Many local governments have started using smartphone applications to more effectively inform and communicate with citizens. This trend is of interest, as cities can only be smart if they are responsive to their citizens. In this paper, the intention to use such a mobile application among adult residents (n = 420) of a mid-sized city in the southeastern United States was examined using hierarchical linear regression analysis. The regression model that was tested indicated significant predictors of the intention to use the app in order to report municipal problems, such as power outages, and to request services for one’s home or community, including: Performance expectancy (e.g., citizens’ beliefs that the app would be efficient, helpful, convenient), effort expectancy (citizens’ beliefs about difficulty of using the app), social influence, perceived cost (e.g., privacy loss, storage space, unwanted notifications), and prior use of city apps. Consistent with current research on technology adoption, performance expectancy had the strongest influence on app-use intentions. Additionally, citizens’ trust in their city government’s ability to effectively manage an app was a weak, positive predictor of app-use intentions; general trust in the city government did not predict app-use intentions. Implications for city governments and city app developers are discussed.

Exemplification (the use of examples) in news stories is a common method of providing information about social phenomena to make stories more interesting to audience members. However, previous research has consistently linked exemplification to highly inaccurate perceptions about the prevalence or severity of a given phenomena. The current study further explored outcomes of exemplification by examining the extent to which the practice influenced perceptions of news credibility. Exemplification of public opinion via layperson quotes was found to differentially affect perceptions of news story credibility. Anecdotal exemplification, however, did not predict credibility ratings. Implications for journalism and democratic participation as well as partisans' preference for congenial coverage in news stories are discussed.

This study tested a new method of using self-affirmation theory to increase adaptive responses to health risk messages. Participants’ self-concepts were affirmed via text integrated with risk messages (public service announcements/PSAs) rather than by methods used in most previous studies that have limited applicability for campaigns employing mediated messages. Participants were exposed to health risk PSAs either including or not including affirming text to examine relative effects on message evaluation and adaptive responses. The moderating effect of personal relevance of the behavior on responses was also examined. Participants exposed to PSAs with integrated, affirming text (affirmed participants) reported more positive attitudes toward the PSA, greater self-efficacy, and greater intention to reduce risky behavior than participants exposed to messages without affirming text (non-affirmed participants). Compared to non-affirmed participants, affirmed participants also reported weaker perceptions of risk severity and equivalent perceptions of susceptibility. The personal relevance of the behavior did not moderate any effects of self-affirmation. Implications for health campaigns that employ mass-mediated messages are discussed.

Results are presented from a nearly week-long experimental evaluation of a scalable control algorithm for a commercial building HVAC system based on real-time measurements of occupancy obtained from motion detectors. The control algorithm decides air flow rate and amount of reheat for each variable air volume terminal box based on real-time measurements of occupancy and space temperature. It is a rule-based controller, so the control computations are simple. The experiments showed that the proposed controller resulted in 37% energy savings over baseline on average without sacrificing indoor climate. In contrast to prior work that reports energy savings without a careful measure of the effect on indoor climate, it is verified that the controller indeed maintains indoor climate as well as the building's baseline controller does. This verification is performed from measurements of a host of environmental variables and analysis of before/after occupant survey results. A complete system required to retrofit existing buildings with the controller is presented, which includes a wireless sensor network and a software execution platform. Two useful observations from this work are: (i) considerable energy savings—along with compliance with ASHRAE ventilation standards—are possible with simple occupancy-based control algorithms that are easy to retrofit; and (ii) these savings are attained with binary occupancy measurements from motion detectors that do not provide occupancy-count measurements. Results also show that there is a large variation in energy savings from zone to zone and from day to day.

Guilt is a widely used emotional appeal in environmental sustainability and other advocacy messages. However, unintended negative effects such as psychological reactance, where individuals resist or reject the message, have been identified, and scholars have recently suggested strategies to mitigate those effects. Using an experimental design, the study examined the role of self-efficacy cues (lower vs. higher magnitude behavioral recommendations) in the message recommendation component of guilt appeals that are designed to elicit more guilt than shame. Adult-aged participants (N = 341) were exposed to messages that described the negative effects of climate change on wild animals. Results from a serial mediation test indicated that viewing guilt messages with lower (vs. higher) magnitude behavioral recommendation was associated with greater self-efficacy beliefs and less perceived threat to freedom, which predicted more anticipated guilt and, finally, greater intention to take pro-environmental actions. These findings contribute to the theoretical development and practical applications regarding how self-efficacy-enhancing content in guilt appeals can reduce defensive responses and foster a stronger commitment to sustainable practices.

One objective of corporate advertising is to build a positive image for the organization in order to immunize it against the impact of negative news in the future. An experiment was conducted to test if a corporate ad could inoculate an audience with initially positive attitudes toward the organization against a negative news report about the organization. Study participants exposed only to a negative news report had more positive attitudes toward the organization than participants who saw the news report in addition to an image ad. Participants' initial attitudes were found to be the most potent predictor of final attitudes toward the organization, suggesting that information integration theory offers a better explanation of attitude formation than the theory of reasoned action.