Matthew J Hashim

Interests

Research

Experimental Economics, Behavioral Economics, Information Security, Electronic Commerce

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Hashim, M., & Bockstedt, J. (2024). REAL-EFFORT INCENTIVES IN ONLINE LABOR MARKETS: PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS FOR INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS. MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, 48(1). doi:10.25300/MISQ/2023/15166
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  Online labor markets and the humans that power them serve a critical role in the advancement of artificial intelligence and supervised machine learning via the creation of useful training datasets. The use of human effort in online labor markets is not enough, however, as a key factor is understanding the possible interventions that market operators can leverage to incentivize human effort among their labor force. We propose that platforms could implement mechanisms such as rewards or punishments at individual or group levels to incentivize real-effort and output. We apply our interventions using a collaborative image tagging experiment—a folksonomy—and the results provide interesting insights and nonobvious consequences. On average, interventions applied at the group level outperformed interventions applied at the individual level. Punishing the group provided the most controversial incentive strategy and provided a nonobvious significant improvement in effort. Rewarding or sanctioning an individual had similar effects on average, with both treatments leading to significant increases in effort post-intervention. In contrast to predictions, sanctioning appears to have significantly motivated those that were punished. Overall, the interventions applied in our real-effort collaborative image tagging experiment had a significant impact on behavior, which provides guidance for online labor market operators and the use of incentives in the creation of labeled machine learning training datasets.
• Khern-Am-nuai, W., Hashim, M., Pinsonneault, A., Yang, W., & Li, N. (2023). Augmenting Password Strength Meter Design Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model: Evidence from Randomized Experiments. Information Systems Research, 34(1). doi:10.1287/isre.2022.1125
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  Password-based authentication is the most commonly used method for gaining access to secured systems. Unfortunately, empirical evidence highlights the fact that most passwords are significantly weak, and encouraging users to create stronger passwords is a significant challenge. In this research, we propose a theoretically augmented password strength meter design that is guided by the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM). We evaluate our design by leveraging three independent and complementary methods: a survey-based experiment using students to evaluate the saliency of our conceptual design (proof of concept), a controlled laboratory experiment conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk to test the effectiveness of the proposed design (proof of value), and a randomized field experiment conducted in collaboration with an online forum in Asia to establish proof of use. In each study,we observe the changes in users' behavior in response to our proposed password strength meter. We find that the ELM-augmented password strength meter is significantly effective at addressing the challenges of password-based authentication. Users exposed to this strength meter are more likely to change their passwords, leading to a new password that is significantly stronger. Our findings suggest that the proposed design of augmented password strength meters is an effective method for promoting secure password behavior among end users.
• Buckman, J. R., Hashim, M. J., & Woutersen, T. (2022). Avoidable mortality: The mediating role of communication in health IT. Decision Support Systems, 157(Issue), 113764. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2022.113764
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  The adoption of health IT transforms communication between care providers and patients. Unfortunately, research on the transformation of communication has produced conflicting results, creating tension regarding its efficacy among healthcare professionals. In this paper, we propose that nurse and physician communication performance mediate the relationship between health IT implementation and patient outcomes. We test the mediating role of communication with a hospital-level data set spanning 2011 through 2015. The specific health information technologies we investigate include EMR documentation, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, clinical decision support (CDS) systems, and health information exchanges (HIE). Our results provide that EMR documentation, CPOE, and HIE directly improve communication between care providers and patients as well as patient outcomes. Further, nurse-patient and physician-patient communication mediates the relationship between health IT implementation and patient outcomes. The mediating effect extends the positive benefits to patient outcomes following technology implementation. We also find that poor communication with patients directly increases mortality, decreases satisfaction, and decreases loyalty. Surprisingly, CDS has a negative relationship on communication and patient outcomes. Our findings contribute to the information systems and healthcare literatures by demonstrating the need to account for the multidimensional nature of healthcare and by providing context for the positive and negative effects previously discovered. Furthermore, the results offer practical and theoretical implications for leveraging specific health IT adoption and for realigning federal incentive structures for hospitals.
• Buckman, J. R., Bockstedt, J. C., & Hashim, M. J. (2018). Relative Privacy Valuations under Varying Disclosure Characteristics. Information Systems Research.
• Buckman, J. R., Bockstedt, J. C., & Hashim, M. J. (2019). Relative privacy valuations under varying disclosure characteristics. Information Systems Research, 30(Issue 2). doi:10.1287/isre.2018.0818
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  We investigate changes to the value that individuals place on the online disclosure of their private information in the presence of multiple privacy factors.We use an incentivecompatible mechanism to capture individuals' willingness-to-accept (WTA) for a privacy disclosure in a series of three randomized experiments. Each experiment manipulates characteristics of a required privacy disclosure by altering the information context, the intended secondary use of the disclosed private information, and the requirement to disclose personally identifying information. We collect data from two populations (college students and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers) to aid with generalizability of our results. As methodological checks to rule out lack of awareness in the participants, we first increase the saliency of the privacy disclosure characteristics in the second experiment and then require participants to watch a video on the potential consequences of disclosing private information in the third experiment. Across the three experiments,we consistently observe null effects for each of the privacy factors, with two population-dependent exceptions in the second study. Our participants do acknowledge the increased risk introduced by the experimental factors, and the increased saliency and awareness do lead to higher privacy valuations on average. However, there is no consistentmanifestation as significantmain effects for the three privacy factors. This is in contrast to prior research, which has found significant effects for each of these factors when studied separately. The results provide a unique perspective on privacy valuations by showing that results from prior research on simple privacy decisions may not translate tomore realistic, complex privacy disclosure decisions that involvemultiple factors.
• Hashim, M. J., Kannan, K. N., & Wegener, D. T. (2018). Central Role of Moral Obligations in Determining Intentions to Engage in Digital Piracy. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35(3), 934-963.
• Hashim, M. J., Ram, S., & Tang, Z. (2019). Uncovering the Effects of Digital Movie Format Availability on Physical Movie Sales.. Decision Support Systems, 117, 75-86.
• Hashim, M. J., Kannan, K. N., & Maximiano, S. M. (2017). Information Feedback, Targeting, and Coordination: An Experimental Study. Information Systems Research, 28(2), 289-308.
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  Best published paper runner-up
• Hashim, M. J., Kannan, K. N., Maximiano, S., & Ulmer, J. R. (2014). Digital Piracy, Teens, and the Source of Advice: An Experimental Study. JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS, 31(2), 211-244.
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  The objective of our paper is to determine the effect of piracy advice from various sources on the behavior of the music consumer. Specifically, does it matter if the source of advice has a stake in the outcome of the piracy decision? Does it matter if the source of advice has a social tie with the advisee? Accordingly, we conduct a laboratory experiment using teenagers and their parents as subjects, increasing the realism of the context by sampling potential pirates and their parents. Treatments represent various sources of piracy advice (e.g., the teen's parent, a record label, or an external regulator). Subjects make decisions playing our new experimental game-The Piracy Game-extended from the volunteer's dilemma literature. Interestingly, subjects respond negatively to advice from record labels over time, purchasing fewer songs as compared to other sources such as the subject's parent. The existence of a social tie between the adviser and the subject assists in mitigating piracy, especially when a parent is facing potential penalties due to his or her child's behavior. An external regulator, having no social tie or stake in the decision, provides the least credible source of advice, leading to the greatest amount of piracy. Our analyses not only provide managerial insights but also develop theoretical understanding of the role of social ties in the context of advice.

