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Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for equality by donating money to affected people. This research examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated social protest cycle after the death of George Floyd have influenced donation behavior for campaigns with a personal goal and those with a societal goal supporting the black community.

This paper follows a quantitative research approach by applying a quasi-experimental research design on a GoFundMe dataset. In total, 67,905 campaigns and 1,362,499 individual donations were analyzed.

We uncover a rise in donations for campaigns supporting the black community, which lasts substantially longer for campaigns with a societal than with a personal funding goal. Informed by construal level theory, we attribute this heterogeneity to changes in the level of abstractness of the problems that social movements aim to tackle.

This research advances the knowledge of individual donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our results highlight the important role that charitable crowdfunding campaigns play in promoting social justice and anti-discrimination as part of social protest cycles.

Crowdfunding (CF) has become an increasingly popular means of financing for entrepreneurs and has attracted significant attention from both researchers and practitioners in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate the core content and knowledge diffusion paths in the CF field. Specifically, we aim to identify the main topics and themes that have emerged in this field and to trace the evolution of CF knowledge over time.

This study employs co-word clustering and main path analysis (MPA) to examine the historical development of CF research based on 1,528 journal articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database.

The results of the analysis reveal that CF research focuses on seven themes: sustainability, entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurship, fintech, social entrepreneurship, social capital, and microcredits. The analysis of the four main paths reveals that equity CF has been the dominant topic in the past years. Recently, CF research has tended to focus on topics such as fintech, the COVID-19 pandemic, competition, Brexit, and policy response.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore knowledge diffusion dynamics in the CF field. Overall, the study offers a structure for analyzing the paths through which knowledge is diffused, enabling scholars to effectively manage a large volume of research papers and gain a deeper understanding of the historical, current, and future trends in the development of CF.

This study aims to examine the effects of industrial production (IP), inflation and investment on suicide mortality in Turkey as a developing country over the 1988–2018 period.

Fourier cointegration test and dynamic ordinary least square regression were used in this study.

IP and investment have a statistically significant and negative impact on suicide mortality, whereas inflation has a statistically significant and positive effect on suicide mortality.

The results of this study have important implications for policymakers and potentially the creation and implementation of suicide prevention policies. Not only do investment promotion, IP and disinflation policies in developing countries have a significant effect on economic growth but they also have a substantial impact on mental health.

Although previous studies have investigated the impact of economic growth and unemployment on suicide deaths in Turkey, no research has probed the effect of economic factors, except for unemployment and gross domestic product, on suicide. Thus, given the hidden unemployment and informal sector in developing economies, it is vital to examine the impact of IP, inflation and investment on mental health.

In this study, the deployment of an integrated Quality Function Deployment (QFD) decision framework is presented to help cities design targeted strategies to become “smart”. Arguably smart cities leverage advanced technologies to enhance their smartness to improve everyday urban life. To this end, a QFD – Analytic Hierarchy Process – Analytic Network Process (QFD-AHP-ANP) framework is proposed to deliver guidance for selecting the appropriate mix of smart technologies based on the specific smart needs of each city.

The AHP and ANP methods are incorporated into QFD to enhance its methodological robustness in formulating the decision problem. AHP accurately captures and translates the “Voice of the Experts” into prioritized “Smart City” dimensions, while establishing inter-relationships between these dimensions and “Smart City Technologies”. Meanwhile, ANP explores tradeoffs among the technologies, enabling well-informed decisions. The framework’s effectiveness is evaluated through an illustrative application in the city of Thessaloniki.

Applying the framework to this real-world context confirms its practicality and utility, demonstrating its ability to particularize local, social, political, environmental and economic trends through the resulting mix of technologies in smart urban development strategies.

The importance of this study lies in several aspects. Firstly, it introduces a novel QFD decision framework tailored for smart city strategic planning. Secondly, it contributes to the operationalization of the smart city concept by providing guidance for cities to effectively adopt smart technologies. Finally, this study represents a new field of application for QFD, expanding its scope beyond its traditional domains.

Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

Academic integrity in tertiary education is a global concern. This chapter describes academic integrity in Australian universities and proposes an “it takes a village” framework to guide universities toward a re-evaluation of academic integrity education. It takes a village to raise a child – a child needs role models and positive influences from multiple people for healthy growth and development. With regard to academic integrity, the parallel is that the entire university community needs to be involved to foster development of students of integrity. The institution and its community need to provide structures, multiple positive and effective learning experiences, and clear guidelines to support both staff and students. In this chapter, we argue that academic integrity needs to be seen as a complex system, one in which everyone involved has responsibility to develop and maintain a culture of integrity and one which supports a student throughout their academic journey.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

Drawing on paradox theory and the category of the “performing-organizing” paradox, the study investigates the tensions firms experience in the context of organizing the processes involved in managing their indirect GHG emissions.

