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The purpose of this research was to investigate at the influence of technology acceptance model (TAM) characteristics including perceived ease of use, perceived compatibility, and perceived security on the perceived utility and actual use of mobile banking among Yemeni academics. It also investigated the function of perceived utility as a moderator in the link between TAM variables and mobile banking adoption. The sample size was 251 respondents who worked at universities in Yemen and were chosen using stratified random selection. According to the findings, perceived compatibility and perceived security had a substantial positive influence on perceived usefulness and real mobile banking use; however perceived simplicity of use had no effect on mobile banking usage. According to the results, perceived usefulness slightly mediated the association between perceived ease of use and security and mobile banking use, whereas it completely mediated the relationship between perceived compatibility and mobile banking usage. Overall, the research proved the significance of TAM elements in academics’ use of mobile banking in Yemen, offering a credible empirical framework for studying mobile banking usage in this setting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of halal meat consumption within the population of Chinese Muslims in China using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a conceptual framework. The role of self-identity as a Muslim, dietary acculturation in the host culture, moral obligation to purchase halal meat and trust on the authenticity of halal meat are explored.

Cross-sectional data were collected through a survey with 378 Chinese Muslims, currently living in Beijing and Xian cities. Data were analysed by means of correlations and stepwise multiple regressions to test the model and the moderating effects of self-identity, dietary acculturation, moral obligation and trust on behavioural intention.

A positive personal attitude towards the consumption of halal meat, personal conviction, motivation to comply, perceived control over consuming halal meat and perceived availability of halal meat predict the intention to eat halal meat among Chinese Muslims.

Limitations include the focus on only four individual characteristics related to religious food consumption, namely, self-identity, dietary acculturation, moral obligation and trust. Additional individual characteristics such as individualism-collectivism and involvement or values could improve the predictive power of the model.

Practical implications extend to food marketers and food policy decision-makers who might pursue identity, acculturation, trustworthiness and moral obligation-related strategies in their distribution and communication efforts targeted at the growing halal food market segments across China and worldwide.

The current study addresses the important limitation of previous studies regarding the inclusion of additional possible individual characteristics such as moral obligation and trust in the TPB model to investigate the determinants of halal meat consumption within a food-religion context.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of halal meat consumption within a Turkish Muslim migration population in Germany using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a conceptual framework. The role of self-identity as a Muslim, dietary acculturation in the host culture, moral obligation to purchase halal food and trust on the authenticity of available halal food are explored.

A quantitative cross-sectional survey design for the current study was adopted. Purposive sampling through self-administered questionnaires was used to collect data from 517 Muslim consumers originated from Turkey and currently living in Germany. The analysis includes exploratory factor analysis, means scores, linear correlation and multiple regressions to examine the determinants of halal meat consumption.

A positive personal attitude towards the consumption of halal meat, motivation to comply with the opinion of important persons and institutions and the perceived control over consuming halal meat predict the intention to eat halal meat among Muslims.

This study used self-identity, dietary acculturation, trust and moral obligation as moderator variables. Future research should also examine the moderating effects of values such as individualism/collectivism and materialism and demographic factors such as age, country of origin, education level and income level to increase the predictive power of the current TPB model.

Practical implications can be extended to those policymakers, marketing managers and advertising agencies dealing with food-related products. They can pursue strategies based on religious self-identity, dietary acculturation, trustworthiness and moral obligation factors in their distribution and communication efforts targeted at the growing local and international market of halal food.

This is one of the few studies investigating the determinants of halal meat consumption in a Muslim population in Germany using the TPB within a food, religion and migration context.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a site selection method using grey system theory for a desalination plant in Libya.

In order to tackle incompleteness and imprecision of human’s judgments, grey numbers were used. This work uses a grey-based approach to represent decision makers’ comparison judgments and extent analysis method to select the best site. Therefore, a real case study of a selection problem of a site selection of desalination plant in Libya was used to illustrate the proposed approach.

Site selection in a desalination plant can be one of the most important decisions in planning a desalination project. The decision affects both the project cost and potentially the project schedule. Based on the results of grey model, a clear order of these sites and the degree of preference are obtained. This paper presents a way to improve a site selection by using a grey model, especially in a complex environment like Libya.

To the best knowledge of the authors, there is no literature for site selection using grey system theory in a desalination plant in Libya. This attempt may well enhance and facilitate the decision-making process of the best site in the country involved in this research.

