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Persuasion Knowledge as a Continuum: Understanding Engagement in Livestream Commerce Between China and the U.S.
Get PDFLivestream shopping on social media platforms represents a merging of real-time social interaction and e-commerce. This dissertation examines the divergent engagement levels of Chinese and American consumers in livestream commerce by integrating the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) to explain differences in trust formation and purchase behaviors. While cultural convergence theory suggests increasing similarities in digital commerce behaviors across markets, findings reveal that persuasion knowledge development, shaped by exposure to commercial persuasion attempts, creates distinct information-processing patterns that persist despite technological convergence. Through a mixed-method comparative study, this research demonstrates that Chinese consumers in a mature livestream market rely more on heuristic cues such as co-viewer involvement and product trust. In contrast, American consumers in an emerging livestream market continue to engage in dual processing with a heavier reliance on influencer credibility. These findings challenge traditional cultural explanations and propose a persuasion knowledge continuum that accounts for the shifting role of systematic processing in trust formation. By identifying key mechanisms influencing livestream shopping adoption across markets, this study contributes to the theoretical discourse on digital commerce while offering actionable insights for brands and platforms seeking to optimize their livestream strategies across technologically converging yet behaviorally distinct consumer landscapes
TOWARDS THE NEXT GENERATION OF STORAGE STACK FOR NAND FLASH MEMORY-BASED SYSTEMS
Get PDFThe explosive growth of data has led to increased attention on NAND flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), which offer high performance, low power consumption, and significant capacity per unit volume when compared to traditional hard-disk drives (HDDs). However, as NAND flash memory density continues to scale, modern SSDs suffer from what is known as fail-slow symptoms, and their performance degrades over time as they wear out. In this dissertation, we focus on understanding and addressing the performance, reliability, and sustainability challenges of modern flash-based storage systems by modeling key metrics, analyzing the design tradeoffs between these metrics, and optimizing existing storage I/O stack across various layers. The first part of the dissertation presents our comprehensive study on SSD aging and fail-slow symptoms. Flash memory has a limited lifetime and suffers reduced reliability as the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles increases. To understand the aged behavior of SSDs, we first propose fast-forwardable SSD (FF-SSD), a machine learning-based SSD aging framework that generates representative future wear-out states without enduring prohibitive simulation times. FF-SSD incrementally builds lightweight regression models for flash blocks to capture the changes in SSD-internal states and predicts their trajectory using the information from past executions. With that, we further conduct an in-depth study on existing SSD lifetime extension algorithms and uncover that conventional wear leveling methods are far from perfect. Our finding challenges the established norms of SSD design and calls for a reevaluation of wear leveling’s role. The second part of the dissertation introduces the design and implementation of a capacity-variant storage system (CVSS) for modern SSDs. In the current capacity-invariant interface where the storage device exports a fixed capacity throughout its lifetime, an SSD has no other choice but to trade performance for reliability as it wears out. Instead, CVSS redesigns the existing storage interface from a holistic perspective by exploiting tradeoffs among capacity, performance, and reliability (CPR) and proposes a flexible capacity-variant interface that allows the SSD to maintain performance by gracefully reducing the number of exported blocks. The third part of the dissertation proposes to improve the performance and sustainability of all-flash array (AFA) storage under heterogeneous device environments. The overall architecture of existing AFA systems is built around the assumption that the underlying storage components are homogeneous. This architecture results in significant disk under-utilization when considering heterogeneity among storage devices, particularly for modern SSDs. In response to these challenges, we present paRAID (placement asymmetric RAID), a heterogeneity-aware AFA system that transitions from traditional symmetric architectures to an asymmetric architecture, enabling the full utilization of all storage devices for optimized performance and sustainability
Genealogies of Religion & Humanity in the Divine Institutes of Lactantius
