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Objectives.Two powerful socioeconomic innovations are sweeping the nation, led by Wal‐Mart Stores, Inc. and Starbucks Corp. These innovations both affect and are driven by profound labor market changes, but exactly how they affect self‐employment or entrepreneurship has not been investigated. We examine the independent effects of these phenomena on the returns to self‐employment, which is itself an underresearched topic in labor economics.Methods.We apply spatial econometric analysis to data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties to analyze how big‐boxes and drinking places that facilitate social networking affect self‐employment earnings.Findings.The presence of Wal‐Mart stores is associated with higher returns to self‐employment, whereas the results for coffee shops and drinking places are mixed. A negative interaction effect on earnings emerges when Wal‐Mart stores and drinking places exist in the same county.Conclusions.We confirm both Schumpeter's and Putnam's assertions about the importance of creative destruction and social networking in raising the productivity of entrepreneurs, although the latter effect is not as clear‐cut as the former.

The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technologyoffers an unparalleled source for seminal and cutting-edge researchon the psychological aspects of communicating with and via emergentmedia technologies, with leading scholars providing insights thatadvance our knowledge on human-technology interactions. A uniquely focused review of extensive research ontechnology and digital media from a psychological perspective Authoritative chapters by leading scholars studyingpsychological aspects of communication technologies Covers all forms of media from Smartphones toRobotics, from Social Medi

Do multimedia enhancements affect how much individuals learn from online news websites? Do audio and video downloads generate positive impressions of the website in the minds of users? A five-condition, between-participants controlled experiment (N = 60) was designed to address these questions. Each study participant read three news stories from a news website created for the experiment; he or she was given either a text-only version of the news site; a version with text and pictures; one with text and audio; one with text, pictures, and audio; or one with text, pictures, and video. Following exposure, participants filled out a paper-and-pencil questionnaire assessing their memory and perceptions. Results suggest that pictures and audio are particularly powerful psychological cues. In general, multimedia tends to hinder memory for story content and leads to negative evaluations of the site and its content, but improves memory for advertisements. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This study investigates the factor structure underlying receivers' perceptions of news content. Exploratory analyses of readers' ratings of a wide variety of news stories reveals that receivers implicitly use at least four key variables in their perception of printed and online news stimuli. This article explicates the four criteria used by news receivers—Credibility, Liking, Quality, and Representativeness—and offers measures for future empirical research on news perception.

Are quoted sources in online news as psychologically meaningful us those in printed and broadcast news? A within-subjects experiment was designed to answer this question. On a web site, forty-eight subjects read three online news stories with quotes and three stories without source attribution. They rated stories with quotes significantly higher in credibility and quality than identical stories without quotes. However, quotes did not seem to affect their ratings of liking for - and representativeness (newsworthiness) of- online news.

Despite calls to conceptualize credibility as three separate concepts—source credibility, message credibility, and media credibility—there exists no scale that exclusively measures message credibility. To address this gap, the current study constructs and validates a new scale. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggest that message credibility, specifically in the context of news, can be measured by asking participants to rate how well three adjectives describe content: accurate, authentic, and believable. Validity and reliability tests are reported, and contributions to credibility research are discussed.

Heightened interactivity and excitement characterize much of our online browsing, especially when it involves shopping on e-commerce websites. Interactivity is said to affect users' engagement with the website by expanding their perceptual bandwidth (Sundar, 2007), much like the effect of optimal physiological arousal on cognitive functioning (Kahneman, 1973). We examine the direct and combinatory effects of interactivity and arousal on consumers' engagement, attitudes, and behavioral intentions in an e-commerce website through a 3 (interactivity: low, medium, high) × 3 (arousal: control, low, high) between-participants experiment ( N = 186). Higher levels of interactivity were found to generate more favorable attitudes and behavioral intentions toward both the website and the product. Interactivity and arousal differed in their effects on various aspects of website engagement. The study also identified several mediators explicating the theoretical mechanism underlying the influence of interactivity on purchase likelihood.

Online health information comes from a variety of online sources. Based on a typology of online sources, this research examines the direct and combined influences of original sources (doctors vs. laypersons) and selecting sources (Web sites vs. bulletin boards vs. blogs vs. personal home pages vs. Internet) on perceived credibility of—and behavioral intentions toward—health information. A large 2 (message) × 2 (original source) × 5 (selecting source) full-factorial online experiment revealed that respondents ( N = 555) were more likely to take action based on the information sourced from a Web site than from a blog or a personal home page. The effect was mediated by perceived level of gatekeeping and perceived information completeness. The analysis also yielded a three-way interaction between message, original source, and selecting source on perceived credibility, suggesting the operation of an appropriateness heuristic when evaluating source combinations for less relevant health topics. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, leading to the proposal of a new online source typology.

Web portals are increasing in their presence as well as importance, yet suffer from lack of conceptual clarity. In explicating the concept of "portal" from a number of disciplinary frameworks, this article uncovers five different but inter-related metaphorical conceptions—gateways, billboards, networks, niches, and brands—which, in turn, suggest five dominant features of portal sites—customization, content, control, community, and commerce—for empirical examination as variables in future research on uses and effects of portals.

This study investigated the effects of pop-up windows and animation on online users' orienting response and memory for Web advertisements. All participants (N = 60) in a mixed-design factorial experiment were exposed to four online portal Web sites, each containing a banner ad that was either animated or static and a pop-up ad that was also either animated or static. Their orienting responses during reception of the online sites were measured via heartbeats using electrocardiogram (ECG). Recall and recognition memory for ads and portal Web sites were measured via a postexposure paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Hypotheses derived from visual attention, motion effect, distinctiveness, bio-informational, and limited-capacity theories were tested. The results fully supported the proposition that pop-up ads elicit orienting responses. Ad recognition was lower whereas ad recall was higher for pop-up ads compared to banner ads. In addition to main effects, the data revealed several interaction effects, with implications for theory.

When individuals apply social rules and social expectations while working on a computer, are they directly interacting with the computer as an independent social actor or source (the CAS model), or are they orienting to an unseen programmer or imagined person in another room (the CAM model)? Two studies provide critical tests of these competing models. In Study 1, all participants were exposed to an identical interaction with computers. In one condition, participants were told that they were dealing with computers; in another, they were told that they were interacting with the software programmers. Consistent with the CAS model, there were significant differences between the two conditions. Study 2 performed a constructive replication of Study 1 by replacing the programmer with a hypothetical networker. Again, differences between the two conditions provide evidence that people respond to the computer as an independent source of information.

When evaluating automated systems, some users apply the "positive machine heuristic" (i.e. machines are more accurate and precise than humans), whereas others apply the "negative machine heuristic" (i.e. machines lack the ability to make nuanced subjective judgments), but we do not know much about the characteristics that predict whether a user would apply the positive or negative machine heuristic. We conducted a study in the context of content moderation and discovered that individual differences relating to trust in humans, fear of artificial intelligence (AI), power usage, and political ideology can predict whether a user will invoke the positive or negative machine heuristic. For example, users who distrust other humans tend to be more positive toward machines. Our findings advance theoretical understanding of user responses to AI systems for content moderation and hold practical implications for the design of interfaces to appeal to users who are differentially predisposed toward trusting machines over humans.