Effects Of Information Availability Research Articles

The role of information availability: A longitudinal analysis of technology entrepreneurship

The rapid spread of digital technologies has fostered an assumption that all entrepreneurs have equal and easy access to knowledge stocks irrespective of their context. We challenge this assumption by examining the contextual influence of information availability and argue that technology entrepreneurship involves a search process reliant on timely access to ideational components. We hypothesize that in contexts where information is more readily available, potential technology entrepreneurs are at an advantage, resulting in higher rates of technology entrepreneurship. Even after controlling for other important factors, such as polity, educational attainment, research and development spending, foreign direct investment, and gross domestic product growth, our results show a positive relationship between information availability and the proportion of entrepreneurs who pursue technology-based ventures instead of low-tech ventures. We further find that the effect of information availability on technology entrepreneurship increases in the presence of stronger intellectual property rights, suggesting that information availability enhances technology entrepreneurship more readily in contexts with incentives for innovation disclosure.

Competing Effects of Information Availability and Visibility Enhancement on Post-IPO Media Coverage

Building on the literature on media behavior, we examine how visibility enhancing factors–specifically dramatic events and prominent affiliations–affect the relationship between availability cascad...

The effect of information availability in a user interface (UI) on in-vehicle task performance: A pilot study

When performing an in-vehicle operation, the information display is a crucial element that decides the operator's control behaviors. The interaction between information presentation and operator's in-vehicle task performance is critical for vehicle safety. The question arises: What is the optimum availability of information? The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between different information availabilities and operation performances as operators interact with an in-vehicle user interface (UI) to complete a simulated train driving task. The results show that some types of information significantly affect the operator's task performance. Information that improved the task performances were closely associated with specific task requirements. The participants' task performance indicated that they had a better awareness of a task situation and were better at controlling their virtual vehicle when completing time and process-restricted tasks with limited, relevant information. These results support the conclusion that more information does not always promote accuracy and safety during the task completion. Relevance to industryThis study presents a unique insight into the information display of in-vehicle UI design for vehicle control. The information available within an in-vehicle interface should be optimized by performance assessments to provide more useful information; this has significant positive effect on operator performance from an accuracy and safety perspective. Thus, this study provides advice for designing an in-vehicle UI.

Self-organizing behavior in collective choice models: laboratory experiments

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to consider queuing systems where captive repeat customers select a service facility each period. Are people in such a distributed system, with limited information diffusion, able to approach optimal system performance? How are queues formed? How do people decide which queue to join based on past experience? The authors explore these questions, investigating the effect of information availability, as well as the effect of heterogeneous facility sizes, at the macro (system) and micro (individual performance) levels.Design/methodology/approach– Experimental economics, using a queuing experiment.Findings– The authors find little behavioural difference at the aggregate level, but observe significant variations at the individual level. This leads the authors to the conclusion that it is not sufficient to evaluate system performance by observing average customer allocation and sojourn times at the different facilities; one also needs to consider the individuals’ performance to understand how well the chosen design works. The authors also observe that better information diffusion does not necessarily improve system performance.Practical/implications– Evaluating system performance based on aggregate behaviour can be misleading; however, this is how many systems are evaluated in practice, when only aggregate performance measures are available. This can lead to suboptimal system designs.Originality/value– There has been little theoretical or empirical work on queuing systems with captive repeat customers. This study contributes to the understanding of decision making in such systems, using laboratory experiments based on the cellular automata approach, but with all agents replaced by humans.

Effects of Information Availability on Command-and-Control Decision Making: Performance, Trust, and Situation Awareness.

We investigated how increases in task-relevant information affect human decision-making performance, situation awareness (SA), and trust in a simulated command-and-control (C2) environment. Increased information is often associated with an improvement of SA and decision-making performance in networked organizations. However, previous research suggests that increasing information without considering the task relevance and the presentation can impair performance. We used a simulated C2 task across two experiments. Experiment 1 varied the information volume provided to individual participants and measured the speed and accuracy of decision making for task performance. Experiment 2 varied information volume and information reliability provided to two participants acting in different roles and assessed decision-making performance, SA, and trust between the paired participants. In both experiments, increased task-relevant information volume did not improve task performance. In Experiment 2, increased task-relevant information volume reduced self-reported SA and trust, and incorrect source reliability information led to poorer task performance and SA. These results indicate that increasing the volume of information, even when it is accurate and task relevant, is not necessarily beneficial to decision-making performance. Moreover, it may even be detrimental to SA and trust among team members. Given the high volume of available and shared information and the safety-critical and time-sensitive nature of many decisions, these results have implications for training and system design in C2 domains. To avoid decrements to SA, interpersonal trust, and decision-making performance, information presentation within C2 systems must reflect human cognitive processing limits and capabilities.

Effect of Information Availability on Assessment and Designation of Species at Risk

Information required to evaluate the extent to which species are at risk of extinction is usually limited and characterized as highly uncertain. In this context, we define information availability as the presence or absence of information used to determine the value of an ecological variable. We examined which of three hypothetical approaches best matched how levels of risk are assigned to species: (1) precautionary approach in which analysts designate levels of risk regardless of the amount of information available, (2) worst-case approach in which analysts assign the maximum level of risk possible from the criteria, and (3) insurance approach in which analysts assign poorly known species to a high-risk category when little information is available. We used the quantitative assessment criteria of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) as a case study. We created a binary (0/1) matrix of all 2.4192 × 10(7) logical combinations of available information for the 14 ecological variables included in the quantitative criteria. We processed each combination of information availability represented in the matrix with a computer algorithm designed to emulate COSEWIC decision-making rules. Low information availability was associated with a relatively high frequency of not being able to assign a candidate taxon to a risk category, which does not follow the precautionary principle. Information availability and the level of risk assigned to species were directly related, which is associated with the worst-case approach, and counter to the insurance approach. Our results suggest that information availability can have a major effect on the level of risk assigned to a species. We recommend a conscious determination of whether such effects are desired, and we recommend the development of methods to explicitly characterize and incorporate information availability and other sources of uncertainty in decision-making processes.

