Mobile Context Research Articles

A Review on Mobile-assisted Chinese EFL Learners Vocabulary Learning

Mobile technology's advent and booming development have unlocked promising possibilities for EFL learners to learn vocabulary supported by mobile devices. Thus, mobile-assisted vocabulary learning has attracted researchers attention and interest recently. This growing attention and interest have led to a demand for review studies. This research aims to examine research foci and major findings on mobile-assisted English vocabulary learning using a content analysis method based on combining literature. Most empirical research focused on exploring the effect of mobile applications on learners English vocabulary learning via mixed methods, while only a few studies tried to examine factors influencing learners performance of English vocabulary learning in a mobile context. Research confirmed the positive effect of mobile applications on learners English vocabulary learning; however, research related to influencing factors reported mixed findings. Theory-oriented research mainly included theorising various modes of mobile-assisted English vocabulary learning and explaining the ideas of how to design user-friendly and efficient mobile vocabulary learning applications. Diverse modes were explained by researchers, such as to send messages, to build a multimodal English vocabulary database, to reasonably using portable devices and to build an online interactive community. Four types of applications are occupying a dominant position, which are online dictionary applications, vocabulary learning applications matching paper textbooks, and word memorizing applications. Research also implied that mobile English vocabulary applications tend to be easy to use, personalizing, and gamifying. This study also provides some implications for researchers, teachers, and learners.

Experience from Designing Augmented Reality Browsing Interfaces for Real-world Walking Scenarios

Mobile phones have enabled users to browse information in varying mobility contexts. For high-mobility settings such as walking, however, phones pose several usability challenges, particularly safety and limited screen sizes. While Augmented Reality (AR) has been proposed to address these issues, prior work has yet to investigate AR interface design in real-world walking conditions beyond text readability and notification design. This paper presents the first exploration of AR browsing interface design and extended usage while walking in the wild. We first conducted design sessions with 12 UI designers while walking in varied environments to design the window size, distance, opacity, anchor type, and placement for three categories of apps: text, video, and mixed content. Results show that traffic level significantly affects the designed window size, whereas content type significantly affects window size, distance, opacity, and vertical placement. To gain further insights from real-world usage, we conducted a multi-day observational study with 5 participants and observed that participants on average switched among window layouts every 3.3 minutes, for reasons such as safety and the level of extended visual attention.

Travel Time Variability in Urban Mobility: Exploring Transportation System Reliability Performance Using Ridesharing Data

Travel time variability (TTV) is a crucial indicator of transportation network performance, assessing travel time reliability and delays. This study investigates TTV metrics within the context of shared mobility using probe data from transportation network companies (TNCs) in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas–Fort Worth. Eight reliability metrics are analyzed and compared for each origin–destination (OD) pair in the network, including standard deviation (SD), the Planning Time Index (PTI), the Travel Time Index (TTI), the Buffer Index (BI), On-time Measures PR (alpha), and the Misery Index (MI), to evaluate their effectiveness in clustering OD pairs using K-means clustering. The findings confirm that SD, PTI, and MI are particularly effective in measuring travel time reliability and clustering within urban systems. This study identifies the most unbalanced supply–demand OD pairs/regions in each city, noting that low/medium-SD clusters around metropolitan airports indicate stable travel times even in high-demand zones, while high-SD clusters in downtown areas reveal significant traffic demands and unreliability. These patterns become more pronounced in study areas with multiple city centers. This study highlights the need for targeted strategies to enhance travel time reliability, particularly in regions like Dallas–Fort Worth, where public transportation alternatives are limited.

Migration Trajectories of Uzbek Students in France and the UK

This paper offers a comprehensive overview of select findings extracted from a PhD dissertation, employing a comparative analysis to investigate the trajectories of Uzbek students in both France and the UK during the period from 2004 to 2009. The paper advocates for the integration of the trajectory element into existing theories on international student mobility and international migration, with a particular emphasis on the context of South-North mobility. Utilizing qualitative research methods, including interviews, surveys, and participant observation, the study underscores the significance of tracking migrants' pathways over an extended period for a nuanced comprehension of migrant strategies and state policies with which they contend. The evidence suggests that stringent measures significantly influence the trajectories of migrants, not necessarily compelling a return to their countries of origin. Migration for studies goes beyond financial considerations as it also addresses the demands of a new social hierarchy emerging within the home country. In essence, migration for studies exposes individuals to diverse perspectives, surpassing the simplistic notion of a linear journey from point A to point B.

Mapping the Online Reviews Sentiment Landscape: An Exploration of Emotion Spectrum in User Reviews of Mobile Apps

Mobile applications have emerged as powerful platforms for consumers and understanding the attitudes and reactions of users by content and emotional sides in a mobile context becomes crucial for marketing decision-making. The study with comprehensive approach aims to analyze the emotion spectrum in mobile applications user reviews context by examining specific emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, neutral, sadness, surprise). Sentiment analysis methodology (through "Emotion English DistilRoBERTa-base" transformers-model) is employed on the dataset of 302.647 reviews from 34 mobile application categories. Categorical examination of emotions indicates that neutrality is the dominant emotion category, followed by joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, and anger emotion categories, while the fear category is the least dominant category. According to polarity examination; negative polarity reviews are associated with neutral, sadness and disgust emotions; neutral polarity reviews are associated with neutral and sadness; positive polarity reviews are associated with neutral and joy emotion categories. Final part of analysis includes examination of emotions individually and mobile app categories which each emotion with the highest frequency of dominance are presented. The distribution rates of emotions and the individual relationships of emotions with different application categories can shed light on future academic research and marketing decision-making.

마이크로 모빌리티를 위한 접이식 헬멧 디자인 연구

Micro mobility, powered by electric energy for first and last mile transportaton, represents a futuristic mode of transport tailored to urban needs. Despite its innovation, helmets designed for micro mobility users have failed to depart from traditional norms. This study aims to explore the requirements for helmets within the context of micro mobility and propose innovative directions. Through preliminary research on micro mobility and its users, an investigation and analysis of currently available foldable helmets revealed insufficient volume reduction capabilities, posing portability issues. Consequntly, a design study was undertaken to address these shortcomings. This research underscores the potential coomercial viability of foldable helmets with significant volume reduction suitable for storage and portability in the context of micro mobility.

CHILDREN’S INDEPENDENT MOBILITY TO SCHOOL IN MALAYSIA

The concept of children’s independent mobility encourages children to participate in physical activity through active transportation. Children’s Independent Mobility (CIM) is defined as the freedom for children to move around their surrounding neighbourhood without supervised by an adult supervision. Currently, there are some concerns about the decline in children's levels of physical activity. Increased reliance on automobiles for children's daily transportation can have negative effects on the environment, as well as increase the level of childhood obesity, and reduce their sense of independence. Research suggests that independent mobility to school is an essential component of a balanced childhood, and it has positive impacts on various aspects of children's lives, such as physical health, social skills, and cognitive development. However, very few practical studies address the association between children`s independent mobility and school specifically. Investigating CIM in the specific context of children's mobility to school is important because commuting between home and school is a major issue in active school travel. Adopting literature reviews as an approach, this paper will outline some recommendations that can be used by the relevant authorities in implementing pedestrian policies and guidelines for school children based on school accessibility and connectivity to promote CIM. From the literature reviews, this paper establishes a conceptual framework for the promotion of CIM to schools in the Malaysian context. It was found that most residential areas and school surroundings in Malaysia are responsive to children`s needs but parents` mindsets hinder this concept to be successfully done.

Food purchasing and eating patterns: Assessing the role of people’s mobility, social networks, and attitudes on healthy diets

A poor diet has crucial impacts on individuals and society as a whole. In addition to individual preferences, there is evidence that people’s diet is related to their social, economic, and geographical environment, including their mobility context. However, few studies have an empirical, integrated perspective of these previous dimensions. This paper presents an empirical effort to understand people’s food purchasing and eating preferences concerning their mobility dynamics, social networks, habits, perceptions, activities, and sociodemographics, going beyond a static distance-based food supply perspective. The case study corresponds to the city of Concepción, Chile, using data that included nutrition, mobility, social networks, habits, perceptions, activities, and sociodemographics. The relationships between people’s eating and shopping patterns and these different contextual dimensions were analyzed through joint multivariate statistical modelling.The empirical findings suggest that greater spatial proximity to the purchase of food does not significantly impact the quality of the diet. However, greater proximity to food supply affects the frequency and characteristics of the transport mode to the shopping trips, impacting the diet quality, especially in the case of open street markets. This relationship shows that mobility patterns play an essential role in the impact of spatial accessibility on the purchase of food and the quality of people’s diets. The results also confirm that food consumption and purchasing decisions go beyond individual sociodemographics and are influenced by other aspects of people’s overall mobility patterns, social capital, and attitudes.

Understanding food delivery service customers’ switching behavior

Purpose Prompted by intense competition among providers of food delivery services, this study examines the behavior of customers using mobile applications. Specifically, based on a push-pull-mooring framework, this study aims to identify the key factors affecting customers’ switching intentions in the food delivery context. A push factor is assumed to drive customers away from an existing service provider due to dissatisfaction, while a pull element lures them to an alternative provider by supplying enhanced levels of enjoyment, usefulness and/or informativeness and mooring factors (i.e. affective commitment and perceived herd) help make these switching decisions. Design/methodology/approach Partial least squares structural equation modeling with SmartPLS was used because it is suited to predictive models and produces stringent assessments of measurement models using a variance-based approach. Data was collected through an online survey. Participants were 350 food delivery application (FDA) customers in the USA. Findings The results highlight the importance of a push factor (dissatisfaction with the present FDA) and a mooring factor (perceived herd) as determinants of customers’ perceptions of risk that can induce a decision to switch to another FDA. However, the pull factors of usefulness, enjoyment and information quality did not significantly influence switching behavior. Originality/value Many food delivery service providers now use mobile application technologies to provide their services. Such companies can use the factors that influence customer switching intentions identified in this study to control customers’ churn behavior by managing dissatisfied customers in the mobile context.

Text Entry Performance and Situation Awareness of a Joint Optical See-Through Head-Mounted Display and Smartphone System.

Optical see-through head-mounted displays (OST HMDs) are a popular output medium for mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications. To date, they lack efficient text entry techniques. Smartphones are a major text entry medium in mobile contexts but attentional demands can contribute to accidents while typing on the go. Mobile multi-display ecologies, such as combined OST HMD-smartphone systems, promise performance and situation awareness benefits over single-device use. We study the joint performance of text entry on mobile phones with text output on optical see-through head-mounted displays. A series of five experiments with a total of 86 participants indicate that, as of today, the challenges in such a joint interactive system outweigh the potential benefits.

Languages to Transform Contexts of Mobility

Languages to Transform Contexts of Mobility

Understanding Business Models in the Brazilian Context of Electric Mobility: A Proposed Framework

In the transition to electric mobility (EM), business model innovation plays a crucial role in expanding the use of electric vehicles and increasing acceptance of this technology. The transition pathways differ between countries in the largest economies and those in Latin America. Brazil presents a unique scenario, benefiting from an early start with biofuels, the production of flex-fuel vehicles, predominantly renewable electric energy generation (>80%), and the absence of a structured national policy aligned with local governments. This study introduces a framework that surveys and categorizes businesses in EM, relating them to sustainable development aspects and regulatory maturity. It builds a solid conceptual foundation, incorporating data from technical and commercial events, as well as interviews with Brazilian specialists for validation. The proposed framework aids in understanding the Brazilian context, identifying regulatory gaps, and developing a common language to advance studies on business model innovation, contributing to electromobility studies in Latin America. Additionally, it can guide the construction of regional and local public policies and help identify more sustainable projects.

Cultivating consumer resilience: understanding and navigating adolescents’ responses to intrusive advertising

Purpose The purpose of this study is to show that as technologies expand the personalization capabilities of advertisers and that intrusive ad formats online and in mobile contexts raise privacy and control concerns, this emerging area requires better understanding. Design/methodology/approach The model tests antecedents and outcomes of advertising intrusion based on surveys of 170 respondents and structural equation modeling. Personalized mobile ads, privacy concerns and perceived vulnerability heighten intrusion, leading to resistance behaviors like avoiding ads and negative brand attitudes. Findings The findings offer several practical implications for marketers targeting youth to balance relevance with transparency in personalized communications to avoid irritation that damages brand perceptions and relationships. The authors believe the article contributes uniquely to the literature at the intersection of interactive marketing technologies, privacy concerns and adolescent consumers – an impactful yet understudied demographic. The rigorous methodology also advances knowledge of advertising intrusion phenomena. Research limitations/implications As with all research, it is important to recognize the limitations of this work that can be taken advantage of in future avenues of research. Firstly, the authors did not consider demographic variables, such as gender, and psychographic variables (lifestyle, personality, etc.), as factors that may influence advertising intrusiveness. Secondly, the authors limited the consequences of intrusion to the variable resistance over time, since several consequences can be studied in this context. Further investigations may remedy those limitations by integrating additional variables into the models, as well as resistance proxies. Besides, a new path for research would consider a breakdown of the age range of teenagers, i.e. the beginning, the middle and the late teenage years. Practical implications The discoveries from this study have significant implications for marketers and organization. The authors therefore recommend that companies commit to creating value through personalization and implement techniques to reduce consumers’ privacy concerns “personalizing mobile advertising involves several important aspects including choosing the right target market, sending users relevant and wanted information and creating personalized advertising contents” (Wang et al., 2019). One way forward, in an environment that will be even more connected in the future, is for companies to request only the data that is relevant and necessary for the smooth running of their business and to integrate privacy practices into their operations. Originality/value This research can contribute to the development of a theory on the role of advertising intrusion in shaping adolescent behavior. The research model has enabled us to deduce the impact of personalization on the perception of an advertising intrusion, providing us with information on the importance of elements provided by the company, such as the importance of the characteristics and beliefs of the adolescent consumer, i.e. perceived privacy concerns and risks, in deciding whether or not to participate in personalization. The conclusions of the study therefore highlight the need for companies to adapt their marketing strategy to remain consistent with new expectations, i.e. to conceive personalization and privacy as two consubstantial issues.

Nyilvános táblák és korlátok. A közösségi média állampolgári részvételi oldala és a digitális objektivizmus igénye

Online movements based on local, regional or ethnic identities and their positive effects, which support civic participation and express community solidarity, are of particular importance in evaluating digital media. To better understand the social impact of digital media, three case studies are presented. Two independent case studies – one on language use in southern Slovakia and the other on online organisations in Szeklerland – will be analysed to understand the context of online social mobilisation. Thirdly, a further case study is used to investigate the extent to which certain ideas related to competitiveness, meritocracy and consumption prevail among the domestic population, with a particular focus on university networks. Finally, it is concluded that it is important to take into account the complexity of the impact of digital media in the evaluation and not to stick to optimistic or pessimistic extremes.

Embracing sustainability on Indian roads: exploring the influence of personality factors in fostering green transportation behaviour

ABSTRACT Green consumption is gaining prominence across domains to negate the ecological footprint of humans. Focusing exclusively on the green mobility segment, the study attempts to analyze the impact of ‘Big Five’ personality factors on adoption behaviour and also address the attitude-intention-behaviour gap. Data was collected from 384 green/electric vehicle owners in Karnataka, India and the results revealed that personality traits like openness, emotional stability positively and significantly impact green adoption behaviour. Further, attitude towards green vehicles successfully mediates the relationship between personality traits and adoption intention which in turn is significantly associated to adoption, extraversion being an exception. Sufficient evidence was gained to prove the attitude-intention-behaviour link in green mobility context. Segmentation and target marketing efforts suggested based on the finding would aid automakers and policymakers in driving green behaviour across the traits and achieving positive attitude towards green vehicles, a crucial antecedent of green consumption intention and behaviour.

Make-or-Buy Policy Decision in Maintenance Planning for Mobility: A Multi-Criteria Approach

The ongoing technical innovation is fully involving transportation sector, converting the usual mass-transit system toward a sustainable mobility. Make-or-buy decision are usually adopted to assess different solutions in terms of costs-benefits to put in place strategic choices regarding in-house production or from an external supplier. This can also be reflected on maintenance operations, thus replicating a similar approach to transport companies involved. This paper aims to present a decision-making model by means of a multi-criteria analysis to lead make-or-buy choices adapted to maintenance. A brief introduction into the actual mobility context is provided, evaluating global and national trends with respect to the mobility solutions offered. Then, a focus is set on maintenance approaches in mobility sector and the need of a make-or-buy decision process is considered. The decision-making path is developed through a multi-criteria framework based on eigenvector weighing assessment, where different Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are identified and exploited to assess the maintenance approach at stake. Results allow to compare the solution offered by the different scenarios considered. In particular, for the case study of interest a −35% decrease in maintenance specific cost and −44% in cost variability were found. Reliability of the fleet was kept at an acceptable level compared to the reference in-house maintenance (≥90%) while an increase in the Mean Time Between Failure was observed. For the purposes of a small company, the method can address the choice of outsourcing maintenance as the best. Finally, a general trend is then extrapolated from the analysis performed, in order to constitute a decision guideline.

Typologizing Digital Nomad Visas: Comparing Policy Rationales from Tourism to Wealth Accumulation to Immigration

This article presents a comparative case study of the “Digital Nomad Visas” (DNVs) of Croatia, Thailand and Spain. Analysing common themes for these visas, the article identifies varying policy rationales that have guided their development, naming these the tourism, wealth accumulation and immigration rationales. The article then introduces a two-scale typology of DNVs centred around the dimensions of civic attachment and temporality. The findings illustrate the evolving nature of DNVs from ad hoc pandemic responses to strategic tools for socio-economic development and draw attention to the visas’ role in the broader context of global mobilities and labour market transformations.

Whatever Happened to Chand Bibi Sultan? Narratives of a Deccan Warrior Queen

Drawing from Persian, Urdu, Dakkhani and Marathi sources, this article examines narratives about the sixteenth century Queen-Regent of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur, Chand Bibi (1550–1600), who was also widely regarded as ‘Queen of the Deccan’. Powerful Muslim women of the Deccan Sultanates have received scant, if any, attention. This article challenges the north-centric perspective of Mughal imperial development that has long dominated histories of Persianate India. Like the Deccan, Chand Bibi resists categorisation. This article delves into Chand Bibi’s afterlives by grappling with the multiple accounts of the queen’s demise in 1600—by murder, suicide and escape. The mythology of an immobile harem or ‘zenana’ is belied by the context of mobility within sixteenth century Deccan. It focuses upon on when narratives of Chand Bibi’s murder, suicide and legendary escape first emerged and how they were circulated. I argue that the existence of three distinct narratives about Chand Bibi’s demise reveals various perceptions about the queen, which characterise the multi-ethnic and multireligious pluralism of the Deccan region to which she belonged.

Just-in-Time crash prediction for mobile apps

Just-In-Time (JIT) defect prediction aims to identify defects early, at commit time. Hence, developers can take precautions to avoid defects when the code changes are still fresh in their minds. However, the utility of JIT defect prediction has not been investigated in relation to crashes of mobile apps. We therefore conducted a multi-case study employing both quantitative and qualitative analysis. In the quantitative analysis, we used machine learning techniques for prediction. We collected 113 reliability-related metrics for about 30,000 commits from 14 Android apps and selected 14 important metrics for prediction. We found that both standard JIT metrics and static analysis warnings are important for JIT prediction of mobile app crashes. We further optimized prediction performance, comparing seven state-of-the-art defect prediction techniques with hyperparameter optimization. Our results showed that Random Forest is the best performing model with an AUC-ROC of 0.83. In our qualitative analysis, we manually analysed a sample of 642 commits and identified different types of changes that are common in crash-inducing commits. We explored whether different aspects of changes can be used as metrics in JIT models to improve prediction performance. We found these metrics improve the prediction performance significantly. Hence, we suggest considering static analysis warnings and Android-specific metrics to adapt standard JIT defect prediction models for a mobile context to predict crashes. Finally, we provide recommendations to bridge the gap between research and practice and point to opportunities for future research.

Context-assisted personalized pedestrian dead reckoning localization with a smartphone

ABSTRACT Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) plays an important role in multi-sensor fusion of indoor positioning due to its autonomy and continuity advantages. The robustness of PDR significantly impacts indoor positioning accuracy, but various pedestrians and mobility contexts pose challenges for reliable step detection and accurate step length estimation. This paper proposes a context-assisted personalized PDR localization solution to address these challenges. Firstly, by exploiting temporal and frequency domain features, an enhanced step detection method is developed to mitigate false step detection, especially during unfavorable actions of pedestrians. Subsequently, a personalized step length model is proposed, and its parameters are dynamically updated online using other high-precision sensors available within a multi-sensor fusion positioning solution. Moreover, the personalized step length model is further refined using mobility context knowledge. Finally, a novel context-assisted pedestrian velocity model is established for PDR localization to enhance positioning accuracy, particularly when there are changes in mobility contexts. The results demonstrate that the robustness of step detection is improved, and the false detection rate is reduced from 13% to 2%. For various smartphone users, the proposed context-assisted personalized step length model exhibits a relative error of 2.01%, in contrast to 7.06% observed with the traditional flat model. Consequently, the accuracy of walking distance is enhanced from 92.2% to 98.9%, and the PDR localization error is reduced from 2.49 m to 1.63 m. Importantly, the proposed solution exhibits more robust and consistent performance across different pedestrians, smartphone models, and challenging mobility contexts.