Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften
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Dynamic Programming
(2024)
Queueing Theory
(2024)
The Decision Tree Procedure
(2024)
Heuristic Methods
(2024)
Network Analysis Method
(2024)
The Peren-Clement Index
(2024)
Sequencing Problems
(2024)
Linear Optimization
(2024)
The Peren Theorem
(2024)
Improved Thermal Comfort Model Leveraging Conditional Tabular GAN Focusing on Feature Selection
(2024)
The indoor thermal comfort in both homes and workplaces significantly influences the health and productivity of inhabitants. The heating system, controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), can automatically calibrate the indoor thermal condition by analyzing various physiological and environmental variables. To ensure a comfortable indoor environment, smart home systems can adjust parameters related to thermal comfort based on accurate predictions of inhabitants’ preferences. Modeling personal thermal comfort preferences poses two significant challenges: the inadequacy of data and its high dimensionality. An adequate amount of data is a prerequisite for training efficient machine learning (ML) models. Additionally, high-dimensional data tends to contain multiple irrelevant and noisy features, which might hinder ML models’ performance. To address these challenges, we propose a framework for predicting personal thermal comfort preferences, combining the conditional tabular generative adversarial network (CTGAN) with multiple feature selection techniques. We first address the data inadequacy challenge by applying CTGAN to generate synthetic data samples, incorporating challenges associated with multimodal distributions and categorical features. Then, multiple feature selection techniques are employed to identify the best possible sets of features. Experimental results based on a wide range of settings on a standard dataset demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in predicting personal thermal comfort preferences. The results also indicated that ML models trained on synthetic data achieved significantly better performance than models trained on real data. Overall, our method, combining CTGAN and feature selection techniques, outperformed existing known related work in thermal comfort prediction in terms of multiple evaluation metrics, including area under the curve (AUC), Cohen’s Kappa, and accuracy. Additionally, we presented a global, model-agnostic explanation of the thermal preference prediction system, providing an avenue for thermal comfort experiment designers to consciously select the data to be collected.
Green infrastructure has been widely recognized for the benefits to human health and biodiversity conservation. However, knowledge of the qualities and requirements of such spaces and structures for the effective delivery of the range of ecosystem services expected is still limited, as well as the identification of trade-offs between services. In this study, we apply the One Health approach in the context of green spaces to investigate how urban park characteristics affect human mental health and wildlife support outcomes and identify synergies and trade-offs between these dimensions. Here we show that perceived restorativeness of park users varies significantly across sites and is mainly affected by safety and naturalness perceptions. In turn, these perceptions are driven by objective indicators of quality, such as maintenance of facilities and vegetation structure, and subjective estimations of biodiversity levels. The presence of water bodies benefited both mental health and wildlife. However, high tree canopy coverage provided greater restoration potential whereas a certain level of habitat heterogeneity was important to support a wider range of bird species requirements. To reconcile human and wildlife needs in green spaces, cities should strategically implement a heterogeneous green infrastructure network that considers trade-offs and maximizes synergies between these dimensions.
In recent years, eXtended Reality (XR) technology like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality became both technically feasible as well as affordable which lead to a drastic demand of professionally designed and developed applications. However, this demand combined with a rapid pace of innovation revealed a lack of design tool support for professional interaction designers as well as a knowledge gap regarding their approaches and needs. To address this gap, this thesis engages with the work of professional XR interaction designers in a qualitative research into XR interaction design approach. Therefore, this thesis applies two complementary lenses stemming from scientific design and social practice theory discourses to observe, describe, analyze, and understand professional XR interaction designers' challenges and approaches with a focus on application prototyping.
The digitization of financial activities in consumers' lives is increasing, and the digitalization of invoicing processes is expected to play a significant role, although this area is not well understood regarding the private sector. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research have a long history of analyzing the socio-material and temporal aspects of work practices that are relevant for the domestic domain. The socio-material structuring of invoicing work and the working styles of consumers must be considered when designing effective consumer support systems. In this ethnomethodologically-informed, design-oriented interview study, we followed 17 consumers in their daily practices of dealing with invoices to make the invisible administrative work involved in this process visible. We identified and described the meaningful artifacts that were used in a spatial-temporal process within various storage locations such as input, reminding, intermediate (for postponing cases) buffers, and archive systems. Furthermore, we identified three different working styles that consumers exhibited: direct completion, at the next opportunity, and postpone as far as possible. This study contributes to our understanding of household economics and domestic workplace studies in the tradition of CSCW and has implications for the design of electronic invoicing systems.
