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This study aims to determine the antecedents that influence attitudes towards the use of environmentally friendly household appliance products and consumers' green purchase intention among consumers in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Data were collected from 329 consumers in Harare, Zimbabwe's commercial capital who were served from five using a structured questionnaire via an online web-based cross-sectional survey. Hypothesised relationships were tested through structural equation modelling with the aid of Smart PLS software.

Green product awareness, social influence, perceived benefit and attitude towards green appliances were found to have a significant positive effect on green purchase intention.

The study's findings may not be generalised to other contexts as sample data was only collected in Zimbabwe. Complementary cross-sectional research studies can be done in other parts of the world to enable cross-cultural comparisons and methodological validations.

The green appliance and energy saving practices are vastly growing, with many multinational appliance companies introducing green products within their product lines and adopting the concept of sustainability through modifications in production, design and consumption of household appliance products that encompass fewer harmful consequences on the environment in response to their concerns about the scarcity of natural resources, environmental well-being and the potential detriment of future generations.

Notwithstanding the limitations of the current study, the results have the potential to contribute to an improved understanding of influence attitudes towards the use of environmentally friendly household appliance products.

This paper has a twofold objective: (1) to examine how trust and distrust mediate the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) perceptions and word of mouth recommendations; and (2) to show that moral norms moderate this mediating relationship.

Two experimental studies test the proposed model. Study 1 performs a single-factor experiment with three levels of corporate social responsibility (positive, neutral, negative) to test the mediation hypothesis (N = 180, 66% females, mean age = 22.3). Study 2 validates the mediation findings and examines the role of moral norms as moderators (N = 240, 50% females, mean age = 39.5).

Study 1 reveals that trust in the company partially mediates the effects of CSR on word of mouth (WOM) recommendations. Study 2 shows that consumers who adhere to higher moral standards follow distinct paths to negative WOM. Specifically, these consumers tend to spread negative comments when they expect the firm to behave irresponsibly. When unsure about future corporate behaviour, they are less likely to spread negative WOM.

This is the first study, to the authors' knowledge, to demonstrate how moral norms shape the effects of distrust in the corporate culprit on word of mouth recommendations. Accordingly, this research proves that conceptualising trust and distrust as separate constructs is useful in explaining consumer reactions to corporate social irresponsibility.

Trade centers are operationally run by a property manager as a delegate of the property owner. The dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL), which include tangibles, assurance, empathy, reliability and responsiveness, are vital to be implemented as the duties of property managers when providing service to tenants to maintain tenant satisfaction and property reputation. This study aims to understand the effects of the SERVQUAL dimensions, the role of property management and the quality of rental value on tenant satisfaction and property reputation.

The sample was gathered using the purposive sampling technique with the criteria of being a tenant and kiosk owner in trade center properties in Surabaya. Data were gathered using questionnaires, from which 100 respondents were acquired. It was then analyzed using the partial least square structural equation model (SEM) in the SmartPLS 3.0 program to test the hypothesis.

The results of this study prove that the SERVQUAL dimensions – assurance, empathy and responsiveness – significantly influence tenant satisfaction with the mediating variable of the role of property management. Moreover, the SERVQUAL dimensions – empathy, reliability and responsiveness – significantly influence property reputation with the mediating variable of the role of property management.

Property managers are expected to proactively map out different service measures related to the dimension of satisfaction by conducting service training programs for their employees. In fact, in the post-pandemic period, property managers require new marketing strategies, such as leaseback, to effectively carry out renovations of the trade center’s public facilities and restructure the tenant mix.

Trade centers as trading areas experience management limitations because of the prohibition of mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a limited number of onsite trading. Tenants who have entered into a long-term contract experience loss and rely on the aid of property management to survive. The role and quality of service of property management influence tenants’ satisfaction post-COVID-19 pandemic.

The unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the budgets of governments worldwide for delivering their much-needed infrastructure. Consequently, public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the private sector's investment and ingenuity, would appear to be an increasingly popular alternative. Value for money (VfM) has become the major criterion for evaluating PPPs against the traditional public sector procurement and, however, is plagued with controversy. Hence, it is important that governments compare and contrast their practice with similar and disparate bodies to engender best practice. This paper, therefore, aims to understand governments' assessment context and provide a cross-continental comparison of their VfM assessment.

Faced with different domestic contexts (e.g. aging infrastructure, population growth, and competing demands on finance), governments tend to place different emphases when undertaking the VfM assessment. In line with the theory of boundary spanning, a cross-continental comparison is conducted between three of the most noticeable PPP markets (i.e. the United Kingdom, Australia and China) about their VfM assessment. The institutional level is interpreted by a social, economic and political framework, and the methodological level is elucidated through a qualitative and quantitative VfM assessment.

There are individual institutional characteristics that have shaped the way each country assesses VfM. For the methodological level, we identify that: (1) these global markets use a public sector comparator as the benchmark in VfM assessment; (2) ambiguous qualitative assessment is conducted only against PPPs to strengthen their policy development; (3) Australia's priority is in service provision whereas that of the UK and China is project finance and production; and (4) all markets are seeking an amelioration of existing controversial VfM assessments so that purported VfM relates to project lifecycles. As such, an option framework is proposed to make headway towards a sensible selection of infrastructure procurement approaches in the post COVID-19 era.

This study addresses a current void of enhancing the decision-making process for using PPPs within today's changing environment and then opens up an avenue for future empirical research to examine the option framework and ensuing VfM decisions. Practically, it presents a holistic VfM landscape for public sector procurers that aim to engage with PPPs for their infrastructure interventions.

Although governments have used social media platforms to interact with the public in an attempt to minimize anxiety and provide a forum for public discussion during the pandemic, governments require sufficient crisis communication skills to engage citizens in taking appropriate action effectively. This study aims to examine how the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) has used TikTok, the leading short video–based platform, to facilitate public engagement during COVID-19.

Building upon dual process theories, this study integrates the activation of information exposure, prosocial interaction theory and social sharing of emotion theory to explore how public engagement is related to message sensation value (MSV), media character, content theme and emotional valence. A total of 354 TikTok videos posted by NHCC were collected during the pandemic to explore the determinants of public engagement in crises.

The findings demonstrate that MSV negatively predicts public engagement with government TikTok, but that instructional information increases engagement. The presence of celebrities and health-care professionals negatively affects public engagement with government TikTok accounts. In addition, emotional valence serves a moderating role between MSV, media characters and public engagement.

Government agencies must be fully aware of the different combinations of MSV and emotion use in the video title when releasing crisis-related videos. Government agencies can also leverage media characters – health professionals in particular – to enhance public engagement. Government agencies are encouraged to solicit public demand for the specific content of instructing information through data mining techniques.