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This study aims to find how can fashion micro-influencers and their electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) messages increase consumer engagement on social media, focusing on micro-influencers’ influence, typology, eWOM content and consumer engagement.

A total of 20,000 microblogs were collected from Irish fashion micro-influencers and analyzed through keyword classification and content analysis in NVivo. The determinants of eWOM persuasiveness for consumer engagement on social media were investigated based on Sussman and Siegal’s information adoption model.

The study finds that among the four types of micro-influencers, market mavens and their eWOM messages have the highest impact on consumer engagement on social media, and it presents a repetitive and persuasive eWOM model of market mavens to increase consumer participation. Also, the study discovers that micro-influencers’ occasion-related microblogs have an increasing impact on consumer interactions whereas microblogs with brands have a decreasing engagement with consumers on social media.

This study advances prior studies on the relationship between influencers’ eWOM messages and consumer participation on social media by the development of a persuasive eWOM model of micro-influencers to increase consumer engagement and fill in the lack of relevant literature. Also, findings provide actionable insights for marketing communication practitioners to persuade consumers to participate in eWOM communications and establish strong consumer-brand relationships on social media.

Previous research has studied interactive value formation (IVF) using resource- or practice-based approaches but has neglected the role of emotions. This article aims to show how emotions are correlated in problematic social media interactions and explore their role in IVF.

By combining a text mining algorithm, nonparametric Spearman's rho and thematic qualitative analysis in an explanatory sequential mixed-method design, the authors (1) categorize customers' comments as positive, neutral or negative; (2) pinpoint peaks of negative comments; (3) classify problematic interactions as detrimental, contradictory or conflictual; (4) identify customers' main positive (joy, trust and surprise) and negative emotions (anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear and sadness) and (5) correlate these emotions.

Despite several problematic social interactions, the same pattern of emotions appears but with different intensities. Additionally, value co-creation, value no-creation and value co-destruction co-occur in a context of problematic social interactions (peak of negative comments).

This study provides new insights into the effect of customers' emotions during IVF by studying the links between positive and negative emotions and their effects on different sorts of problematic social interactions.

The e-freight program launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has gradually become a standard specification for international air freight operations. This study examined critical factors affecting air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the IATA e-freight using a technology-organization-environment model with air freight forwarders in Taiwan as the base. Our findings show that ‘information technology (IT) competence’, ‘trading partner pressure’, ‘government policy’ and ‘competitive pressure’ all have significant positive effects on air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the e-freight and the top three factors among these are ‘government funding’, ‘government’s active promotion’ and ‘government’s requirement of electronic air waybill (e-AWB)’. Finally, this study proposes strategies that can encourage air freight forwarders to decide on e-freight adoption for the information of relevant oK regyawniozradtison International Air Transport Association (IATA); IATA e-freight; Technology organization environment model; Air freight forwarder

Simulation-based optimisation (SO) is a popular optimisation approach for building and civil engineering construction planning. However, in the framework of SO, the simulation is continuously invoked during the optimisation trajectory, which increases the computational loads to levels unrealistic for timely construction decisions. Modification on the optimisation settings such as reducing searching ability is a popular method to address this challenge, but the quality measurement of the obtained optimal decisions, also termed as optimisation quality, is also reduced by this setting. Therefore, this study aims to develop an optimisation approach for construction planning that reduces the high computational loads of SO and provides reliable optimisation quality simultaneously.

This study proposes the optimisation approach by modifying the SO framework through establishing an embedded connection between simulation and optimisation technologies. This approach reduces the computational loads and ensures the optimisation quality associated with the conventional SO approach by accurately learning the knowledge from construction simulations using embedded ensemble learning algorithms, which automatically provides efficient and reliable fitness evaluations for optimisation iterations.

A large-scale project application shows that the proposed approach was able to reduce computational loads of SO by approximately 90%. Meanwhile, the proposed approach outperformed SO in terms of optimisation quality when the optimisation has limited searching ability.

The core contribution of this research is to provide an innovative method that improves efficiency and ensures effectiveness, simultaneously, of the well-known SO approach in construction applications. The proposed method is an alternative approach to SO that can run on standard computing platforms and support nearly real-time construction on-site decision-making.

Aiding employment is an important poverty reduction strategy in many countries’ social welfare systems, as this strategy can help empower the recipients with a better living standard, development and social inclusion. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most significant individual and systematic variables for the employment status of low-income groups in urban China.

The data of this study are drawn from “Social Policy Support System for Poverty-stricken Families in Urban and Rural China 2015” report. The Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China appointed and funded the Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS) at Peking University to deliver the related project and organize a research team to write the report. Multiple binary logistic regression analysis is adopted to identify both individual and systematic factors that affect the employment status among low-income groups in urban China.