Citizen participation is deemed to be crucial for sustainability and resilience planning. However, generational equity has been missing from recent academic discussions regarding sustainability and resilience. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to reintroduce the topic of the existence or absence of an intergenerational consensus on the example of a rural community and its perceived brand image attributes and development priorities. The research is based on primary data collected through an online survey, with a sample size of N = 808 respondents in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Germany. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal–Wallis test for the presence and/or absence of consensus among the five generations regarding brand image attributes and development priorities. The findings point to divergence between what the median values indicate as the most relevant brand image attributes and development priorities among the citizens and the areas where the Kruskal–Wallis test shows that an intergenerational consensus either does or does not exist. The results imply the need for new concepts and applied approaches to citizen participation for sustainability and resilience, where intergenerational dialogue and equity-building take center stage. In addition to the importance of the theory of citizen participation for sustainability and resilience, our results provide ample evidence for how sustainability and resilience planning documents could potentially benefit from deploying the concept of intergenerational equity. The present research provides sustainability and political science with new conceptual and methodological approaches for taking intergenerational equity into account in regional planning processes in rural and other areas.
AI systems pose unknown challenges for designers, policymakers, and users which aggravates the assessment of potential harms and outcomes. Although understanding risks is a requirement for building trust in technology, users are often excluded from legal assessments and explanations of AI hazards. To address this issue we conducted three focus groups with 18 participants in total and discussed the European proposal for a legal framework for AI. Based on this, we aim to build a (conceptual) model that guides policymakers, designers, and researchers in understanding users’ risk perception of AI systems. In this paper, we provide selected examples based on our preliminary results. Moreover, we argue for the benefits of such a perspective.
When dialogues with voice assistants (VAs) fall apart, users often become confused or even frustrated. To address these issues and related privacy concerns, Amazon recently introduced a feature allowing Alexa users to inquire about why it behaved in a certain way. But how do users perceive this new feature? In this paper, we present preliminary results from research conducted as part of a three-year project involving 33 German households. This project utilized interviews, fieldwork, and co-design workshops to identify common unexpected behaviors of VAs, as well as users’ needs and expectations for explanations. Our findings show that, contrary to its intended purpose, the new feature actually exacerbates user confusion and frustration instead of clarifying Alexa's behavior. We argue that such voice interactions should be characterized as explanatory dialogs that account for VA’s unexpected behavior by providing interpretable information and prompting users to take action to improve their current and future interactions.
Smart heating systems are one of the core components of smart homes. A large portion of domestic energy consumption is derived from HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, making them a relevant topic of the efforts to support an energy transition in private housing. For that reason, the technology has attracted attention both from the academic and the industry communities. User interfaces of smart heating systems have evolved from simple adjusting knobs to advanced data visualization interfaces, that allow for more advanced setting such as time tables and status information. With the advent of AI, we are interested in exploring how the interfaces will be evolving to build the connection between user needs and underlying AI system. Hence, this paper is targeted to provide early design implications towards an AI-based user interface for smart heating systems.
Trust your guts: fostering embodied knowledge and sustainable practices through voice interaction
(2023)
Despite various attempts to prevent food waste and motivate conscious food handling, household members find it difficult to correctly assess the edibility of food. With the rise of ambient voice assistants, we did a design case study to support households’ in situ decision-making process in collaboration with our voice agent prototype, Fischer Fritz. Therefore, we conducted 15 contextual inquiries to understand food practices at home. Furthermore, we interviewed six fish experts to inform the design of our voice agent on how to guide consumers and teach food literacy. Finally, we created a prototype and discussed with 15 consumers its impact and capability to convey embodied knowledge to the human that is engaged as sensor. Our design research goes beyond current Human-Food Interaction automation approaches by emphasizing the human-food relationship in technology design and demonstrating future complementary human-agent collaboration with the aim to increase humans’ competence to sense, think, and act.
