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
Important Dates for Pre-Conference Doctoral Consortium Application
June 30, 2024 | 11:59 pm HST: Application deadline (11:59 pm HST)
August 17, 2024 | 11:59 pm HST: Notification of acceptance/rejection

Link: https://hicss.hawaii.edu/