Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The role of gossip in the evolution of cooperation(2021) Pan, Xinyue; Gelfand, Michele J.; Nau, Dana S.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The prevalence of cooperation in human societies is astonishing. Scholars from many disciplines have been sought to understand why it evolves. Some studies have indicated that gossip may play an important role in the evolution of cooperation. However, there has yet to be a systematic attempt to test this hypothesis directly. In this thesis, I developed an evolutionary game theoretic model and examined the role of gossip in the evolution of cooperation as well as the mechanism of the evolution of gossipers. I found that gossip increases reputation accessibility and makes the utilization of reputation information effective and necessary. The utilization of reputation information not only leads to more cooperation but also motivates individuals to manage their reputation by cooperating more with gossipers. As a result, gossipers gain an advantage over non-gossipers, and this leads to the evolution of gossipers. I also examined the factors that moderate these results.Item REPUTATION DYNAMICS IN MARKETING CONTEXTS(2019) Ukanwa Zeiger, Kalinda Ukanwa; Godes, David; Rust, Roland T.; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is an examination of the impact of dynamic consumer reputation effects on firm decision-making in the marketplace. Essay I is a study of the impact of firm interventions on competitive reputation building among consumers on an online platform. Specifically, I model an actor’s decision to upload pirated content in order to build his reputation, despite facing threats from copyright lawsuits (firm interventions seeking to deter uploading activity) and intense competition on the platform. We propose a novel theory that explains what could occur in this scenario: high-reputation consumers will decrease their reputation-building activity, but their low-reputation competition may see an opportunity to enhance their reputation and increase activity. We argue that because competition for reputation is active on the site, the lawsuits may deter uploading in the short-run but may actually lead to more piracy over the long-run. Our findings support the theory: while high-reputation publishers decrease the likelihood of uploading as lawsuits increase, low-reputation uploaders do the opposite: they upload more. Essay II is an examination of the impact that a consumer group's reputation can have on firm decision-making. Specifically, we investigate 1) conditions under which a non-prejudiced firm may discriminate in service against its consumers based on group reputation, and 2) how subsequent consumer word-of-mouth can impact demand and profits over time. This mixed-methods study shows that discrimination can be profitable in the short-run but can backfire in the long-run due to the effects of consumer word-of-mouth and firm competition. Results indicate that high consumer heterogeneity in quality (i.e., their profitability to the firm) and low measurement error in detecting consumer quality attenuate the magnitude of service discrimination. The authors provide managerial recommendations on reducing service discrimination's profit-damaging effects. This research emphasizes the long-term benefits of switching to a service policy that does not use group reputation information. This dissertation contributes to the general marketing literature by providing new insights into how the reputation of the consumer, a sparsely researched area, can have direct impact on the firm in its decision-making.Item QUANTIFYING AND PREDICTING USER REPUTATION IN A NETWORK SECURITY CONTEXT(2019) Gratian, Margaret Stephanie; Cukier, Michel; Reliability Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Reputation has long been an important factor for establishing trust and evaluating the character of others. Though subjective by definition, it recently emerged in the field of cybersecurity as a metric to quantify and predict the nature of domain names, IP addresses, files, and more. Implicit in the use of reputation to enhance cybersecurity is the assumption that past behaviors and opinions of others provides insight into the expected future behavior of an entity, which can be used to proactively identify potential threats to cybersecurity. Despite the plethora of work in industry and academia on reputation in cyberspace, proposed methods are often presented as black boxes and lack scientific rigor, reproducibility, and validation. Moreover, despite widespread recognition that cybersecurity solutions must consider the human user, there is limited work focusing on user reputation in a security context. This dissertation presents a mathematical interpretation of user cyber reputation and a methodology for evaluating reputation in a network security context. A user’s cyber reputation is defined as the most likely probability the user demonstrates a specific characteristic on the network, based on evidence. The methodology for evaluating user reputation is presented in three phases: characteristic definition and evidence collection; reputation quantification and prediction; and reputation model validation and refinement. The methodology is illustrated through a case study on a large university network, where network traffic data is used as evidence to determine the likelihood a user becomes infected or remains uninfected on the network. A separate case study explores social media as an alternate source of data for evaluating user reputation. User-reported account compromise data is collected from Twitter and used to predict if a user will self-report compromise. This case study uncovers user cybersecurity experiences and victimization trends and emphasizes the feasibility of using social media to enhance understandings of users from a security perspective. Overall, this dissertation presents an exploration into the complicated space of cyber identity. As new threats to security, user privacy, and information integrity continue to manifest, the need for reputation systems and techniques to evaluate and validate online identities will continue to grow.Item MEASURING A WORLD IN CRISIS: A NEW MODEL OF REPUTATION REPAIR(2018) Page, Tyler Grant; Liu, Brooke F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Reputation repair is a paradigm within public relations and crisis communication. The reputation repair paradigm is currently