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The purpose of this paper is to investigate dynamics of causal interactions and financial risk contagion among BRICS stock markets under rare events.

Two methods are adopted: The new causal inference technique, namely, the Liang causality analysis based on information flow theory and the dynamic causal index (DCI) are used to measure the financial risk contagion.

The causal relationships among the BRICS stock markets estimated by the Liang causality analysis are significantly stronger in the mid-periods of rare events than in the pre- and post-periods. Moreover, different rare events have heterogeneous effects on the causal relationships. Notably, under rare events, there is almost no significant Liang's causality between the Chinese and other four stock markets, except for a few moments, indicating that the former can provide a relatively safe haven within the BRICS. According to the DCIs, the causal linkages have significantly increased during rare events, implying that their connectivity becomes stronger under extreme conditions.

The obtained results not only provide important implications for investors to reasonably allocate regional financial assets, but also yield some suggestions for policymakers and financial regulators in effective supervision, especially in extreme environments.

This paper uses the Liang causality analysis to construct the causal networks among BRICS stock indices and characterize their causal linkages. Furthermore, the DCI derived from the causal networks is applied to measure the financial risk contagion of the BRICS countries under three rare events.

The tremendous market growth of mobile platforms for esports underscores the need to understand players' psychological states and consumption behavior. Based on flow theory, this study examines players' psychological states (flow and clutch experiences) and consumption behavior based on the interaction effects of playing frequency, playing duration and players' levels on the PC (LOL – League of Legends) and mobile (LOLWR – League of Legends: Wild Rift) versions of the same esports title.

Data were collected from 930 valid responses and analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression (PROCESS macro, Model 3).

There are two main findings. First, across PC and mobile participants, casual gamers (low playing frequency and duration) have firm purchase intention when they have a clutch experience, but flow experience hinders their purchasing intention. Second, hardcore gamers' (high playing frequency and duration) psychological states are clearly distinguished according to technological platforms. Flow experience is the most effective for their purchase intention in the PC platform, but both flow and clutch states are important in the mobile platform. Flow experience is essential overall for hardcore gamers to intend their in-game item purchasing.

This study has two primary originality/values. First, this study explores flow and clutch together to measure psychological states and the impact on the purchase intention of in-game items. Second, the interacting effects of playing frequency, duration, and skill level with technical platforms (i.e. PC and mobile) for esports gaming.

This chapter of the book aims to introduce multiobjective linear programming (MLP) as an optimum tool to find the best quality engineering techniques (QET) in the main domains of supply chain management (SCM). The importance of finding the best quality techniques in SCM elements in the shortest possible time and at the least cost allows all organizations to increase the power of experts’ analysis in supply chain network (SCN) data under cost-effective conditions. In other words, this chapter aims to introduce an operations research model by presenting MLP for obtaining the best QET in the main domains of SCM. MLP is one of the most determinative tools in this chapter that can provide a competitive advantage. Under goal and system constraints, the most challenging task for decision-makers (DMs) is to decide which components to fund and at what levels. The definition of a comprehensive target value among the required goals and determining system constraints is the strength of this chapter. Therefore, this chapter can guide the readers to extract the best statistical and non-statistical techniques with the application of an operations research model through MLP in supply chain elements and shows a new innovation of the effective application of operations research approach in this field. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a supplemental tool in this chapter to facilitate the relevant decision-making process.

Online games are popular applications of Internet technology, with over 2.8 billion users worldwide. Many players engage in team gameplay, indicating that online games are suitable media through which players connect with their friends. However, past studies have not examined the ability of games to assist players in connecting with their friends, indicating a gap. To fill this gap, the authors propose a new concept, the friend-connecting affordance, which is the ability of an online game to enable players to contact friends within the game.

The authors built a model to explain how games' friend-connecting affordances influence game loyalty. The authors gathered responses from 1,347 online players and used structural equation modeling to test the model.

The authors found that friend-connecting affordances and team participation influence game loyalty. Gaming intensity and gaming history can moderate the impact of friend-connecting affordances.

This new affordance can be realized through various game elements, offering unique and actionable insights to game makers. The authors also compared the friend-connecting affordances among a number of popular online games, providing insights specific to each game and increasing the practical value of the findings.

This study intended to identify and categorize the drivers of using online English learning resources (OELR) and to understand OELR's impacts.

The authors conducted an online survey, obtained complete responses from 157 OELR users and used structural equation modeling (SEM) for hypothesis testing.

Most utilitarian and hedonic drivers lead to positive perceptions of OELR, which in turn positively contribute to continuance intention (CI). Two counterintuitive findings were obtained. First, functionality was negatively related to the perception of ease of use. Second, perceived ease of use (PEOU) was not related to CI to use OELR.

This study has implications as follows: (1) complexity of the functions of OELR may deter rather than attract users, (2) ease of use of OELR is not directly positively related to CIs and (3) users may seek practical benefits (utilitarian) and experiential learning processes (hedonic) when using OELR.

