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There is emerging evidence in the accounting literature that investors react negatively to corporate greenwashing. But does that hold for all investors, or do different types of investors react differently? This paper aims to study retail investors’ responses to media reports on corporate greenwashing and how these responses depend upon the investors’ social value orientation. The authors argue that media reporting on corporate greenwashing negatively affects the rationale for allocating funds to firms engaging in greenwashing. The authors also expect this reaction to be stronger for prosocial investors compared to proself investors.

The authors conduct an online experiment with 229 participants representing retail investors in the German-speaking countries.

The results show that retail investors who received media reports on deceptive disclosure invest more funds in the company that does not engage in greenwashing (and less in the firm that engages in greenwashing) than investors who did not receive these reports. The authors’ results provide novel evidence that this effect primarily holds for investors with a prosocial value orientation. Finally, the authors’ data show that lower trust in the firm that engages in greenwashing partially mediates the effect of media reports on investor choices.

The authors provide unique evidence how different types of investors react to media reports on greenwashing. The authors find that moral motives, rather than risk-return considerations, drive investor responses to greenwashing. Overall, these findings support the important function of the media as an intermediary in stock market participation and highlight the pivotal role of individual traits in investors’ responses to greenwashing.

In this paper, the authors take the central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) as an exogenous shock to study the reaction of the stock market in China. Using the event study method, the authors check how the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision affects the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of the listed firms on the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

In this paper, the authors take the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision as a clean exogenous shock to study its effects on the capital market. The authors collect daily trading data from the China stock market and accounting research (CSMAR) database, with the sample containing 1,950 Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchanges. And detailed information on CEPI supervision is obtained from the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China. The event study method is adopted to analyze the reaction of the stock market under CEPI supervision. Specifically, the authors constructed the cumulative abnormal return of each firm around the event day of CEPI. To capture the deterrent effects of CEPI supervision, the authors examine the situation of polluting and non-polluting firms in the supervised provinces, adjacent provinces and provinces that are not supervised or close to the supervised provinces, respectively.

This paper throws light on the following: (1) the polluting firms in the supervised provinces were negatively impacted by CEPI within 20 trading days of the event day, and its effects spread to the polluting firms in the neighboring provinces; (2) CEPI had a favorable impact on the non-polluting businesses in the provinces that are neither supervised nor close to the supervised provinces. The authors contend that it is because the investment is being forced out of the polluting sector and into the non-polluting sector, which is more pronounced in the provinces not directly or indirectly targeted by CEPI; (3) by comparison, the “looking back monitoring of the first round” has had no discernible detrimental impact on the firms' CAR, indicating an important role of psychology anticipation of investors in the stock market performance; (4) although not physically located in the supervised provinces, the downstream enterprises of the polluting firms suffer significantly from CEPI shock; (5) the effectiveness of CEPI supervision in the supervised provinces depends on the level of local environmental regulation and the ownership structure of the company. Private firms in the provinces with stronger environmental regulations suffer more from the CEPI shock; (6) the multivariate analysis shows that while enterprises with high ROE and financial leverage may be at risk of CAR loss, older, larger firms are less likely to experience CEPI shock; (7) the study of persistent effect reveals that the strike of CEPI supervision can last for at least 10 months after the event day and deterrent effect can be spread within the whole polluting industry.

In this paper, the authors only concentrate on the market reaction within 20 trading days after the event day. An analysis of long-term effects should be valuable to get a deeper knowledge of the capital market reaction to the CEPI policy. In addition, the paper only focuses on the first round of the first batch of CEPI. Since CEPI has been built as a constant regulation of local environmental performance, further study may need to track both the reaction of listed firms and investment behavior in the capital market.

Policy implications of the paper are as follows: First, for the policymakers, it is important to construct a constant environmental regulation system instead of a campaign movement. Second, for investors, as environmental issues are receiving increasing attention from both the government and the public, investment decisions should take into account firms' environmental performance, which can help reduce the risk from environmental regulations. Third, the firms in the polluting industry should take more action to reduce pollutant releases and adopt green technology, which is essential for sustainable development under environmental protection.

This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following aspects. First, the authors provide new evidence on the effects of environmental regulations as a shock to the stock market, which has been wildly concentrated in the literature about environmental policies evaluation and capital market reaction. Second, the authors supplement the literature on green finance and sustainability transformation, which has got increasing attention in recent years. Theoretically, by guiding investment and affecting the stock market performance, environmental regulations are considered to be an efficient way to stimulate polluting firms to transform into green development. The results of the paper support this intuition by showing that the CAR of the non-polluting firms in non-supervised provinces in fact benefit from the CEPI supervision.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on pollution emissions and how environmental regulation affects this relationship.

In the empirical research, the authors selected panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019 as samples. First, the authors used the instrumental variable method to verify the existence of the above hypotheses in China. Then, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of different types of environmental regulations on the environmental effects of FDI. Next, in further discussion, the authors analyzed the difference between the environmental effect and the moderating effect in different time periods and regions, respectively. Finally, the authors discussed whether the different intensities of environmental regulations lead to the transfer effect of FDI in choosing investment destinations.