focused on the symbolic strategies organizations use to repair their reputations in the aftermath of a crisis. This dissertation proposes significant revisions to the reputation repair paradigm and builds a series of scale measures and a revised model of reputation repair to achieve this goal. Using moral foundations theory, situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), image repair theory, and input from 20 participants with expertise in public relations, this dissertation designs new measures for instructing information, adjusting information, reputation management messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness that buffers against reputational harms posed by crisis. This dissertation then refines and validates these measures with a pilot test with 797 participants recruited from mTurk. Finally, it concludes with an experiment testing these measures in a crisis situation operationalized as a potentially deadly fire in a building. The experiment used 1,000 participants recruited from mTurk in a 2 (crisis types: rumor or organizational misdeed) x 2 (offensiveness: high or low) x 2 (instructing information: yes or no) x 2 (adjusting information: yes or no) x 2 (crisis response: denial or rebuilding) factorial design to test the effect of SCCT’s matching construct of response strategies and the proposed revised model of reputation repair that explains how messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness impact post-crisis reputation. This dissertation finds that matching strategies according to SCCT have a very small effect (ή2 = .005) on post crisis reputation while reputation management messages overall have a very strong structural effect on post crisis reputation (.814). Further, it finds that the revised model of reputation repair explains how messages, perceived offensiveness, virtuousness, and post-crisis reputation interrelate and that the revised model changes slightly under different situations. Implications for theory and practitioners are discussed.Item Status Motivations: Consumer and Seeker Perspectives(2017) Vesco, Robert; Waguespack, David; Agarwal, Rajshree; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation includes two essays which examine status motivations from different perspectives. In the first essay, I explore the motivations of actors who are seeking to increase their status. In particular, when the competitive signals become opaque, how do their behaviors change? In the second essay I look at status motivations from the perspective of the consumers. In other words, what motivates actors and audiences to reward status? Ultimately, my aim with this dissertation is to extend our understanding of status beyond whether it has an effect and into understanding what is driving those effects. I also seek to highlight the importance of heterogeneity in status motivations since populations of people are unlikely to have homogeneous reasons for pursuing status. The first essay examines how making the competitive environment opaque changes status-seekers productivity and prosocial behavior. While status competition is generally considered a positive force for increasing productivity, a growing body of research suggests it can have unintended consequences. However, the literature on status is largely divided on the motivations behind it. Management scholars tend to see status as an asset to be pursued as a means to an end while economists and psychologists focus on the ego needs associated with it. If these two groups of status-seekers react differently to changing incentives, and ex ante, we cannot identify these groups, then how can we interpret empirical results? To deal with this complexity I leverage an agent-based simulation that explores motive heterogeneity. I then exploit a natural experiment in an online community for technologists where status competition is decreased and then examine how low- versus high-status actors change their helpful behaviors and productivity. I find that productivity decreases with the less competitive (opaque) environment, but that only high-status actors decrease their helpful comments. I argue that the agent-based simulation suggests that this pattern of outcomes is likely due to the community having a heterogenous mixture of status-seekers since a homogenous community of either type of status-seeker would yield different results. The second essay turns around the motivation lens to the status-consumers rather than to the status-seekers. Why do they value status? This study examines taste-based status motives. That is, motives which are independent of quality considerations. Among this class of status audience, theory suggests that they may either be interested in status intrinsically or that they value status as a form of conspicuous consumption, but few large-scale empirical studies have addressed these different motivations. To address this challenge, I use a setting where audiences can reward high-status actors either anonymously or publicly. I find high-status actors receive a 60\% increase in deference versus their low-status counterparts. However, I find no difference between anonymous or public deference. Thus, while my findings replicate prior work on quality-based status motives, I find no evidence of taste-based status motives. One possibility for this could be that my setting does not contain sizable cohorts of people who have a taste for status. Another possibility could be that a different empirical approach is needed to tease these differing motivations apart from one another.Item Decisions under Uncertainty in Decentralized Online Markets: Empirical Studies of Peer-to-Peer Lending and Outsourcing(2010) Lin, Mingfeng; Viswanathan, Siva; Lucas, Hank; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent developments in information technologies, especially Web 2.0 technologies, have radically transformed many markets through disintermediation and decentralization. Lower barriers of entry in these markets enable small firms and individuals to engage in transactions that were otherwise impossible. Yet, the issues of informational asymmetry that plague traditional markets still arise, only to be exacerbated by the "virtual" nature of these marketplaces. The three essays of my dissertation empirically examine how participants, many of whom are entrepreneurs, tackle the issue of asymmetric information to derive benefits from trade in two different contexts. In Essay 1, I investigate the role of online