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Large, influential and profitable young adults are being targeted for fast fashion that negatively impacts the environment. The transition from a fast to an environmentally friendly slow fashion is a challenging process and culturally dependent. The process starts with slow fashion idea adoption. Thus, the authors modified an information acceptance model (IACM) to examine information characteristics (idea/information quality, credibility, usefulness, source credibility) and consumer factors (need for idea and attitudes) impacting intentions to adopt the slow fashion idea in Canada, South Africa (individualists) and China (collectivists).

Cross-sectional data were collected from South African (n = 197), Chinese (n = 304) and Canadian (n = 227) young adults (18–35 years old) at universities in metropolitan cities. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results show that while most information characteristics and consumer factors are vital for slow fashion attitudes and intention formation, information quality and trust in the sources were a problem in individualistic cultures as opposed to the collectivist culture. This finding confirms the greater tendency of collectivists to trust disseminated information on environmental issues. In all cultures, attitudes impacted idea adoption intentions. On testing IACM, the multigroup analyses showed no significant differences between young adults in the individualistic cultures. Attitudes mediated most relationships and were highly explained by IACM (South Africa, 49.6%; China, 74.5%; and Canada, 64.5%).

In emerging and developed markets, this study informs environmentalists and green fashion brands of information characteristics that can create positive attitudes and slow fashion idea adoption intentions among influential young adults.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how nonprofit service providers can better engage their customers through online communication. It identifies two communication styles and three communication functions, and examines their impact on customer commenting, customer liking and customer sharing.

Similar to Python for Facebook, a software package for the automatic retrieval of web page content was developed specifically for this study to extract data from the microblog Sina Weibo. Following the successful retrieval of 1,500 randomly selected messages from 34 universities in China, a two-level regression was performed using Mplus 7 to examine the association between the proposed relationships.

The findings reveal that messages with a friendly communication style increase both the number of comments and their positive tone; an authoritative style has no effect on customer engagement. The functions associated with message content (spreading information, building community or promoting action) influence customer liking and sharing. Building community tends to engage more customers than spreading information; promoting action often generates the least customer engagement in social media settings.

The study fills an important research gap in the service marketing literature as it pertains to nonprofit service organizations (i.e. universities) by identifying two types of online identities based on the communication style and the messages posted on social media. This study is the first to investigate the relationship between identity type and audience engagement, and to analyze the moderating factors of this relationship.

With the rapid development of China’s urbanisation and market economy, municipal solid waste (MSW) generation is increasing dramatically. In response to the threat of environmental pollution and the potential value of converting waste into energy, both the government and the public are now paying more attention to MSW treatment and disposal methods. In 2014, 178.6 million tonnes of MSW was collected at a safe treatment rate of 84.8%. However, the treatment methods and the composition of MSW are influenced by the collection area, its gross domestic product, population, rainfall and living conditions. This chapter analysed the MSW composition properties of Lhasa, Tibet, compared with other cities, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and so forth. The research showed that the moisture content of MSW in Lhasa approaches 31%, which is much lower than the other cities mentioned previously. The proportion of paper and plastics (rubbers) collected was 25.67% and 19.1%, respectively. This was 1.00–3.17 times and 0.75–2.44 times more than those found in Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. Non-combustibles can reach up to 22.5%, which was 4.03–9.11 times that of Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. The net heating values could reach up to 6,616 kilojoule/kilogram. The food residue was only half the proportion found in other cities. Moreover, the disposal method applied in each city has also been studied and compared.

The authors propose a semiparametric approach for testing independence between two infinite-order cointegrated vector autoregressive series (IVAR(∞)). The procedures considered can be viewed as extensions of classical methods proposed by Haugh (1976, JASA) and Hong (1996b, Biometrika) for testing independence between stationary univariate time series. The tests are based on the residuals of long autoregressions, hence allowing for computational simplicity, weak assumptions on the form of the underlying process, and a direct interpretation of the results in terms of innovations (or shocks). The test statistics are standardized versions of the sum of weighted squares of residual cross-correlation matrices. The weights depend on a kernel function and a truncation parameter. Multivariate portmanteau statistics can be viewed as a special case of our procedure based on the truncated uniform kernel. The asymptotic distributions of the test statistics under the null hypothesis are derived, and consistency is established against fixed alternatives of serial cross-correlation of unknown form. A simulation study is presented which indicates that the proposed tests have good size and power properties in finite samples.

This study aims to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of research-based community service programs in Indonesia that used government funds in 2017–2021.

The design of this research is a quantitative research method using a data envelopment analysis to evaluate 370 leading universities in Indonesia. Furthermore, six analytical models were considered to compare effectiveness and efficiency between universities. It involved two resource (budget and staff academic involved), three output (intellectual property, prototype and publication) and three outcome variables (economic impact, social impact and capacity building).

The findings showed that several universities are considered necessary, with great potential to increase output and outcome efficiency in community involvement. The study mapped and divided the position of 370 universities for additional information. The effectiveness aspect provides another perspective in assessing the performance of tertiary institutions in Indonesia and can be an option for evaluating research performance to improve the quality of output.

