Diversity
In our daily life, we are continuously required to learn new motor skills and adapt these skills to new situations, such as during tool-use. Tool-use as one of the hallmark skills in humans serves to functionally extend our body to overcome physical limitations to interact or manipulate other objects or organisms in an environment.
In the present dissertation, I used behavioral and neural oscillation correlates of body schema plasticity during virtual tool-use in young and older adults to investigate the embodiment of virtual tools into the body schema, body image and the association between body ownership and agency as well as their mutual dependency on action-related sensory feedback.
To do so, an arm-shaped virtual tool-use paradigm was employed in order to study forearm sensorimotor body schema, and its level of plasticity in young and older individuals during a sequential motor learning task.
Overall, our findings suggest that virtual tools can be incorporated into the existing body schema of the forearm in younger adults but not in older adults, while showcasing how future work may further disambiguate the contributions of tactile and visual feedback. Additionally, resting-state beta power and task-related theta, alpha and beta power predicts stronger practice effect during virtual tool-use in younger adults compared to older adults.
All together, I conclude that a sense of agency may strongly relate to improvement in tool-use in older adults dependent on practice effect but independent of alterations in the body schema, while ownership did not emerge due to a lack of body schema plasticity. Additionally, I concluded that the stronger practice effect during virtual tool-use training is positively related with resting-state relative beta power, higher task-related relative theta power and lower task-related alpha across frontal, parietal and occipital regions in younger adults but not in older adults.
Given the profound changes in the demand for new innovative ways of developing and delivering services, the so-called “personal services” are responding to the digital challenge by using different approaches and at varying speed. Personal services are those services that can be found in sectors such as education, retail, hospitality (hotels, restaurants), craftmanship, art and entertainment. These are services that have been for so long designed around the idea that they only require “high-touch” personal encounters. However, due to the fact that the world today is becoming more digitalized and is heading towards what is known as a “digital revolution”, firms from this sector must look for new and alternative ways on how to adapt their business models, organizational structures, and service offerings, especially by taking advantage of the use and application of digital technologies. Thus, leading these firms to avoid what could be a long-term business collapse.
Despite the fact that it is true that certain companies within this industry such as Airbnb, VR-All-Art, or HelloFresh have managed to disrupt traditional business paradigms, even leading to building billion-dollar businesses, the reality is that personal services represent one of the few service sectors struggling the most to achieve the transition from analog to digital and thus, primarily rely on traditional and analog business models. Guidance regarding the path towards becoming digital is lacking.
To fill out this gap, this Ph.D. thesis aims to introduce a maturity model as a strategic and systematic instrument that help personal service firms to assess their current developmental digitalization stage and show trajectories for improvements to guide the transition from an analog towards a stage of “digital maturity” in a holistic and well-structured manner.
Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are economic mechanisms to compensate actors for providing environmental services.
Distributed Ledger TEchnologies (DLTs) are a system of electronic records that enables a network of independent participants to establish a consensus around a set of transactions. They are distributed databases organised as a chain of ordered information blocks, recorded by a network of computers.
DLTs enable the appearance of innovative applications (such as smart contracts, tokens, wallets and programmable money) to tackle recurrent PES issues and implement PES design advice found in the scientific literature. They also promise to facilitate new collaboration infrastructures for independent actors that pursue a common environmental goal. Through a common authoritative ledger that serves as a synchronizing backbone for managing interactions between independent network participants, DLTs enable coordinated collaboration efforts based on the transparent transaction of financial resources, the collective management of information regarding the state of the environmental resources and the management of activities that impact its transformation.
This study investigates how blockchain technologies might contribute to the success of PES schemes by lowering information asymmetries and transaction costs, by enabling the appearance of blockchain-supported applications that tackle specific PES deficiencies and by providing new institutional alternatives for governing the interaction of individuals for a common (environmental) purpose.
This study proposes that blockchain-supported applications are likely to improve current PES schemes by making them more transparent, by reducing the costs associated to maintaining trust and by reducing the need for certain intermediary services. It also envisions new types of peer-to-peer payments for environmental services emerging as a consequence of decentralization and distributed ledger technologies.
Digital platforms (DPs) drastically change how users derive their value from offerings and how corporations interact with each other across fading global and organizational boundaries. The rapid development of DPs has already disrupted industries such as retail, entertainment, hospitality, transportation and fueled social and political controversies across the globe.
To evaluate the design of DPs in this thesis, I mainly rely on the concept engagement platforms (EPs). EPs are physical or virtual touchpoint designed to enable and ease the integration of resources. Thereby, co-creation of value between actors is facilitated. Such EPs utilize functionalities to attract users and build loyalty. As time and attention of users are limited, EPs providing the best fit and experience attract and bind the largest user base, thus further increasing their usefulness to users due to network effects. In an increasingly globalized and digitalized world, this leads to an increased occurrence of “winner takes all environments”. To cement their status and keep users on their EPs, platform operators implement features that constantly seek the user’s attention. Yet, these practices may impact users negatively, e.g., through addictive potential or stress.
