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Associate Professor & Muma Fellow

School of Information Systems & Management
Muma College of Business
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL 33620

dezhiyin@usf.edu

I am an Associate Professor and Muma Fellow in the School of Information Systems and Management, Muma College of Business, University of South Florida. I earned a PhD in IT management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

I am a behavioral researcher in information systems, while I have collaborated with scholars from marketing, strategy/entrepreneurship, and organizational behavior in addition to IS.

I am primarily interested in the role of expressed and experienced emotions in online environments, mostly at the individual level. I believe affect/emotions and cognition are interdependent and inseparable. On one hand, emotions abound on the Internet, and emotional expressions can influence observers in various ways. On the other hand, when individuals search, consume, evaluate, and make use of online information, they may employ different heuristics (often fueled by feelings) and demonstrate various biases in their judgment and decision-making.

My research interests include expressed and experienced emotions in online environments, user-generated content and crowds (e.g., online reviews, Q&A sites, crowdfunding), and AI technologies (e.g., virtual AI agents such as chatbots, embedded AI). The bulk of my research has been conducted in the context of online reviews, but I also have interest in other types of user-generated content and the emerging AI technologies. I also have interest in theory development.

My primary expertise in methodology is laboratory experiments that can be conducted either in the lab or online, and I have also used econometric analyses and surveys in my research. As a strong proponent of triangulation, I believe no study or method is perfect, and I strive to use multiple studies and/or multiple methods to produce more reliable and valid findings.

My research has appeared in premier academic journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Academy of Management Journal, Production and Operations Management, and others. My research has received several awards, including the Emerald Citations of Excellence Award in 2017, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)’s William A. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award in 2021, the Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST)’s Best Paper Runner-up Award in 2017, the Workshop on E-Business (WeB)’s Best Paper Award in 2020, etc. Some of my research has been covered in Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.

I have also received the INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award, the MIS Quarterly Outstanding Reviewer of the Year Award, and the Information Systems Research Best Reviewer Award. I am currently serving as an Associate Editor for MIS Quarterly, and I have served as a track co-chair for International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

Academic Experience

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

  • Muma Fellow, 2022 – present
  • Associate Professor (with tenure), 2021 – present
  • Assistant Professor, 2018 – 2021

University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

  • Assistant Professor, 2012 – 2018
Education
  • Ph.D., IT Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, 2012
  • M.S., Management Information Systems, Peking University, China, 2007
  • B.S., Information Management & Information Systems, Shandong University, China, 2005