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This paper aims to identify Islamic influence on customer satisfaction in Pakistan Takaful and conventional insurance industry. Specifically, it analyses the vital role of Shari’ah perception in achieving higher customer satisfaction.

The data from 400 customers of both the family Takāful and life insurance (200 each) were collected. Further, the regression-based bootstrapping approach was applied through process macro developed by Hayes (2013).

The results indicate that a higher Shari’ah perception positively affects the customer satisfaction in the Takaful industry with improved service and relationship quality; whereas, it negatively affects customer satisfaction in case of the conventional insurance. Further, it has been found that customer satisfaction partially mediates the customer switching intentions in both the Takaful and conventional insurance industry in the presence of service quality and relationship quality.

This research will enable the practitioners to understand the factors that affect customer satisfaction in Pakistan. It has the essential policy and managerial implications for the growth of the Takaful and conventional insurance industry.

This is one of the pioneer studies investigating the impact of Islamic influence (specifically Shari’ah perception) on customer satisfaction in both the Takaful and conventional insurance industry in Pakistan.

This study aims to examine the impact of board characteristics on debt choice.

The sample comprises of unique nonfinancial firms listed in the FTSE 350 over the period 2011–2018. This study uses Tobit and OLS regressions to check the impact of board characteristics on debt choice. The results are robust to the battery of robust checks.

This study finds that board size and board independence are positively associated with public debt. However, CEO duality and board meetings frequency are inversely associated with public debt. Overall, the findings are consistent with the “financial intermediation theory” that the firms with weak governance rely on bank financing, and firms with better corporate governance go for public debt.

This study offers significant insights for investors and policymakers.

This study offers new insights regarding the role of board characteristics in firms’ debt choice by showing the significant impact of board characteristics on debt choice. The findings indicate that the board’s efficient internal monitoring may substitute external monitoring by the bank.

The current advancements in technologies and the internet industry provide users with many innovative digital devices for entertainment, communication and trade. However, simultaneous development and the rising sophistication of cybercrimes bring new challenges. Micro businesses use technology like how people use it at home, but face higher cyber risks during riskier transactions, with human error playing a significant role. Moreover, information security researchers have often studied individuals’ adherence to compliance behaviour in response to cyber threats. The study aims to examine the protection motivation theory (PMT)-based model to understand individuals’ tendency to adopt secure behaviours.

The study focuses on Australian micro businesses since they are more susceptible to cyberattacks due to the least security measures in place. Out of 877 questionnaires distributed online to Australian micro business owners through survey panel provider “Dynata,” 502 (N = 502) complete responses were included. Structural equational modelling was used to analyse the relationships among the variables.

The results indicate that all constructs of the protection motivation, except threat susceptibility, successfully predict the user protective behaviours. Also, increased cybersecurity costs negatively impact users’ safe cyber practices.

The study has critical implications for understanding micro business owners’ cyber security behaviours. The study contributes to the current knowledge of cyber security in micro businesses through the lens of PMT.

Natural gas makes up about 50 per cent of Pakistan's energy consumption, which is decreasing at an alarming pace, making Karachi – the largest city of Pakistan – one of the major victims of natural gas shortfall. The purpose of this paper is to model natural gas demand and supply using geographic information systems.

Sui Southern Gas Company datasets were used to derive annual per capita gas usages and to analyze the capacity of gas supplies. Union Council is taken as a smallest and basic analytical administrative spatial unit for appraisal of badly affected, with insufficient, low and better gas supply regions.

Results show that the per capita demand for natural gas is higher in high class residential areas while supply is lowest for upper middle and lower middle class residential area populations. Only 19 per cent of the total residential areas are expected to be free from gas shortfalls. About 53 per cent of residential areas are facing the problem of low gas availability; and 3 per cent and 11 per cent areas are under stress of badly affected and insufficient gas supply, respectively.

This research shows an example of constructing a Geographic Information System (GIS)‐based gas demand and supply model that can be used for building strategic guidelines for top‐level planners, engineers and decision makers at the micro‐level. This is not a “deep” paper, but it works in identifying a problem and presenting a quantitative way forward. This paper will have significant impact both on society and academia, as this innovative technology and its implementation on gas utility has happened for the first time in Pakistan. Furthermore, in the international literature this has also been in infancy and will open new avenues of research, especially in developing countries. The work would certainly be applicable for other consumer‐based utilities such as electricity, telecommunication, sewerage and municipal water and they would all benefit from it substantially.

This study aims to examine the role of social media influencers (SMI) in millennial behavioural intentions towards Islamic banks, from the perspective of both bank clients and non-clients.

Of the 484 Indonesian millennials in the sample, 278 were clients and 206 non-clients of Islamic banks. Factor analysis was used to examine the SMI dimension in the Islamic banking context. This study then used the partial least square to evaluate the proposed model and test the relationships between SMI, bank image, trust and behavioural intention.

Three SMI dimensions were confirmed, i.e. expertise, celebrity and similarity. For bank clients, the findings show that SMI has a significant influence on behavioural intention and reinforces bank image and trust. For non-clients, SMI does not have a significant impact on behavioural intentions but significantly strengthens bank image and trust.