Consequently, platform operators and designers who try to create impactful and supportive EPs should not solely focus on traditional marketing metrics, such as retention, and maximizing daily usage. Instead, understanding the intended value that users seek to derive provides more appropriate and sustainable solutions for engagement platforms users. This dissertation derives design knowledge for EPs of both the B2C and the B2B sectors. To derive design knowledge for operators and designers, this dissertation follows the Design Science Research approach to provide practitioners with actionable knowledge on how to inform platform design with insight based on the Service Logic.
The COVID-19 pandemic as a crisis has been associated with changes in daily interaction, social connectedness, mental health, support structures, and the provision of (mental) health care treatment. This thesis aims to examine 3 main targets: psychological well-being during crises, psychological mechanisms related to reactions and consequences of individuals and systems, and the effectiveness of digital interventions to support mental health.
In 5 studies the following were examined: (1) triggers of preventable adverse events (pAEs) through evaluating the psychometric properties of a questionnaire; (2) hand hygiene behavior along the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) through structural equation modeling; (3) differences in worries and mental health of the general population and psychosomatic rehabilitation patients; (4) evaluation of the intercorrelation between psychological variables along the Evolutionary Theory of Loneliness via a serial mediation model; (5) evaluation of the effectiveness of digital (psycho)therapeutic interventions.
In study 1, 5 areas of triggers of pAEs were defined and the questionnaire showed good psychometric properties. Study 2 has shown that hand hygiene behavior could be explained along the HAPA with the pattern being invariant for mental health. Study 3 has demonstrated higher mental health-related symptoms for psychosomatic rehabilitation patients who also reported different worries than the general population. Study 4 has shown a serial and individual mediation effect of loneliness and anxiety between distress and depression. Adding digital interventions to the traditional therapy approach supported the reduction of psychological symptoms as shown in study 5.
The findings of this thesis contribute to a greater understanding of psychological mechanisms evaluated by reactions and consequences associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and allow for several practical, theoretical, and methodological conclusions to be drawn.
As children develop, they learn to copy from others, interpret their intentions, and evaluate their reliability as sources of information (social learning). Today, these ‘others’ include not only children's peers, parents, or teachers, but also technological devices with which they can interact, including in educational settings. Social robots occupy a particular niche among such technologies, with the ability to embody specific social behaviours such as gaze, gesture, and verbal communication. Nonetheless, the technology underlying the design of social robots remains far from perfect, and opportunities for failures are rife. Understanding how the social capabilities inherent with social robots interact with these inevitable failures is therefore necessary for the design of robust educational interactions with robots. Consequently, the goal of this thesis is to develop an understanding of how errors impact children's social attitudes and behaviour towards social robots. First, a meta-analysis on children's trust in social robots was conducted, creating a theoretical baseline from which to study robot errors. Second, a learning task and measurements for use in child-robot-interaction (cHRI) were developed, through which robot errors could be manipulated and their effect on constructs such as trust, liking, and perceived agency captured. Third, the role of robot errors in a real-world implementation of the learning task was examined. Finally, how current social cognition paradigms can be used to explain children's perceptions of robot errors was explored. Throughout these studies, a theme emerged towards errors not being detrimental to children's perceptions of social robots, at least for more short-term interactions. The significance of robot errors and, more generally, social behaviour when evaluating social robots as tutors is discussed. The thesis concludes with recommendations for how cHRI research can draw from psychology in the design of future cHRI studies.
In tracing the complex circulation of Bauhaus principles and approaches to design in Australia throughout the 1940s and 1950s, this dissertation establishes the various exchanges between the Australian artists Dahl and Geoffrey Collings and Alistair Morrison, the British artist Richard Haughton James, and Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and György Kepes in London during the period from 1935 to 1937.
Through various case studies, visual analysis, and by drawing on the critique of unidirectional notions of agency and influence, I demonstrate how certain practices of collaboration and experimentation used at the Bauhaus were applied and advocated by the Collingses, Morrison, and James in Australia throughout their wide-ranging artistic practices, which included photography, film, design, and painting. Furthermore, I demonstrate how this group of designers promoted the Bauhaus and its associated collaborative and experimental principles in their lectures, writings, and exhibitions and through their involvement in professional art and design organizations. I argue that this group of designers all subsequently played crucial roles in introducing Australia to the Bauhaus and improving art and design standards in Sydney and Melbourne during the post-war period, enriching Australia’s art and culture for decades.
