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This research examines how universities enhance the virality of their social media messages among students. Specifically, we explore whether and how positive affective content in universities’ social media posts can influence sharing behavior. We also investigate the mediating roles of perceived effort and positive emotional reaction, as well as the moderating effect of visual content (i.e. photos).

Drawing upon the emotions as social information model, we conducted (1) an online experiment (N = 222) and (2) text analysis of 1,269,798 Twitter posts extracted from the accounts of 94 UK universities over 11 years (2010–2020) to test our hypotheses.

The findings show that social media posts containing positive affective content encourage sharing behavior and the relationship is mediated by both perceived effort and positive emotional reaction. An additional finding suggests that the use of visual content (photos) strengthens the relationship between positive affective content and sharing behaviors through an interaction effect.

This study contributes to the scant research focusing on positive affective content in the higher education context. The findings shed light on how universities could create social media communications that engage current and prospective students.

This paper looks at mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) support services in Aotearoa New Zealand, which predominantly center white queer voices and services and fail to account for the intersectional identities of young ethnic queers.

This exploratory, qualitative study investigated the social and professional support experienced and responded to by 43 young ethnic queers living in Aotearoa New Zealand, who were between 18 and 35 years of age. Participants identified as queer, non-binary, gay, pansexual, demisexual, gender fluid, non-binary and trans among others and held ethnic heritage from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. Persadie and Narain's Mash Up methodological approach (2022) was used to analyze the data. Mash Up allowed us to understand the intersectional spaces of queer ethnic lives in white-dominated spaces, the ways in which young ethnic queers resisted the marginalization of their racialized being and took agency to counter actions and decisions that negated their presence and intersectional identities.

The findings from the study showed that young ethnic queers responded to the lack of adequate support services by establishing their own voluntary organizations and support networks. The study revealed that ethnic queer young people were critical of the white-dominated LGBTQIA+ support organizations; they created their own transformative spaces where they found “family” and community where they could be open about their queerness without the fear of rejection and stigma, while still advocating for equitable resources and an intersectional approach in queer mainstream services.

This paper provides valuable information on the lack of support for queer ethnic young people in Aotearoa New Zealand. The absence of information on the needs of this group poses a challenge to government departments, which rely on data to inform policy and allocate resources. The limited research and knowledge of this community make them less visible and, consequently, less likely to be given resources. It also means that harmful practices and behaviors toward queer ethnic young people by families and communities are more likely to go unnoticed and unaddressed. The paper also shows that the agency of young ethnic queers to create their own transformative spaces and to challenge the white-centric spaces, which have failed to consider their intersectional identities, has been instrumental to their well-being.

Driven by Davis’s (1989) technology acceptance model (TAM) and Westaby’s (2005) behavioral reasoning theory (BRT), the purpose of this study is to develop and test a conceptual model and examine consumers’ acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for apparel shopping.

Data from 353 eligible US respondents was collected through a self-administered questionnaire distributed on Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online panel. Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis were used to test all hypothesized relationships using the structural equation model.

The results show that optimism and relative advantage of “reasons for” dimensions have a positive and significant influence on perceived ease of use (PEU), while innovativeness and relative advantage have a positive and significant influence on perceived usefulness (PUF). Discomfort and insecurity have no significant impact on PEU and PUF. However, complexity has a negative and significant impact on PEU but not on PUF. Additionally, PEU has a positive influence on PUF. Both PEU and PUF have a positive and significant influence on consumers’ attitudes toward using AI chatbots, which, in turn, affects the intention to use AI chatbots for apparel shopping. Overall, this study identifies that optimism, innovativeness and relative advantage are enablers and good reasons to adopt AI chatbots. Complexity is a prohibitor, making it the only reason against adopting AI chatbots for apparel shopping.

This study contributes to the literature by integrating TAM and BRT to develop a research model to understand what “reasons for” and “reasons against” factors are enablers or prohibitors that significantly impact consumers’ attitude and intention to use AI chatbots for apparel shopping through PEU and PUF.