According to the results of the binary logistic regression model, individual factors, including: gender; householder status; education; and self-rated health status, play a significant role in determining the employment status of low-income groups in urban China. Clearly, the impacts of individual factors are more influential to marginal families than to families entitled to receive Basic Living Allowance. In contrast, compared with marginal families, systematic factors are more influential to families entitled to receive Basic Living Allowance.

This study highlights the importance of precise poverty reduction strategy and the issue of “welfare dependence” among low-income groups in urban China. Policy recommendations derived from the findings are hence given, including: the promotion of family-friendly policies; the introduction of a smart healthcare system; the establishment of a Basic Living Allowance adjustment mechanism; and the provision of related social services.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

Vision, audition, olfactory, tactile and taste are five important senses that human uses to interact with the real world. As facing more and more complex environments, a sensing system is essential for intelligent robots with various types of sensors. To mimic human-like abilities, sensors similar to human perception capabilities are indispensable. However, most research only concentrated on analyzing literature on single-modal sensors and their robotics application.

This study presents a systematic review of five bioinspired senses, especially considering a brief introduction of multimodal sensing applications and predicting current trends and future directions of this field, which may have continuous enlightenments.

This review shows that bioinspired sensors can enable robots to better understand the environment, and multiple sensor combinations can support the robot’s ability to behave intelligently.

The review starts with a brief survey of the biological sensing mechanisms of the five senses, which are followed by their bioinspired electronic counterparts. Their applications in the robots are then reviewed as another emphasis, covering the main application scopes of localization and navigation, objection identification, dexterous manipulation, compliant interaction and so on. Finally, the trends, difficulties and challenges of this research were discussed to help guide future research on intelligent robot sensors.

As an advanced manufacturing method, additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides new possibilities for efficient production and design of parts. However, with the continuous expansion of the application of AM materials, subtractive processing has become one of the necessary steps to improve the accuracy and performance of parts. In this paper, the processing process of AM materials is discussed in depth, and the surface integrity problem caused by it is discussed.

Firstly, we listed and analyzed the characterization parameters of metal surface integrity and its influence on the performance of parts and then introduced the application of integrated processing of metal adding and subtracting materials and the influence of different processing forms on the surface integrity of parts. The surface of the trial-cut material is detected and analyzed, and the surface of the integrated processing of adding and subtracting materials is compared with that of the pure processing of reducing materials, so that the corresponding conclusions are obtained.

In this process, we also found some surface integrity problems, such as knife marks, residual stress and thermal effects. These problems may have a potential negative impact on the performance of the final parts. In processing, we can try to use other integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, try to combine various integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, or consider exploring more efficient AM technology to improve processing efficiency. We can also consider adopting production process optimization measures to reduce the processing cost of adding and subtracting materials.

With the gradual improvement of the requirements for the surface quality of parts in the production process and the in-depth implementation of sustainable manufacturing, the demand for integrated processing of metal addition and subtraction materials is likely to continue to grow in the future. By deeply understanding and studying the problems of material reduction and surface integrity of AM materials, we can better meet the challenges in the manufacturing process and improve the quality and performance of parts. This research is very important for promoting the development of manufacturing technology and achieving success in practical application.

Metaverse is a virtual application spawned by digital technology that is becoming increasingly relevant to our lives. However, for the opportunities created and challenges posed by the metaverse, its important elements and future evolution trend remain largely unknown. Thus, this paper aims to understand the current status of metaverse research and its future research directions.

Based on the analysis of the literature data on the metaverse both in English and Chinese using Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling and bibliometrics, this study discussed the related research and development trend of the metaverse. The authors first defined the concept of the metaverse and analyzed 1,378 English articles from seven publishers and 590 Chinese articles from the CNKI database. Following that, the authors summarized three important themes from the current studies: virtual world, metaverse technologies and metaverse applications. Finally, a framework of future directions on metaverse research was proposed.

The review found that during the rapid development of the metaverse, opportunities and challenges coexisted. In the virtual world, metaverse technologies drive the implementation of application scenarios, and in turn, applications promote the improvement of technologies. The interrelationship between technology and application lays the foundation for the development of the metaverse. Future metaverse research will generate different research directions.

This review provides a valuable, systematic perspective for individuals who want to understand the metaverse. The conceptual framework on metaverse research proposed in this paper offers a comparison of literature analysis from domestic and international perspectives and brings new insights into the development of the metaverse.

Souvenirs have been repeatedly studied as both a subject and as a variable for other tourism-related phenomena, but research into this issue is fragmented. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to analyze souvenir in tourism to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review. Second, this paper contributes to identifying the directions for future search through reviewing existing literature. This study is one of the first papers to offer a systematic overview of the key themes in tourism souvenir research. In addition to the key themes, this paper also offers insights into future souvenir research.