In pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing, buyers are allowed to pay any amount they want, often including a price of zero. Standard theory predicts that buyers are driven solely by their own interest and will always choose to pay nothing, making PWYW pricing impractical to use. Nonetheless, PWYW pricing has been consistently occurring in the marketplace. We build and analyze a theoretical model to explain the presence of PWYW pricing in the marketplace and identify the situations under which businesses are better off adopting it over the traditional posted pricing. Because the digital product domain is a particularly good fit for PWYW pricing because of its constant exposure to piracy threats, we focus on digital product firms and examine PWYW pricing as an alternative to their piracy prevention efforts. We show that PWYW pricing becomes a superior pricing strategy when the pirate version is quite similar to the authentic product and it is costly for the firm to improve its product quality. Moreover, if network externalities are present, PWYW pricing can outperform posted pricing only when the network externalities are weak. The results explain why PWYW pricing is rare in the established digital product marketplace, which exhibits strong network externalities.

A prime example of an emerging two-sided market is the driverless vehicle industry, an industry that will get much of its software from one side of the market: specifically, application developers. Consumers stand at the other side of this market. To what extent will this marketplace reward both the industry itself and application developers for technological innovation? In modeling this first question and keeping in mind consumers’ appetite for technological advances, we provide nuanced answers for executives in the driverless industry, application development firms, and government. This question speaks directly to what level of investment is optimal. Given that high government officials want to encourage the future growth of this vibrant industry, a second key theme of the paper is as follows. Should governments subsidize the focal industry or developers based on the extent to which they are innovative? Or should governments subsidize consumers? Our models conclude that subsidizing the industry is the overall best strategy followed by subsidies for consumers under certain other conditions. We find that it is not in the interest of society to subsidize application developers. Executives can use our models and results to fine tune to match their own circumstances with basic changes in our parameters.

The neutron counter proposed here has a long history and was commercially available in a somewhat different form. This counter would be suitable for a rover or lander since it requires a rather long measuring time for each placement. It consists of two silicon wafer charged-particle counters with a layer of Li-6F deposited on the inner surface of one. The neutron detecting reaction is Li-6(n,H-3)He-4 in which the alpha particle and the triton are emitted from the Li-6 deposit back to back. If one of the detectors sees the alpha particle, the other will see the triton. This allows one to use a coincidence technique that virtually eliminates all background. The signals from each detector can be added together so that the total energy of the reaction, Q=4.6 MeV and the kinetic energy of the neutron, can be recorded.

A major tenet in organizational behavior literature is that feedback improves performance. If feedback is thought to improve performance, then individuals should actively seek feedback in their work. Yet, surprisingly, individuals seldom seek feedback perhaps because of face-loss costs of obtaining feedback face-to-face. Furthermore, in cases where the giver is perceived to be in a bad mood, individuals may be even more reluctant to seek feedback if they believe seeking feedback risks the giver's wrath and a negative evaluation. In this paper, we explain how information technology can be designed to mediate feedback communication and deliver feedback that promotes feedback seeking. In a laboratory experiment, the effects of information technology and the perceived mood of the feedback giver on the behavior of feedback seekers are examined. The results showed that individuals in both the computer-mediated feedback environment and the computer-generated feedback environment sought feedback more frequently than individuals in the face-to-face feedback environment. In addition, individuals sought feedback more frequently from a giver who was perceived to be in a good mood than from a giver who was perceived to be in a bad mood.

This study examines three rental models—long-term, on-demand, and hybrid—in the sharing economy and evaluates their impacts on social welfare and consumer surplus. Our analysis reveals the significance of consumers’ setup and transaction costs in determining the optimal rental-model for platforms. We find that the relative setup cost and the relative transaction cost between owners and renters play a crucial role in shaping the equilibrium market price and optimality of the three rental models, whereas the total costs determine the equilibrium transaction volume and sustainability of the three models, with high costs posing barriers to the viability of on-demand and hybrid models. In practice, platforms can maximize consumer surplus by selecting an optimal rental model that narrows the gap in setup costs between renters and owners. Policymakers should implement favorable policies or subsidies to balance consumers’ participation incentives on both sides of the market, leading to mutually beneficial social outcomes.

