This study examined whether users’ negative emotions of fear could be positively associated withtheir satisfaction with immersive virtual reality (VR) sports and how exercise intensity modes of VRsports moderate this relationship at the individual leisure player level. The proposed hypotheseswere examined using user-generated reviews (N ¼ 57,047) generated by individual leisure playersabout their VR sports usage experiences, collected from the Meta Oculus platform. Sentiment ana-lysis and fixed-effects ordered logistic regression were applied to test the hypotheses. The resultsshow that fear affects user satisfaction positively, and exercise intensity modes of VR sports mod-erate the positive effect. This suggests that incorporating elements designed to evoke users’ nega-tive emotions of fear within VR sports can contribute to enhanced user satisfaction under certainconditions (such as exercise intensity). The findings also provide practical guidelines for VR sportspractitioners to improve immersive VR sports design.

Purpose: Humanoid social robots (HSRs) are an innovative technology revitalizing various service sectors, such as the hospitality industry. However, limited research has explored how anthropomorphic features of HSRs influence user satisfaction with the services delivered by HSRs. To address this, a research model was proposed to evaluate how three distinct anthropomorphic features: appearance, voice and response, impact the perceived values (i.e. utilitarian, social and hedonic values) of HSRs, which, in turn, influence user satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach: Data from an online survey of hotel customers was utilized to test the research model (N = 509). Findings: The results indicated that appearance, voice, and response affect perceived utilitarian, hedonic and social values differently. The response feature of HSRs demonstrated the strongest impact on perceived utilitarian, social and hedonic values. In addition, voice affected all three perceived values, while appearance only affected perceived utilitarian and social values. Furthermore, perceived utilitarian, hedonic and social values showed positive impacts on user satisfaction, with hedonic value being the most influential factor. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature on HSRs and anthropomorphism by explaining how different anthropomorphic features affect users’ value perceptions and user satisfaction with HSR services by utilizing the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework.

Purpose – To improve the academic integrity of online examinations, digital proctoring systems have recently been implemented in higher education institutions (HEIs). The paper aims to understand how digital proctoring has been practised in higher education (HE) and proposes future research directions for studying digital proctoring in HE.

Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review was conducted. The PRISMA procedure was adapted for the literature search. The topics were identified by topic modelling techniques from 154 relevant publications in seven databases.

Findings – Seven widely discussed topics in literature were identified, including solutions for detecting cheating and student authentication, challenges/issues of uptakes and students' performance in different proctoring environments.

Research limitations/implications – This paper provides insights for academics, policymakers, practitioners and students to understand the implementation of digital proctoring in academia, its adoption by HEIs, impacts on students' and educators' performance and the rapid increase in its use for digital exams in HEIs, with particular emphasis on the impacts of the systems on digitalising examinations in HE.

Originality/value – This review paper has systematically and critically described the state-of-the-art literature on digital proctoring in HE and provides useful insights and implications for future research on digital proctoring, and how academic integrity in online examinations can be enhanced, along with digitalising HE.

This study investigates the impact of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) on the development of routine capabilities and practice changes within public organizations. Drawing on the theoretical lens of technology as routine capability, we conducted case studies at two Swedish public universities. Our findings reveal that the implementation of RPA, conceptualized as a routine capability, fostered the emergence of automation practices within these institutions despite their differing implementation experiences. We identified practice changes across four key dimensions: design, execution, diffusion, and shift. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge on RPA by offering detailed empirical insights into how it has advanced practices, induced organizational changes, and identified challenges that require further exploration. This research offers practical implications for public organizations managing RPA-triggered organizational transformations towards automation.

Purpose – The paper aims to evaluate the Digital Government Collaborative Platform (DGCP), which facilitates collaborations between the citizens and the government to address environmental issues in Sri Lanka. The DGCP is an artifact developed by the value-sensitive design (VSD) approach.

Design/methodology/approach – The DGCP is evaluated following the Framework for Evaluation in Design Science Research (FEDS). Two hundred and twenty-four citizens participated in the survey based on the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) and open questions about human values embedded in the design. Fifteen government officers were interviewed to enhance the evaluation. 

Findings – The DGCP received positive evaluations from the citizens and government officers. The platform is attractive, novel and pragmatic, also generatinghedonic experiences for the citizens. The users believed that human values are reflected in the DGCP. Further, they shared a few suggestions to improve it.

Originality – The paper contributes knowledge to evaluating digital government systems, especially in developing countries. The human-value-centered DGCP was evaluated using multiple methods of quantitative (i.e., UEQ Survey) and qualitative(i.e., qualitative interviews with stakeholders) techniques. Further, the systematic process of DGCP evaluation produces a case-based guideline for evaluating related and similar digital government systems using FEDS.