This chapter provided systematic and comprehensive analysis on trawl fisheries management and conservation measures in the Straits of Malacca. Detailed analysis is conducted on Malaysian fishery management framework particularly domestic country's trawl fishery status, legal structure, input-control strategies, ecosystem protection plan, pollution, law enforcement, and complementary measures that designed to reduce and prevent overfishing in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Malacca Straits. Gaps and challenges found in existing trawl fisheries literature are presented followed by recommendations for improvement in the management and conservation of trawl fisheries.

The purpose of this study is two phase modeling of Water/Cu nanofluid forced convection in different arrangements of elliptical tube banks in a two-dimensional space.

The arrangements of tube banks have been regarded as equal spacing triangle (ES), equilateral triangle (ET) and the rotated square (RS). The obtained results indicate that, among the investigated arrangements, the RS arrangement has the maximum value of heat transfer with cooling fluid. Also, the changes of Nusselt number and the local friction factor are under the influence of three main factors including volume fraction of slid nanoparticles, the changes of fluid velocity parameters on the curved surface of tube and flow separation after crossing from a specified angle of fluid rotation.

In Reynolds number of 250 and in all arrangements of the tube banks, the behavior of Nusselt number is almost the same and the separation of flow happens in almost 155-165 degrees from fluid rotation on surface. In RS arrangement, due to the strength of vortexes after fluid separation, better mixture is created and because of this reason, after the separation zone, the level of local Nusselt number graph enhances significantly.

In this research, the laminar and two-phase flow of Water/Cu nanofluid in tube banks with elliptical cross section has been numerically investigated in a two-dimensional space with different longitudinal arrangements. In this study, the effects of using nanofluid, different arrangements of tube banks and the elliptical cross section on heat transfer and cooling fluid flow among the tube banks of heat exchanger have been numerically simulated by using finite volume method.

An increment in energy efficiency by employing nanoparticles is a hot topic of research in present era due to its abundant implications in modern engineering and technological processes. Therefore, the current research analysis reported the viscoelastic nanofluid flow over porous oscillatory moving sheet in the presence of microorganisms. A rate-type fluid namely Maxwell fluid is employed with the addition of nanoparticles. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

First, acceptable dimensionless variables are defined to convert the system of dimensional form into the system of dimensionless forms. Later on, the self-similar solution of the boundary value problem is computed by using the homotopy analysis method. The obtained results of velocity, temperature, mass concentration and motile microorganism density profiles are interpreted through physical background.

The presence of both thermophoresis and Brownian motion parameters also improve the thermophysical features of non-Newtonian nanoparticles. It is also pointed out that the presence of porous medium and magnetic force enhances the nanoparticles concentration. Moreover, a weaker distribution of gyrotactic microorganism has been depicted with Peclet number and bioconvection Lewis parameter.

No such article exists in the literature yet.

Pre-positioning and distributing relief items are important parts of disaster management as it simultaneously considers activities from both pre- and post-disaster stages. This study aims to address this problem with a novel mathematical model.

In this research, a bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to tackle pre-positioning and distributing relief items, and it is formulated as an integrated location-allocation-routing problem with uncertain parameters. The humanitarian supply chain consists of relief facilities (RFs) and demand points (DPs). Perishable and imperishable relief commodities (RCs), different types of vehicles, different transportation modes, a time window for delivering perishable commodities and the occurrence of unmet demand are considered. A scenario-based game theory is applied for purchasing RCs from different suppliers and an integrated best-worst method-technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution technique is implemented to determine the importance of DPs. The proposed model is used to solve several random test problems for verification, and to validate the model, Iran’s flood in 2019 is investigated as a case study for which useful managerial insights are provided.

Managers can effectively adjust their preferences towards response time and total cost of the network and use sensitivity analysis results in their decisions.

The model locates RFs, allocates DPs to RFs in the pre-disaster stage, and determines the routing of RCs from RFs to DPs in the post-disaster stage with respect to minimizing total costs and response time of the humanitarian logistics network.

This paper aims to shed light on how small- and medium-sized enterprises can use export promotion programmes (EPPs) to improve their performance. The proposed conceptual model focuses on the need that the mechanism of awareness and use of EPPs should play a more active strategic role in shaping the firm’s export performance.

A meta-analysis of the pertinent literature reveals 16 studies on EPPs.

This study reveals that there are 16 relationships which are important based on the meta-analytic correlations. The analysis of these relationships shows that EPPs, export performance, strategy, knowledge, commitment, capabilities, competitive advantage and experience are the mostly used constructs.

This investigation supports the view that the moderating effects of the improvement of trust relationship between partners, i.e. importers to exporter and public policymakers to exporter, and the mechanism of awareness and use of EPPs accelerate the firm’s export performance. EPPs explain 31.3 per cent of the variance in export performance indicating their catalytic role in the exports’ growth.