Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Across numerous disciplines, the ability to generate high-dimensional datasets is driving an enormous demand for increasingly efficient ways of both capturing and processing this data. A promising recent trend for addressing these needs has developed from the recognition that, despite living in high-dimensional ambient spaces, many datasets have vastly smaller intrinsic dimensionality. When capturing (sampling) such datasets, exploiting this realization permits one to dramatically reduce the number of samples that must be acquired without losing the salient features of the data. When processing such datasets, the reduced intrinsic dimensionality can be leveraged to allow reliable inferences to be made in scenarios where it is infeasible to collect the amount of data that would be required for inference using classical techniques. To date, most approaches for taking advantage of the low intrinsic dimensionality inherent in many datasets have focused on identifying succinct (i.e., sparse) representations of the data, seeking to represent the data using only a handful of "significant" elements from an appropriately chosen dictionary. While powerful in their own right, such approaches make no additional assumptions regarding possible relationships between the significant elements of the dictionary. In this dissertation, we examine ways of incorporating knowledge of such relationships into our sampling and processing schemes. One setting in which it is possible to dramatically improve the efficiency of sampling schemes concerns the recovery of temporally correlated, sparse time series, and in the first part of this dissertation we summarize our work on this important problem. Central to our approach is a Bayesian formulation of the recovery problem, which allows us to access richly expressive models of signal structure. While Bayesian sparse linear regression algorithms have often been shown to outperform their non-Bayesian counterparts, this frequently come (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Philip Schniter PhD (Advisor); Lee Potter PhD (Committee Member); Per Sederberg PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Electrical Engineering

Master of Science in Cyber Security (M.S.C.S.), Wright State University, 2022, Computer Science

The current Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) standard provides three security modes Unsecured Mode (UM), Preinstalled Secure Mode (PSM), and Authenticated Secure Mode (ASM). The PSM and ASM are designed to prevent external routing attacks and specific replay attacks through an optional replay protection mechanism. RPL's PSM mode does not support key replacement when a malicious party obtains the key via differential cryptanalysis since it considers the key to be provided to nodes during the configuration of the network. This thesis presents an approach to implementing a secure authenticated key exchange mechanism for RPL, which ensures the integrity and authentication of the received key while providing tamper-proof data communication for IoTs in insecure circumstances. Moreover, the proposed approach allows the key to be updated regularly, preventing an attacker from obtaining the key through differential cryptanalysis. However, it is observed that the proposed solution imposes an increase in the cost of communication, computation, power consumption, and memory usage for the network nodes.

Committee: Bin Wang Ph.D. (Advisor); Zhiqiang Wu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Meilin Liu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Engineering : Computer Science

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the basic language that all computers use to communicate across networks and the Internet. A flaw in the design of this protocol allows at tackers to forge the sending address of IP packets, known as packet spoofing. This packet spoofing is a serious security issue on networks and the Internet because it prevents authorities from locating the true source of any spoofing attack. In this paper we analyze technologies available for coping with packet spoofing. After this discussion we present a simple method for traceback, followed by an analysis of the method's requirements.

Committee: John Franco (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Applied Communication Theory and Methodology, Cleveland State University, 2009, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The purpose of this study was to examine how text message communication creates a feeling of social presence, and how it affects self-disclosure, intimacy, and uncertainty. A total of 171 participants were surveyed who at the time were engaged in a dating relationship and used text messages. The findings indicated that a feeling of social presence can be achieved through text message communication. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between the amount of text messages sent to a dating partner and the feeling of social presence. Specifically, a relationship was found between the amount of text messages sent daily from a dating partner and received daily from a dating partner and relational uncertainty. The analysis revealed a negative relationship between the amount of text messages sent to a dating partner and relational uncertainty. Furthermore, this study suggested there is a positive relationship between relationship stage and self-disclosure through text messages, but there isn't one between the length of a relationship and self disclosure via text messages. Lastly, it was found that the amount of text messages sent to a dating partner and received from one's dating partner facilitate intimacy.