Digital technologies are changing how and where we live, work and socialize. Rural areas are distinctive spaces and places but in the current debates of new digital phenomena, digital spaces and practices risk not being contextualized with sensitivities to rural geographies. This study aims to map how digital has been examined to date in rural-focused studies, and accordingly present propositions for how rural-digital studies can be sensitive to the distinctive and diverse character of rural spaces and places. We conduct a two-stage/scale literature review, combining 1) computational topic modelling from a Global Dataset (459 article abstracts) with 2) qualitative content analysis from a sub-dataset focusing on the Nordic region (Nordic Sub-Dataset, 17 full articles). We begin with a topic modelling analysis generating ten major themes (topics) leading to an overview of how research areas are connected to the meaning of rural context. Turning to the Nordic region, as an in-depth example, we illustrate the complexity of rural digital geographies, through a qualitative content analysis. This demonstrates that digital in rural contexts are primarily positioned outwardly as social/regional development and business/economy, and less situated inwardly through individual experience and community building. Combined we show a wide spectrum of rural-digital relations but demonstrate that rural contexts in rural-digital relations need more attention. We propose three propositions to invite deeper rural contextualizations in future digital studies to uphold the importance of rural spaces and places through, by and with digital geography.

Privacy is one of the key challenges to the adoption and implementation of online proctoring systems (OPS) in higher education. To better understand this challenge, we adopt privacy as contextual integrity theory to conduct a scoping review of 17 papers. The results show different types of students’ personal and sensitive information are collected and disseminated; this raises considerable privacy concerns. As well as the governing principles including transparency and fairness, consent and choice, information minimization, accountability, and information security and accuracy have been identified to address privacy problems. This study notifies a need to clarify how these principles should be implemented and sustained, and what privacy concerns and actors they relate to. Further, it calls for the need to clarify the responsibility of key actors in enacting and sustaining responsible adoption and use of OPS in higher education.

Public organizations are adopting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to enhance process performance. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how RPA specifically advances routine practices in public organizations, particularly in developing countries. To address this research gap, we conducted an interpretive case study in Turkey, focusing on the implementation of RPA from the perspective of technology as routine capability. Our findings reveal that the case organization has advanced its practices by leveraging RPA affordances, implementing effective governance mechanisms, and developing automation capabilities. This research contributes unique contextual insights into the implementation of RPA within a public organization situated in a developing country. The empirical evidence demonstrates the transformative impact of RPA on organizational practices and provides guidance for optimizing RPA governance practices and sustaining RPA-enabled automation capabilities. This study offers practical implications for public organizations aiming to leverage RPA as part of their broader digital transformation initiatives.

Book cover International Conference on Electronic Government EGOV 2022: Electronic Government pp 336–352Cite as Adoption of Robotic Process Automation in the Public Sector: A Survey Study in Sweden Gustaf Juell-Skielse, Evrim Oya Güner & Shengnan Han Conference paper First Online: 30 August 2022 407 Accesses Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS,volume 13391) Abstract The public sector has increased its use of robotic process automation (RPA) in administration, decision making and citizen services. Available studies mostly focused on the specific cases of using RPA in public organizations. Thus, we lack the helicopter view of the adoption of RPA in a country. In this paper, we present the results of a national survey of RPA adoption in the public sector in Sweden. The results show that the awareness of RPA is high in the Swedish public sector although the level of adoption is still modest. Also, there are notable differences in the level of adoption between central and local government. The study goes beyond the limitations of case studies, and contribute new knowledge of RRA adoption, benefits, routine capability and governance on a national level. The knowledge and insights can serve as a reference for other countries and public administrative models.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be directed at humane ends. The development of AI has produced great uncertainties of ensuring AI alignment with human values (AI value alignment) through AI operations from design to use. For the purposes of addressing this problem, we adopt the phenomenological theories of material values and technological mediation to be that beginning step. In this paper, we first discuss the AI value alignment from the relevant AI studies. Second, we briefly present what are material values and technological mediation and reflect on the AI value alignment through the lenses of these theories. We conclude that a set of finite human values can be defined and adapted to the stable life tasks that AI systems will be called upon to accomplish. The AI value alignment can also be fostered between designers and users through technological mediation. Upon that foundation, we propose a set of common principles to understand the AI value alignment through phenomenological theories. This paper contributes the unique knowledge of phenomenological theories to the discourse on AI alignment with human values.