды. Разработана схема лабораторной установки, состоящая из генератора ультразвуковых частот с соответствующей интенсивностью, преобразователя (концентратора), передающего ультразвуковые колебания в исходную воду, и емкости для озвучивания. Выполнены экспериментальные исследования по влиянию ультразвукового поля в режиме кавитации на динамическую вязкость водной среды, получено время экспозиции для достижения максимального эффекта.


Author(s):  
Abigail A. Fagan ◽  
Kristen M. Benedini

This chapter reviews the degree to which empirical evidence demonstrates that families influence youth delinquency. Because they are most likely to be emphasized in life-course theories, this chapter focuses on parenting practices such as parental warmth and involvement, supervision and discipline of children, and child maltreatment. It also summarizes literature examining the role of children's exposure to parental violence, family criminality, and young (teenage) parents in affecting delinquency. Because life-course theories are ideally tested using longitudinal data, which allow examination of, in this case, the impact of parenting practices on children's subsequent behaviors, this chapter focuses on evidence generated from prospective studies conducted in the United States and other countries. It also discusses findings from experimental studies designed to reduce youth substance use and delinquency by improving the family environment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001391652093263
Author(s):  
Sojung Claire Kim ◽  
Sandra L. Cooke

We examine psychological mediating mechanisms to promote ocean health among the U.S. public. Ocean acidification (OA) was chosen as the focus, as experts consider it as important as climate change with the same cause of humanity’s excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but it is lesser known. Empathy is a multi-dimensional concept that includes cognitive and emotional aspects. Previous literature argues that environmental empathy can facilitate positive behaviors. We tested the hypothesis that empathy affects beliefs and behavioral intentions regarding ocean health using the Health Belief Model. We found that higher empathy toward ocean health led to higher perceived susceptibility and severity from OA, greater perceived benefits of CO2 emissions reduction, greater perceived barriers, and keener attention to the media. Beliefs and media attention positively influenced behavioral intentions (e.g., willingness to buy a fuel efficient car). Theoretical and practical implications regarding audience targeting and intervention design are discussed.


Author(s):  
Dan Yue ◽  
Zepeng Tong ◽  
Jianchi Tian ◽  
Yang Li ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
...  

The global illegal wildlife trade directly threatens biodiversity and leads to disease outbreaks and epidemics. In order to avoid the loss of endangered species and ensure public health security, it is necessary to intervene in illegal wildlife trade and promote public awareness of the need for wildlife conservation. Anthropomorphism is a basic and common psychological process in humans that plays a crucial role in determining how a person interacts with other non-human agents. Previous research indicates that anthropomorphizing nature entities through metaphors could increase individual behavioral intention of wildlife conservation. However, relatively little is known about the mechanism by which anthropomorphism influences behavioral intention and whether social context affects the effect of anthropomorphism. This research investigated the impact of negative emotions associated with a pandemic situation on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies for wildlife conservation across two experimental studies. Experiment 1 recruited 245 college students online and asked them to read a combination of texts and pictures as anthropomorphic materials. The results indicated that anthropomorphic materials could increase participants’ empathy and decrease their wildlife product consumption intention. Experiment 2 recruited 140 college students online and they were required to read the same materials as experiment 1 after watching a video related to epidemics. The results showed that the effect of wildlife anthropomorphization vanished if participants’ negative emotion was aroused by the video. The present research provides experimental evidence that anthropomorphic strategies would be useful for boosting public support for wildlife conservation. However, policymakers and conservation organizations must be careful about the negative effects of the pandemic context, as the negative emotions produced by it seems to weaken the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193896552110335
Author(s):  
John W. O’Neill ◽  
Jihwan Yeon

In recent years, short-term rental platforms in the lodging sector, including Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway, have received extensive attention and emerged as potentially alternative suppliers of services traditionally provided by established commercial accommodation providers, that is, hotels. Short-term rentals have dramatically increased the available supply of rooms for visitors to multiple international destinations, potentially siphoning demand away from hotels to short-term rental businesses. In a competitive market, an increase in supply with constant demand would negatively influence incumbent service providers. In this article, we examine the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance in different cities around the world. Specifically, we comprehensively investigate the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance based on hotel class, location type, and region. Furthermore, we segment the short-term rental supply based on its types of accommodations, that is, shared rooms, private rooms, and entire homes, and both examine and quantify the differential effects of these types of short-term rentals on different types of hotels. This study offers a comprehensive analysis regarding the impact of multiple short-term rental platforms on hotel performance and offers both conceptual and practical insights regarding the nature and extent of the effects that were identified.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 421
Author(s):  
Dariusz Puchala ◽  
Kamil Stokfiszewski ◽  
Mykhaylo Yatsymirskyy

In this paper, the authors analyze in more details an image encryption scheme, proposed by the authors in their earlier work, which preserves input image statistics and can be used in connection with the JPEG compression standard. The image encryption process takes advantage of fast linear transforms parametrized with private keys and is carried out prior to the compression stage in a way that does not alter those statistical characteristics of the input image that are crucial from the point of view of the subsequent compression. This feature makes the encryption process transparent to the compression stage and enables the JPEG algorithm to maintain its full compression capabilities even though it operates on the encrypted image data. The main advantage of the considered approach is the fact that the JPEG algorithm can be used without any modifications as a part of the encrypt-then-compress image processing framework. The paper includes a detailed mathematical model of the examined scheme allowing for theoretical analysis of the impact of the image encryption step on the effectiveness of the compression process. The combinatorial and statistical analysis of the encryption process is also included and it allows to evaluate its cryptographic strength. In addition, the paper considers several practical use-case scenarios with different characteristics of the compression and encryption stages. The final part of the paper contains the additional results of the experimental studies regarding general effectiveness of the presented scheme. The results show that for a wide range of compression ratios the considered scheme performs comparably to the JPEG algorithm alone, that is, without the encryption stage, in terms of the quality measures of reconstructed images. Moreover, the results of statistical analysis as well as those obtained with generally approved quality measures of image cryptographic systems, prove high strength and efficiency of the scheme’s encryption stage.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
pp. 4034
Author(s):  
Paolo Iodice ◽  
Massimo Cardone

Among the alternative fuels existing for spark-ignition engines, ethanol is considered worldwide as an important renewable fuel when mixed with pure gasoline because of its favorable physicochemical properties. An in-depth and updated investigation on the issue of CO and HC engine out emissions related to use of ethanol/gasoline fuels in spark-ignition engines is therefore necessary. Starting from our experimental studies on engine out emissions of a last generation spark-ignition engine fueled with ethanol/gasoline fuels, the aim of this new investigation is to offer a complete literature review on the present state of ethanol combustion in last generation spark-ignition engines under real working conditions to clarify the possible change in CO and HC emissions. In the first section of this paper, a comparison between physicochemical properties of ethanol and gasoline is examined to assess the practicability of using ethanol as an alternative fuel for spark-ignition engines and to investigate the effect on engine out emissions and combustion efficiency. In the next section, this article focuses on the impact of ethanol/gasoline fuels on CO and HC formation. Many studies related to combustion characteristics and exhaust emissions in spark-ignition engines fueled with ethanol/gasoline fuels are thus discussed in detail. Most of these experimental investigations conclude that the addition of ethanol with gasoline fuel mixtures can really decrease the CO and HC exhaust emissions of last generation spark-ignition engines in several operating conditions.


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