Committee: Jill Rudd PhD (Committee Chair); Cheryl Bracken PhD (Committee Member); Gary Pettey PhD (Committee Member); Patricia Burant EdD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, Psychology

Behavioral intervention technologies (BITs) hold the potential to increase access to mental healthcare. Tailoring such tools may further bridge disparities, such as those in tobacco use and smoking cessation. To assess the value of tailoring BITs to different targets, we used a modified exploratory sequential design to analyze secondary data from two novel, automated text message-based smoking cessation interventions: a tailored intervention (Cravings Coach) and an active, untailored control (Motivation Coach). We first coded qualitative exit interviews using a combination of codes that were pre-determined based on theoretical concepts of interest, and codes that were determined by reading transcripts and iteratively identifying themes relevant to those areas of interest. Next, codes were used to explore important themes and potential differences between how participants perceived the tailored Cravings Coach intervention versus the generic Motivation Coach. We found similarities in impressions of the two interventions, with generally positive impressions of ease of use and convenience, accountability associated with receiving messages, and reminders of participants' smoking cessation goals. Relatively little agreement emerged across participants about which individual differences were important to intervention success, apart from readiness to change, which was perceived to be important. Next, we used t-tests and chi-square tests to compare Cravings Coach and Motivation Coach on key impressions of the interventions, and found no differences. As anticipated, baseline readiness to change predicted more perceived success and less failure with implementing knowledge from the intervention into participants' daily lives. Considering readiness to change when designing and deploying behavioral intervention technologies may improve user outcomes.

Committee: Joshua Magee (Advisor); Vaishali Raval (Committee Member); James Coyle (Committee Member); Christopher Wolfe (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Psychology; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Journalism (Communication)

The study examined the effects of emotional appeals, message sources, and social endorsement on message elaboration, social media engagement, and other persuasive outcomes. The study employed a 2 (emotion appeals: guilt and hope) x 2 (message sources: influencers and organizations) x 2 (social endorsement: high and low likes) between-subjects design. From the perspective of a dual-processing theory (i.e., heuristic-systematic model), the study tested how systematic cues (i.e., emotional appeals) and heuristic cues (i.e., message sources, and social endorsement) influenced the persuasive effects of a campaign message. 350 participants were recruited for an online experiment through a panel service company. Each participant was exposed to a nonprofit organization's Facebook message encouraging blood donations. The results showed that hope appeals produced higher message elaboration than guilt appeals, but guilt appeals had higher comment intentions and greater donation intentions than hope appeals. Also, influencers produced greater like and comment intentions, higher self-efficacy, and better attitudes than organizations. Moreover, high likes had higher message elaboration than low likes. Furthermore, influencers produced greater social media engagement than organizations in hope appeals with high likes. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Committee: Jatin Srivastava (Committee Chair) Subjects: Communication; Mass Communications; Public Health

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Arts and Sciences: Communication

In the summer of 2021, each school district became responsible for the creation of their own COVID-19 safety policy for the 2021-2022 school year. This granted local stakeholders more power and opportunity to participate in decision-making processes – most visibly during school board meetings' public participation sections. The aim of this thesis project is to explore how stakeholders, specifically parents, framed their positions regarding schools' mask policies during these recorded school board meetings. Research questions include: RQ1: In what ways do aspects of RPT and PRT appear in arguments supporting and in opposition of mask mandates in schools? RQ2: How are message framing strategies such as issue-, gain-, and loss-framed messages used in stakeholders' arguments supporting and in opposition of mask mandates in schools? Data were gathered from a total of three Ohio public school districts that held (recorded and publicly available) school board meetings between July 2021 and September 2021. A thematic analysis was utilized to identify and describe the arguments articulated either for or against mandatory masking in schools. Special attention was placed on identifying aspects of Psychological Reactance Theory and Risk Perceptions Theory, as well as pinpointing which message framing strategies are used in the arguments. Results from this study highlighted the importance of clear and concise communication from sources that are trusted by the public during health crises, identified that parents (as influencers and decision makers for their families) are a key group to focus on when it comes to health communication, and emphasized how dangerous polarization and politicization are when it comes to health crises.

Committee: Nancy Jennings Ph.D. (Committee Member); Stephen Haas Ph.D. (Committee Member); Abel Gustafson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

