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This study aims to investigate the effects of peers on corporate payout policies in one of the largest emerging markets – India. It also examines the motives for mimicking payout decisions.

The sample is composed of 3,024 non-financial and non-government firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the period 1995 to 2020. To encounter the endogeneity problem, the instrumental variable technique based on peer firms' idiosyncratic risk is used to estimate the effects of peers on firms' payout policy. To define peer reference groups, the authors use the basic industry classification of the firms.

The results indicate a significant positive impact of peers on firms' dividend policies in India. A firm with all dividend-paying peers is more likely to declare dividends than the one with no dividend-paying peers. Further, peer effects are found to be more pronounced amongst larger and older firms, thus supporting the rivalry theory of mimicking.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind that attempts to understand peer effects on payout decisions in an emerging market India, that offers a unique institutional setting. Moreover, the authors extend the existing literature by investigating the peer effects on a firm's payout policies considering various firm-level characteristics, such as growth opportunity, cash holding, financial constraint and profitability, which previous studies have not taken into consideration. These results provide additional insights into the heterogeneity and motives behind peer effects.

In recent times, reverse logistics (RL) is gaining significant traction in various automobile industries to recapture returned vehicles’ value. A good RL program can lower manufacturing costs, establish a green supply chain, enhance customer satisfaction and provide a competitive advantage. However, reducing disruptions and increasing operational efficiency in the automobile RL requires implementing innovative technology to improve information flow and security. Thus, this manuscript aims to examine the hurdles in automobile RL activities and how they can be effectively tackled by blockchain technology (BCT). Merging BCT and RL provides the entire automobile industry a chance to generate value for its consumers through effective vehicle return policies, manufacturing cost reduction, maintenance records tracking, administration of vehicle information and a clear payment record of insurance contracts.

This research is presented in three stages to accomplish the task. First, previous literature and experts' opinions are examined to highlight certain factors that are an aggravation to BCT implementation. Next, this study proposed an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) – decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships. Finally, the causal outline diagrams are plotted to determine the influence of factors on one another for BCT implementation in automobile RL.

This study has categorized the barriers to BCT implementation into five major factors – operational and strategical, technical, knowledge and behavioral, financial and infrastructural, and government rules and regulations. The results revealed that disreputable technology, low-bearing capacity of IT systems and operational inefficiency are the most significant factors to be dealt with by automobile industry professionals for finer and enhanced RL processes utilizing BCT. The most noticeable advantage of BCT is its enormous amount of data, permitting automobile RL to develop client experience through real-time data insights.

This study reveals several factors that are hindering the implementation of BCT in RL activities of the automobile industry. The results can assist experts and policymakers improve their existing decision-making systems while making an effort to implement BCT into the automobile industry's RL activities.

Although there are several studies on the benefits of BCT in RL and the adoption of BCT in the automobile industry, individually, none have explicated the use of BCT in automobile RL. This is also the first kind of study that has used IVIFS-DEMATEL with the Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships hindering BCT implementation in automobile RL activities.