  Whilst affective responses to various forms and genres of multimedia content
have been well researched, precious few studies have investigated the combined
impact that multimedia system parameters and human factors have on affect.
Consequently, in this paper we explore the role that two primordial dimensions
of human factors - personality and culture - in conjunction with system factors
- frame rate, resolution, and bit rate - have on user affect and enjoyment of
multimedia presentations. To this end, a two-site, cross-cultural study was
undertaken, the results of which produced three predictve models. Personality
and Culture traits were shown statistically to represent 5.6% of the variance
in positive affect, 13.6% in negative affect and 9.3% in enjoyment. The
correlation between affect and enjoyment, was significant. Predictive modeling
incorporating human factors showed about 8%, 7% and 9% improvement in
predicting positive affect, negative affect and enjoyment respectively when
compared to models trained only on system factors. Results and analysis
indicate the significant role played by human factors in influencing affect
that users experience while watching multimedia.
