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Τεκμήριο Assessing the Adoption of e-Government Services by Teachers in Greece(2012) Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Karavasilis, Ioannis; Vrana, VasilikiTechnological developments and governments’ understanding of what citizens need usually determine the design of public online services. For successful implementation of e-Government services, governments have to place the user in the center of future developments, understand what citizens need and measure what increases citizens’ willingness to adopt e-government services. The paper uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the extended TAM, the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory and the important determinants of user acceptance perceived risk and trust, in order to describe teachers’ behavioral intensions to adopt e-Government services. A model containing trust and risk, along with cognitive, social and intrinsic factors is used to study the intentions of e-Government use by Greek primary and secondary education teachers. Two hundred and thirty teachers responded to an online survey. Findings reveal that cognitive and intrinsic factors have significant effects on intentions to use e-Government websites.Τεκμήριο Associating E-Government and E-Participation Indexes With Governmental Twitter Accounts Performance, In EU Countries(2014-05) Antoniadis, Konstantinos; Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, KostasThe paper records government and ministries Twitter accounts for 24 EU countries. It records four indexes of Twitter performance: number of followers and following, number of tweets and number of tweets per day, and two indexes describing potential reach to citizens regarding the information tweeted by the accounts, to describe the specific accounts’ performance and influence. Two summary indexes are constructed using PCA: network characteristics and activity characteristics of the accounts. Correlations are calculated for all performance indexes with e-Government and e-Participation indexes of the 24 countries. Tweeting frequency and retweeting mentioning represent the accounts’ activity and the community activity, respectively. Only activity indexes are strongly correlated with e-Government and e-Participation, while number of followers and following seems not to be associated with them. Performance of the Twitter accounts is not only a matter of Twitter appearance and networking of the accounts; it is mainly a matter of citizens’ active participation.Τεκμήριο Associations between USPs and design characteristics of mediterranean countries' websites(2011-09-20) Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, KostasToday's process of globalization has urged countries to brand themselves like corporations. The Internet is a valuable tool in this process. Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) are a part of a company's strategy and contribute to their sales. This article attempts to investigate whether efficient selling propositions' usage is associated with efficient websites' structure and design. It analyzes branding elements and explores possible associations among design characteristics and USP delivery. The research focuses on websites of Mediterranean countries. Results show that most websites do not effectively deliver a USP. On the contrary, brand-building components of the websites orchestrate effectively clear targeting and are delivering messages to target markets.Τεκμήριο Authority Groups among Popular Wine Blogs(2013-05-03) Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Vagianos, DimitriosBlogging in the wine industry has become widespread. This article explores linkage patterns of the Top 100 Wine Blogs. The analysis aims at finding the central wine-blog groups among them. Central blog groups are located using blog inter-linkages through blogrolls. Because of the methodology used, they may be considered to be authority blogs, in terms of search engine optimization. They serve as focal points where interesting conversation and exchange of information takes place. The article describes the features of these blogs in an attempt to explore the characteristics that distinguish these blogs and make them appreciated and worth visiting.Τεκμήριο Bloggers’ Community Characteristics and Influence within Greek Political Blogosphere(2012) Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Vrana, Vasiliki; Vagianos, DimitriosThis paper investigates the properties of central or core political blogs. They can be located as clusters of blogs whose members have many incoming links. Other blogs form clouds around them in the sense that they link the core blogs. A case study records Greek political blogs and their incoming links reported through their blogrolls. The adjacency matrix from the blogs’ social network is analyzed and clusters are located. Three of them, those with the larger numbers of incoming links, may be considered to be central. Next, four measures of influence are used to test the influence of the central blogs. The findings suggest that there are many kinds of central blogs, influential and non-influential, and high influence does not always involve high hyperlinking.Τεκμήριο Discussion of eParticipation topics in greek political blogs(2011-05) Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Vagianos, Dimitrios; Vrana, VasilikiBlogs are an effective way to participate in politics and have the potential to support eParticipation. Political discourse is formed through hypertext links, blogrolls, posts and opinionated commentary, calls to political action, and requests for feedback. The paper applies a methodology to locate focal conversational points within the blogosphere. These take shape as central clusters of blogs having many incoming links. Next, the paper investigates the communication patterns among these focal points and associates the findings to the content of blogs participating in these focal points. Through statistical analysis and content analysis it is shown that linkage patterns among focal point blogs are reproduced to content similarities.Τεκμήριο Exploring e-governance acceptance by primary and secondary education teachers in Greece(2014) Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Karavasilis, Ioannis; Vrana, VasilikiThe transition from conventional governances to e-governance is becoming an international trend. It is important for governments to understand variables that influence citizens’ adoption of e-governance in order to take them into account when delivering services online. However, Greece falls back in adoption of e-governance with regards to other EU countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing e-governance acceptance in education sector. It uses the technology acceptance model (TAM) and integrates the trust construct in it. Primary and secondary education teachers responded to an online survey resulting to 230 questionnaires. An SEM validation of the proposed model reveals that along with the traditional TAM constructs, trust to e-governance websites is an important factor affecting attitudes and intentions to use. Policy makers should make an effort to enhance familiarisation of teachers with the internet to promote e-government use along with building useful and easy to use e-governance websites.Τεκμήριο Locating central travelers' groups in travel blogs' social networks(2010) Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, KostasPurpose – Using Travelpod.com, this paper aims to provide a methodology to locate central groups of travelers and to describe pattern characteristics of central travelers. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses snowball sampling to locate travelers and analyze their hyperlink interconnections to identify central travelers’ groups. Analysis of the adjacency matrix of the social network of travelers using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to identify core travelers’ groups follows. Findings – In total, 7 percent of travelers are considered central travelers. They form core groups containing the most active and information providing travelers. Group membership is correlated with common travelers’ characteristics. Research limitations/implications – The research is limited to a specific network of travelers, to a specific time interval, and to a specific sampling method. Repetition of the study in other travelers’ networks in several time instances using a full list of member travelers would help to generalize the findings. Also, graph theoretical approaches other than the statistical analysis used could reveal more properties. Practical implications – Travelers in core groups are more likely to be reached by others who navigate through a series of incoming links that lead to them and it is probable that these travelers have the potential to address many visitors and therefore to have a significant impact on the provision of information. Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in the use of multivariate statistics on the network adjacency matrix to locate core travelers groups and on finding groups of the most influential travelers.Τεκμήριο A model for investigating e-governance adoption using TAM and DOI(2010) Karavasilis, Ioannis; Zafiropoulos, Kostas; Vrana, VasilikiAs governments around the world move toward e-governance, a need exists to examine citizens’ willingness to adopt e-governance services. In this paper, the authors identify the success factors of e-governance adoption by teachers in Greece, using the Technology Acceptance Model, the Diffusion of Innovation model and constructs of trust, risk and personal innovativeness. Two hundred thirty primary and secondary education teachers responded to an online survey. LISREL then analyzed the data. Model estimation used the maximum likelihood approach, with the item covariance matrix as input. A SEM validation of the proposed model reveals that personal innovativeness, compatibility and relative advantage are stronger predictors of intention to use, compared to trust, and perceived risk. Findings may enhance policymakers’ capacities by presenting them with an understanding of citizens’ attitudes.Τεκμήριο Promoting European countries destination image through Twitter(2014) Antoniadis, Konstantinos; Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, KostasDestination Management Organizations (DMOs) have traditionally been providers of destination-related information and knowledge. Nowadays they have realized the added value of using social media channels to market their destinations. They are developing strategies and initiatives to increase awareness, achieve influence and promote country's image. Twitter is the most popular microblogging site. Building relationships, convenience of networking, and expanding online branding opportunities have been recorded as the perceived benefits of using it. The paper records tourism Twitter accounts' of 38 European countries and indexes of Twitter performance such as number of followers of each account and indexes of followers’ community involvement. An overall performance index is constructed. European countries are then ranked according to their Twitter accounts performance. Three indexes regarding actual Tourism performance for each country, are also recorded. Indexes include International Tourist Arrivals 2011, International Tourism Receipts, and The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index 2011. Correlations between Twitter performance indexes and tourism indexes are calculated. The high and significant correlations reveal that Twitter use is in accordance with countries’ tourism performance and that Twitter, as a medium of eBusiness, does not fail to provide information and to promote countries’ Destination Image.Τεκμήριο Rural tourism lodgings' websites: a comparative study among Mediterranean countries(2009) Vrana, Vasiliki; Zafiropoulos, KostasInternet is viewed as a cost-effective, flexible way of doing business. Websites can enable rural tourism lodgings to access markets quickly and to become international. The objective of the study is to quantitatively analyse the websites of rural tourism lodgings in terms of interactivity, navigation and functionality (site design characteristics) as well as site marketing practices on the internet. The study also investigates variations of websites in design and use of marketing elements among Mediterranean countries in Europe. The paper concludes that rural tourism lodgings do not take full advantage of the emerging marketing opportunities in the global marketspace.