There has been a growing interest in taste research in the HCI and CSCW communities. However, the focus is more on stimulating the senses, while the socio-cultural aspects have received less attention. However, individual taste perception is mediated through social interaction and collective negotiation and is not only dependent on physical stimulation. Therefore, we study the digital mediation of taste by drawing on ethnographic research of four online wine tastings and one self-organized event. Hence, we investigated the materials, associated meanings, competences, procedures, and engagements that shaped the performative character of tasting practices. We illustrate how the tastings are built around the taste-making process and how online contexts differ in providing a more diverse and distributed environment. We then explore the implications of our findings for the further mediation of taste as a social and democratized phenomenon through online interaction.
Background
Consumers rely heavily on online user reviews when shopping online and cybercriminals produce fake reviews to manipulate consumer opinion. Much prior research focuses on the automated detection of these fake reviews, which are far from perfect. Therefore, consumers must be able to detect fake reviews on their own. In this study we survey the research examining how consumers detect fake reviews online.
Methods
We conducted a systematic literature review over the research on fake review detection from the consumer-perspective. We included academic literature giving new empirical data. We provide a narrative synthesis comparing the theories, methods and outcomes used across studies to identify how consumers detect fake reviews online.
Results
We found only 15 articles that met our inclusion criteria. We classify the most often used cues identified into five categories which were (1) review characteristics (2) textual characteristics (3) reviewer characteristics (4) seller characteristics and (5) characteristics of the platform where the review is displayed.
Discussion
We find that theory is applied inconsistently across studies and that cues to deception are often identified in isolation without any unifying theoretical framework. Consequently, we discuss how such a theoretical framework could be developed.
Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa – Conference Proceedings 2022
(2023)
These proceedings are the outcome of the 10th annual joint conference on "Universities Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa".
These proceedings document the culmination of the 10th annual joint conference on "Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa," which was held on the 8th and 9th of September 2022 at the Campus Sankt Augustin, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. The conference was a collaboration between the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany.
Neutral buoyancy has been used as an analog for microgravity from the earliest days of human spaceflight. Compared to other options on Earth, neutral buoyancy is relatively inexpensive and presents little danger to astronauts while simulating some aspects of microgravity. Neutral buoyancy removes somatosensory cues to the direction of gravity but leaves vestibular cues intact. Removal of both somatosensory and direction of gravity cues while floating in microgravity or using virtual reality to establish conflicts between them has been shown to affect the perception of distance traveled in response to visual motion (vection) and the perception of distance. Does removal of somatosensory cues alone by neutral buoyancy similarly impact these perceptions? During neutral buoyancy we found no significant difference in either perceived distance traveled nor perceived size relative to Earth-normal conditions. This contrasts with differences in linear vection reported between short- and long-duration microgravity and Earth-normal conditions. These results indicate that neutral buoyancy is not an effective analog for microgravity for these perceptual effects.
The art of nudging
(2023)
Do simple and subtle changes in the living and study environment improve the eating behaviour of students in an educational setting? This dissertation provides a not-so-simple answer to this simple question based on the outcomes of four studies that explore the effects and design of artwork nudges (specifically the artwork of Alberto Giacometti) on the eating behaviour of students by applying different research designs. Study 1 explores the effects of a Giacometti-like nudge (a more contemporary version of the original nudge) regarding the dietary behaviour of high school students in a controlled setting. Study 2 applies different artwork nudges within a virtual vignette setting to measure their effects on virtual meal choices made. Also, the degree to which individuals were aware of the nudge’s presence is included as an influential factor in nudge effectiveness. Study 3 assesses the susceptibility to nudges as measured with a questionnaire. Susceptibility to nudges is defined as nudgeability. Study 4 assesses the effects of the original Giacometti nudge in a real-world university cafeteria setting. Specifically, the immediate and sustained effects of the original Giacometti nudge on students’ meal purchases in the university cafeteria are considered. In addition, the role of awareness of the nudge’s presence as well as the acceptance of this specific nudge are discussed. The conclusion is drawn that the original Giacometti nudge should only be applied in an educational setting to improve healthy eating behaviour if the intended target groups and environment meet certain conditions. Artwork nudges in general should be applied only after rigorous testing of various types of different nudges and more research reflecting healthy eating in its entirety.
