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Business Analytics and Information Systems, Faculty
Leading information systems scholar Ho joins Harbert faculty
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Yi-Jen “Ian” Ho, a leading scholar on the impacts of information technologies like location-based services and artificial intelligence (AI) on commerce, fairness, and judicial systems, has joined the Harbert College of Business as the Broadway Distinguished Professor of Information Systems.
“Ian’s research spans AI, digital platforms and their impact on society — exactly the kind of forward-looking work that will elevate the Harbert brand,” said Department of Business Analytics and Information Systems Chair Uzma Raja. “He will also serve as director of our doctoral program, and I have no doubt his energy and rigor will shape the next generation of scholars we produce."
Impactful research
Since launching his faculty career a decade ago, Ho has accumulated an impressive research record, publishing numerous papers in the most elite operations management and information systems journals and winning accolades for the work.
In one study that he conducted early in his faculty career while at Penn State, Ho provided an economic analysis of geofencing, an advertising strategy that sends digital ads or coupons to shoppers’ smartphones when they come within a specified distance of a business.
He and his research collaborators demonstrated that geofencing outperformed traditional advertising, and he proposed a more flexible and lucrative form of geofencing that benefits businesses and consumers.
"Ian’s research spans AI, digital platforms and their impact on society — exactly the kind of forward-looking work that will elevate the Harbert brand. He will also serve as director of our doctoral program, and I have no doubt his energy and rigor will shape the next generation of scholars we produce."
Department of Business Analytics and Information Systems Chair Uzma Raja
In another study, Ho and his colleagues conducted a multi-week randomized field experiment at one of the largest shopping malls in Asia, combining gamification strategies — badges and leaderboards — with location-based advertising.
“We tracked where shoppers were and which stores they visited, and we randomly decided which game they’d play versus the traditional couponing,” said Ho about the study that was published last year in Information Systems Research. “We found that gamification was very useful for long-term engagements.”
These research findings established Ho as a leading scholar in the field of how location-based services affect businesses. In 2023, Ho joined the business college faculty at Tulane, where he expanded his research interests to address broader societal issues.
“[AI] and other emerging technologies had become more mature, so I began looking at how [they] can help people make better decisions,” Ho said.
One such research study explored the effects that AI-based recommendations have on judges’ sentencing decisions and whether there’s a downstream impact on public safety.
“In many jurisdictions during sentencing, judges use risk-assessment algorithms that predict criminal offenders’ chances of getting arrested again,” said Ho, noting that criminals deemed low-risk by the technology can be sentenced to probation rather than prison time.
Ho and his research collaborators reviewed more than 32,000 non-violent felony drug offense cases in Virginia during an 11-year period.
“We found that algorithm sentencing recommendations balanced out the gender disparity, resulting in comparable sentences for men and women,” he said. “Without the algorithm recommendations, men were sentenced more harshly than women.”
However, they also found that judges may have misapplied the AI guidance along racial lines, by offering white offenders probation more frequently while sentencing other low-risk black offenders to jail.
Their study earned best paper awards from the INFORMS Information Systems Society and the Taiwan Summer Workshop on Information Management.
More recently, Ho has conducted research projects on how AI can help faculty become more creative in producing novel and disruptive research, as well as the implications of disclosing AI-generated content.
Auburn: The next chapter
In addition to becoming the director of the information systems management doctoral program at Auburn, Ho will teach two Ph.D. seminar courses that strengthen the students’ critical-thinking skills and ability to use AI responsibly in their research.
Ho’s decision to come to Auburn was influenced by Harbert leadership’s research vision and the resources available in the Department of Business Analytics and Information Systems.
“I love the research direction of where Dean Mueller-Phillips, Dr. Raja, and others see the college in five and 10 years,” Ho said. “And that [vision] aligns perfectly with my own interests.”
The enthusiastic recommendation of Harbert research colleague Yifan Zhang sealed the deal for him.
“Since Yifan joined the Harbert faculty two years ago, he has told me so many good things about Auburn,” said Ho, who collaborated with Zhang on the AI-sentencing and gamification papers published in Information Systems Research. “Friend recommendations matter more than anything else.”
Having grown up in a small town in Taiwan, Ho said he also appreciates the small-town atmosphere and positive energy of the Auburn area. In his spare time, Ho enjoys working out, meditating, and tasting beer.
Service and research recognition
Ho received the prestigious Gordon Davis Young Scholar award, which recognizes young researchers who are poised to make outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline, and the highly competitive Nunamaker-Chen Dissertation award presented by the INFORMS Information Systems Society.
He is serving as an associate editor at Management Information Systems, served as a special-issue senior editor at Production and Operations Management and as an editorial review board member at Information Systems Research, and has helped organize research sessions at leading conferences. He earned his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of California, Irvine.
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