This thesis analyses pricing and market design to allocate network access and recover network cost in electricity distribution networks with distributed generation and flexible consumers. The challenge of coordinating new, flexible, and increasingly active network users is the overarching motivation for the analyses in the four different papers. First, an introduction gives an overview of the background, main contents and conclusions. This is followed by the four academic papers, each picking up a separate, topical aspect of coordinating new network users in distribution grids.
The first paper contributes to the ongoing debate on integrating self-supply into the tariff structure of distribution grids and provides options to prevent a potentially inefficient, self-reinforcing dynamic. By analysing the evolution of self-supply shares in distribution grids depending on network charges, several options are revealed that adjust common charging parameters in order to maintain or restore financial stability. Paper 2 analyses the theoretical efficiency limits of the two-part tariff which is common in practice and trades-off economic efficiency with other requirements for the design of network charges. A formal comparison to the efficient benchmark of peak-load pricing reveals specific circumstances under which a two-part tariff simply cannot deliver fully efficient incentives. Paper 3 applies this to the practical challenge of steering investments into new technology for network users efficiently with network tariffs, thus broadening the perspective of the thesis from just self-supply and mere financial stability to efficient integration of active network users. The analysis shows how common uniform pricing distorts not only operation of existing assets, but also investments into new ones and thereby may lead to developing the distribution system inefficiently. The last paper focuses on access rights allocated by market mechanisms as an alternative or complement to regulated, listed access prices. Thus, it presents an account of different dimensions of access and the design of products and market rules for market-based allocation of access to electricity distribution grids. The paper finds that while differentiated access rights can theoretically be allocated efficiently by regulated, listed prices as well as in a market-based setting, pricing requires information on demand which network users ideally reveal in a market setting. A discussion of options for product and market design for access auctions carves out the potential benefits, as well as remaining challenges with market-based allocation.
Background: Digital physical activity interventions can be effective, but how their components influence complex health behavior change processes has rarely been investigated in older adults.
Objective: Applying principles from social cognitive theory, missing value treatment and person-centered analyses, this thesis aims to tackle three research gaps in the form of barriers to physical activity behavior change in digital interventions targeted at older adults.
Methods: Study 1 covers social-cognitive mechanisms in the effect of tailored, theory-based digital interventions on movement in the physical activity stage of change. In study 2, lifestyle profiles consisting of six self-reported, health-related behaviors were researched using latent profile analysis. Adjusted risk ratios were calculated to identify dropout-vulnerable risk profiles. In Study 3, latent class growth analysis was used to determine trajectory subgroups regarding physical activity and sedentary behavior.
Results: In study 1, the hypothesized positive effects on stage of change were partly mediated by social-cognitive predictor changes. There were heterogenous intervention mechanisms. Four latent health-related lifestyle profiles were identified in study 2. Membership of the “socially inactive lifestyle” profile was associated with an elevated risk of dropping out. Study 3 identified two latent physical activity and sedentary behavior change trajectories, respectively. Significant positive trajectories were only observed in the highly sedentary.
Discussion and Conclusion: This thesis lays out a theoretical and methodological basis of how areas of heterogeneity in the physical activity behavior change process of older adults participating in digital interventions can be analyzed. Characterizing distinct subgroups and their needs can advance tailoring of intervention components and behavior change strategies, and ultimately improve acceptance, retention, and long-term intervention effectiveness.
Despite numerous attempts to reduce socioeconomic disparity in education, the gap in educational attainment and expectations among students with different socioeconomic backgrounds persists. This thesis is an attempt to extend our understanding of the social-psychological mechanisms that could explain this gap and inform solutions that would promote greater equality in education. It presents three manuscripts, which together propose that (1) the link between socioeconomic background and educational attainment can be explained by self-efficacy beliefs, and (2) childhood socioeconomic status and self-efficacy bias the process of judgement that precedes achievement-oriented behaviour. Building on the existing literature and research, in the first study I assess the roles of self-efficacy antecedents in the relationship between socioeconomic background and educational expectations. The findings demonstrate that self-efficacy antecedents fully explain the effects of income, social class, and primary caregiver’s education on educational expectations of students. Further, in a theoretical piece, I propose that pre-existing self-efficacy beliefs guide the selection and interpretation of the immediate information relevant in the process of appraisal of problem-focused coping potential. Finally, building on the results of the first study and the proposed theoretical framework, I test the effects of childhood status on the appraisal of coping potential and attribution of the outcome when people solve cognitive tasks. The findings demonstrate that the effect of childhood status varies across tasks with different difficulty and among people who succeeded and failed. I situate these findings within broader research on socioeconomic disparity in education and discuss their implications for theory, research, and practice.
