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The purpose of this study is to extend the Fraud Diamond Theory to celebrity Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) and investigate their post-Initial Public Offering (IPO) stock market performance.

After obtaining a sample of celebrity SPACs from the Spacresearch.com database, fraud risk characteristics were obtained from Lexis Nexus searches. Buy and hold abnormal returns were calculated for celebrity SPACs versus a small-cap equity benchmark for time intervals after IPO, and multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between fraud risk features and post-IPO returns.

Celebrity SPACs exhibit Fraud Diamond characteristics and significantly underperform a small-cap stock portfolio on a risk-adjusted basis after IPO.

This study only examines celebrity SPACs that conducted IPOs on the NYSE and NASDAQ/AMEX and does not include those that are traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB).

Celebrity endorsement of SPAC vehicles attracts investors who may not be properly informed regarding the risk characteristics of SPACs. Accordingly, investors should be warned that celebrity SPACs underperform a small-cap equity portfolio and exhibit significant elements of fraud risk.

The use of celebrity endorsement as a marketing device to attract investment in SPACs has regulatory implications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the fraud risk characteristics and post-IPO performance of celebrity SPACs.

The goals of this review are to identify key theories, constructs and themes in the international business travel (IBT) literature and to propose a model based on findings, theories and constructs drawn from adjacent research literature.

The authors reviewed the business travel (BT) literature to identify conceptual and empirical articles on IBT published from 1990 to 2022. Only 53 publications were suitable for review. The authors reviewed them using an open coding system.

The IBT literature is dispersed across several disciplines that use different methods, focus on different aspects of travel and emphasize different positive and negative outcomes that IBT engenders. The publications employed a diverse range of methods, including review and conceptual (11), quantitative (28) and qualitative methods (14). The samples were diverse in country, age, marital status and tenure. Many publications were descriptive and exploratory. The few that based their research on theory focused on two stress theories: Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory.

Experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to reduce the causal ambiguity of this body of mostly correlational and cross-sectional research. The authors discuss the impact of emerging advances in virtual global communication technology on the future of IBT.

More research is needed on positive aspects of IBT. Human resource (HR) people should be aware of these issues and are encouraged to decrease the deleterious aspects of the international trips and increase the positive ones.

Increasing well-being of international business travelers is important for the travelers, their families and the organization.

This is the first IBT review focused on the theoretical underpinnings of research in the field. The authors offer a model for IBT and introduce adjustment and performance as important constructs in IBT research. The authors encompass crossover theory to add the reciprocal impact of travelers and spouses and label IBT a “double-edge sword” because it arouses both positive and negative outcomes.

Many believe that any social media harms kids because of frequent use. This study aims to examine these assumptions. It proposes and tests a model that considers two alternative pathways – one negative and one positive – through which social media affects teens’ self-reported subjective well-being.

This research used Preacher and Hayes process modeling to conduct path analysis on data collected on 585 teenagers from across the USA.

Results showed that along a negative pathway, frequent social media use leads to greater risky social media engagement that ultimately diminishes adolescent’s sense of well-being. Also, and perhaps simultaneously, frequent social media use leads to socially-connected social media use that enhances adolescent’s sense of well-being.

The research recommends ways parents, policymakers and platforms can encourage teens to use social media to connect with friends while guiding them away from pathways exposing them to risky behaviors.

Findings show more social media use is not necessarily harmful, but more of some types is bad, while more of others is good.

This paper examines the influence of micro-credential learning on students' perceived employability. In addition, the study aims to explore different components that will help students to gain knowledge, enhance their careers and develop their human capital (social, cultural and scholastic capital). Hence, the study also analyzed the mediating role of human capital on the aforementioned association.

Explanatory research was conducted by utilizing a correlational research design. A questionnaire comprising of closed-ended items was utilized in the study. The data was analyzed by employing PLS-SEM technique.

Our findings stipulate that micro-credential learning is an essential component to improve students' perceived employability. The study identified that micro-credential programs have a positive relationship with students' perceived employability. Moreover, the findings that micro-credential learning significantly impacts students' human capital, i.e. cultural, social and scholastic capital. Additionally, human capital acts as a significant mediator in the relationship between micro-credential learning and students' perceived employability. Moreover, participation in micro-credential learning can ensure that students can identify diverse career directions, seek information about the labor market and educational system, attain relevant qualifications for their vocations, and develop a plan for their future.

Micro-credential programs are short and focused educational programs that offer specialized knowledge and skills in a particular area. These programs are becoming increasingly popular in the modern workforce to upskill or reskill quickly and efficiently. However, lack of empirical evidence is the ultimate gap in determining the importance of micro-credential learning; as the limited literature is unable to determine the importance of MCL on students' perceived employability. Thus, the study identifies the impact of micro-credential learning on students' perceived employability.

To understand how parents make the decision to implant their deaf young children with cochlear implants, focusing specifically on the concepts of normality, medicalization, and stigma.

I conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with the hearing parents or parent of children with cochlear implants. In all but two families I interviewed the primary caretaker which in all cases was a mother. In the remaining two interviews, I interviewed both parents together. Because of the relative scarcity of families with children with cochlear implants, and the difficulty in connecting with these families, I used a convenience sample, and I did not stratify it in any way. The only requirement for parents to be interviewed is that they had at least one deaf child who had been implanted with at least one cochlear implant. Although this is a small sample, the findings are transferable to other families with the same sociodemographic characteristics as those in my study.

Parents in the study focused on three key concepts: normality, risk analysis, and being a good parent. Dispositional factors such as the need to be “normal” and the desire for material success for one's children appeared to moderate the cost-benefit calculus.

This interview project concentrated on hearing families who had implanted their deaf children with cochlear implants; it does not include culturally Deaf parents who choose to use American Sign Language (ASL) with their Deaf children. Understanding how Deaf families understand the concepts of normality, medicalization, and stigma would shed light on how a distinctly “abnormal” group (by a statistical conception of normal) – ASL-using Deaf people-explain normality in the face of using a non-typical communication method. One can learn a lot by studying the absence of a phenomena, in this case, not implanting children with cochlear implants. It is possible that the existential threat felt by some Deaf people, specifically the demographic problem presented by cochlear implants, led Deaf educators or parents to resist being the subject of research.

Overwhelmingly the sample was female, and white. Only two participants were male, and none of the participants were non-white. The lack of diversity in the sample does not necessarily reflect a lack of diversity of children receiving cochlear implants. Medicaid, which disproportionately covers families of color, covers cochlear implants in most cases, so low SES/racial intersectionality should not have affected the lack of diversity in the sample. However, the oral schools are all private pay, with few scholarships available, so low SES/racial intersectionality in the sampling universe (all children who attend oral schools), may have played a part in the lack of racial diversity within the sample.

Parents in this study were very specific about the fact that they believed cochlear implants would lead to academic, professional, and personal success. They weaved narratives of normality, medicalization, and stigma through their stories. Normality is an important lens from which to see stories about disability and ability, as well as medical correction. As medical science continues to advance, more and more conditions will become medicalized, leading to more and more people taking advanced medical treatments to address problems that were previously considered “problems with living” that are now considered “medical problems” that can be treated with advanced science.

This chapter's contribution to the sociological cochlear implant literature is it's weaving of narratives about normality, stigma, and medicalization into parental stories about the cochlear implant decision-making process. Most literature about the cochlear implant decision-making process focus on cost-benefit analysis, and logical decision-making processes, whereas this paper focuses on decision-making factors stemming from bias, emotions, and values.

There is growing interest around the world in more effectively linking public payments to the provision of public goods from agriculture. However, published evidence syntheses suggest mixed, weak or uncertain evidence for many agri-environment scheme options. To inform any future “public money for public goods” based policy, further synthesis work is needed to assess the evidence-base for the full range of interventions currently funded under agri-environment schemes. Further empirical research and trials should then focus on interventions for which there is mixed or limited evidence. Furthermore, to ensure the data collected is comparable and can be synthesised effectively, it is necessary to reach agreement on essential variables and methods that can be prioritised by those conducting research and monitoring. Future policy could then prioritise public money for the public goods that can most reliably be delivered, offering better value for taxpayers and improving the provision of ecosystem services from agricultural landscapes.

In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

The importance of well-being at all ages is well-argued theoretically and experimentally, with it having a special place during adolescence and young adulthood, largely because of its association with mental health. Thus, it is important to better understand influences affecting the well-being of Generation Z and explore plans for adequate interventions. In addition, with factors pointing to high psychological well-being among Gen Zers, there are grounds for positive expectations for this generation. This can help optimize programs to improve mental health at a young age, which has important implications for the whole life spectrum.

The disparities of COVID-19 vaccination rates between the rural and urban areas have become apparent during this pandemic. There is a need to understand the root causes of vaccine hesitancy demonstrated by the rural population to increase coverage and to contain the disease spread throughout the United States. This study aimed to explore other factors influencing vaccine hesitancy among rural dwellers besides the geography-related barriers such as poor health care access and individuals having no or suboptimal insurance coverage.

By reviewing existing data and literature about vaccination, health literacy, and behaviors, and prevailing ideologies, we discuss the potential causes of vaccine hesitancy in rural areas that could create barriers for successful public health efforts related to vaccine coverage and provide suggestions to ameliorate the situation.

Geography-related barriers, health literacy, and preconceived notions are key determinants of adopting healthy behaviors and complying with public health authorities' recommendations among rural individuals during a public-health crisis. We argue that ideology, which is much deeper than preconception or misconception on vaccination, should be incorporated as a key factor to redefine the term “vulnerable populations” in public health research.

The limitation of our study is that we have not found an effective way to encourage the populations who hold conservative religious and political ideologies to join the efforts for public health. Even though geography-related barriers may strongly impact the rural dwellers in achieving optimal health, the various forms of ideologies they have toward certain health behaviors cannot be discounted to understand and address vaccine-related disparities in rural areas. There is a need to redefine the term “vulnerable population” particularly as it relates to rural areas in the United States. During large-scale public health disasters, scholars and public health authorities should consider the ideologies of individuals, in addition to other factors such as race/ethnicity, area of residence (rural vs. urban), and socioeconomic factors influencing the existing vulnerabilities and health disparities.