Miwa Yamazaki will be defending her dissertation proposal entitled "A Study of Consumer Empowerment: The Effects of Same-Gender and Cross-Gender Message Framing on Attitudes and Intentions Toward Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 Prevention" on March 5th (Monday) in POST 302 at 9:00-11:00am.

Junghyun Nam will defend her dissertation "Perceived Quality and Motivations on Intention-to-use of a General Web Portal" on Wednesday, April 30, 1:00-2:30PM, Shidler College of Business room E-301. Among other findings, the study identified four groups of quality factors perceived by users of web portals: Content relevancy, Communication interactiveness, Information currency, and Instant gratification. Findings are interpreted from a social computing standpoint. The committee is chaired by Dr. Tung Bui.

Congratulations to Claire Hitosugi, who successfully defended her dissertation proposal, "Effects of Culture on Online Initial Trust: Individual Level Analysis" on April 18th.

Abstract: This study investigates how culture affects initial online trust formation at the individual level. In IS research, culture was often analyzed either at the national level or at the organizational level, if culture was investigated at all. Little work has been done on culture and online trust. I will attempt to link cultural constructs to the online initial trust model that was presented by McKnight in 2002. First, I will replicate McKnight’s trust model with new subjects and with new tasks. Then I will attempt to integrate cultural factors into the trust model. Culture survey scales will be adopted from the 2006 Srite and Karahanna’s study.