The authors use data from research and community service management information systems used, both the resources used and the results. Efficiency and effectiveness of 370 universities were compared in this study, including comparing their position on the previous assessment with the assessment of the results of this study. Approach to the concept of Mandl et al. (2008) regarding the relationship between input, output and outcome as the main component of the indicators, the authors apply to analyze efficiency and effectiveness.

With the rapid development of the sharing economy in manufacturing industries, manufacturers and the equipment suppliers frequently share capacity through the third-party platform. This paper aims to study influences of manufacturers sharing capacity on the supplier and to analyze whether the supplier shares capacity as well as its influences.

This paper deals with conditions that the supplier and manufacturers share capacity through the third-party platform, and the third-party platform competes with the supplier in equipment sales. Considering the heterogeneity of the manufacturer's earning of unit capacity usage and the production efficiency of manufacturer's usage strategies, this paper constructs capacity sharing game models. Then, model equilibrium results under different sharing scenarios are compared.

The results show that when the production or maintenance cost is high, manufacturers sharing capacity simultaneously benefits the supplier, the third-party platform and manufacturers with high earnings of unit capacity usage. When both the rental efficiency and the production cost are low, or both the rental efficiency and the production cost are high, the supplier simultaneously sells equipment and shares capacity. The supplier only sells equipment in other cases. When both the rental efficiency and the production cost are low, the supplier’s sharing capacity realizes the win-win-win situation for the supplier, the third-party platform and manufacturers with moderate earnings of unit capacity usage.

This paper innovatively examines supplier's selling and sharing decisions considering manufacturers sharing capacity. It extends the research on capacity sharing and is important to supplier's operational decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple yet effective force control scheme for collaborative robots by addressing the problem of disturbance rejection in joint torque: inherent actuator flexibility and nonlinear friction.

In this paper, a joint torque controller with an extended state observer is used to decouple the joint actuators from the multi-rigid-body system of a constrained robot and compensate the motor friction. Moreover, to realize robot force control, the authors embed this controller into the impedance control framework.

Results have been given in simulations and experiments in which the proposed joint torque controller with an extended state observer can effectively estimate and compensate the total disturbance. The overall control framework is analytically proved to be stable, and further it is validated in experiments with a robot testbed.

With the proposed robot force controller, the robot is able to change its stiffness in real time and therefore take variable tasks without any accessories, such as the RCC or 6-DOF F/T sensor. In addition, programing by demonstration can be realized easily within the proposed framework, which makes the robot accessible to unprofessional users.

The main contribution of the presented work is the design of a model-free robot force controller with the ability to reject torque disturbances from robot-actuator coupling effect and motor friction, applicable for both constrained and unconstrained environments. Simulation and experiment results from a 7-DOF robot are given to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller.

Many e-commerce firms suffer from high returns because of inaccurate and incomplete product information. Omnichannel and bundling settings can help firms improve operational efficiency and lower returns costs. However, no studies have been conducted on omnichannel supply chains considering bundling strategies. The purpose of this study is to examine the comparison between test-in-store-and-buy-online (TSBO) and online retail, comparing manufacturers’ bundling with retailers’ bundling.

The supply chain discussed here consists of two competitive manufacturers and one retailer. The retailer sells both manufacturers' products online and displays one manufacturer's product in a showroom who bears the display cost. Stackelberg game theory is used to develop mathematical models that help manufacturers and retailers make the most effective decisions. Here, the manufacturer is the Stackelberg leader, while the retailer is the follower. Using the backward induction approach, the authors determined the optimal values for selling price, wholesale price and service effort level.

The results show that the total TSBO retailing profit under manufacturer bundling is highest when the second manufacturer integrates with the online retailer. The result additionally establishes that when the bundling cost exceeds a certain threshold (1.5), the total profit is higher for the non-integrated type of supply chain channel as compared to the integrated retailer bundling-based configuration.

The operations and logistics manager will likely undertake the TSBO omnichannel strategy during manufacturers bundling and retailer bundling under the integrated strategy.

The main contribution of the study is to examine the effect of TSBO retailing on supply chains profit and individual decision-making under different bundling strategies. The authors developed different mathematical models in the TSBO retailing and bundling context and extended the earlier work in the area of integration frame.

The purpose of this study is to assess the spatiotemporal patterns of future meteorological drought in the Yellow River Basin under different representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios.

Delta method is used to process the future climate data of the global climate models, then analyzed the spatiotemporal variation trend of drought in the Yellow River Basin based on standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI) under four RCP scenarios.

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41901239), Soft Science Research Project of Henan Province (212400410077, 192400410085), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0602703), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M640670) and the special fund of top talents in Henan Agricultural University (30501031).

This study can provide support for future meteorological drought management and prevention in the Yellow River Basin and provide a theoretical basis for water resources management.