Many students approaching adulthood often choose high-calorie food products. Concurrently, health interventions applied during this life phase can potentially lead to a healthier lifestyle. Nudge health interventions in experimental cafeteria settings have been found to improve eating behavior effectively, yet research in real-world settings is lacking. Accepting nudges as health interventions impacts nudge effectiveness. The present study applies a pretest–posttest design for a period of three consecutive weeks (no nudge, nudge, no nudge), testing the effectiveness of the so-called Giacometti cue on the number of calories purchased in a real-world cafeteria. Students were exposed to the nudge during the intervention week when entering the cafeteria and when choosing their meals. After purchasing a meal, their choice was recorded, and they completed a questionnaire. The Giacometti cue immediately reduced the number of calories purchased (comparing weeks one and two). After nudge removal, an effect was identified, increasing the number of calories purchased (comparing weeks two and three). Contrary to expectations, higher nudge acceptance resulted in more calories purchased. Neither awareness of the nudge’s presence when buying food nor the interaction between acceptance and awareness played a role. We explore potential explanations for the Giacometti cue’s effects.
Work-related thoughts in off-job time have been studied extensively in occupational health psychology and related fields. We provide a focused review of research on overcommitment – a component within the effort-reward imbalance model – and aim to connect this line of research to the most commonly studied aspects of work-related rumination. Drawing on this integrative review, we analyze survey data on ten facets of work-related rumination, namely (1) overcommitment, (2) psychological detachment, (3) affective rumination, (4) problem-solving pondering, (5) positive work reflection, (6) negative work reflection, (7) distraction, (8) cognitive irritation, (9) emotional irritation, and (10) inability to recover. First, we leverage exploratory factor analysis to self-report survey data from 357 employees to calibrate overcommitment items and to position overcommitment within the nomological net of work-related rumination constructs. Second, we leverage confirmatory factor analysis to self-report survey data from 388 employees to provide a more specific test of uniqueness vs. overlap among these constructs. Third, we apply relative weight analysis to quantify the unique criterion-related validity of each work-related rumination facet regarding (1) physical fatigue, (2) cognitive fatigue, (3) emotional fatigue, (4) burnout, (5) psychosomatic complaints, and (6) satisfaction with life. Our results suggest that several measures of work-related rumination (e.g., overcommitment and cognitive irritation) can be used interchangeably. Emotional irritation and affective rumination emerge as the strongest unique predictors of fatigue, burnout, psychosomatic complaints, and satisfaction with life. Our study assists researchers in making informed decisions on selecting scales for their research and paves the way for integrating research on effort-reward imbalance and work-related rumination.
INTRODUCTION: The cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) data on mid- to long-term myocardial damage due to COVID-19 infections in elite athletes are scarce. Therefore, this study investigated the mid -to long-term consequences of myocardial involvement after a COVID-19 infection in elite athletes.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study included 27 athletes at the German Olympic Centre North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)/Rhineland with a confirmed previous COVID-19 infection between January 2020 and October 2021. The athletes were part of an ongoing observational COVID-19 study at the Institute of Cardiology and Sports Medicine Cologne at the German Sport University (DSHS).Nine healthy non-athletes with no prior COVID-19 illness served as controls. CMR was performed within a mean of 182 days (standard deviation [SD] 99) of the initial positive test result.
RESULTS: CMR did not reveal any signs of acute myocarditis (according to the current Lake Louise criteria) or myocardial damage in any of the 26 elite athletes with previous COVID-19 infection. Of these athletes, 92% experienced a symptomatic course, and 54% reported symptoms lasting for more than 4 weeks. One male athlete was excluded from the analysis because CMR revealed an arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). Athletes had significantly enlarged left and right ventricle volumes and increased left ventricular myocardial mass in comparison to the healthy control group (LVEDVi 103.4 vs 91.1 ml/m2, p = 0.031; RVEDVi 104.1 vs 86.6 ml/m2, p = 0.007; LVMi 59.0 vs 46.2 g/m2, p = 0.002). Only two cases of elevated high-sensitivity-Troponin were documented; in one, the participant had previously engaged in high-intensity training, and in the other, CMR revealed a diagnosis of an arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.
CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the risk for mid- to long-term myocardial damage is very low to negligible in elite athletes. Our results do not allow conclusions to be drawn regarding myocardial injury in the acute phase of infection nor about possible long-term myocardial effects in the general population.