Proceedings Publications

• Ivanov, A., Hashim, M., & Tacheva, Z. (2025). Doug's Effect: The Impact of Influencer Marketing on Community-Driven Online Auctions. In 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2025.
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  The pandemic restrictions imposed during 2020 contributed to a significant shift of economic activity in online automotive auction markets. Yet, with vehicle sales going down in the post-pandemic period, online auction platforms are struggling to keep their communities engaged and active. One such platform (Cars & Bids) leverages Doug DeMuro, founder and social media influencer, to bolster user engagement and auction performance on the platform. To explain the effect of their “endogenous to the platform” influencer, we rely on the theoretical principles of resource mobilization and relational herding. We collected a panel dataset of N = 1300 vehicles auctioned from 2020 to 2024 and leverage difference-in-differences and coarsened exact matching to conduct our analyses. Our findings suggest that an endogenous influencer effect can significantly increase user engagement (i.e., viewership and commenting), as well as increase auction performance with a higher number of bids and higher final auction price.
• Ivanov, A., Hashim, M., & Tacheva, Z. (2024). ICIS 2024 Bangkok, The Impact of Endogenous Influencer Marketing on Performance of Community-Driven Online Auctions. In 45th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2024.
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  The consumer-to-consumer online auction market has seen phenomenal growth, with a significant shift in economic activity towards online automotive auctions. Yet, with vehicle sales going down, online auction platforms are struggling to keep their communities engaged and active. One such platform (Cars&Bids) is leveraging the influence of internal figure Doug DeMuro, founder and social media influencer, to bolster user engagement and auction performance. To explain the effect of such influencer, endogenous to the platform, we rely on the theoretical principals of resource mobilization and relational hearing. To test the proposed hypothesis, we collected a panel dataset of N = 1300 vehicles auctioned from 2020 to 2024. To estimate the focal effect, we leverage difference-in-difference and coarsened exact matching. Our findings suggest that endogenous influencer effect can significantly impact user engagement, manifested in increased viewership and commenting, and auction performance, reflected in higher number of bids and final price achieved.
• Hashim, M. J., Ram, S., & Tang, Z. (2019). Uncovering the effects of digital movie format availability on physical movie sales. In Decision Support Systems, 117, 75-86.
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  Abstract The impact of multi-channel technology-enabled digital goods on the sales of the physical counterpart faces uncertainty in the electronic commerce domain. We address the issue empirically by identifying the effect of the availability of digitally-delivered movies on physical DVD movie sales. Unique to our study is our interest in not only purchased digital goods but rented digital goods as well. We construct a robust panel dataset consisting of movie data collected from Amazon and Barnes and Noble on the same day for every movie observed. A key feature of our dataset is the multi-channel availability of digital purchase and digital rental movie formats at Amazon. Our results show that the availability of the digital purchase format does not have a significant effect on DVD sales. Surprisingly, the availability of the digital rental format is associated with a significant reduction in DVD sales. The results imply that a product substitution effect may be occurring between the digital rental and the physical DVD purchase of the same movie. We conduct robustness tests to show under which conditions the effect is greatest. Our results also provide practical implications to inform strategies regarding movie format release windows.
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2015, January). Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?. In Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, Proceedings of the 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2015, January). “Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?”. In Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, 48th (2015), 4834-4843.