The result shows that FDI can help reduce pollution emissions and create a “pollution halo” effect, which is enhanced by command-and-control regulation but suppressed by market-based incentives. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party has weakened the pollution halo effect of FDI, while the environmental effect of FDI in the eastern region is not significant, but in the middle and western regions, there is a significant pollution halo effect and a positive moderating effect of environmental regulations. Finally, further analysis reveals that FDI has a transfer effect under command-and-control environmental regulations.

First, the main purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between FDI and pollution emissions from the perspective of heterogeneous environmental regulation. Therefore, there is no detailed discussion on their effect mechanism of them. Second, limited by data, the authors adopt the single index to measure the stringency index of command-and-control and market-based incentive environmental regulations in China. The single index may not be able to fully reflect the intensity of regional environmental regulation, so the construction of a composite indicator is necessary. These shortcomings are the focus of the authors' future research.

Under the guidance of high-quality development, the conclusions above can provide reference for adjusting FDI policies and improving environmental regulation policies.

The innovations in this paper can be summarized as the following four dimensions: First, the authors use the instrumental variable (IV) method to address endogeneity in the relationship between FDI and pollution emission, which can further ensure the robustness of the research results and increases the credibility of the paper. Second, the authors distinguish between two types of environmental regulations to investigate their moderating effect on the environmental impact of FDI. Third, the authors consider the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of both the environmental effects of FDI and the moderating effect of regulation. Last, the authors analyze the spatial spillover of environmental regulation through the study of the transfer effect.

COVID-19 has made businesses increasingly dependent on technology to be competitive and efficient. Small and medium enterprises (SME) digitalisation and innovation research are widespread. SME digital transformation and innovation require government policies, initiatives and assistance. How the government can help SMEs achieve these goals is unclear. So, this paper aims to investigate how government policy may assist Vietnamese SMEs to boost innovation performance and digital transformation.

The study will take a quantitative approach, with questionnaires distributed to 659 respondents from SMEs in Vietnam through snowball and convenience sampling procedures. The structural equational modelling method is used for data analysis.

The study indicated that government policies supported Vietnamese SMEs’ innovation and information technology (IT) capabilities. Government policy assistance also boosted IT capabilities and innovation. Furthermore, mediation effects show that digital transformation fully mediates the relationship between innovativeness and firm performance, whereas IT capabilities partially mediate this relationship.

Further research that replicates the findings and analyses contextual heterogeneities between nations is advised because Vietnam’s pandemic setting was both similar and dissimilar.

The study demonstrated government-company interactions through supportive policy. It investigated whether SMEs seeking digital transformation and innovativeness might gain competitive benefits by implementing effective knowledge management and enhancing their IT capabilities.

A resource-based theoretical framework is extended to study how innovation, public policy and digital transformation for SMEs interact. The study confirms government policy strongly influences enterprises’ digital development. Specifically, the new mediating effects of IT capabilities and digital transformation are explored and provide new insights into the existing literature.

This study aims to deal with the paucity of studies in the stages of the development of loyalty behaviour of customers in the healthcare context by incorporating three crucial service quality dimensions (physical environment, personnel quality and technical quality) and also investigating trust and commitment as mediating factors.

Survey data were obtained from 420 respondents admitted to government hospitals in Kerala employing a convenience sampling method. The formulated hypotheses were tested using partial least square structural equation modelling.

Results indicate that patient satisfaction, trust and commitment can create favourable behavioural intentions amongst patients. When patients reveal higher trust, they are more inclined to value healthcare services and willing to commit to a long-term relationship, resulting in increased patient loyalty.

Organisational efforts should improve trust and commitment and build a good relationship between service providers and patients. Efforts should be taken to raise the standard of technical and personnel aspects, and a focus on physical infrastructure should also be considered to build a favourable behavioural intention to revisit and positive referrals.

This is the first empirical study to analyse technical quality, personnel quality and physical environment along with the mediating effect of trust, and commitment in a four-stage loyalty development model in the healthcare context of Kerala, India.

Multiple topics often exist on social media platforms that compete for users' attention. To explore how users’ attention transfers in the context of multitopic competition can help us understand the development pattern of the public attention.

This study proposes the prediction model for the attention transfer behavior of social media users in the context of multitopic competition and reveals the important influencing factors of users' attention transfer. Microblogging features are selected from the dimensions of users, time, topics and competitiveness. The microblogging posts on eight topic categories from Sina Weibo, the most popular microblogging platform in China, are used for empirical analysis. A novel indicator named transfer tendency of a feature value is proposed to identify the important factors for attention transfer.

The accuracy of the prediction model based on Light GBM reaches 91%. It is found that user features are the most important for the attention transfer of microblogging users among all the features. The conditions of attention transfer in all aspects are also revealed.