MA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Prior time perspective research suggests being future-oriented has beneficial health implications. That research has focused primarily on prevention health behaviors and less so on detection health behaviors. Two studies in the context of dental hygiene examined the relationship between time perspective and health outcomes. Messages concerning plaque-preventing and plaque-detecting mouth rinses were designed and individuals were either randomly assigned to (Study 1) or viewed both (Study 2) messages. Time perspective was assessed via temporal orientation (Study 1) and consideration of future consequences (Study 2). Attitudes, intentions, and preferences for the mouth rinses were primary outcomes. Hypothesis 1 predicted time perspective would positively relate to outcomes and both studies provided some support for this hypothesis. Hypothesis 2 explored the interaction between time perspective and behavioral function (prevention vs. detection). A consistent interaction was found in Study 1 showing future-orientation was associated with more positive outcomes with the detective mouth rinse and present-orientation was associated with more positive outcomes with the preventive mouth rinse. Study 2 data did not support this interaction but did find information avoidance mediated the relationship between time perspective and preference between the mouth rinses; future-orientation led to less information avoidance, which in turn led to greater preference for the prevention mouth rinse and immediate-orientation led to greater information avoidance, which in turn led to greater preference for the detection mouth rinse. Inconsistent findings in the present work may be due to measurement differences of time perspective, differences in study designs, or the use of young adult samples. Even so, this work provides initial evidence that time perspective and behavioral function may create an interactive effect on health outcomes, and that information avoidance may explain this relat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Updegraff (Advisor); Judith Gere (Committee Member); Jennifer Taber (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Communication

Across the world and fueled by climate change, natural disasters are increasing in their geographic distribution and intensity. Theoretically guided message design can inform people about their disaster risk and persuade them to change their attitudes and behavioral intentions regarding preparedness. The purpose of this study was to use theory, including framing and the heuristic-systematic model, to inform message design to persuade people about hurricane preparedness. Specific message features under investigation included language framing, temporal framing, and the use of decision aids. The results suggest that using easier language to communicate about hurricanes and preparedness increased people's perceptions of their ability to process the information at hand, which increased systematic processing and led to persuasive outcomes. Further, results related to decision aids indicate that decision aid selection can serve as a behavioral outcome of systematic information processing and also amplify persuasive effects. Temporal framing did not increase motivation to process information, systematic processing, or persuasive outcomes. Overall, results suggest that easy language and use of decision aids are effective message features to facilitate persuasion about hurricane preparedness. More generally, using theory to inform message design can help researchers and practitioners optimize persuasive messaging.

Committee: Hillary Shulman (Advisor); Graham Dixon (Committee Member); Shelly Hovick (Committee Member); Kelly Garrett (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Science, Miami University, 2022, Computational Science and Engineering

Vehicular communication networks hold promise to significantly improve road safety by giving vehicles improved awareness and advanced warning to emergencies. By their urgent nature, VANET applications regarding safety typically have strict performance requirements on delay and medium congestion. This has led to many different proposed approaches to improving the performance of safety message dissemination. Though these proposed solutions are able to improve the performance, they frequently make no mention of whether or not the improved performance is yet sufficient for the application. The proposed research will develop a scheme for modulating the transmission range of safety message broadcasts in order to satisfy the directly-measured delay requirements of each vehicle in the network. This method would guarantee that the message is delivered to each vehicle in due time whilst minimizing the interference in the network. The proposed research expands upon existing preliminary work by integrating more complete analysis of transmission delay and interference and implementing a more general system model. The theoretical analysis validates the proposed strategy, and simulations further characterize the behavior of the strategy under different conditions. Using the proposed strategy, vehicles on the road can adjust their communications to guarantee safety to every vehicle without overloading the network.

Committee: Miao Wang (Advisor); Ran Zhang (Advisor); Gokhan Sahin (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Public Policy and Management

Climate change, also referred to as global warming, is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. Despite considerable evidence that climate change is occurring and has severe consequences, many Americans remain skeptical and are impeding efforts to address the problem. The purpose of this dissertation is to build an understanding of the determinants of climate change perceptions among climate skeptics. Specifically, this research explores the extent to which political communication affects climate skeptics' perceptions of the phenomenon. In total, three separate analyses were conducted using a national sample of climate skeptics (N = 4,001). The first analysis provides a profile of the average climate skeptic. Using descriptive data and responses from an open-ended question, the study provides a bird's-eye view of the factors that might contribute to individual perceptions of climate change. The findings confirm those of existing research; particularly that climate skepticism is more prevalent among Republicans, older populations, low-income individuals, and those who identify as evangelical. Individuals report being skeptical of climate change because they believe that the narrative around climate change only advances the interests of elites. Individuals also cite factors such as media coverage, awareness of historical data, first-hand experiences with local weather, knowledge of the phenomenon (or lack thereof), and belief in a higher power as reasons for their climate skepticism. The second analysis employs a randomized survey experiment to examine whether framing climate messages as optimistic or fatalistic (i.e., the phenomenon is unstoppable by human action) affects the perceptions of climate skeptics (N = 827). The results show that the framing of an issue does not influence climate skeptics' beliefs that (1) climate change is occurring or (2) that the phenomenon poses a risk of personal harm. Partisanship, however, does appear to moderate th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stéphane Lavertu (Advisor); Christopher Rea (Committee Member); Vladimir Kogan (Committee Member) Subjects: Behaviorial Sciences; Climate Change; Environmental Education; Environmental Science; Environmental Studies; Experimental Psychology; Political Science; Public Administration; Public Policy; Social Psychology; Sustainability

