Call for Papers

HICSS-58 Minitrack on

Human-Centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

The advent of global digital transformation has significantly altered various facets of human existence, encompassing economies, societies, and personal lives. This era, characterized by digital innovation, has facilitated the creation of unique services and solutions for end-users. Concurrently, it has engendered critical challenges at individual and societal levels, such as concerns related to online privacy, algorithmic bias, fairness, accountability, transparency, governance, explainability of information systems, user manipulation, misinformation, and traceability. An effective response lies in the development of human-centric and end-user empowering information systems, which constitute a cornerstone of “digital sustainability.”

Such systems, though innovative and beneficial, are crafted with a profound comprehension of human needs, values, capacities, limitations, motivations, and circumstances. They are designed to be as comprehensible and manageable by humans as feasible. Alternatively, they are augmented with cognitive, collective, and contextual mechanisms that enable humans to exercise, and if necessary, safeguard their digital rights and values while engaging with or utilizing these systems. The emergence of novel, personalized services that align with these principles underscores a sustainable digital economy – a construct that prioritizes the well-being of human users.

This minitrack seeks to gather research that deepens the understanding of human-centricity and end-user empowerment within the context of a sustainable digital economy.Acknowledging the multidimensional nature of this transformation, the minitrack embraces an interdisciplinary approach, exploring human-centricity and end-user empowerment across various application domains (such as software development, digital commerce, healthcare, administration, mobile applications, social media, and online services) and disciplines (including economics, ecology, computer science, and sociology). Relevant topics include:

• Characteristics, design and frameworks of/for sustainable and human-centric information systems (IS)

• Impact of emerging technologies (e.g., genAI, Metaverse) for sustainable, human-centric IS

• Development of human-centric end-user agents, chatbots, AI, and recommender systems

• Systems for identity, privacy, and consent management (e.g., self-sovereign identities)

• Exploration of fairness, transparency, accountability, and controllability in IS

• Examination of legal, social, ethical, political, and economic facets of human- compatibility in IS

• Investigation of the business value derived from human-compatibility and user empowerment

• Human-compatibility and sustainability in economic models (platform, shared, circular, and digital economies).

• Analysis of obstacles, facilitators, drivers, and concerns for human-compatibility in digital ecosystems and environments

• Approaches aligned with human-centricity, such as social welfare computing, life engineering, digital humanism, digital sustainability, citizen science and human awareness

Special Issue at Electronic Markets

Selected papers will be invited for a fast-track in Electronic Markets – The International Journal on Networked Business. A Special Issue on “Applied Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy” at Electronic Markets is planned.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Soheil Human (Primary Contact)

Vienna University of Economics and Business

soheil.humann@wu.ac.at

Rainer Alt

Leipzig University

rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de

Gustaf Neumann

Vienna University of Economics and Business

gustaf.neumann@wu.ac.at

Important Dates for Paper Submission

June 15, 2024 | 11:59 pm HST:           Paper submission deadline

August 17, 2024 | 11:59 pm HST:         Notification of acceptance/rejection

September 22, 2024|11:59 pm HST:   Deadline for authors to submit final manuscript for publication

October 1, 2024 | 11:59 pm HST:         Deadline for at least one author of each paper to register