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Concern about privacy on the Internet runs high, but the prescriptions for treatment vary widely. Privacy advocates seek different goals when formulating policy proposals. Some seek to protect individuals and society from the effects of loss of privacy, including the loss of human dignity. Others seek to encourage the development of online markets in personal information, so that consumers can profit from their own information, rather than giving it away. Still, others seek primarily to promote the growth of e-commerce, and see privacy fears as a threat to that goal. These goals are fundamentally inconsistent, and that inconsistency is obscured by the fact that much of the current debate about online privacy focuses on the tools of regulation, rather than the goals for which regulation is sought.

Although message tailoring has been shown to produce experimental effects in previous studies, the cognitive mechanisms through which tailoring works have not been sufficiently studied. Using the integrative model to predict intentions to use the nicotine replacement patch among adult smokers, this study examines how tailoring theoretical elements of the integrative model is effective in changing the theoretical mediators. Participants were randomized into one of two conditions. In the experimental condition, participants received messages tailored to some or all of the underlying behavioral, injunctive normative, or self-efficacy beliefs with the expectation that changing the underlying beliefs would result in experimental differences in the integrative model's direct measures. This expectation was confirmed. The integrative model also worked well in predicting intentions to perform the target behavior; attitude, perceived normative pressure, and perceived behavioral control accounted for 53 percent of the variance in intentions. Attitude and normative pressure were the strongest predictors of intention. These results provide support for tailoring messages using a reasoned action approach and provide insight into the mechanism through which message tailoring operates.

In the near future, the Internet of Things is expected to penetrate all aspects of the physical world, including homes and urban spaces. In order to handle the massive amount of data that becomes collectible and to offer services on top of this data, the most convincing solution is the federation of the Internet of Things and cloud computing. Yet, the wide adoption of this promising vision, especially for application areas such as pervasive health care, assisted living, and smart cities, is hindered by severe privacy concerns of the individual users. Hence, user acceptance is a critical factor to turn this vision into reality. To address this critical factor and thus realize the cloud-based Internet of Things for a variety of different application areas, we present our comprehensive approach to privacy in this envisioned setting. We allow an individual user to enforce all her privacy requirements before any sensitive data is uploaded to the cloud, enable developers of cloud services to integrate privacy functionality already into the development process of cloud services, and offer users a transparent and adaptable interface for configuring their privacy requirements.

Existing empirical research has rarely examined the influence of Internet use on civic participation through the lens of consumer behavior. In this study, we propose a consumer empowerment model to explore the relationship between Internet use and civic participation mediated by consumer behavior variables including online shopping and consumer complaints. Using survey data (N = 1,000) of Internet users in China, we found a positive association among Internet use, civic participation, and consumer behavior to play a crucial role in this process: Internet use catalyzes online shopping, which leads to more consumer complaints, creating a spillover effect for civic engagement. The Internet will not turn China into a liberal democracy, but our findings suggest it may energize elements of civic culture.

Les objectifs du site P2Vie sont de mettre à profit les nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication pour réunir dans un système d'informations les éléments destinés au senior, permettant ainsi d'améliorer la prévention du vieillissement et d'optimiser la prise en charge des sujets dont l'état nécessite de recourir au système de soins. Plus spécifiquement, ce projet a permis de définir trois grands objectifs: la constitution d'un serveur d'informations médicales, celle d'un serveur d'informations socio-administratives et l'élaboration d'un carnet de santé électronique géré par le senior. Les perspectives attendues sont la mise en place d'un partenariat avec un site santé afin de proposer ce service au grand public.

Cyberaggression is a harmful behavior, but cross-national studies on cyberaggression including relations among its individual and social predictors are limited. This study aimed to discover the direct and indirect relations among individual and social predictors of cyberaggression in socio-demographically balanced survey data set of 4816 15–25-year-old participants from Finland ( n = 1200, 50.0% female), South Korea ( n = 1192, 50.34% female), Spain ( n = 1212, 48.76% female), and the United States ( n = 1212, 50.17% female). Both, impulsivity and involvement in online cliques (i.e., identity bubbles) were related to more cyberaggression in the four countries. The relation between impulsivity and cyberaggression was partially mediated by compulsive Internet use in Finland, Spain, and the United States, but not in South Korea. The relation between identity bubble involvement and cyberaggression was mediated via compulsive Internet use only in the Spanish sample. Findings of this study can be used for policy and practice against cyberaggression.

The concept of Energy Internet has emerged from the limitless possibilities of energy sharing networks formed by interconnection of electricity producers cum consumers (prosumers) with renewable energy sources/systems, electric loads, and storage devices. Energy Internet represents a radical transformation of traditional electricity system by orchestrating real-time bidirectional power, communication, and money flows. This transformation is expected to be resultant of ongoing renewable energy transitions and evolution in the energy technologies such as smart grids, storage devices, vehicle-to-grid, etc. Energy Internet will rely on wide spectrum of Information and Communication Technologies such as Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchains, Payment Interfaces, etc. These technologies have achieved a state of evolution to facilitate seamless bidirectional flows in the Energy Internet. This paper has attempted to study the aptness of Energy Internet for a transitioning electricity system by focusing on national electricity systems across the globe. Firstly, study delves into discussion on studies related to smart grids since it is the precursor of Energy Internet, and various other studies which discuss the developments that likely to enable smooth transition of present electricity system to Energy Internet. Secondly, a systematic review of literature related to state-of-the-art of Energy Internet is performed to outline its structure, operational features and energy market mechanisms. We find that while system infrastructures, technologies, and operational principles across globe are adequately ready for the transition to Energy Internet, hindrances put forth by the policies, regulations, government agencies and institutions need to be addressed to realize a nation-wide Energy Internet. ; Published version