The authors develop hypotheses to explain why the paradox elements of supply chain transparency and supply chain coordination affect firms' ability to reduce their indirect supply chains GHG emissions. Using a two-stage method based on data from Refinitiv and CDP for 2002 to 2021, the authors test this study’s hypotheses through panel regression analyses.

While greater transparency experience with scope 3 emissions disclosure, GSCM practices and broader supply chain engagement are all associated with higher levels of scope 3 emissions levels, both long-term transparency experience and GSCM practices are also associated with relative reductions in scope 3 emissions over time.

Given growing pressures on firms to demonstrate both transparency and legitimacy regarding their scope 3 emissions, firms must understand the characteristics of this paradox as this has implications for how emissions performance is perceived and managed. This study's results suggested that firms need to take both a long-term perspective and effectively communicate the differences involved in reporting their emissions performance to avoid unwarranted criticism.

Filling a gap in sustainable OSCM studies by providing large-scale quantitative insights into the relationships between organizing and performing, the authors demonstrate that the processes involved in firms' efforts of measuring and managing their indirect scope 3 emissions are paradoxically affected by whether performance outcomes are specified as annual absolute levels of scope 3 emissions, or relative changes over time.

In view of the increasing trend in food policies targeting the promotion of consumer interest in locally produced foods and growing developments in willingness-to-pay (WTP) methodologies, the authors investigate consumer preference for packaged traditional drink asaana.

The study used a simple random sample of 336 consumers to draw on perception index and contingent valuation methods to evaluate consumers' perceptions of the attributes of packaged asaana – a traditional maize-based beverage produced in Ghana (also known as Ghana Coca-Cola). A tobit regression model was employed to analyze consumers’ WTP for the product.

Analyzing the factors that influence consumers' WTP for packaged asaana using the tobit regression model, the study established the existence of positive health and nutrition, economic benefits and purchasing decision-making perceptions for asaana. While the results further showed that consumers are willing to pay a premium for well-packaged asaana, demographics such as age, income level, labeling, price of the product and savings were found to exert significant influence on consumers’ WTP for packaged asaana. Salient recommendations for food processors and relevant government agencies and food policy implications are identified.

Comprehending WTP provides valuable understanding regarding consumer qualms, actions and WTP for more secure traditional drinks and an examination of how the different factors that influence WTP for local beverages help boost local beverage production and guarantee employment.

Analyzing WTP data for traditional drinks reveals important implications for production, marketing and public health policies. Certification systems for traditional beverages may be beneficial, and the findings can be used to create public awareness campaigns about the safety of local drinks.

Assessing the WTP among Ghanaian consumers for traditional drinks, specifically asaana, is a ground-breaking study. The contingent evaluation (CE) and tobit regression approaches utilized in this research are strong, and the results obtained can guide decisions related to traditional drink production, marketing and the development of public health policies.

This study aims to assess financial development and debt status impact on energy efficiency in Nigeria as a developing economy.

This study combined the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), fully modified ordinary least squares and canonical cointegration regression analytical methods to estimate the parameters for energy efficiency policy recommendations. Secondary data between 1990 and 2020 were used for the analysis.

The result confirms the long-run nexus between energy efficiency, financial development and total debt stock. Furthermore, the ARDL estimates for this study’s key variables show that financial development promotes energy efficiency in the short run but hinders long-run energy efficiency. Total debt stock limits energy efficiency in Nigeria in short- and long-run periods.

The limitation of this study is that the scope is limited to Nigeria as a developing economy. The need to support energy efficiency projects is a global call requiring cross-country analysis. Despite this study’s focus on Nigeria, it provides useful insights that can guide energy efficiency policy through the financial sector and debt management.

The financial sector must ensure the availability of long-term credit facilities to clean energy investors. The government must maintain a sustainable debt profile to pave the way for capital expenditure on clean energy projects that promote energy efficiency.

The environmental consequences of energy intensity are being felt globally, with the developing countries most vulnerable. The cheapest way to curb these consequences is to promote energy efficiency to reduce the disastrous effect. Driving energy efficiency requires investment in energy-efficient technology but the challenge for developing economies, i.e. Nigeria’s funding, remains challenging amid a blotted debt profile. This becomes crucial to investigate how financial sector development and debt management can accelerate energy-efficient investments in Nigeria.