Transparency in Consumer Credit: The Usage of the APR

The role of Annual Percentage Rate (APR) in installment plan selection was investigated. The choice of analyzing APR was motivated by its wide diffusion due to the mandatory disclosure acts. There have been doubts towards consumer understanding of APR.A sample of 299 consumers were given five series of credit alternatives. The descriptions of the loans were homogeneous and regarded amount borrowed, duration, monthly installment, APR, total repayments, and opportunity cost of capital. Consumers were asked to select a credit option for each series clarifying the motivations of their choice.The ability to select the loan with the highest Net Present Value (NPV) was ascertained. It depends on the awareness of (i) opting for the lowest APR, that is also less than the opportunity cost of capital; and (ii) demanding the extension of the repayment period to improve the convenience of the identified competitive rate.The analysis attested consumer failure to single out the loan with the highest NPV. The reason should be a considerable lack of information about the usage of APR: participants selected the lowest rate but they neglected to consider the opportunity cost of capital and the extension of the repayment period. Furthermore, they sometimes chose the loan contrasting duration and monthly borrowing costs. APR usage may therefore be inapt since employed as a substitute for the monthly installment payment. An overlap between economic convenience and financial sustainability could explain this phenomenon. To improve disclosure, further (or different) borrowing cost measures should be placed in credit advertisements.This is one of the few studies that measure ability to select installments plans considering effects of information availability.

The Impact of Hotel Pricing Policies on Perceived Fairness and Satisfaction with the Reservation Process

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of offering differential pricing policy information on customer perceptions of fairness and their satisfaction with the reservation process. More specifically, we want to investigate whether offering information on the hotel's pricing policies would influence guest perceptions. In addition, we sought to understand how comparison outcome (better/worse/same) and comparison standard (internal/social comparison) mitigate the positive effects of information availability. Two hundred and forty travelers waiting for their planes at an airport in the Washington DC area served as subjects. Our results indicate that both information availability and comparison outcome influenced perceived fairness ratings. Moreover, the three factors (comparison outcome, comparison standard and information availability) jointly determined overall satisfaction with the reservation process.

The effects of information availability on the benefits accrued from enhancing audit-firm reputation

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment that examines the effect of market setting and reputation enhancement on audit prices, profits, and number of contracts. Klein and Leffler (1981) The role of market forces in assuring contractual performance. Journal of Political Economy, 89, 615–641 provide theory related to reputation effects based on the availability of perfect ex-post quality (of the audit) information. Such information is not routinely available within audit markets. Therefore, the assumption of the availability of perfect ex-post quality information was relaxed to reflect a more realistic market in which audit quality must be inferred from information related to audit failure. Findings are that restricting the information available in this manner significantly affected the market's response to the auditor's attempts to establish a reputation. While the markets for which perfect ex-post quality information was provided closely followed the model's expectations, the limited information markets did not—auditors who attempted to enhance their reputation were unable to charge significantly higher prices and correspondingly made significantly lower profits.

The effects of information availability on the group consensus process

Abstract Can a group reach consensus without the right information? To support group interaction, groupware must provide the correct amount and kind of information. This pilot study tests the relationship between information availability and consensus. Availability includes amount of information, as well as the usefulness of information. Does the group have enough information? Does the group have and use the right information? Discovering the information availability/consensus relationship may help decide whether or not consensus is desired under certain information circumstances.

Errors in Recall and Judgment: The Effect of Information Availability

Abstract Researchers in many disciplines use behavioral measures that ask subjects for judgments based on previous experiences without considering how subjects recall such information. We examined an availability model, which assumes that the ease with which events are recalled from memory can lead to overstating the likelihood of those events and, in turn, can affect judgment. Two experiments were conducted, and the results support this model, suggesting that certain characteristics of events in memory can lead to errors in subjects' responses to research questions.

Social networks and innovation adoption: A look at burt's use of structural equivalence

This paper examines Burt's 1982 model of innovation adoption based on an application of structural equivalence. The proposition that two structurally equivalent actors will adopt an innovation at approximately the same time is explored. The diffusion of two innovations through a network of commercial fishermen provides the basis for an empirical test. Tentative support for this proposition is found, particularly if the effects of information availability, economic competition, and the appropriateness of the innovation are taken into account.

A Laboratory Test of the Mirror Image Hypothesis1

Chinese and American nationals participated in an experimental internation simulation as a test of Bronfenbrenner's mirror image hypothesis. Perceptions of own and opposing nations were measured for (1) a rebel movement, and (2) a large power fighting a rebel movement in a foreign nation. The effects of information availability (relevance), and of increasing threat from a third power were also investigated. It was found that evaluative mirror image perceptions of the opposing nation as “bad” and one's own as “good” were easily established. Mirror image perceptions of “they are the aggressors” were found for Chinese, but not for Americans. Information relevance had only limited effects. Threat from a third power produced, in general, decreased mirror image perceptions for subjects representing the large power, but did not affect subjects representing the rebel movement.