This study addresses the underrepresentation of women and the so-far neglected process perspective in empirical entrepreneurial research. It aims to identify the personality traits that differentiate successful female entrepreneurs from their less successful peers and to determine which traits are crucial for pre-launch, launch, and post-launch success. Independent t-tests on 305 female entrepreneurs (and 476 male entrepreneurs) from the DACH region highlight the role of self-efficacy, proactivity, locus of control, and need for achievement for female entrepreneurs. Multiple regression analyses further reveal the importance of self-efficacy for every phase of women’s entrepreneurial journey. While the need for autonomy was critical during pre-launch and launch, locus of control significantly predicted female entrepreneurial success in the pre-launch and post-launch phases. Contrary to previous research, risk-taking was not a crucial trait for female entrepreneurs when compared to their male counterparts, while both showed similar levels of need for autonomy, proactivity, need for achievement, perseverance, self-control, and locus of control. The study offers valuable insights into successful entrepreneurship and highlights the need for female- and phase-specific support programs to enhance self-efficacy among female entrepreneurs.
Project Management
(2023)
Companies are increasingly developing into dynamic and project-oriented organizations. Globalization, innovations and organizational dynamics require more and more projects, and thus a more project-oriented corporate organization and management. As a rule, managers as well as employees already work parallel to their line function in projects or completely from project to project.
At the same time, cross-company and especially international value chains lead to the cooperation of cross-departamental and intercultural teams. For this, the specialists and executives need above all knowledge and experience in project management and the corresponding concepts as well as in the special form of cooperation, team development and communication. Because the most problems in project management are not caused by project goals and methods, but by the many different problem-solving behavior and attitudes, e.g. between engineers and business people, different departments or the different country cultures. The international IT project specialist Tom DeMarco puts it in a nutshell (in Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams: The major problems of our work are not so much technological as socio-logical in nature. In terms of content here, in contrast to traditional professional textbooks, not only the technologies are priority, but also the social and intercultural aspects of project work.
The book is aimed equally at students of all disciplines with a focus on managerial and project-related work as well as practitioners and entrepreneurs in all private business sectors as well as in NGOs, public projects or PPPs as public-private partnership.
Trust-Building in Peer-to-Peer Carsharing: Design Case Study for Algorithm-Based Reputation Systems
(2023)
Peer-to-peer sharing platforms become increasingly important in the platform economy. From an HCI-perspective, this development is of high interest, as those platforms mediate between different users. Such mediation entails dealing with various social issues, e.g., building trust between peers online without any physical presence. Peer ratings have proven to be an important mechanism in this regard. At the same time, scoring via car telematics become more common for risk assessment by car insurances. Since user ratings face crucial problems such as fake or biased ratings, we conducted a design case study to determine whether algorithm-based scoring has the potential to improve trust-building in P2P-carsharing. We started with 16 problem-centered interviews to examine how people understand algorithm-based scoring, we co-designed an app with scored profiles, and finally evaluated it with 12 participants. Our findings show that scoring systems can support trust-building in P2P-carsharing and give insights how they should be designed.
Improving insect conservation management through insect monitoring and stakeholder involvement
(2023)
In recent years, the decline of insect biodiversity and the imminent loss of provided ecosystem functions and services has received public attention and raised the demand for political action. The complex, multi-causal contributors to insect decline require a broad interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach that addresses ecological and social aspects to find sustainable solutions. The project Diversity of Insects in Nature protected Areas (DINA) assesses insect communities in 21 nature reserves in Germany, and considers interactions with plant diversity, pesticide exposure, spatial and climatic factors. The nature reserves border on agricultural land, to investigate impacts on insect diversity. Part of the project is to obtain scientific data from Malaise traps and their surroundings, while another part involves relevant stakeholders to identify opportunities and obstacles to insect diversity conservation. Our results indicate a positive association between insect richness and biomass. Insect richness was negatively related to the number of stationary pesticides (soil and vegetation), pesticides measured in ethanol, the amount of area in agricultural production, and precipitation. Our qualitative survey along with stakeholder interviews show that there is general support for insect conservation, while at the same time the stakeholders expressed the need for more information and data on insect biodiversity, as well as flexible policy options. We conclude that conservation management for insects in protected areas should consider a wider landscape. Local targets of conservation management will have to integrate different stakeholder perspectives. Scientifically informed stakeholder dialogues can mediate conflicts of interests, knowledge, and values to develop mutual conservation scenarios.