The advancement of technologies has made it possible for health-care organizations to provide convenient online services that enable people to manage their health conditions. Although many studies have investigated the adoption and benefits of e-health services, there has been little focus on health-oriented behaviors after adoption, particularly in relation to service quality and user satisfaction.

This paper is based on the SOR model and service quality theories to investigate behavioral responses, including word-of-mouth, intention to use and intention to act. The authors use a partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis with 194 participants and the diabetes risk test survey in Finland.

The results show that people are willing to engage in health self-management behaviors if they intend to use the e-health service and are satisfied with it. User satisfaction can be enhanced by improving the visual appeal of the website presentation, the quality of the presented information, as well as the usability of the website, all as components of e-health services.

The authors contribute by creating a construct “intention to act,” referring to health-oriented behaviors resulting from e-health service use. In addition, this study is among the first to apply the SOR model to investigate how user satisfaction leads to intention to use, intention to act and word-of-mouth.

This study aims to validate the link between production manipulation and a firm’s performance variability (fundamentals and stock returns). It explores whether executives' risk-taking incentives encourage production deviations around the normal level during uncertainty.

Utilizing panel data of manufacturing firms from Compustat over three decades, the study investigates production management practices during economic uncertainty. The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPU) is employed as a key metric. The empirical strategy involves documenting the effect of economic uncertainty on overproduction and underproduction, examining the role of executive compensation and assessing the impact on risk.

The research finds that risk-taking incentives increase over/underproduction, particularly amplifying the extent of underproduction during uncertainty. Production deviation rises, indicating that firms take greater risk by engaging in abnormal business operations. The study’s results are robust against various econometric methods, emphasizing the influence of risk-taking incentives on corporate production decisions.

While providing valuable insights, the study acknowledges inherent limitations, including factors influencing production decisions beyond risk-taking incentives. Further research could explore additional determinants for a comprehensive understanding.

The findings highlight the potential dark side of executive compensation that motivates suboptimal risk-taking decisions, impacting risk, cost of capital and firm performance. Policymakers and compensation committees can use these insights to design efficient systems that mitigate moral hazard problems associated with productivity changes.

The study emphasizes the broader social implications of production manipulation under uncertainty. It prompts discussions on the ethical considerations of managerial opportunism, its potential consequences for stakeholders and market dynamics.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the role of economic uncertainty on production manipulation and the influence of risk-taking incentives. It extends the earnings management literature by considering real activity manipulation and emphasizing the importance of decomposing production deviation into positive and negative values.

The South African construction industry appears to be lagging behind other industries in the country in terms of implementation and adoption of innovative technologies. Moreover, sufficient empirical data on the adoption of innovative technologies, especially, in developing countries are not readily available. The aim of this study is therefore to assess the adoption and implementation of innovative technologies in the South African construction industry with a view to improving the industry's performance.

A survey was undertaken using a questionnaire, administered to construction professionals primarily in project management, quantity surveying and architectural firms.

The key findings show that there are some innovative technologies such as building information modelling, 3-dimensional mapping, drones, 3-dimensional printing and virtual reality that have been deployed. However, limited adoption of innovative technologies within the industry and low levels of knowledge of its benefits among the respondents were reported. This low implementation of innovative technologies was due to critical barriers such as high cost, limited knowledge, time requirement, fear of change, lack of interest, nature of construction processes and lack of team dynamics. Key drivers of innovation were found to include globalization and competition.

The current level of implementation of innovative technologies indicated that they are not yet optimized in the South African construction industry and suggests implications for change, adaptation and growth. The study recommends that firms should consider investing in research and development in order to exploit the potential of innovation for organizations and the industry at large.

The drivers and barriers indicated will help to prioritize the direction of adoption and growth which could help to improve the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the literature around regulatory compliance and market manipulation in capital markets through the use of bibliometrics and propose future research directions. Under the domain of capital markets, this theme is a niche area of research where greater academic investigations are required. Most of the research is fragmented and limited to a few conventional aspects only. To address this gap, this study engages in a large-scale systematic literature review approach to collect and analyze the research corpus in the post-2000 era.

