Determinants of consumer adoption of multilingual self-service ordering systems in fast food restaurants

Due to the increasing number of international exchanges, foreign users have gradually become a significant consumer segment. Many of them are not proficient in the local language. Providing them with native language services will be an important trend, both from a business and a humanistic perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate the fast-food restaurant ordering system that can provide multilingual services for foreigners, and to investigate factors that influence fast food restaurant consumers to adopt multilingual self-service ordering systems. Based on the characteristics of foreign users, we have proposed experience factors such as convenience, translation quality, social anxiety, and the Flow. According to research, the convenience of the service has a strong direct impact on consumers' intention to use, social anxiety has a weak direct impact on consumers' intention to use, and translation quality has a weak direct impact on consumers' intention to use through the intermediate variable of social anxiety. Particularly, Flow experience is not associated with intention to use. The Flow state is one in which users are completely immersed and do not notice time or the surroundings when the perceived difficulty of a task matches their abilities. The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of the customer evaluation criteria for multilingual self-service systems, as well as to establish the MSSS model for future research on multilingual self-service systems.

Factors affecting medical students' intention to use Rain Classroom: a cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND

Rain Classroom was one of the most popular online learning platforms in Chinese higher education during the pandemic. However, there is little research on user intention under the guidance of technology acceptance and unified theory (UTAUT).

OBJECTIVE

This research aims to determine factors influencing students' behavioural intention to use Rain Classroom.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional and correlational investigation, 1138 medical students from five medical universities in Guangxi Province, China, made up the sample. This study added self-efficacy (SE), motivation (MO), stress (ST), and anxiety (AN) to the UTAUT framework. This study modified the framework by excluding actual usage variables and focusing only on intention determinants. SPSS-26 and AMOS-26 were used to analyze the data. The structural equation modelling technique was chosen to confirm the hypotheses.

RESULTS

Except for facilitating conditions (FC), all proposed factors, including performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), self-efficacy (SE), motivation (MO), anxiety (AN), and stress (ST), had a significant effect on students' behavioural intentions to use Rain Classroom.

CONCLUSIONS

The research revealed that the proposed model, which was based on the UTAUT, is excellent at identifying the variables that influence students' behavioural intentions in the Rain Classroom. Higher education institutions can plan and implement productive classrooms.

Customer perception and acceptance of autonomous delivery vehicles in the State of Kuwait during COVID-19

COVID-19 is one of the most important dilemmas that took place during the last few years. Logisticians worked hard to present a new mechanism called Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs) by which they afford help making life easier for people during pandemic while trying to reduce pollution on road as well. This work mainly aimed to explore Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and the convenience of users - according to gender - to the idea of using Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs). A survey-based method was applied and presented. It was distributed online where a total of 450 participants had taken part to express their ideas. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data and the results were discussed thoroughly. The model was conducted according to nine hypotheses. Results showed that all of them were supported except hypothesis 7, which is the trust in technology that negatively influenced the perceived risk leading to rejecting the hypothesis that supposes the validity of H7. It was concluded that the perceived risk and behavioral intention relationship were only significant for males while the perceived risk and trust in technology relationship were only significant for females.

Influencing factors of urban residents' willingness to classify waste during COVID-19: The case of Hangzhou

During COVID-19, the urban environment has faced more challenges, and household waste classification has become increasingly important. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this paper studies the key influencing factors and influence paths of urban residents' willingness to perform waste classification using a structural equation model. Based on the timing of two questionnaires, one before and one after the COVID-19 outbreak, we apply multigroup analysis to test the moderating role of the pandemic. We find that 1) social norms are the primary factor that directly affects residents' willingness to classify waste, followed by perceived behavior costs and behavior attitude. All factors show a positive effect, except for perceived behavior costs. We also find that 2) the results of multigroup analysis indicate that before and after the epidemic there are significant differences in the effect from three influencing paths, which verifies that during the epidemic, the influence paths of behavior attitude and perceived behavior costs on waste classification willingness have been strengthened, but the influence from social norms is weakened. Finally, we suggest that the government should keep playing an important role in waste classification in terms of promotion, reward and penalty, as well as improvement in laws, rules and waste classification facilities.

Official social media and its impact on public behavior during the first wave of COVID-19 in China

BACKGROUND

During the COVID-19 pandemic, official social media became a critical channel for the public to obtain pandemic information. No matter the positive function or negative effect of information dissemination, it involves the public's risk perception and behavior. This study was designed to contribute to the existing research on how official social media information quality (IQ) and risk perception (RP) affect preventive behavior (PB) and continued use behavior (CB) of official social media during the first wave of COVID-19.

METHODS

The required data were extracted from a national online survey of the Chinese Mainland during March 24-30 2020, a random sample was asked to participate in the survey (n = 666). Data analysis was performed using regression analysis, structural equation modeling, mediating effect analysis, and one-way ANOVA analysis.

