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This study seeks to explore the intricate relationship among supply chain transparency, digitalization and idiosyncratic risk, with a specific focus on newly public firms. The objective is to determine whether supply chain transparency effectively mitigates idiosyncratic risk within this context and to understand the potential impact of digitalization on this dynamic interplay.

The study utilizes data from Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on China’s Growth Enterprise Board (ChiNext) over the last five years, sourced from the CSMAR database and firms’ annual reports. The research covers the period from 2009 to 2021, observing each firm for five years post-IPO. The final sample comprises 2,645 observations from 529 firms. The analysis employs the Hausman test, considering the panel-data structure of the sample and favoring fixed effects over random effects. Additionally, it applies the high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE) estimator to address unobserved heterogeneity.

The analysis initially uncovered an inverted U-shaped relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, indicating a delicate equilibrium where detrimental effects diminish and beneficial effects accelerate with increased transparency. Moreover, this inverted U-shaped relationship was notably more pronounced in newly public firms with a heightened level of firm digitalization. This observation implies that firm digitalization amplifies the impact of transparency on a firm’s idiosyncratic risk.

This study distinguishes itself by providing distinctive insights into supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk. Initially, we introduce and substantiate an inverted U-shaped correlation between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, challenging the conventional linear perspective. Secondly, we pioneer the connection between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, especially for newly public firms, thereby enhancing comprehension of financial implications. Lastly, we pinpoint crucial digital conditions that influence the relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk management, offering a nuanced perspective on the role of technology in risk management.

The distinct characteristics of slow tourism compared to mass tourism determine the differences between slow travelers and mass travelers. This transformation is essential for potential tourists to transition into slow travelers when promoting slow tourism to them. Can travel vlogs, a “fast” way of promoting, achieve such a “slow” transformation? To address this question, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the resonance theory and investigate the impact of resonance with slow tourism vlogs on potential travelers’ destination image and travel intention.

Through the distribution of online questionnaires on site, this study collected a total of 349 valid questionnaires. Subsequently, the researcher used partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

The research findings indicate that cognitive resonance only positively affected cognitive image, while emotional resonance was positively associated with both cognitive image and affective image. In addition, it was observed that cognitive image and affective image played a positive mediating role between resonance with slow tourism vlogs and travel intention.

This research is pioneering in quantitatively validating the structure linking resonance, destination image and travel intention in the context of slow tourism. By validating the second-order structure of cognitive and emotional resonance, this study underscores the crucial role of resonance in shaping tourists’ transition toward a slow mindset in slow tourism.

Ukraine hosts thousands of international students for educational tourism, of which more than 18,000 Indian medical students were compelled to escape Ukraine under emergency conditions of war. This paper aims to examine their intention to return to Ukraine to complete their education based on an integrated theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework with added constructs, i.e. risk perception, career anxiety, rescue and relief memory.

The data were collected from 26 February 2022 to 30 June 2022 in two phases and two modes. It was ensured that the respondents were strictly confined to Indian medical students who had travelled to Ukraine for educational tourism. SPSS 25 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analyse the data. The hypotheses proposed were statistically tested.

The analysis reveals that the extended TPB model resulted in a strong model and the empirical findings corroborate that the students’ attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and career anxiety significantly and positively influence the students’ revisit intention (RI) while risk perception and rescue and relief memory have a negative influence on the RI.

The study provides timely insights and implications to the Ukrainian tourism industry, particularly educational tourism business and medical institutions under the present turmoil, which can also act as blueprint research for destinations with a similar unstable political background.

The primary value of this research work is that it provides an understanding of the intention of medical students (educational tourists) towards revisiting the war-hit destination of Ukraine.

Leader high performance expectation (LHPE) as a performance management practice is becoming more common in today’s business environment, with managers setting ambitious goals to motivate employees to excel at their jobs. This study aims to critically examine LHPE as a performance management practice within contemporary organizations, focusing on whether LHPE has opposing effects on employee performance and health, as well as how servant leadership can improve the benefits of LHPE while lowering its costs.

A path analysis of data from a three-wave survey of 416 full-time employees was used to test our hypotheses.

LHPE has opposing effects on employees via two distinct pathways: motivational effects on employee performance via harmonious work passion and strain effects on employee health via work strain. In the face of LHPE, servant leadership can assist in achieving a mutual gain between employee performance and health.

This study contributes uniquely to the field of employee relations by offering a comprehensive analysis of LHPE’s dual effects. It moves beyond traditional views that focus on singular outcomes, providing a deeper understanding of how LHPE can both motivate and strain employees. Highlighting servant leadership’s role signifies a novel approach to managing LHPE’s complexities, presenting valuable insights for HR practitioners and organizational leaders. This research underlines the importance of balancing performance expectations with employee well-being, aligning with modern perspectives on positive employment relationships.

The purpose of this study is to examine different paths to overcoming the liability of foreignness. Based on the eclectic paradigm, the authors construct a theoretical framework comprising enterprise nature, location choice, entry mode and internationalization strategy.