PRACTICE-ORIENTED ABSTRACT In September of 2017, Equifax disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people, including names, Social Security numbers, and addresses. Such high-profile data breaches have rendered traditional forms of identity verification—especially knowledge-based authentication (KBA)—worse than useless: fraudsters have a 92% success rate in KBA screenings, compared to just 46% for genuine customers. In the face of these challenges, digital platforms are turning to sparse alternative data sources and overt verification technologies, often to the detriment of the user experience. The objective of this research is to design and build a novel approach to identity verification for new platform users using digital behavior data—features that describe how users type and interact during account setup. The system (1) evaluates identity fraud risk for all first-time users, and (2) minimizes the impact on the new user experience by seamlessly analyzing behavior during a platform’s existing onboarding experience. We evaluated and improved the design in four experiments, culminating in an identity fraud detection tool that effectively detects identity fraud for first-time users and supports seamless user experiences.

Existing research has long considered service quality as a primary determinant of user satisfaction with information technology (IT) service delivery. In response to the knowledge-intensive and collaborative nature of IT service delivery in the contemporary business context, we advance the theoretical understanding of user satisfaction by re-conceptualizing IT service delivery as a bilateral, relational process between the IT staff and users. Based on this reconceptualization, we draw on social capital theory to examine the antecedents of user satisfaction with IT service delivery. Specifically, we posit that two major dimensions of social capital, i.e., cognitive capital and relational capital, not only positively affect user satisfaction but also strengthen the established relationship between service quality and user satisfaction. Furthermore, we propose that the effect of the other dimension of social capital—structural capital—on user satisfaction is fully mediated through cognitive capital and relational capital. A field study of 159 users in four financial companies provides general empirical support for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The control of information systems (IS) projects is central to creating and capturing value from digitalization. However, the current understanding of IS project control is too restrictive and not well attuned to the digital era, in which collaborative value creation in open-ended digital innovation and transformation efforts is critical to firm competitiveness, ecosystem evolution, and societal advancement. Reviewing earlier research, we find that the dominant view of IS project control emphasizes value capture/appropriation and virtually ignores value creation. To address this shortcoming, we introduce the concept of control purpose (why) and advocate for broadening control activities to encompass the two control purposes of value appropriation and value creation. This implies that practitioners need to strategically decide on and actively manage the balance between different purposes of control activities. By doing so, they will be better equipped to achieving success in digital innovation and transformation initiatives.

This paper analyzes the impact of e-commerce on markets where established firms face competition from Internet-based entrants with focused offerings. In particular, we study the retail brokerage sector where the growth of online brokerages and the availability of alternate sources of information and research services have challenged the dominance of traditional brokerages. We develop a stylized game-theoretic model to analyze the impact of competition between an incumbent full-service brokerage firm with a bundled offering of research services and trade execution and an online entrant offering just trade execution. We find that as consumers’ willingness to pay for research declines, the incumbent finds it optimal to unbundle its offering when competing with the online entrant. We also find that the online entrant chooses a lower quality of trade execution when faced with direct competition from the incumbent’s unbundled offering. The analytical model motivates a unique field experiment placing actual simultaneous trades with traditional full-service and online brokers, to compare order handling practices and the quality of trade execution. In keeping with our analytical results, our empirical findings show a significant difference in the quality of execution between online brokerages and their full-service counterparts. We discuss the relevance of our findings for quality differentiation, price convergence, and profit decline in a variety of markets where traditional incumbents are faced with changes in the competitive landscape as a result of e-commerce.

Bystanders Join in Cyberbullying on Social Networking Sites: The Deindividuation and Moral Disengagement Perspectives Cyberbullying on social networking sites escalates when bystanders join in the bullying. Bystanders’ joining-in behaviors reinforce the abuse, expose victims to a larger audience, and encourage further abuse by signaling their approval of the aggressive behavior. This study developed an integrative model that explains bystanders’ joining-in cyberbullying behaviors on SNSs to offer actionable insights into reducing such harmful behaviors. We tested the model using 1,179 responses using a scenario survey study. Our findings suggest that IT artifacts (including digital profile, search and privacy, relational ties, and network transparency) activated two key mechanisms that lead to cyberbullying joining-in behaviors: (i) the deindividuation experiences that attenuate self-identity and put salience on group/social identity, and (ii) the moral disengagement practices that permit the exercise of cognitive maneuvers to justify group-interested choices that do not align with social standard. The findings explain why people who do not know each other gang up to bully a target on social media. Platform owners who wish to discourage bystanders from joining in undesirable activities may consider regulating how users could share and access digital resources in a social network and should acknowledge the influence of social identity in igniting, driving, and prolonging harmful online group behaviors.