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Computer Science and Engineering

Since the introduction of nonblocking collectives in the MPI-3 standard, communication has been progressed by several mechanisms. One such mechanism includes modifying the application code to periodically call MPI_Test to enter the MPI library. Another launches an extra thread per core to progress communication asynchronously. Communication progression can also be offloaded to the Host Channel Adapter (HCA) using the latest hardware. In this thesis, we explore this last option by using the Data Processing Unit (DPU) shipped with the BlueField-2 SmartNIC adapter to offload progression of nonblocking MPI_Ibcast and MPI_Iallgather collectives. For both collectives, we present several designs which take advantage of the DPU. We demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed designs through microbenchmark and application kernel evaluations. At the microbenchmark level, total execution time of the osu_ibcast microbenchmark can be reduced by up to 54% using our DPU-based Ibcast designs. Total execution time of the osu_iallgather microbenchmark can be reduced by up to 43%. For application kernel level evaluations, we run a parallel radix sort kernel that was modified to take advantage of nonblocking allgather, and show up to a 6.4% reduction in overall execution time using our DPU-based Iallgather. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to optimize nonblocking broadcast and allgather collectives on emerging BlueField DPUs.

Committee: Dhabaleswar Panda (Advisor); Hari Subramoni (Committee Member); Radu Teodorescu (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, 2021, Washkewicz College of Engineering

In this thesis, we draw attention to the problem of cross-service attacks, that is, attacks that exploit information collected about users from one service to launch an attack on the same users on another service. With the increased deployment and use of what fundamentally are integrated-services networks, such as 4G/LTE networks and now 5G, we expect that cross-service attacks will become easier to stage and therefore more prevalent. As running example to illustrate the effectiveness and the potential impact of cross-service attacks we will use the problem of account association in 4G/LTE networks. Account association attacks aim at determining whether a target mobile phone number is associated with a particular online account. In the case of 4G/LTE, the adversary launches the account association attacks by sending SMS messages to the target phone number and analyzing patterns in traffic related to the online account. We evaluate the proposed attacks in both a local 4G/LTE testbed and a major commercial 4G/LTE network. Our extensive experiments show that the proposed attacks can successfully identify account association with close-to-zero false negative and false positive rates. Our experiments also illustrate that the proposed attacks can be launched in a way that the victim receives no indication of being under attack.

Committee: Ye Zhu (Committee Chair); Yongjain Fu (Committee Member); Sui-Tung Yau (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Electrical Engineering; Information Technology; Technology

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Computer Science and Engineering

The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a popular parallel programming interface for developing scientific applications. These applications rely a lot on MPI for performance. Collective operations like MPI_Allreduce, MPI_Alltoall, and others, provide an abstraction for group communication on High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. MVAPICH2 is a popular open-source high-performance implementation of the MPI standard that provides advanced designs for these collectives through various algorithms. These collectives are highly optimized to provide the best performance on different existing and emerging architectures. To provide the best performance, the right algorithm must be chosen for a collective. Choosing the best algorithm depends on many factors like the architecture of the system, the scale at which the application is run, etc. This process of choosing the best algorithm is called tuning of the collective. But tuning of the collective takes a lot of time and using static tables may not lead to the best performance. To solve this issue, we have designed an “Autotuning Framework”. The proposed Autotuning Framework selects the best algorithm for a collective during runtime without having to rely on the previous static tuning of the MVAPICH2 library for the system. Experimental results have shown a performance increase of up to 3X while using the Autotuning Framework version of the MVAPICH2 library versus an untuned MVAPICH2 library for collectives.