The paper uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to test the framework with data covering 120 multinational Chinese subsidiaries in 34 host in 2019.

The results show that liability of foreignness (LOF) is multiple concurrency, equifinality and asymmetry. When investing in Belt and Road (B&R) countries, non-SEOs can weaken LOF by applying the greenfield mode and resource-seeking strategy, other MNEs can implement a market- or resource-seeking strategy via cross-border M&A to reduce LOF. But when investing in non-B&R countries with a strategic asset-seeking strategy, the LOF is increased. The B&R initiative can reduce the LOF effectively.

The authors construct a general framework to explain the paths of overcoming LOF by bridging the OLI with LOF and introduce fsQCA method into the field of LOF to make up for the shortcoming of existing test method by explaining the influence of more than three factors on LOF.

As one of China’s most influential social platforms, Xiaohongshu is considered an underexploited market with significant user traffic. This study aims to build on existing scholarly work on social media marketing by conducting an empirical analysis of Xiaohongshu’s content to explore effective marketing strategies for children’s books.

This study uses qualitative content analysis to investigate the marketing practices for children’s books on Xiaohongshu. By systematically coding and interpreting data, the authors identified core marketing strategies and their interactions among publishers of children’s books on the platform.

Based on viral marketing and social proof theories, the analysis delineates practices and interrelations among three key marketing strategy components: content creation, traffic navigation and sales conversion on Xiaohongshu. From this analysis, a conceptual model titled “Continuous ‘Planting a Seed’ of Interest: Strategies for Marketing Children’s Books on Xiaohongshu” was developed.

This research not only corroborates the existing literature on the transformative power of social media in marketing but also extends it by providing a focused examination of how these principles apply to the promotion of children’s books on Xiaohongshu. It also provides practical insights for publishers looking to develop effective marketing strategies.

We attempt to analyze the impact of retailer’s rebate strategy on consumer reviews and retailer’s profits.

Retailers' rebates have a chance to affect sales and their profits by encouraging customers to submit product reviews. To investigate the impact of retailer’s rebate strategy on consumer reviews and retailer’s profits, we describe the consumer’s utility function and the number of consumer-written reviews by introducing the concepts of product demand mismatch and consumer review effort, then develop a two-stage model of the retailer’s rebate strategy and examine how the retailer’s rebate affects online reviews, the consumer’s perceived utility and the retailer’s profit. Finally, a number case verifies the validity and rationality of the proposed model.

The results show that the rebate strategy can effectively reduce consumer dissatisfaction caused by excessive product demand mismatch, improve the consumer utility, prompt more positive comments, and thus increase product sales.

In this paper, we focus on the impact of retailers' rebate strategy on consumer purchase decisions. The research can accurately reflect the influence of online reviews on consumers and retailers, assisting merchants in making the best selections. The analysis indicates that the retailer’s rebate strategy can have a direct impact on consumers' evaluation choices and product sales.

Product discounts have been widely applied in digital commerce as a method to attract and retain customers to purchase in China. Given that digital channels differ in their attributes, customers may behave differently when they respond to the same discount across channels. However, little attention has been paid to explore the heterogeneity of customer responses to discounts across channels. This study aims to fill in the gap by exploring how customers’ purchase responses to price discounts differ across digital channels.

This study applies a Poisson regression to an unbalanced data set of purchasing history from Chinese footwear brands with 3,510 customers in a two-year time window across the three digital channels (i.e. personal computer [PC], app and mobile website), with a correction for endogeneity by using the Gaussian copula method.

This paper finds that price discounts have the strongest positive effect on consumers’ purchase volumes on the PC channel, followed by the app channel, while discounts show the weakest impact in the mobile website channel. By so, this paper demonstrates that customers respond differently to online and mobile channels, and they also respond differently within mobile channels when they purchase products with price discounts.

This study is original in analyzing the difference in customers’ discount responses across digital channels, offering valuable contributions to existing research on multichannel marketing as well as mobile marketing and providing helpful insights for multichannel merchants to design digital discount strategies.

To setup a theoretical model for grasping cutting pieces of garment better, which will help to design a special soft gripper and push forward the automated level of garment manufacturing.

This paper first analyzed the mechanics of the grasping process and concluded the main factors that affect the success of grasping. A theoretical model named grasping fabric model (GFM) was constructed to show the mechanical relationship between the soft gripper and the fabric pieces. Subsequently, two fabric samples were selected and tested for their friction properties and critical buckling force, and the test data were substituted into the theoretical model GFM to obtain the grasping parameters required for fabric grasping layer by layer.

It was found that (1) the critical buckling force of the fabric is mainly influenced by the bending stiffness and the deformation length of the fabric during grab. (2) The difference between the friction between the soft gripper and the fabric and the friction between the fabric, that is DF1-2, has an important influence on the accuracy of grasping layer-by-layer.

It showed that the grasping parameters provided by GFM enable the two samples to be more effectively separated layer by layer, which verifies that the GFM model is strong enough for the possible application in garment automated production.