No full textIn “Genealogies of Religion & Humanity in the Divine Institutes of Lactantius”, I revisit the thought of Lactantius, an early-fourth century statesman from Roman North Africa, later named the “Christian Cicero.” I explore the role that his magnum opus, the Divine Institutes — written in protest to the “Great Persecution” of Christians under Diocletian — has played in histories of the Christianization of the Roman Empire and of the emergence of “religion” and “humanity” as anti-imperialist concepts. Building on the work of Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, I track Lactantius’s philosophical, political, and juridical arguments to recover how the Divine Institutes fashions joint concepts of religion and humanity to advocate for peaceful resistance to tyranny and for freedom from religious coercion. Ultimately, I demonstrate how Lactantius establishes the earliest extant concept of religion as a critique of ancient philosophy and its justifications of empire and violence, and I unfold Lactantius’s comprehensive argument for religious liberty as a “human right” under the auspices of a novel legal formula he calls “the law of humanity and kinship”. This framework is crucial for clarifying how Lactantius’s concept of “true religion” has been misconstrued in scholarly tradition as a simple expression of Christian triumphalism, which has foreclosed its more radical interpretive potentialities and obscured its historical import. Overall, I aim in this dissertation to contribute to the understanding of Lactantius and of how his concepts of religion and humanity resisted the making of Christian empire, contrary to typical scholarly interpretations in the context of theology, church history, and the intellectual histories of religion and philosophy. Moreover, filling a lacuna in scholarship, it lays groundwork toward illuminating the historical process by which, and possible reasons for which, concepts of religion and humanity fell out of general use during the Middle Ages following Augustine, and it lays the groundwork for tracing how the Lactantian concepts of religion and humanity influenced early modern and modern proponents of humanism and religious freedom in underexplored ways that may yet remain in play today. Readers with an interest in the following key topics may find this dissertation of particular use, not limited to but including: Lactantius and Cicero; Diocletian and Constantine; Edict of Milan; late antiquity and classical reception history; history of Christianity; history of concepts of religion, justice, humanity, servitude and liberty; history of philosophy, Stoicism, Platonism, and theurgy; Hermeticism; varieties of monotheism; Roman political philosophy and jurisprudence; rhetoric, dialogue, persuasion, and coercion; and history of human rights law
Essays on Corporate Governance and Behavioral Strategy
No full textThis dissertation bridges the corporate governance research and behavioral strategy research to examine how the interplay between governance mechanisms and managerial cognition and behavior shapes firm strategy and performance. The dissertation consists of three empirical essays. The first essay examines whether the greater monitoring intensity and informational advantages of concentrated institutional ownership curb CEO overconfidence. By situating CEO overconfidence within an agency context, this study highlights the importance of concentrated institutional ownership for curtailing CEO overconfidence and sheds light on the multiple channels through which these owners monitor. The second essay uses the behavioral theory of the firm and agency theory perspectives to investigate the interplay between employed independent directors’ primary and secondary job demands and the implications for board bandwidth. The findings suggest that negative performance feedback at a director’s primary employer could reduce board bandwidth at their secondary employer. This bandwidth reduction is offset by retired directors lacking primary employment but not exacerbated by overboarded directors with multiple secondary directorships at the secondary employer. The third essay revisits a well-established relationship in the behavioral theory of the firm literature: negative performance feedback increases R&D search. Replication and extension reveal that underperformance is negatively associated with R&D search when alternative measures of R&D activity are used. The study identifies factors confounding previous results and shows that both accounting standards and governance constraints have important implications for the previous findings regarding performance feedback and R&D search. By integrating the insights from both fields and examining these constraints, this dissertation contributes to both corporate governance and behavioral strategy research and offers a more nuanced and realistic understanding of how governance and managerial cognition and behavior jointly influence firm strategies and performance
Race and Military Service: Economic Mobility for Underrepresented Racial Minority (URM) Veteran Entrepreneurs
No full textThe United States military has long been perceived as a path to upward economic mobility, offering comprehensive training and a robust support network for veterans. Yet for historically underrepresented minority populations, the full scope of this potential remains uncertain due to ongoing discrimination and disparities in access to opportunities. This research interrogates how intersecting identities of military service and race shape entrepreneurial outcomes and pathways to economic mobility
Green Roots in the Grassroots: Conceptualizing Eco-Conservation and Eco-Funding for Women in Vihiga, Kenya
