Competitive firms may share their digital resource to improve their efficiency in the industries of banks, insurance and hospitals. Their decisions about information security are important, but fail to receive enough attention. This paper examines two competitive firms’ information security investment and security information sharing through building a game-theoretic model in which these firms interact with one strategic hacker who launches cyber-attacks against them. We can obtain the following interesting findings: (a) when the efficiency of security information sharing remains low, resource sharing may hurt the firms because the security investment is restricted; (b) the firms may benefit from security competition that would urge security investment to effectively defend against cyber-attacks; (c) the firms may suffer from government intervention to raise their security awareness in that security information sharing is inhibited. We further discuss how the equilibrium outcomes of the firms and the hacker change when security decisions of the firms are made in a centralized way and made prior to cyber-attacks of the hacker respectively.
In recent years, technological change through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has been an inevitable strategy for information technology (IT) artifacts to better meet individualized needs and provide smart services. However, AI-driven technological change differs from previous technological changes because it has been an emerging, disruptive technological change that aims to make accepted IT smart. It may bring significant sociotechnical changes in existing IT artifacts that require user adaptation to such technological changes, which may hinder the success of the technological change strategy. This paper investigates how IT identity inspires user adaptation to AI-driven technological change in existing IT artifacts in terms of three dimensions: emotional energy, relatedness, and dependence. Drawing on the commitment to technological change (CTC) theory, we found that two dimensions of CTC (affective CTC and continuous CTC) could explain the underlying mechanism between IT identity and user adaptation in existing IT artifacts. Emotional energy, relatedness, and dependence have different effects on the two dimensions of CTC, leading to different influences on user adaptation. The findings can provide new insights for service providers of IT artifacts to integrate AI artifacts into IoT-based smart services.
High loan default rates pose a significant challenge to the sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs). While digital interventions offer promising solutions, their effectiveness, particularly in designing text message reminders, remains underexplored in this context. This study investigates the impact of text message reminders, designed based on Construal Level Theory (CLT), on loan repayment behavior in microfinance. Through a randomized 2 × 2 factorial field experiment involving 767 active borrowers of Addis Ababa Credit and Saving Institution (ADCSI), Ethiopia’s third-largest MFI, we manipulated two key dimensions of psychological distance: temporal distance (reminders sent 1 day vs. 10 days before the due date) and informational distance (messages with vs. without loan amount disclosure). Our findings reveal that text message reminders significantly increase loan repayment rates (25.5
This study aims to discuss the impact of FinTech on corporate financialization and its governance measures, revealing the dominant motive for over-financialization among Chinese enterprises. It finds that the primary motivation behind financialization among Chinese enterprises is the pursuit of profits rather than risk aversion. FinTech exacerbates this motivation by improving financial investment returns, thus enhancing the level of corporate financialization. Furthermore, FinTech exacerbates the degree of corporate over-financialization, significantly boosting the financial investment levels of enterprises that excessively hold financial investment portfolios. The external and internal governance of enterprises can be potential solutions to mitigate FinTech-induced corporate financialization. The impact of FinTech-induced corporate financialization can be alleviated through institutional investor ownership and high-quality external audits. Also, executive compensation incentives and high information transparency can reduce the financialization effects caused by FinTech.
Online Q A communities have gained traction for their role in disseminating high-value information in the form of question-and-answer. While prior research has examined factors influencing answer helpfulness, the role of consistency between questions and answers remains underexplored. Based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model, this study explores how sentiment and thematic consistency function as heuristic and systematic cues respectively to shape answer helpfulness. Using a dataset of 50,525 answers from Zhihu.com, we find that thematic consistency is positively related to answer helpfulness, whereas sentiment consistency is negatively related to it. Additionally, based on identity theory, we examine how social and relational identity moderate these effects. This study extends prior research by integrating content consistency and identity perspectives to explain content evaluation in Q A platforms. It differentiates cognitive routes via the Heuristic-Systematic Model and reveals that identity dimensions significantly shape users’ processing of different consistency cues. These offer valuable insights for platform managers and content creators, highlighting strategies to increase perceived answer helpfulness in online Q A communities.