The findings can help governments and enterprises understand the competition mechanism among multiple topics and improve their ability to cope with public opinions in the complex environment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the symbiotic evolution decisions of digital innovation enterprises, research institutes and the government in the digital innovation ecosystem.

Based on innovation ecosystem theory and an evolutionary game model, this study constructs a tripartite symbiotic evolution game model of digital innovation ecosystems with digital innovation enterprises, research institutes and the government as the main bodies and analyzes the influencing factors as well as the evolution paths of the different behavioral strategies of each subject through numerical simulation.

The research shows that the digital innovation ecosystem has the characteristic of self-organization, which requires the symbiotic cooperation of each subject. The government plays an active role in any stage of symbiotic evolution, and the system cannot enter symbiosis under a low level of subsidies and penalties. Only when the initial willingness to cooperate of digital innovation enterprises and scientific research institutes is at a medium or high level is the system likely to become symbiotic. While digital innovation enterprises are more sensitive to government subsidies and punishments, scientific research institutes are more sensitive to the distribution proportion of cooperation income.

This study includes government regulation into the research scope, expands the research mode of the digital innovation ecosystem and overcomes the difficulties of empirical research in collecting dynamic large sample data. It vividly and systematically simulates the symbiotic evolution process of the digital innovation ecosystem, which provides a theoretical and practical reference for digital innovation ecosystem governance.

The promotion of autonomous vehicles introduces privacy and security risks, underscoring the pressing need for responsible innovation implementation. To more effectively address the societal risks posed by autonomous vehicles, considering collaborative engagement of key stakeholders is essential. This study aims to provide insights into the governance of potential privacy and security issues in the innovation of autonomous driving technology by analyzing the micro-level decision-making processes of various stakeholders.

For this study, the authors use a nuanced approach, integrating key stakeholder theory, perceived value theory and prospect theory. The study constructs a model based on evolutionary game for the privacy and security governance mechanism of autonomous vehicles, involving enterprises, governments and consumers.

The governance of privacy and security in autonomous driving technology is influenced by key stakeholders’ decision-making behaviors and pivotal factors such as perceived value factors. The study finds that the governmental is influenced to a lesser extent by the decisions of other stakeholders, and factors such as risk preference coefficient, which contribute to perceived value, have a more significant influence than appearance factors like participation costs.

This study lacks an investigation into the risk sensitivity of various stakeholders in different scenarios.

The study delineates the roles and behaviors of key stakeholders and contributes valuable insights toward addressing pertinent risk concerns within the governance of autonomous vehicles. Through the study, the practical application of Responsible Innovation theory has been enriched, addressing the shortcomings in the analysis of micro-level processes within the framework of evolutionary game.

Security education, training and awareness (SETA) programs are the key to addressing “people problems” in information systems (IS) security. Contrary to studies using conventional methods, the present study leveraged an “event” lens and dimensionalized employees' perceptions into three sub-dimensions: perceived novelty, perceived disruption and perceived criticality. Moreover, this research went a step further by examining how pedagogical and communication approaches to a SETA program affect employees' perceptions of the program. This study then investigated whether – and if so, how – these approaches impact employees' perceptions of the SETA program and their subsequent commitment to it.

Utilizing a factorial-based scenario survey, this study empirically tested a model of the above relationships via covariance-based structural equation modeling.

The results of this research showed that pedagogical approaches were more effective than communication approaches and that employees' perceptions of the SETA program accounted for a large variance in their commitment to SETA.

First, this research deepens understanding of the protection of information assets by elaborating on the different approaches that organizations can take to encourage employees' commitment to SETA. Second, the study enriches the SETA literature by theorizing a SETA program as an organizational “event”, which represents a major shift from the conventional approach. Third, the study adds to the theoretical knowledge of the event lens by extending it to the SETA context and investigating the relationship among three event strength components.

Leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship is a crucial context for individuals’ generation of creative ideas. Unlike the fruit research between LMX quality and employee creativity, the relationship between LMX ambivalence and employee creativity is scarce. This study thus aims to examine the effect of LMX ambivalence on employee creativity.

This study conducted an on-site survey of research and development teams in China and distributed paired questionnaires with a time lag of one month. Data from 116 leaders and 484 subordinates were collected and analyzed.

The results showed that LMX ambivalence was directly negatively or indirectly negatively related to employee creativity via self-efficacy. Employee cynicism acted as a potential personal moderator of the effect of LMX ambivalence, specifically, employee cynicism attenuated the negative influence of LMX ambivalence on employee creativity via self-efficacy.

This study extends our knowledge of the complex effects of LMX relationships by empirically exploring whether and how LMX ambivalence influences employee creativity, with self-efficacy introduced as one crucial underlying mechanism. Meanwhile, this study enriches the existing cynicism literature by demonstrating the role of employee cynicism as a buffer in the relationship between LMX ambivalence and employee creativity.