Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing society, yet its widespread adoption is accompanied by significant ethical and societal concerns. Through a large survey, this study explores the complex interplay between self-efficacy, AI competency, cultural factors, and attitudes towards AI among UK and Arab participants. We investigate how these factors influence individual’s attitudes toward AI and its impact on well-being. Our findings reveal that self-efficacy plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes towards AI, with higher levels of self-efficacy associated with more positive attitudes and enhanced well-being. Moreover, our results show that AI competency serves as a mediator, with increased competence fostering greater confidence and positivity towards AI. Our results also show gender disparities in AI attitudes within the UK sample, with males exhibiting higher positive attitudes and lower negative attitudes compared to females. Cultural differences were evident, with the Arab sample showing higher AI competency, positive attitudes, and overall well-being compared to the UK sample. Our results emphasize the need for culturally sensitive design and implementation of AI to ensure responsible development and implementation of AI for diverse populations.

Spurred by the rapid modernisation of the sector and the advent of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), audiovisual (AV) piracy is at epidemic levels, with interventions having limited effect. To date, the dominant themes in interventions have been around personal deterrence (i.e. the threat of legal action) and have not considered other factors that may influence an individual’s decision to consume infringing content. In this paper, we consider psychological factors, including perceptions around risk-taking, security behaviours, problematic internet use and personality traits, to gain a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing engagement with IPTV and the potential implications for cyber security. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 283 participants living in the UK (age range 18–74, male 104), and an integrated structural equation model was constructed. Our findings showed a positive relationship between security behaviours and the perceived risk of viewing IPTV and a negative relationship between the dark personality triad and the perceived risk of viewing IPTV. They suggest that security behaviours fully mediate the relationship between problematic internet use and IPTV risk-taking, indicating a potential new path for anti-piracy interventions with greater efficacy.

This study investigates the barriers to challenging others who post misinformation on social media platforms. We conducted a survey amongst U.K. Facebook users (143 (57.2%) women, 104 (41.6%) men) to assess the extent to which the barriers to correcting others, as identified in literature across disciplines, apply to correcting misinformation on social media. We also group the barriers into factors and explore demographic differences amongst them. It has been suggested that users are generally hesitant to challenge misinformation. We found that most of our participants (58.8%) were reluctant to challenge misinformation. We also identified moderating roles of age and gender in the likelihood of challenging misinformation. Older people were more likely to challenge misinformation compared to young adults while, men demonstrated a slightly greater likelihood to challenge compared to women. The 20 barriers influencing the decision to challenge misinformation, were then grouped into four main factors: social concerns, effort/interest considerations, prosocial intents, and content-related factors. We found that, controlling for age and gender, “social concerns” and “effort/interest considerations” have the significant impact on likelihood to challenge. Identified four factors were analysed in terms of demographic differences. Men ranked “effort/interest considerations” higher than women, while women placed higher importance on “content-related factors”. Moreover, older individuals were found to be more resilient to “social concerns”. The influence of educational background was most prominent in ranking “content-related factors”. Our findings provide important insights for the design of future interventions aimed at encouraging the challenging of misinformation on social media platforms, highlighting the need for tailored, demographically sensitive approaches.

Our survey included 250 UK-based social media users and aimed to identify the factors that contribute to users’ reluctance to challenge misinformation.The study found that people have misperceptions about the negative consequences of challenging misinformation and the acceptability of the behaviour. The negative consequences were categorized into three categories: relationship consequences, negative impact on others, and futility. Participants perceived higher relationship consequences and futility for others than themselves. Additionally, people anticipate more negative reactions from others when being challenged for sharing misinformation than they themselves expect. Those who believed that others think challenging misinformation is more socially acceptable than themselves were more likely to challenge. Moreover, age, injunctive norms and perceived negative impact on others have an impact on willingness to challenge.Overall, the study underscores the significance of understanding the role of perceptions and misperceptions in challenging misinformation. Developing features on social media that facilitate challenging misinformation or fostering social norms that endorse it can address these misperceptions. To develop the right approach understanding of users and their motivations is crucial. Our study paves the way for the development of effective user-centric countermeasures by shedding light about user’s attitudes, perceptions and misperceptions.

Perceived persuasiveness, an individual’s acknowledgement of the system’s influence on the self, may affect users’ response to persuasion attempts. Existing research mainly focused on systems where persuasion supports a desired behaviour, e.g., a healthy lifestyle. Studies have also considered how people perceive persuasion in themselves but not in others. In this paper, we conducted an online survey and explored users’ perception of susceptibility to persuasion in themselves and in others, taking online gambling as an example domain. We further examined how player attributes may influence their perception of susceptibility. A total of 250 participants (age range 18–75, 127 female) completed the online survey. Findings showed that susceptibility to the different persuasive design techniques differed significantly, with participants reporting the highest susceptibility to in-game rewards. Females were significantly more likely than males to report higher susceptibility to all of the persuasive design categories, and problem gamblers had higher susceptibility scores for all the persuasive design categories compared to other groups. There was a discrepancy between self-reported susceptibility scores and susceptibility scores that participants assigned to others. For each persuasive design category, participants assigned higher susceptibility scores to others compared to themselves. Moreover, the difference between self-reported susceptibility and susceptibility scores assigned to others was significantly higher for males and for all the persuasive design categories, non-problem gamblers exhibited a much greater discrepancy between the two compared to other groups. More research is required to determine whether the perception of susceptibility to persuasive design techniques is related to other individual or domain-specific factors.