social networks in mitigating information asymmetry in an online peer-to-peer lending market, and find that the relational dimensions of these networks are especially effective for this purpose. In Essay 2, I exploit a natural experiment in the same marketplace to study the effect of shared geographical ties on investor decisions, and find that "home bias" is not only robust but also has an interesting interaction pattern with rational decision criteria. In Essay 3, I study how the emergence of new contract forms, enabled by new monitoring technologies, changes the effectiveness of traditional signals that affect a buyers' choice of sellers in online outsourcing. Using a matched-sample approach, I show that the effectiveness of online ratings and certifications differs under pay-for-time contracts versus pay-for-deliverable contracts. In all, the three essays of my dissertation present new empirical evidence of how agents leverage various network ties, signals and incentives to facilitate transactions in decentralized online markets, form transactional ties, and reap the benefits enabled by the transformative power of information technologies.Item Information in the Marketplace: Two Essays on Firm Strategies and Stakeholder Perceptions(2007-08-02) Pfarrer, Michael D.; Rindova, Violina P.; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of two essays that examine the role of information exchange in the marketplace and how firm strategies shape stakeholder perceptions of this information. In Essay 1, I develop a theoretical framework of Perceived Information Quality (PIQ), the extent to which stakeholders consider information useful in their evaluations of firm behavior. As PIQ increases, stakeholders' information asymmetry and evaluation costs decrease, thereby potentially leading to more transactions between the firm and its stakeholders, greater access to resources for the firm, and ultimately, a greater probability of the firm achieving economic success. However, stakeholders may perceive certain types of information about the firm to be more useful than others, depending on whether the firm is engaging in conforming or non-conforming behavior and whether information about these behaviors is received directly or through a mediated channel. Essay 2 looks at the relationships among firm intangible assets, investor perceptions, and financial outcomes. In Chapter 1, I examine the influence of firm reputation and celebrity on the likelihood of the firm announcing either a positive or negative earnings surprise. In Chapter 2, I examine the impact of reputation and celebrity on investors' reactions to the surprise announcement. Using a matched sample of 291 firms over a 15-year period, results show support for financial reputation decreasing the likelihood of positive and negative surprises, whereas one measure of firm celebrity, strategic deviance, predicts an increase only in the likelihood of negative surprises. Two additional celebrity measures, visibility and positive emotion, predict a greater likelihood of positive surprises and a lower likelihood of negative surprises respectively. In addition, results of post-hoc paired t-tests among six firm categories that group firms according to varying combinations of intangible assets show that reputation and visibility enhanced the returns of firms' announcing positive earnings surprises, but only reputation provided a buffer for negative surprises. Tests also showed that firms high in both reputation and visibility performed worst among the six groups. Thus, certain levels of reputation or visibility may enhance investor perceptions of the firm amid deviant behavior, but high levels of both may not.Item Reputation Building by New Ventures: Three Essays on Processes and Performance(2006-05-24) Petkova, Antoaneta Petkova; Gupta, Anil K.; Rindova, Violina P.; Management and Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Management scholars have established the importance of reputation for firm performance but the mechanisms through which reputation can be accumulated are still to be explored. While some researchers have proposed that reputation accumulates through causally ambiguous social processes and can be built through continuous investments over time, there is little evidence regarding the nature of firm activities that may serve as strategic investments in reputation building. Prior research has focused primarily on studying reputation in large established firms that have both their prior performance, which can guide public perceptions and opinions, and substantial resources to make costly investments in product quality and advertising, which serve to increase their reputation. The tendency to study reputation among firms that already have accumulated some reputation does not allow for examining how this critical intangible asset comes into being and what factors account for the variance in the levels of reputation among young firms in an industry. This gap in the literature can be addressed by studying the process of reputation building in the context of new ventures (NVs), because such a context allows for examining the processes and different paths that may evolve from day one in the life of a firm. Specifically, my dissertation addresses these gaps in the current state of knowledge by examining the critical factors that determine the variations among NVs in their reputation building efforts, the factors that account for the relative efficiency of these efforts, and the performance implications of reputation building activities and reputational capital at different stages of the life of NVs. The dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay describes the exploratory stage of this dissertation and provides initial insights regarding the activities that help NVs develop reputation early in their lives. The second essay provides a theoretical framework to understand the process of reputation building by NVs. I propose that NVs can build their initial reputations by investing in symbolic activities and critical resources that serve as signals of NVs' underlying quality and potential. The patterns and efficiency of such investments are likely to vary systematically depending on the founders' entrepreneurial experience and the technology and market uncertainty faced by NVs and their stakeholders. The third essay tests and provides empirical supports to the hypothesized model of reputation building in a sample of 415 information technology NVs.