Presentations

• Hashim, M. J., & Hunter, M. G. (2022, 03-30-2022). Why Data Literacy is Important for Future Business Leaders. CFO Club Indonesia in partnership with Sampoerna University.
• Khern-am-nuai, W., Hashim, M. J., Pinsonneault, A., Yang, W., & Li, N. (2021, May). Augmenting Password Strength Meter Design using the Elaboration Likelihood Model: Evidence from Randomized Experiments. IS Research Seminar, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
• Hashim, M. J. (2020, March). Overcoming Free-Riding in User-Generated Content Platforms: Punishments and Rewards for Individuals and Groups. Business Information Technology Research Seminar. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech.
• Hashim, M. J. (2020, October). Enhancing Operational Security by Redesigning Password Strength Meters: Evidence from Randomized Experiments. ISOM Research Seminar. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University.
• Buckman, J., Woutersen, T. M., & Hashim, M. J. (2019, October). The Effect of Communication and EMR Meaningful Use Technologies on Patient Outcomes. INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technologies.
• Hashim, M. J. (2019, February). Discussion of Experimental Economics Research in Information Systems. McGill University Ph.D. Student Workshop.
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2019, May). Overcoming Free-Riding in User-Generated Content Platforms: Punishments and Rewards for Individuals and Groups. Workshop on Experimental and Behavioral Economics in Information Systems. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
• Szep, A., Hashim, M. J., & Ram, S. (2019, December). Polarizing Virtual Water Cooler Chat? An Analysis of Bot Influence on Sentiment During US Elections (Best Paper Nominee). Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems. Munich.
• Buckman, J. R., Hashim, M. J., Woutersen, T. M., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2017, June). Fool Me Twice: An Analysis of Repeat Data Breaches within Firms. Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. La Jolla, CA.
• Hashim, M. J., Brandimarte, L., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2017, May). Social Engineering Experiments. Workshop on Experimental and Behavioral Economics in Information Systems. Atlanta, GA: Emory University.
• Khern-am-nuai, W., Hashim, M. J., Pinsonneault, A., Yang, W., & Li, N. (2017, December). Designing Better Password Strength Meters by Incorporating Contextual Information. Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (Best Paper Nominee).
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2016, April). Cybersecurity Experiments on Privacy, Authentication, and Social Engineering. Eller College Interdisciplinary Research Workshop.
• McDermott, B., Kaufer, I., Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2016, December). Human Exploits in Cybersecurity: A Social Engineering Study. The Workshop on Information Security and Privacy. Dublin.
• McDermott, B., Kaufer, I., Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2016, June). Human Exploits in Cybersecurity: A Social Engineering Study. The 5th Annual UA-Tsinghua E-Commerce Workshop. Beijing.
• McDermott, B., Kaufer, I., Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2016, September). Human Exploits in Cybersecurity: A Social Engineering Study. IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics.
• McDermott, B., Kaufer, I., Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2016, September). Security Experiments in MIS. Celebrate Research in the Eller College – Experimental Research Focus.
• Bockstedt, J. C., Hashim, M. J., & Buckman, J. (2015, October). “Analyzing the Value of an Information Disclosure,”. Dewald Roode Workshop on Information Systems Security Research. Newark, DE: University of Delaware.
• Bockstedt, J. C., Hashim, M. J., Buckman, J., Bockstedt, J. C., Hashim, M. J., & Buckman, J. (2015, October). “Analyzing the Value of an Information Disclosure,”. INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology. Philadelphia, PA: INFORMS.
• Dorn, B., Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2015, May). Comparing Decisions to Disclose Private Information Using Economic Experiments. 4th Annual UA-Tsinghua E-Commerce Workshop.
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2015, July). “Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?”. Workshop on Experimental and Behavioral Economics in Information Systems. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University.
• Hashim, M. J., & Bockstedt, J. C. (2015, October). Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?. ITO Research Seminar Series. San Diego: University of California.
• Hashim, M. J. (2014, June 18). Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?. The 3rd Annual UA-Tsinghua E-Commerce Workshop. Beijing, China: Tsinghua University.
• Hashim, M. J. (2014, November 14). Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?. OPIM Research Workshop. Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut.
• Hashim, M. J., & Kannan, K. N. (2013, October). Coordination by Sanctions: Internal and External Consequences in the Lab. INFORMS Annual Meeting.

Poster Presentations

• Bockstedt, J. C., & Hashim, M. J. (2014, October). Overcoming Free-Riding in Information Goods: Sanctions or Rewards?. INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology. San Francisco: INFORMS.