Research

"The purpose of an IS discipline is to study how people are affected by and can make use of the wide range of information and communication technologies in all their activities: including their commercial, scientific, personal, social, creative and political lives."

-by Mike Cushman, from AISWorld Mailing List

As it said in this quote, I am always interested in how the information and communication technologies can affect people and how to make good use of them. These technologies, especially, the Internet and web technologies as well as their relationship with people, organizations and business attract me most.

My current research interest lies on the economics of the Internet, especially, the economics of the user generated content (UGC) online. This is a quite active area recently, which poses many deep and fascinating questions. For example, what is the economic value of UGC? How can we measure it? How can firms deal with these contents? These are only a few among the set of questions that need research, and these questions represent exciting research opportunities.

I am also interested in other research topics such as adoption and diffusion of information innovations, e-commerce, economics of open source software, etc.

Publication

Ye, Q., R. Law, B. Gu, and W. Chen. 2010. The influence of user-generated content on traveler behavior: An empirical investigation on the effects of e-word-of-mouth to hotel online bookings. Computers in Human Behavior, In Press, Corrected Proof.

Law, R., Q. Ye, W. Chen, and R. Leung. 2009. An Analysis of the most influential articles published in tourism journals from 2000 to 2007: A Google Scholar approach. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 26(7), 735.

Ye, Q., B. Gu, W. Chen, and R. Law. 2008. Measuring the Value of Managerial Responses to Online Reviews – A Natural Experiment of Two Online Travel Agencies. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2008)

Feng, X., W. Chen, and Y. Feng. 2007. Wiki-based Knowledge Management in Small and Medium Projects. Proceedings of the International Conference on Construction and Real Estate Management

Chen, W. 2006. Chinese Search Engine Comparing Research. Management Science in China, (Special Issue), 47-51. (in Chinese)