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