Exploring game experiences and game leadership in massively multiplayer online role‐playing games

This study explored the in‐game experiences of massively multiplayer online role‐playing game (MMORPG) players focusing on game leadership and offline leadership. MMORPGs have enormous potential to provide gameplayers with rich social experiences through various interactions along with social activities such as joining a game community, team play and others. In this study, a total of 808 Korean online gameplayers participated in an online survey. Amongst them, 300 MMORPG players were used as the final sample group. The results showed that joining a game community and playing in teams may help players build their leadership experience in games. The findings also suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between in‐game leadership and offline leadership. However, there were no significant differences in gender regarding in‐game and offline leadership. This study suggests that MMORPGs offer a useful place where people can grow their leadership skills and potentially transfer them into the real world.     

Crowdfunding public projects: Collaborative governance for achieving citizen co-funding of public goods

This study explores the potential of crowdfunding as a tool for achieving “citizen co-funding” of public projects. Focusing on philanthropic crowdfunding, we examine whether collaborative projects between public and private organizations are more successful in fundraising than projects initiated solely by private organizations. We argue that government involvement in crowdfunding provides some type of accreditation or certification that attests to a project's aim to achieve public rather than private goals, thereby mitigating information asymmetry and improving mutual trust between creators (i.e., private sector organizations) and funders (i.e., crowd). To support this argument, we show that crowdfunding projects with government involvement achieved a greater success rate and attracted a greater amount of funding than comparable projects without government involvement. This evidence shows that governments may take advantage of crowdfunding to “co-fund” public projects with the citizenry for addressing the complex challenges that we face in the twenty-first century.     

“The Paradox of Narcissus and Echo in the Instagram Pond” in Light of the Selfie Culture from Freudian Evolutionary Psychology: Self-Loving and Confident but Lonely

Drawing from the Freudian evolutionary psychology of narcissism and the literature on social media popularity, this article addresses the central theme revolving around “The Paradox of Digital Narcissists in the Instagram Pond” in light of the selfie/groupie culture. A cross sectional survey was conducted among 398 Instagram users (236 males and 162 females) recruited from Amazon M-Turk. Structural equation modeling analyses using Mplus 7.4 propose an integrative model of narcissism and reveal dynamic relationships among users’ narcissism, self-discrepancy, self-confidence, intrasexual competition for mates, need to belong, need for popularity, loneliness, number of selfie/groupie posts on Instagram, and number of Instagram followers/followings.     

A muted voice in academe: the Korean version of entrepreneurial scholarship

The imperatives of social democratization and global economic competition have opened a new phase of development for the Korean university and its scholarship. The increased social demands for knowledge creation and dissemination gradually extend the scope of professional practice beyond the conventional areas of academic work. This paper explores, based upon the findings of a case study, how Korean universities and their professors have been responding to these demands and what consequences are observable. It also explains how the new demands and responses are contributing to local development. Finally, it highlights several controversial issues in the discourse on entrepreneurial scholarship and discusses these in the Korean context as points for further investigation.     

Explicitly integrating MeSH thesaurus help into health information retrieval systems: An empirical user study

When consumers search for health information, a major obstacle is their unfamiliarity with the medical terminology. Even though medical thesauri such as the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and related tools (e.g., the MeSH Browser) were created to help consumers find medical term definitions, the lack of direct and explicit integration of these help tools into a health retrieval system prevented them from effectively achieving their objectives. To explore this issue, we conducted an empirical study with two systems: One is a simple interface system supporting query-based searching; the other is an augmented system with two new components supporting MeSH term searching and MeSH tree browsing. A total of 45 subjects were recruited to participate in the study. The results indicated that the augmented system is more effective than the simple system in terms of improving user-perceived topic familiarity and question–answer performance, even though we did not find users spend more time on the augmented system. The two new MeSH help components played a critical role in participants’ health information retrieval and were found to allow them to develop new search strategies. The findings of the study enhanced our understanding of consumers’ search behaviors and shed light on the design of future health information retrieval systems.     

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a halo effect in issue management: public response to negative news about pro-social local private companies

This study investigates the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate nationality on public reactions to negative news about corporations. To explain how CSR activity works as a buffer for a negative issue of an organization, we propose a halo effect theory. This study conducted an experiment using a 2 (CSR activity vs. no CSR activity) x 2 (domestic company vs. foreign company) between-subject design. For this experiment, we developed a negative news story about a fictitious Asian local company. The dependent variable was whether individuals showed willingness to take actions against this company. We found that both CRS activities and corporation nationality have the main effects on individuals' willingness to take an action against the local company. CSR activities and the company's national identity (being domestic) were significant positive factors in attenuating participants' intention to take action against the local company. Further, there was a significant interaction effect of CSR activity and the company's nationality on individuals' willingness to take action against the company: CSR activity had a greater positive impact on soothing the public's negative reactions when the local company was identified as foreign rather than domestic. The results were discussed as a halo effect of CSR activities.     

The Role of Centering for Interaction of Level 1 Variables in Multilevel Structural Equation Models

This article examined the role of centering in estimating interaction effects in multilevel structural equation models. Interactions are typically represented by product term of 2 variables that are hypothesized to interact. In multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM), the product term involving Level 1 variables is decomposed into within-cluster and between-cluster random components. The choice of centering affects the decomposition of the product term, and therefore affects the sample variance and covariance associated with the product term used in the maximum likelihood fitting function. The simulation study showed that for an interaction between a Level 1 variable and a Level 2 variable, the product term of uncentered variables or the product term of grand mean centered variables produced unbiased estimates in both Level 1 and Level 2 models. The product term of cluster mean centered variables produced biased estimates in the Level 1 model. For an interaction between 2 Level 1 variables, the product term of cluster mean centered variables produced unbiased estimates in the Level 1 model, whereas the product term of grand mean centered variables produced unbiased estimates for the Level 1 model. Recommendations for researchers who wish to estimate interactions in MSEM are provided.