Committee: Dhabaleswar K. Panda (Advisor); Radu Teodorescu (Committee Member); Hari Subramoni (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Psychology

Across ten studies, the current work demonstrated that when people hold deeply entrenched attitudes, they become more open to change after reading two- versus one-sided counter-attitudinal messages. In Studies 1, 2, 3A/B, and 4, using moral basis as the indicator of attitude strength, there was an interactive effect between the extent of moral attitude basis and message sidedness using moralized social and political topics. More specifically, in Study 1, the interactive effect of moral basis and message sidedness only occurred with a counter-attitudinal communication, not a pro-attitudinal one. In Study 2, the extent of the author's appreciation for the recipient's point of view was both manipulated and measured to demonstrate that perceived appreciation was a mediator of the abovementioned interaction effect. In Studies 3A/B and 4, the generalizability of the interactive effect was explored by demonstrating that the interaction result would happen not just for a controversial issue with balanced opposing views but also for topics that have a majority opinion. Additionally, downstream consequences of openness to opposing views were explored including attitudes and behavioral intentions. Then in Studies 5, 6, 7A/B, and 8, the interaction result of interest was extended to other attitude strength indicators besides moral basis (e.g., certainty) and to other persuasion contexts (i.e., consumer behavior). These studies suggested that the results of the first set of studies could be broadly construed as evidence for a more general interactive effect between attitude strength and message sidedness on openness. Specifically, in Study 5, when using a non-moralized topic, non-moral attitude strength indicators showed greater predictive power than moral basis when producing the interactive effect with message sidedness. Lastly, in Studies 6, 7A/B, and 8, the effect was further extended using loyalty to a consumer brand as the indicator of attitude strength and one- versus tw (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Petty (Advisor); Duane Wegener (Committee Member); Russell Fazio (Committee Member); John Casterline (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Recovering an unknown vector from its noisy linear measurements is an important problem that arises in many fields. In linear inverse problems, the forward operator is perfectly known, whereas in bilinear inverse problems, the forward operator has some unknown parameters. Most existing recovery algorithms are either slow to converge or give a final solution that is not accurate. In this dissertation, we develop algorithms using Approximate Message Passing (AMP) methods to solve linear and bilinear inverse problems. First, we consider the computationally efficient Vector Approximate Message Passing (VAMP) algorithm, which is based on the Expectation Propagation framework. VAMP minimizes a cost function, also known as the Gibbs free energy in statistical physics, under moment-matching constraints. It iteratively calls a denoiser that is chosen based on prior knowledge about the unknown vector that we want to recover. VAMP has a remarkable property, that when the sensing matrix is a typical instance of a large right-rotationally invariant random matrix, the per-iteration macroscopic behaviour of VAMP can be exactly predicted by a set of scalar equations that yield the so called state-evolution (SE). The state-evolution can be used to predict the MSE performance of VAMP at each iteration. The SE was first proven for separable Lipschitz denoisers. In this work, we extend the state-evolution to a larger class of non-separable Lipschitz denoisers. Empirical results show that the SE also accurately predicts VAMP's performance in bilinear problems solved that have been converted to linear problems using the ''lifting'' technique. In bilinear inverse problems, the forward operator is written as a linear combination of known matrices with unknown weights. Problems such as dictionary learning, CS with matrix uncertainty, self-calibration, are all instances of bilinear inverse problems. We propose a new algorithm called Bilinear Adaptive Vector Approximate Message Pa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Philip Schniter (Advisor); Lee Potter (Committee Member); Rizwan Ahmad (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Media and Communication

This study investigated the donation behavior mechanisms underlying the message and visual strategies in narrative form and their impact on crowdfunding campaigns' success. Specifically, the study examined how messages and visual appeals in fundraising campaigns in the crowdfunding platform influence the amount of money raised through people's engagement with the campaigns. This study employed quantitative content analysis to study online crowdfunding campaign stories from the Facebook Fundraiser page. Through natural and field data from the fundraising page (n = 300), this study investigated the charitable crowdfunding phenomenon in its rich context. Specifically, message and visual appeals discussed as significant factors according to previous research are assessed along with individuals' engagement information from technology affordances. Incorporating those significant variables, this study developed a model to explain people's donation mechanisms. Through regression, ANOVA, and Partial Least Squares (PLS) path modeling analysis of the content (n = 300), this study revealed that specific message appeals significantly influence individuals' engagement in the story, leading to a higher amount of funds raised. The final path model shows that only the third-person point of view (POV), positive framing, visual images of the beneficiary, identifiability of the beneficiary, and interactivity positively influence the amount of funds raised through technology affordances on social media. The study identified the relative importance of different message appeals to donors and engagement as facilitated by the technology affordances of the crowdfunding platform with real data from crowdfunding campaigns. The study's theoretical, methodological and practical significance is discussed. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also explored.

