Call for Industrial PhD Fellowship in Omni-channel and Business Analytics

EUROSKO is looking for one outstanding candidate for a 4-year doctoral project in the industry in cooperation with Kristiania University College in the fields of Omnichannel/Business Analytics. The successful candidate is expected to start the appointment with EUROSKO autumn 2021. The candidate will be members of the Behavior & Technology Lab (BTLab) at Kristiania University College and will be expected to conduct research of high-quality level under the supervision of Prof. Asle Fagerstrøm.

Special Section on “Health, Technology, & Behavior Science”

Valdimar Sigurdsson (Reykjavik University) and Asle Fagerstrøm (Kristiania University College) are guest editors for a special section on “Health, Technology, & Behavior Science” in Perspectives on Behavior Science. The aim of this section is to provide reviews and empirical research that integrates the latest technological innovations and behavior science. The contributors in this special section demonstrate that behavior science can aid an understanding of why people do or do not engage in a healthy lifestyle and help identify what is needed to design a successful health behavior intervention through the use of technology

Call for papers: Internet of Things Applications in Healthcare: A Focus on Improving Patient Safety

Internet of Things Applications in Healthcare: A Focus on Improving Patient Safety: A special issue of Journal of Healthcare Engineering

Call for papers

This special issue seeks to attract original research articles that discuss emerging IoT technologies with regard to their impact on patient safety in healthcare. This special issue especially welcomes analytical, computational, experimental, and clinical research, state-of-the-art reviews, and conceptual and theoretical developments and designs.

Persuasive technology

Sanchit Pawar gives a presentation at The Behavior Bar the 12th of October 2017. His talk is on Persuasive technology, a topic which is part of research in the Behavioral Lab at Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology. Persuasive technology is broadly defined as technology designed to facilitate behavioral change. It is based on the principles of human-computer interaction and experimental methodologies. It shares several core features with behavioral science. In order to effectively utilize technology for behavioral change, we propose that the influence of technology can be better understood from a behavior-analytic perspective. Show up and listen to this groundbreaking topic within human-computer interaction.

Design of Digital Products in the Future

A paper titled “Design of Digital Products in the Future: A Study of Interaction Design Students and Their Perceptions on Design Issues” by Hanne Sørum was presented at the conference HCI International 2017 in Vancouver, Canada,  9-14 July 2017. Today’s students on programs covering interaction design will most likely contribute to the development of products that we will use in the future. The roles they will play in this regard will of course depend on various factors. Regardless of this, their educational background is a vital component, along with their motivation, personality, knowledge, and ideas. The present study reports on an online questionnaire (n = 82) given to students on interaction design programs. Additionally, eight qualitative interviews were performed to gain more insight. The findings show that, in general, the students of today perceive themselves to be in great shape for the development of future products. However, the majority of the respondents have also considered other study areas that might be relevant to them, grounded in shared backgrounds and interests. They also enjoy working individually with design ideas and prototypes, and they generally prefer working with digital solutions over working with print and physical products. User testing is found to be a vital element within the design process, although the analysis of such  data  is  found  to  be  somewhat  difficult. Concerning  industrial  needs,  the students struggle to clearly define the role of an interaction designer and the tasks they are expected to perform when taking on a job within the design industry. This paper ends with concluding remarks and suggestions for upcoming research contributions.

Consumers´ credit use

The consumer credit use project has gained a lot of attention. From the lens of behavioral economics, we investigates consumers´ choice between saving and credit use. Understanding of consumers’ credit use is of vital importance as well as for the responsible policy-makes, credit card companies, researchers, as for the individual credit users. This research is done by Asle Fagerstrøm (Westerdals Oslo ACT, Norway), Donald Hantula (Temple University, US) and Lars Sydnes (Westerdals Oslo ACT). Our research is published in The Psychological Records and has been mentioned in Forskning.no, Aftenposten, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation).

That personal profile image might jeopardize your rental opportunity!

This study aims to investigate the impact of a seller’s facial image and their expression upon buyers’ behavior in on Airbnb. The impact of facial expressions was investigated together with other relevant variables (price and customer ratings). Findings show that the impact of a seller’s facial expression on buying behavior in an online peer-to-peer context is significant. A negative facial expression and absence of facial image (head silhouette) abates approach and evokes avoidance tendencies to explore a specific web page on Airbnb, and, simultaneously decrease the likelihood to rent. The reverse effect was true for neutral and positive facial expressions. We found that a negative and positive facial expression had more impact on likelihood to rent, for women than for men. Further analysis shows that the absence of facial image and an angry facial expression cannot be compensated for by a low price and top customer ratings related to likelihood to rent. The study published in Computers in Human Behavior and is presented at ScienceNordic, Forskning.no, and Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

Wi-Fi services get high priority when booking hotels

Our research on the impact of Wi-Fi service on consumers´ hotel booking online is presented in ScienceNordic. The study aim to expand understanding of the relative importance of Wi-Fi when consumers book hotel rooms online.When looking only at Wi- Fi, results show that previous guests’ Wi-Fi reviews have a higher impact on booking than Wi-Fi price. Further analysis shows that Wi-Fi can be a “deal breaker” in a competitive and/or undifferentiated market. We propose that the impact of Wi-Fi can be understood as rule-governed behavior. Consequently, behavioral understanding of the impact of Wi-Fi could aid hotel managers in developing more effective marketing strategies. The study is done by Niklas Eriksson (Arcada University of Applied Sciences) and Asle Fagerstrøm (Westerdals Oslo ACT), and is published in Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research