Dr. LIU Ben

I am an associate professor in the Department of Information Systems at City University of Hong Kong. I received my Doctoral degree in Business Administration from the Department of Management Information Systems, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. 

My primary research area can be broadly described as the impact of information environments (e.g., social media) on individual judgment and decision-making (e.g., online consumer choice) and on interpersonal interactions (e.g., the interactions among online consumers). I am also interested in the use of information technology in healthcare.

The theoretical foundations of my research primarily draw from the Psychology and Economics program (a.k.a. Behavioral Economics) including behavioral decision theory and behavioral game theory. The research methods used in my research have a strong focus on credible causal inference, including running randomized experiments in both the lab and the field and identifying natural experiments from observational data.

Teaching Areas

• Systems Analysis and Design
• Social Media Applications
• Business Analytics

Research Grant

• PI: "Investigating the Quality of Online Healthcare in China", CityU Strategic Research Grant - City University of Hong Kong , Amount: 100,000 (2021-2023) , Ben Liu
• PI: "Investigating the direct and spillover effects of patient-gifting in Chinese healthcare: an online field experiment", General Research Fund - Hong Kong RGC , Amount: 308,096 (2019-2022) , Ben Liu, Xitong Guo
• PI: "Investigating the Impact of Social Recommendation Systems on Consumer Preference Similarity", CityU Strategic Research Grant - City University of Hong Kong , Amount: 100,000.00 (2018-2020) , Ben Liu, Seth Li, Elena Karahanna
• PI: "Investigating the Serial Position Effect in Consumer Valuation based on Online Product Reviews", CityU Strategic Research Grant - City University of Hong Kong , (2013-2014) , Ben Liu
• PI: "When ", General Research Fund - Hong Kong RGC , (2013-2014) , Ben Liu, Elena Karahanna
• PI: "Understand Consumers' Use of Online Product Review: A Cognitive Psychology Perspective", CityU Start-up Grant for New Faculty - City University of Hong Kong , (2011-2014) , Ben Liu

External Academic Activities

Period	Organizer	Country / Region	Role
1/2021 - 12/2023	MIS Quarterly	United States of America	Associate Editor

Publications

Journal Publications and Reviews

Zhao, Wei; Liu, Qianqian Ben; Guo, Xitong; Wu, Tianshi; Kumar, Sobodha / Quid Pro Quo in Online Medical Consultation? Investigating the Effects of Small Monetary Gifts from Patients. April 2022; In: Production and Operations Management. Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 1698-1718 Liu, Qianqian Ben; Liu, Xiaoxiao; Guo, Xitong / THE EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATING IN A PHYSICIAN-DRIVEN ONLINE HEALTH COMMUNITY IN MANAGING CHRONIC DISEASE: EVIDENCE FROM TWO NATURAL EXPERIMENTS. March 2020; In: MIS Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 1b, pp. 391-419 Yu, Yan; Liu, Ben Qianqian; Hao, Jin-Xing; Wang, Chuanqi / Complicating or simplifying? Investigating the mixed impacts of online product information on consumers’ purchase decisions. 2020; In: Internet Research. Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 263-287 Karahanna, Elena; Chen, Adela; Liu, Qianqian Ben; Serrano, Christina / CAPITALIZING ON HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO ENABLE DIGITAL ADVANTAGE IN U.S. HOSPITALS. March 2019; In: MIS Quarterly. Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 113-140 Liu, Qianqian Ben; Karahanna, Elena / The dark side of reviews: The swaying effects of online product reviews on attribute preference construction. June 2017; In: MIS Quarterly. Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 427-448 Karahanna, Elena; Williams, Clay K; Polites, Greta L; LIU, Ben; Seligman, Larry / Uncertainty Avoidance and Consumer Perceptions of Global e-Commerce Sites: A Multi-Level Model. October 2013; In: Drake Management Review. Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 12 - 47 Liu, Ben Q.; Goodhue, Dale L. / Two worlds of trust for potential e-commerce users: Humans as cognitive misers. December 2012; In: Information Systems Research. Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 1246-1262 Liu, Qianqian (Ben); Karahanna, Elena; Watson, Richard T. / Unveiling user-generated content: Designing websites to best present customer reviews. May 2011; In: Business Horizons. Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 231-240 Dong, Xiaoying; Liu, Qianqian; Yin, Dezhi / Business Performance, Business Strategy, and Information System Strategic Alignment: An Empirical Study on Chinese Firms. June 2008; In: Tsinghua Science and Technology. Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 348-354 Dong, Xiaoying; Jiang, Guihuang; Liu, Qianqian / Knowledge management increases innovation capability of enterprises: An empirical study. June 2006; In: Qinghua Daxue Xuebao/Journal of Tsinghua University. Vol. 46, No. SUPPL., pp. 956-963

Conference Papers
LIU, Ben / The Influence of Uncertainty Avoidance on Consumer Perceptions of Global e-Commerce Sites. May 2013; Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference (MWAIS), 24/05/2013 - 25/05/2013, Normal, United States.

Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary Works

Liu, Xiaoxiao; Liu, Qianqian Ben; Guo, Xitong / Patients' use of social media improves doctor-patient relationship and patient wellbeing: Evidence from a natural experiment in China. December 2016; 2016 International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016. Yu, Yan; Wang, Chuanqi; Luo, Keyi; Liu, Ben / Mixing Consumers' Rationality and Sociality: Effects of Product Quantity and Popularity Information on Online Shopping. June 2016; Proceeding of the 20th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2016). Liu, Qianqian; Karahanna, Elena / An agent-based modeling analysis of helpful vote on online product reviews. January 2015; Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Vol. 2015-March, pp. 1585-1595 Liu, Ben Q.; Goodhue, Dale L. / An exploration of the hygiene and motivator aspects of WebQual constructs in predicting website reuse. 2008; Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Yin, Dezhi; Qiu, Lingyun; Dong, Xiaoying; Li, Dong; Liu, Qianqian / Using blogs to enhance management education: An empirical study. 2007; PACIS 2007 - 11th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Managing Diversity in Digital Enterprises.