Persuasive interfaces raise ethical concerns when users are unaware of persuasion or find it hard to resist it. Inoculation Theory suggests that attitudes can be inoculated against persuasive attacks. Studies show that disclosure statements in native advertising help people recognize persuasive intent. Likewise, just-in-time disclosure statements in persuasive interfaces may have a similar effect. In this article, explainable persuasion was used as an inoculation intervention to build resistance against persuasive interfaces. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed via a 4x2 online experiment, taking online gambling as an illustrative domain. 240 participants (age range 18-73 years, 138 male, 100 female, 2 participants choose not to disclose) were recruited from the UK. Inoculation was delivered through an animated video, while explainable persuasion was operationalized through the disclosure of persuasive intent. The findings showed that explainable persuasion increased awareness of the presence and risks of persuasive interfaces and strengthened user resistance to persuasive attempts. Explainable persuasion, being information-based, can be a cost-effective strategy for helping people stay in control over their digital usage while engaging with persuasive technologies.

Persuasive technology refers to digital means that influence attitude behaviour, and decisions. While the professional design of persuasive interfaces considers user interests and freedom of choice a primary requirement, principles and methods to achieve it are yet to be introduced. In the design of persuasive interfaces, fulfilling conditions of informed consent can help establish transparency and address such ethical issues. This paper defined explainable persuasion, its potential form, and benefits and explored whether explainable persuasion is a user requirement on demand. This paper further examined explainable persuasion design from the user’s perspective and reported on acceptance and rejection factors, as well as possible design tensions and solutions. In this study, we took online gambling as a case study. A total of 250 UK-based users of gambling platforms (age range 18–75, 127 female) completed our online survey based on principles of persuasion and explainability. Findings showed that players were aware of the use, persuasive intent, and potential harm of various persuasive design techniques used in online gambling platforms (e.g., the use of in-game rewards, reminders, and praise to encourage further gambling). Despite this awareness, they agreed that explainable persuasion can still help users stay in control of their online experience, increase their positive attitude towards the online system, and keep them reminded of the potential side effects of persuasive interfaces. Future research is required to enhance the design and implementation of explainable persuasion in persuasive interfaces.

In recent years, the notion of digital addiction has become popular. Calls for solutions to combat it, especially in adolescents, are on the rise. Whilst there remains debate on the status of this phenomenon as a diagnosable mental health condition; there is a need for prevention and intervention approaches that encourage individuals to have more control over their digital usage. This narrative review examines digital addiction countermeasures proposed in the last ten years. By countermeasures, we mean strategies and techniques for prevention, harm reduction, and intervention towards addictive digital behaviours. We include studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 2010 and 2021 and based on empirical evidence. In total, 87 studies were included in the review. The findings show that the main countermeasures could be grouped under four categories: psycho-social, software mediated, pharmacological, and combined. Overall, it has been shown that the proposed countermeasures were effective in reducing addictive digital use. However, a general statement on the efficacy of proposed countermeasures cannot be made due to inconsistent conceptualisation of digital addiction and methodological weaknesses. Accordingly, this review highlights issues that need to be addressed in future studies.

The increased adoption of collaborative human-artificial intelligence decision-making tools triggered a need to explain recommendations for safe and effective collaboration. We explore how users interact with explanations and why trust-calibration errors occur, taking clinical decision-support systems as a case study.

Digital addiction is becoming a prevalent societal concern and persuasive design techniques used in digital platforms might be accountable also for the development and maintenance of such problematic behavior. This paper theoretically analyses the relationship between persuasive system design principles and digital addiction in light of theories on behavioral and substance-based addictions. The findings suggest that some of the persuasive design principles, in specific contexts, may trigger and expedite digital addiction. The purpose of this paper is to open a discussion around the potential effects of persuasive technology on digital addiction and cater to this risk in the design processes and the persuasive design itself.

Persuasive technology refers to the use of digital means to influence attitude, behaviour, and decisions. While a professional design of persuasive interfaces shall consider user interests and freedom of choice as a primary requirement, principles, and methods to achieve it are yet to be introduced. In the design of persuasive interfaces, fulfilling conditions of informed consent can help establish transparency and resolve such ethical issues. This paper introduces the concept of explainable persuasion as a way to address informed consent within persuasive interfaces. We provide a definition for explainable persuasion, highlight the need for it, discuss the design approach and underline the challenges to be addressed when designing explainable persuasive interfaces.

Today many interactive online platforms are equipped with immersive and attention-grabbing elements to increase user engagement and persuade more online presence, interaction and transactions. Excessive and obsessive use of technology combined with harm can be seen as a behavioral addiction. While technology companies started to introduce tools to mitigate addictive behavior, their principles, design process and success are questionable. Given the potential conflict between the revenue model and such tools, our work aims to define ethical requirements categories that act as a reference point for analysts and designers. We base our discussion on online gambling, which provides a clear example of addictive technology. Reno Model I–V was examined to discover main guidelines for enabling conscious online activity. As a result, we identified three main ethical goals: 1) creating an environment that supports informed choice, 2) monitoring player data to identify risk factors, and 3) introducing measures to tackle problematic online behaviour. We then refined these upper level goals into more concrete functionalities and metrics.