DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/CXMY-EM90

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3950-2908

Defense Date

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Business

First Advisor

Dr. Victoria Yoon

Second Advisor

Dr. Manoj Thomas

Third Advisor

Dr. Yeongin Kim

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Haeran Jae

Abstract

Contracts have a longstanding history and wide use across industries. Their importance cannot be overstated as they govern the future of relationships between contractual parties (e.g., consumer and company). However, most consumers neither read nor understand their contracts. The leading reasons for said phenomenon are contract length and complexity. The problem may be exacerbated by the cumbersome nature of accessing contracts and lack of notification from the company to its end users to inform them about contract changes. Researchers and businesses have attempted to improve contracts, but issues persist. Every year billions of end users’ have published contents violating social media companies’ End-User License Agreements[1] (EULA; i.e., contracts) for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (FIT). As a result, FIT has taken gradual actions, ranging from warnings to legal action (e.g., involving law enforcement) against those end users. To improve this situation, this study, following the information systems (IS) design science method, proposed a solution for end-user content compliance with social media EULA. The approach we have proposed semiautomatically extracts EULAs in free text form, ontologizes the EULAs, notifies end users about EULA changes, evaluates their imminent social media posts, and provides them the result of this evaluation in real-time. Our study innovates an approach of EULA data integration framework in the context of social media analytics initiatives. Moreover, our design artifact provides end users, based on their dynamic imminent posts on social media, with salient EULA data derived from current EULAs along with other necessary information. The utility of our proposed artifact is demonstrated through Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test analysis of data collected from a user study conducted with 110 respondents recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The study measured these constructs: performance expectancy drawn from unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT; Venkatesh et al., 2003) in addition to trustworthiness (Komiak & Benbasat, 2006). Study results supported both hypotheses that respondents, who hold at least one social media account (e.g., Facebook), perceived our design artifact as useful and trustworthy.

[1] For the purposes of this study, the terms: End-User License Agreement, agreement, contract, terms of service, and terms of use were used interchangeably with the same meaning intended. End-User License Agreements are obliquitous and often abbreviated as “EULA” (Mulligan, 2018, p. 1073).

Rights

© Yousif Yaqoub Alsharif Alhashemi

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

8-11-2022

Available for download on Tuesday, August 10, 2027

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