The big data corpus comprising research articles has been extracted from the scientific Scopus database and analyzed using the VoSviewer application. The literature around the subject has been presented using bibliometrics to give useful insights on the most popular research work and articles, top contributing journals, authors, institutions and countries leading to identification of gaps and potential research areas.

Based on the review, this study concludes that, even in an era of global market integration and disruptive technological advancements, many important aspects of this subject remain significantly underexplored. Over the past two decades, research has lagged behind the evolution of capital market crime and market regulations. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggests important future research directions as well as a few research questions. This includes market manipulation, market regulations and new-age technologies, all of which could be very useful to researchers in this field and generate key inputs for stock market regulators.

The limitation of this research is that it is based on Scopus database so the possibility of omission of some literature cannot be completely ruled out. More advanced machine learning techniques could be applied to decode the finer aspects of the studies undertaken so far.

Increased integration among global markets, fast-paced technological disruptions and complexity of financial crimes in stock markets have put immense pressure on market regulators. As economies and equity markets evolve, good research investigations can aid in a better understanding of market manipulation and regulatory compliance. The proposed research directions will be very useful to researchers in this field as well as generate key inputs for stock market regulators to deal with market misbehavior.

This study has adopted a period-wise broad-based scientific approach to identify some of the most pertinent gaps in the subject and has proposed practical areas of study to strengthen the literature in the said field.

The person who works in an office starts his or her day with a choice of attire. The way they look in the office depends on the decisions they make on their clothes. This study aims to identify the challenges faced by employees in the management positions in the Sri Lankan apparel industry who regularly come into contact with customers when they have to decide upon the most appropriate work attire for the position they are occupying in their organization.

Collection of data was primarily achieved through a well-structured questionnaire containing a mixture of open- and closed-ended questions. Targeted employees were managers, designers and merchandisers belonging to Generation Y whose total number was sufficient to obtain 50 feedbacks. Six more interviews were conducted with the intention of finding out more about this matter.

The majority of employees in the management positions in the Sri Lankan apparel industry who have regular contact with customers prefer to dress in “smart casual attire”, which means semi-formal clothes. Lack of availability of certain varieties of business attire in Sri Lanka proved to be a major challenge for some employees. Overpriced clothing, less comfortable clothing and lack of the right fabrics and designs were also challenges. These findings highlight the importance of manufacturing a wider variety of business attire using moderately priced but comfortable fabrics to make affordable and good quality products. There is a need to have a persuasive merchandising method to achieve good sales and provide a pleasant shopping experience to the customers.

Sri Lankan workwear retailers as well as apparel designers can benefit from the findings of this research as there is no evidence of any other studies on this subject. Therefore, this will help them to fill the market gap for business attire by addressing these challenges.

This research paper aims to examine two hybrid models of logistics service quality (LSQ) and its influence on satisfaction, loyalty and future purchase intention in a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce context. This study extends the literature for LSQ by incorporating the second-order assurance quality construct, which comprises personnel contact quality, order discrepancy handling and order returns, into one of the hybrid models.

A survey-based approach is used to collect data. Participant responses to questions concerning multiple LSQ dimensions and behavioral perceptions from their most recent online shopping experience are measured using structural equation modeling.

Findings highlight the importance of including a second-order construct assurance quality as a more explanatory model. Results illustrate that online ordering procedures and assurance quality impact customer satisfaction more than other prominent LSQ dimensions. Furthermore, the findings revealed a customer loyalty is a partial mediator between customer satisfaction and future purchase intention. This underscores the significance of improved logistics services as a competitive edge for e-commerce retailers.

Implications are limited to the e-commerce B2C domain.

The findings of this study underscore critical LSQ dimensions that garner greater satisfaction and retention in the online shopping experience. The results indicate that the effective and efficient handling of the initial order and any order problem significantly influences customer satisfaction and reaps the long-term benefits of customer retention.

The authors present and empirically test a hybrid model of LSQ in a B2C e-commerce domain that captures many of the important elements of the customer experience as espoused in the literature.