No full textWomen’s grassroots ecological activism significantly influences environmental conservation in Vihiga County, Kenya. These women’s labor, expertise, and organizational skills are essential for addressing environmental degradation and resource scarcity. This study examines how rural women, through community-based organizations (CBOs), address the intersection of environmental issues and gendered socioeconomic hierarchies to promote ecological balance and community well-being. Recognizing that environmental crises disproportionately affect rural women due to their greater involvement in water collection, food production, and caregiving, the research situates women’s activism within a broader context of environmental justice, community ecology, and equitable development. This study examines the various goals, adaptive approaches, and everyday acts of resistance carried out by women-led community-based organizations, employing a qualitative method that includes in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. It notably focuses on how women tackle structural obstacles, including deforestation, inadequate waste management systems, fluctuating rainfall patterns, and the depletion of essential water supplies. Additionally, the study explores various international frameworks that contradict ongoing local efforts toward environmental justice. Lastly, the study examines how enduring gender stereotypes and the unequal distribution of labor influence, limit, and occasionally enhance women’s involvement in conservation. Despite constrained access to resources, little institutional support, and existing patriarchal institutions, these women demonstrate autonomy through creative, locally based environmental initiatives. The study highlights the value of indigenous ecological knowledge, intergenerational education, and traditional stewardship practices that women use to promote biodiversity and sustainability. Their efforts are ecologically beneficial and economically uplifting because they promote income-generating enterprises and foster social solidarity. Lastly, this research project examines the significance of local institutions and community mobilization as instruments for women to influence environmental programs and voice their ecological rights. By shedding light on these often-overlooked contributions, the study challenges mainstream narratives that sideline rural women in environmental discourse, advocating for their full participation in decision-making processes. Ultimately, this thesis argues that women’s grassroots environmental engagement in Vihiga County contributes to ecological justice, socioeconomic justice, and gender equality, which fundamentally challenge conventional local and international environmental governance paradigms
CINEMA’S IMPACT ON BLACK SOCIETY, HOME MOVIES, AND DOCUMENTARIES
No full textCinema’s Impact on Black Society, Home Movies, and Documentaries explores the devastating and long lasting impact of Hollywood\u27s stereotypes on young Black children growing up in America. Heavily impacted by the picture on the screen, early films like The Birth of a Nation shaped the way Black people are seen by society and how they see themselves. This paper dives into my deeply personal storytelling of my own journey of unlearning self-hatred, rediscovering myself through old family home movies my grandfather left me before passing away, and finding peace in continuing his legacy by documenting my own journey through life. At its core, this is a deeply profound love letter to my younger self struggling to fit in without being a stereotype and find serenity in preserving the stories that once came before me
Belonging, Identity, and Reintegration in India: Two Generations of US Women Return Migrants
No full textThis dissertation examines how generational differences among Indian returnee women shape their experiences of reintegration into Indian society, highlighting how migration and return are embedded in broader socio-historical, cultural, and gendered contexts. Focusing on two cohorts- women who migrated before India’s 1991 economic liberalization and those who migrated after- the study draws on qualitative interviews to explore how returnees navigate the tensions between values acquired abroad and the social expectations they face upon returning. The older cohort of returnee women, many of which were influenced by Gandhi’s ideals, often view their reintegration as a process of reconnecting with familiar values, emphasizing resilience, adaptability, and a commitment to communal responsibility within the context of India’s traditional social frameworks. In contrast, younger returnees, socialized in a globalized, consumer-driven India, engage in what this study conceptualizes as boundary work: a deliberate negotiation of familial roles, gender norms, and professional expectations. These women selectively integrate egalitarian and individualistic ideals into their everyday lives, often challenging patriarchal norms and constructing hybrid identities. Through this intergenerational lens, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on return migration by highlighting how gender and generation intersect to shape reintegration. By acknowledging the impact of generational and gendered experiences on return migration, this dissertation calls for a more nuanced understanding of the reintegration process, urging policymakers, researchers, and social organizations to create environments that support returnees in navigating and integrating their multiple, intersecting identities