RESULTS

The results show that IQ (10.010 ± 3.568) has direct and indirect positive impact on PB (9.475 ± 3.571), and has a low significant positive indirect impact on CB (3.739 ± 1.566). The IQ has a significant positive impact on RP (β = 0.548), which show that there is no "risk perception paradox" in COVID-19. Furth more, this study also provides new evidence indicating that RP mediates the relationship between IQ and PB. According to the region, gender, age and annual income, and there are significant differences in PB and CB.

CONCLUSION

The study findings have remarkable implications for improving the information quality and public behaviors. Too high or too low level of risk perception is not conducive to pandemic prevention and control. Official social media should indirectly affect information flow through the reasonable supply of pandemic information and constantly improve the quality of pandemic information to avoid public's undue panic and excessive health concerns during this ongoing outbreak and subsequent national public emergency events.

Cancer patient knowledge about and behavioral intentions after germline genome sequencing

OBJECTIVES

Germline genome sequencing (GS) is becoming mainstream in cancer diagnosis and risk management. Identifying knowledge gaps and determinants of health behavior change intentions will enable effective targeting of educational and management strategies to translate genomic findings into improved cancer outcomes.

METHODS

Probands diagnosed with cancer of likely genetic origin that consented to but not yet undergone GS, and their biological relatives, completed a cross-sectional questionnaire assessing GS knowledge and hypothetical intention to change behaviors.

RESULTS

Probands (n = 348; 57% university educated) and relatives (n = 213; 38% university educated) had moderate GS knowledge levels, with greater knowledge associated with higher education. Both populations reported high behavioral change intentions, significantly associated with being female (p = 0.01) and greater perceived importance of GS (p < 0.001), and for probands: being from English-speaking households (p = 0.003), higher socio-economic status (p = 0.01) and greater self-efficacy (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS

Increasing GS knowledge will enable realistic participant expectations surrounding germline GS. Actual behavior change should be monitored to determine whether increased cancer risk knowledge results in altered cancer-related behavior and ultimately, cancer outcomes.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Educational resources should target specific populations to ensure informed decision-making and expectation management. Support tools facilitating and maintaining behavioral change may be needed to achieve improved cancer patient outcomes.

Assessing customer financial risk perception and attitude in the hotel industry: Exploring the role of protective measures against COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has lead authorities from many countries to adopt crucial protective measures such as wearing face masks, lockdowns and social distancing. The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships among the protective measures against virus handled by hotels with financial risk perception, customer attitude, satisfaction and behavioral intention. The study also calculates the mean comparison across the demographic variables of hotel customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. Results reported a significant contribution of the protective measures implemented by Chinese hotels against COVID-19 on financial risk perception, and a customer attitude. It also demonstrates significant and positive interaction with customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. However, financial risk perception and customer attitude did not show effects on satisfaction, while they had effects on behavioral intention. The results suggest that protective measures are an important aspect of encouraging people to visit hotels safely and continually.

Which brand should be more nervous about nutritional information disclosure: McDonald's or Subway?

This study examines the health halo and horn effects in the context of two fast food brands commonly associated with healthy and unhealthy food (i.e., Subway and McDonald's). Health halo is consumers' tendency to overestimate the healthiness of certain food categories or items based on a single claim, whereas health horn is the tendency to underestimate it. Specifically, we investigated the moderating effects of nutritional information disclosure and dietary restraint on consumers' behavioral intentions. Two items from the McDonald's and Subway menus each served as stimuli. They represented health halo confirmation (Roast Chicken sandwich) or disconfirmation (Italian Spicy sandwich) and health horn confirmation (Big Mac burger) or disconfirmation (McSpicy Cajun Burger). This study employed a 2 (nutritional information: present vs. absent) × 4 (menu item type: a health halo or horn associated with Subway or McDonald's menu items with favorable and unfavorable nutritional profiles) and 2 (dietary restraint: restrained eaters vs. unrestrained eaters) × 4 (menu item type: a health halo or horn associated with Subway or McDonald's menu items with favorable and unfavorable nutritional profiles) mixed factorial design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (nutritional information: present vs. absent) and presented with all four menu items. There was a decrease in behavioral intentions toward all menu items except the one representing health horn disconfirmation. In particular, behavioral intentions were most substantially weakened for the item that entailed a health halo disconfirmation (Italian Spicy sandwich). The findings not only delineate the different practices companies adopt but also underscore the importance of nutritional information disclosure in helping consumers make healthier food choices.

The consequences of suggesting false childhood food events

We combined data across eight published experiments (N=1369) to examine the formation and consequences of false autobiographical beliefs and memories. Our path models revealed that the formation of false autobiographical belief fully mediated the pathway between suggesting to people that they had experienced a positive or negative food-related event in the past and current preference for that food. Suggestion indirectly affected intention to eat the food via change in autobiographical belief. The development of belief with and without memory produced similar changes in food preferences and behavior intention, indicating that belief in the event drives changes in suggestion-related attitudes. Finally, positive suggestions (e.g., "you loved asparagus the first time you tried it") yielded stronger effects than negative suggestions (e.g., "you got sick eating egg salad"). These findings show that false autobiographical suggestions lead to the development of autobiographical beliefs, which in turn, have consequences for one's attitudes and behaviors.