Earticle

2020년 시작된 코로나19 팬데믹으로 인하여 많은 국가에서 사회적 거리두기 정책을 실시하였고 그로 말미암아 물리적인 제한에 구애 받지 않는 온라인 피트니스 산업이 큰 성장을 하였다. 그러나 사회적 거리두기 정책이 경제에 부정적인 영향을 미친다고 판단한 우리나라 정부는 2021년 11월 1일 위드코로나 정책을 시행하면서 팬데믹 이전의 일상으로의 회복을 선언하였고, 이에 따라 온라인 피트니스 산업의 성장 동력의 손실에 대한 우려가 제기되었다. 본 연구는 위드코로나 정책의 시행이 온라인 피트니스 콘텐츠 소비 및 참여도에 어떠한 변화를 가져왔는지 준실험 설계를 활용하여 파악하였다. YouTube의 온라인 피트니스 콘텐츠를 활용하여 분석한 결과, 위드코로나 정책 시행 감소했을 것이라는 우려와는 달리 온라인 피트니스 콘텐츠의 시청 지표는 오히려 약 21% 증가한 양상이 나타났다. 하지만 이러한 양상은 운동 종목의 기회 비용에 따라 다르게 나타났으며, 부분 집단 분석을 통해서 고비용 집단의 온라인 콘텐츠의 시청 지표만이 약 32%로 저비용 집단에 비해서 더 큰 폭으로 증가한 것을 확인하였다. 본 연구는 분석 결과를 토대로 온라인 피트니스 콘텐츠의 성격과 강점을 파악하였으며 온라인 피트니스 플랫폼 비즈니스와 콘텐츠 제작자들에게 실무적인 제언을 제공하면서 포스트-코로나 시기의 “뉴노멀”에 적응할 수 있는 새로운 시사점을 제시하였다.

The online fitness industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years, overcoming physical constraints of conventional fitness programs. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend as social distancing policies were implemented. However, as financial distress of offline gyms worsened, the Korean government implemented the “With-COVID19” policy, which lifted most of the restrictions and regulations on offline gyms, on November 1st, 2021, raising concerns about the loss of drivers for the growth of the online fitness industry. Using regression discontinuity design in time (RDDiT), this study investigates the causal effect of the “With-COVID19” policy on the viewer engagement of online fitness content. Contrary to expectations that viewer engagement would decrease, it increased by 21%. Additionally, subgroup analysis based on opportunity cost reveals heterogeneity, and the high-cost group experienced a greater increase of 32% compared to low-cost group. Based on these findings, the study provides possible mechanisms of the increase, theoretical contributions on using RDDiT in the Information Systems, and practical implications for guidelines on managing online fitness platforms and content in the era of digital transformation.

The online fitness industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years, overcoming physical and geographical constraints of conventional fitness programs. The COVID19 pandemic accelerated the trend as social distancing policies were implemented. However, as financial distress of offline gyms worsened, the Korean government implemented the "With-COVID19" policy, lifting most of the restrictions and regulations, which raised concerns about the loss of drivers for the growth of the online fitness industry. Using regression discontinuity design in time (RDDiT), this study investigates the causal effect of the "With-COVID19" policy on viewer engagement of online fitness content on YouTube. Contrary to expectations that viewer engagement would decrease, it increased by 21%, and additional analysis reveals the heterogeneity, as high-cost group experienced a greater increase of 32%. Based on these findings and possible mechanisms, the study provides practical implications and contributes to existing literatures.

This research examines the entry effect of shared electric scooters on the usage and price of ride-share services. Although there are known positive social impacts of rideshare services, the overall effect on our society can be complex. One subject of controversy is the dynamic pricing scheme, which allows prices to surge based on the real-time equilibrium of supply and demand. Ride-share companies claim that through dynamic pricing the service is able to resolve sudden surge in demand, but there are views that such pricing scheme harms the fairness of passengers. In our study, we test whether such inequity can be resolved or reinforced by the addition of shared electric scooters. We leverage a natural experiment setting where shared escooters made entry to specific parts of Chicago and estimate the impact on overall ridership and price of ride-share trips.

The textual information from title provides the video viewers the overview of the video contents. However, there has been less focus on the textual information from previous viewers’ comments. Comments which contain information such as the difficulty or the experienced benefits of the exercise can be another source of textual information. Those comments, Active Engagement, are not only the review of the contents but also the driver of viewership of other videos. In this paper, the amount of information in the title and Active Engagements are measured by word embeddings through text analysis. We further examine the effect of textual information on the view count and try to identify the feedback effect. Based on the findings, we provide the fitness content creators on YouTube and mobile fitness app developers with the guidelines on the management of the channel and the contents.

The objective of this study is to investigate how the travels through shared micromobility have influenced the copings of restaurants against the pandemic. We argue that the existence of the shared micromobility system could have aided restaurants in their survival during the pandemic. There are some evidence that the association exists. First, restaurants could not operate at full capacity during the pandemic, which discouraged people to dine-in with large groups. We purport that the reduction in the size of the maximum dine-in group has increased the propensity to travel to restaurants through micromobilities, which are typically used by a single person. Second, due to the social distancing policy and the fear of infection, individuals found micromobility as the alternative to public transportation. Through an econometric analysis, we confirm that the shared micromobility trips have positively affected restaurant performance during the pandemic. We further discuss implications and directions for future research.

This study examines the impact of a mobile application spinoff on the new companion application adoption and user engagement. We exploit a natural experiment in the launch of a new spun-off companion mobile application to identify the causal effect of spin-off on spun-off companion application adoption and user engagement. In our research context, a mobile advertisement company implemented the mobile application spin-off due to the new platform policy enacted. However, there also existed an application in this company which was not affected by the policy and continued the service without any change. By comparing mobile application usage in these two distinct setups, we demonstrate robust evidence that reveals the impact of the spin-off on spun-off mobile application adoption and user engagement of the application. Our results demonstrate that the spun-off companion application adoption induces users to use the application less frequently as measured by daily active usage. Surprisingly, we find that user engagement, measured by an advertisement click-through-rate, with the spun-off application is significantly increased.