With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, AI educators have become a reality. The advancement and increasing applications of AI technology in higher education not only provide more efficient tools for teachers in long-term and focused teaching, but also provide new active and independent spaces for sustainable self-motivated learning for college students. It is of great importance that the effects of AI educator design are understood to ensure the sustainable development and deployment of AI-driven courses at universities. This paper investigates the influences of AI educators’ autonomy design on students’ usage intentions by delving into how the artificial autonomy of AI educators satisfies students’ needs. Drawing on the uses and gratification (U&G) framework, we theoretically elaborate on how AI educator autonomy (i.e., sensing autonomy, thought autonomy, and action autonomy) influences students’ intentions to use an AI educator through the mediating effects of U&G benefits (i.e., information-seeking gratification, social interaction gratification, and entertainment gratification). By conducting an online survey (N = 673) on college students, we found that the sensing autonomy of AI educators is positively associated with usage intention due to the mediating effects of social interaction and entertainment gratifications; the thought autonomy of AI educators is positively related to usage intention, mediated by information-seeking and social interaction gratifications, and the action autonomy of AI educators is positively linked with usage intention through the paths of information-seeking and entertainment gratifications. Our findings provide both theoretical contributions and practical implications.

Copycat brands mimic brand leaders to free ride on the latter's equity. However, little is known regarding if and how consumers confuse copycat as leading brand in purchasing. In this study, we applied a word-pair evaluation paradigm in which the first word was a brand name (copycat vs. normal brand both similar with a leading brand in category), followed by a product name (near vs. far from the leading brand’s category). Behavioral results showed that, when the product is near the leader’s category, the copycat strategy (CN) was more preferred compared to the normal brand (NN) but not different in the far product condition (CF and NF). Event-related potential (ERP) data provided further insight into the mechanism. The N400 amplitude elicited by the CN condition was significantly smaller than NN. However, when products are far from the leader’s category, there was no significant difference in N400 amplitudes. For the late positive component (LPC), the CN gave rise to a larger amplitude than the CF. The N400 amplitude was suggested to reflect the categorization process, and the LPC demonstrated the recollection process in long-term memory. These findings imply that the copycat brand strategy is generally only effective when products are within the category of the leading brand, which offers important implications for marketing practices.

With the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), social media-based donation platforms emerged.¹ These platforms innovatively demonstrate peer information (e.g., number of donated peers) on the donation page, which inevitably brings the peer influence into donors’ donation decision process. However, how the peer influence will affect the psychological process of donation decisions are remained unknown. This study used the number of donated peers to examine the effects of peer influence on donors’ donation decisions and extracted event-related potential (ERP) from electroencephalographic data to explore the underlying psychological process. The behavioral results indicated that the number of donated peers positively influenced donors’ willingness to donate. The ERP results suggested that a larger number of donated peers might indicate a higher level of conformity and greater perceived emotional rewards, as a larger P2 amplitude was observed. Following the early processing of emotional stimuli, cognitive detection of decisional risk took place, and the donors reckoned a smaller number of donated peers as a high potential risk, which was reflected by a larger N2 amplitude. In the later stage, the larger number of donated peers, which represented a higher magnitude of prospective emotional rewards, led to a higher incentive to donate, and reflected in a larger amplitude of P3. Additionally, implications and future directions were discussed.

Extrinsic cues are ubiquitous in daily commodity consumption scenarios, not to mention online consumption scenarios. Among the many online cues, monthly sales and product ratings are two of the most representative. Some scholars have researched the impact of these cues on consumer decision making, but only search products have been investigated. Based on previous research, this article expanded the types of products to experience products and further explored consumer purchase behaviours and the underlying purchase processes influenced by these two extrinsic cues with the assistance of a neuroscience tool, event-related potentials (ERPs). The behavioural results indicated that the subjects decided mainly based on ratings, while the effect of sales was continuously inhibited. The ERP results further suggested that consumers recognised low ratings and low sales as more negative stimuli than high ratings and high sales, as larger P2 amplitudes were observed. Following the early processing of these cues, low ratings were considered unacceptable and evoked more significant emotional conflicts than high ratings, which was reflected by larger N400 amplitudes. Moreover, in the late stage, high ratings, which activated evaluation categorisation and produced more significant emotional arousal than low-rating conditions, guided the formation of purchase intention and reflected greater LPP amplitudes. Theoretical and managerial implications were discussed.

Purpose: Peer information is now commonly used in solicitation. However, scholars have long focused on testing its effectiveness on increasing the donation amount without paying attention to its potential negative effects on donors. Thus, the current study employs high vs low peer donation amount (HPDA vs LPDA) information to explore its effect on “how-much-to-donate” decisions and the corresponding neural and psychological reactions at the same time. Participants and Methods: Student samples from a Chinese university and behavioral experiments with the event-related potential (ERP) method were used in this study. Results: The behavioral results are consistent with previous research in which HPDA was positively associated with higher donation levels. ERP results show the mechanisms behind decision-making can be summarized into a cognitive approach represented by cost-benefit analysis and an affective approach represented by reward perception. More surprisingly, in contrast to the behavioral results, LPDA elicits higher level of reward perception than HPDA. Conclusion: The results indicate that although HPDA leads to higher levels of donation, donors do not show higher levels of reward anticipation at the neurological level, indicating the increment of donation may come at the cost of donors. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.