Islamic bank managers can take benefit of this study findings by learning to foster the behavioural intentions of their millennial clients and non-clients using SMIs. Further, choosing the right SMIs for their Islamic bank is an important activity, and if they want to make a positive impact on existing and potential millennial clients, they need to choose popular millennials who are knowledgeable about the Islamic value compliance of Islamic banking services.

This study is an early study to explore SMI’s role in influencing the behavioural intentions of millennials towards Islamic banks.

This study aims to examine the effect of board-related and firm-specific drivers on quality of risk disclosure (RD) by listed firms in Kenya.

This study uses explanatory sequential mixed-method. The quantitative approach uses content analysis to measure quality of RD and panel data regression to examine the effect of board-related and firm-specific factors on quality of RD. The results of regression analysis are informed by qualitative analysis through interviews with preparers of the annual report.

The results reveal that quality of RD is low but greater in the post-regulation than in the pre-regulation period. Additionally, the results of regression and interview analysis show that board-related (board independence and board gender diversity) and firm-specific factors (firm size and leverage) positively influence the quality of RD.

This study focused on listed non-financial firms; this may affect the generalisation of the findings among financial firms.

The findings highlight the effectiveness of the Companies Act in improving RD practice in Kenya. However, the low-quality RD suggests that more consideration should be taken to review the current regulations. This study also suggests that board independence, board gender diversity, leverage and firm size are attributes that require regulatory focus to enhance quality of RD.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussions about RD to improve worldwide.

This paper adds to the limited studies investigating RD and drivers using mixed methods in developing countries. Specifically, this study develops a novel measure of RD and examines its drivers (board-related and firm-specific) using agency and institutional theories.

It is widely evident that trust and commitment are important pillars for strengthening the relationship between financial service firms and their customers. However, it has not been explored how the service quality, perceived cost and role of agents are important for financial service firms. To overcome this gap, this study aims to investigate the role of service quality, perceived cost and the role of agents as the commitment–trust factors in the financial insurance service (Takaful) in Malaysia, enhancing customer satisfaction.

The study follows a quantitative design in which primary data was collected using a survey instrument. The measurement instrument was adapted from the previous research, and data were collected from 264 customers of the Takaful financial service organizations in Malaysia. The data were analyzed using variance-based structural equational modeling in Smart-PLS software.

This research has revealed several useful insights that demonstrate a significant impact on service quality, perceived cost and the agents’ role in forging close relationships with their customers. Corporate image has a moderating role in relationships and has significantly impacted takaful insurance companies. The results imply that regardless of the corporate image of the financial service organizations, customers are concerned about the prices and the quality of the agents’ services.

In this study, only the predictors such as service quality, perceived costs and agents’ roles as trust–commitment factors were examined to determine customer satisfaction. Other investigations are highly recommended, such as value co-creation in takaful, takaful customer experience and takaful trust. This study offers insights to takaful insurance companies on how to keep up a positive corporate image, which will boost their trust–commitment factors and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.

By presenting commitment–trust factors and company image in an identifiable framework, the current study has expanded the discussion on takaful financial insurance services. The methodology is developed and rigorously tested to gauge customer satisfaction in takaful financial service organizations’ context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the connectedness among Memecoin, Halal exchange traded funds (ETF) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) indexes in different quantiles.

The authors consider Dogecoin to measure Memecoin while Wahed FTSE USA Shariah ETF (HLAL) and SP Funds S&P 500 Sharia Industry Exclusions ETF (SPUS) are used to represent Halaf ETF. Similarly, iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF (ESGU) and Vanguard ESG US Stock (ESGV) proxy the ESG index ETF. The daily price of these examined markets is considered from January 2, 2020, to January 18, 2024. The quantile vector autoregression is deployed for the empirical computation.

The result reveals that Memecoin (Dogecoin) emerges as the best diversifier irrespective of various quantiles because it is least connected in terms of recipient and transmission of shock. In addition, the authors observe an intriguing observation that the total connectedness in higher quantile is large, followed by lower quantile.

This study is undertaken considering the novelty in the form of the proxies of examined markets along with natural outbreak (COVID-19) and man-made outbreak (Russia–Ukraine invasion) periods.

The Islamic banking system is not very primordial, but recently it is getting popular. Now it becomes a prominent topic to investigate what are the reasons behind it and how it happens. This study aims to identify the influencing factors in the time of opening account in Islamic banks.

A descriptive and factor analysis method were carried out to collect the quantitative data using a validated structured questionnaire. This study is based on a survey of 300 clients from Bangladesh who have at least one bank account in any Islamic banks in Bangladesh.

The findings of the study revealed that the most important factors influencing the people to open an account in Islamic banks including high Riba (Interest) on saving, ATM facility, confirmation SMS on the transaction, availability of branch service in several locations, lower cost on financing (loan), low initial deposit fee for account opening, employees’ prompt service and their behavior, etc. Also, the other religious people, rather than Islam, start a banking relationship with Islamic banks without any obligation.

The study focused only on a certain area of Bangladesh. This study could be extended for a different target market, creative strategy, other media and more countries.

The paper provides guidelines to the management of Islamic banks to decide to attract more customers by focusing on the influencing factors that manipulate a person to open a bank account.

The research is original. There are very few studies available on this topic, particularly focusing on Bangladesh. Consequently, the research findings have significant implications for Islamic banks functioning in a predominantly Islamic atmosphere.