The authors' study has theoretical significance by being the first to caution that excessive functionality or complexity in assisting learning tools would likely hinder further use of OELR. The practical significance of this finding is that the finding highlights two factors (perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived enjoyment) that could effectively increase OELR use.

This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a digital medical library, including department-based electronic journal access, library training course participation and scholarly publications.

The data on full-text electronic journal access, participants of library training courses and scholarly publications were exported from a digital medical library database during 2017–2021. In addition, electronic journal access and library training courses were divided into high-level and low-level groups, while scholarly publications were divided into physician and non-physician groups.

The scholarly publications had a positive correlation to library training courses and electronic journal access. Furthermore, scholarly publications showed a significant difference between the high-level and low-level electronic journal access groups but not between the high-level and low-level library training course groups. Scholarly publications and electronic journal access had positive correlations for both the physician and non-physician groups. Scholarly publications and library training courses, and electronic journal access and library training courses had positive correlations only in the non-physician group.

The importance of electronic journal access for scholarly publications is suggested based on the findings of the present study. The training courses held by the medical library had a positive effect on scholarly publications for the non-physician group.

The current study provides insights relevant to the electronic journal access of library-supported scholarly publications among medical departments. These results can serve as a reference for medical library development planning and decision-making in the future.

The research aims to discuss technical and vocational students' long-term and complete evaluation of learning effectiveness under school-wide thematic teaching design.

This study adopted a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach to measure the learning effectiveness of thematic teaching in technical vocational schools using the Kirkpatrick model. Qualitative research conducted in-depth interviews with 32 interviewees, including students, parents, teachers, graduate alumni and the supervisors of off-campus internship units. Quantitative research conducted a questionnaire survey on vocational students. A total of 221 valid questionnaires were collected. In addition, this research conducts another quantitative survey on cooperative enterprises to compare the actual effect of the implementation of the school-wide thematic teaching students with the others, and a total of 35 valid questionnaires were collected.

The results of the research found that the effectiveness of thematic teaching method can achieve the expected goals of each level of Kirkpatrick model. The students taking thematic teaching are significantly better and fitting in the industry expects. Therefore, this research suggests the comprehensive introduction of school-wide thematic teaching to other school operators.

This research is the first study used the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate the effectiveness of school-wide thematic teaching design in hospitality education and providing a practical case for schools. This research combined qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate the effectiveness of the teaching method through multiple perspectives. Through the feedback from supervisors of the hospitality industry, the school-wide thematic teaching design provides a good foundation for technical and vocational graduates.

The purpose of this research is to examine Micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Which have limited access to financial resources from financial intermediaries. Thus, resource allocation is a primary concern for them.

This research studies the determinants of cash conversion cycle components and cash flow of MSMEs operating in Ecuador. This study examined a robust sample of 19,680 firms from 2000 to 2020, using the two-step generalized methods of moments to control for endogeneity and multicollinearity of independent variables issues.

The sample was divided into working capital intensive and fixed capital intensive firms. It was found that in every segment (micro-, small- and medium-sized), the majority of firms are working capital intensive and their average return is higher. This implies that small business owners assign the majority of their resources to current assets, which thus far have enabled them to achieve higher profitability.

Research investigated Ecuadorian MSMEs in a dollarized developing environment. Scrutinizing working capital intensive vs fixed capital intensive.

This study examines academic librarians' perceptions and attitudes toward Internet of Things (IoT) applications in Hong Kong academic libraries and the problems and possible improvements in using IoT technologies to strengthen library services.

This qualitative research used video conferencing software for semi-structured, one-on-one interviews. Participants were given introductory material about the IoT and asked to complete an interview. The data were analyzed using inductive theme clustering for this study.

The analysis identified three themes: perception about applying IoT technology to the library, problems and improvements in using IoT. Participants were generally optimistic about the potential benefits of IoT for improving library operations and providing personalized services. However, they also expressed concerns about privacy and security, errors and extra efforts for information literacy training. They suggested improvements such as incorporating facial recognition technology, advanced RFID technology and collections identification technology to enhance user experience.

Most studies examined users' views rather than librarians' on IoT applications, which few studies cover, especially in East Asia.

This chapter, by virtue of a generalized specification, examines the equilibrium growth paths under two distinct scenarios, namely, a small open economy and a small semiopen economy in a two-sector, endogenous growth model of money. We show that these two scenarios end up with very different characteristics of equilibrium and the steady-state effects of inflation targeting (IT). In a small open economy, there is a nonbalanced-growth path equilibrium (hence, great ratios are nonstationary), while in a small semiopen economy there is a balanced-growth path equilibrium (great ratios are stationary). This provides a convincing reconciliation of the discrepancy in the empirical literature on great ratios. In addition, our steady-state analysis implicitly suggests that a lower inflation target gives rise to a positive GDP growth effect only for those IT countries which are more open to international trade. This enables us to explain why IT countries are relatively open to the international market and why some IT countries with a high degree of trade openness continuously lowered their inflation targets in the 1990s.