Committee: Louisa Ha (Advisor); Srinivas Melkote (Committee Member); Yanqin Lu (Committee Member); Salim Elwazani (Other) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Communication

Overcoming audience resistance is an important and lasting topic in communication research. Theories conceptualizing the self as the driver of various media processes, including selection, processing, and effects, can offer a unified account for audience resistance across communication domains and provide important guidance for message design in communication campaigns and interventions. This dissertation focused on the role of the self-improvement motive in media processes and posited that, due to its ability to orient individuals towards changes in their self-concepts, this motivation can encourage the selection and processing of beneficial but self-threatening messages, as well as produce positive outcomes post-exposure. Theoretical propositions were advanced based on the SESAM (Selective Exposure Self- and Affect Management) model and the literature on the self-improvement motive. The SESAM model posits that the working self and affect combined would determine a self-related motive, which then directs selective exposure behaviors and message processing of mediated social comparison targets. Specifically, the self-improvement motive is expected to prompt media users to select portrayals of upward comparison targets to learn and improve, resulting in more positive affect and self-concept after exposure. Study 1 added to the original model by examining the potential predictors of the self-improvement motive, including domain importance, perceived discrepancy, and perceived attainability (proposition 1); and testing whether priming a working self-concept in conjunction to the self-improvement motive would lead to selection of upward comparison targets in the same life domain (proposition 2). The results showed little support for these predictions. Perceived discrepancy interacted with perceived attainability to produce different levels of the self-improvement motive as expected. However, the manipulation did not prompt stronger selective exposure of upward compar (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Silvia Knobloch_Westerwick Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Emily Moyer-Gusé Ph.D. (Committee Member); Hyunyi Cho Ph.D. (Committee Member); Graham Dixon Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

MFIS, Kent State University, 2020, College of the Arts / School of Fashion

The fashion industry struggles to address the waste accompanying overconsumption. Packaging, an inherent component of purchases (particularly in online settings), poses a particular dilemma. Current endeavors to decrease the environmental harm of packaging may only be suited to particular companies and can be expensive and time consuming to develop. Furthermore, products or packaging marketed as environmentally friendly are often associated with a price premium. Without a perceived personal benefit, consumers often forgo their sustainable values, discouraging development of sustainable initiatives. Prospect Theory positions that individuals tend to take different action based on the gain or loss frame. Literature suggests that references interact with frames, producing different results. Therefore, this study uses a 2 (frame: gain/loss) x 2 (reference: personal/societal) x 2 (green consumer value: high/low) mixed method online experiment in which consumers were shown one of four message combinations and offered the choice of no poly bag and a polybag. Analysis revealed that while the message did not have a significant effect on packaging selection, 74.73% fewer polybags were used because the option was present. Multiple 3 way ANOVAs revealed that brand attitude and purchase intention were affected by frame; frame and reference interacted to affect attitude towards the packaging initiative and brand attitude; and that green consumer values acted as a moderator in certain cases. Overall, this study provides a starting strategy for packaging initiatives and outlines message architecture to better promote sustainable behavior and positive attitudes for customers with both low and high green consumer values.

Committee: Gargi Bhaduri Ph.D. (Advisor); Lawrence Marks Ph.D. (Committee Member); Noël Palomo-Lovinski M.F.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Environmental Management; Marketing; Packaging; Sustainability

BA, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Interventions tailored to a person's stage of change (SOC) tend to more effectively promote behavior change by considering individual's readiness to perform a particular health behavior. The present study tested whether college students' perceptions of persuasive messages depended on their stage of exercise behavior. After reporting their stage of exercise behavior, participants (n=225) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions in which they read a short message describing either short-term affective (STAM) or long-term cognitive (LTCM) benefits of regular exercise. The STAM listed mental health benefits that could be gained immediately during or following exercise (e.g., fewer depression symptoms). The LTCM listed physical health benefits that may occur years in the future (e.g., lower disease risk). A series of 3x2 (SOC x Message) ANOVAs were conducted. Contrary to hypotheses, there were no significant (i.e.,'p<.05) interaction effects for message effectiveness, F(2, 225)=1.43, p=.243, message relevance, F(2, 225)=.076, p=.927, or perceived argument strength, F(2, 225)=1.51, p=.224, and no significant main effects of Message. In contrast to the null effects, a main effect of SOC indicated that participants who were currently exercising rated both messages as stronger than those in non-exercising stages, F(2, 225)=4.63, p=.011, with no significant effects on any other DVs. College students rated messages emphasizing cognitive or affective benefits of exercise as equally relevant and effective, with no differences based on previous exercise behavior. Future research should continue to explore how best to tailor exercise recommendations.

Committee: Jennifer Taber Ph.D. (Advisor); Amy Sato Ph.D. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Howard Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nichole Egbert Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology