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The objective of this study was to analyse the influencing factors of citizens' dissatisfaction with government services during the COVID-19 pandemic to help government departments identify problems in the service process and possible countermeasures.

The authors first used cosine interesting pattern mining (CIPM) to analyse citizens' complaints in different periods of the pandemic. Second, the potential evaluation indices of customer satisfaction were extracted from the hotline business system through a hypothesis analysis and modelled using multiple regression analysis. During the index transformation and standardization process, a machine-learning algorithm of clustering and emotion analysis was adopted. Finally, the authors used the random forest algorithm to evaluate the importance of the indicators and obtain the indicators more important to citizen satisfaction.

The authors found that the complaint topic, appeal time, urgency of citizens' complaints, citizens' emotions, level of detail in the case record, and processing timeliness and efficiency significantly influenced citizens' satisfaction. When the government addresses complaints in a more standardized and efficient manner, citizens are more satisfied.

During the pandemic, government departments should be more patient with citizens, increase the speed of the case circulation and shorten the processing period of appeals. Staff should record appeals in a more standardized manner, highlighting themes and prioritizing urgent cases to appease citizens and relieve their anxiety.

This paper aims to examine the influence of user characteristics on preference for government service delivery channels. Preferences are understood as citizen use of and satisfaction with digital and traditional government contact modalities. User characteristics are represented by three constructs encapsulating the key elements of citizen features and attitudes.

The constructs are tested on data from a survey of 30 cities in China, resulting in 3,000 respondents, which asked questions on respondents’ use of and satisfaction with traditional modes (hotlines and service center channels) and digital modes (e-government and m-government channels) as well as respondents’ sociodemographics, technological capacity and view of government.

The results showed two important findings. First, service channel use was related to the first and second constructs (sociodemographics and technological capacity). Second, service channel satisfaction showed strong evidence of relation to the third construct, view of government.

The results of this study make an empirical contribution to understanding the features of citizens that influence channel choice for public service contacts.

This study contributes to the understanding of channel choice in three areas. First, it is an empirical study using survey data and so adds to a largely case-based and conceptual literature. Second, by looking at the impact of citizen attitudes about government and not just their sociodemographic features. Third, by examining channel choice in the context of a fast-developing country like China.

Studies which look at disaster affected people’s use of communications technologies often fail to take into account people’s communication rights in their analyses, particularly their right to freedom of expression. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to this issue by exploring the link between freedom of expression, community participation and disaster risk reduction in the use of digital feedback channels offered by aid and government agencies in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.

Ethnographic fieldwork was undertaken in the Philippines between 2014 and 2015 in Tacloban City and Sabay Island, both in the Visayas, which have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan. A total of 101 in-depth interviews were conducted with affected people, local and national officials, community leaders, civil society groups, telecommunications companies and humanitarian agencies.

The interviews reveal that majority of disaster-affected Filipinos chose not to engage with formal feedback platforms offered by government and aid agencies out of fear of giving critical feedback to those in authority. They were concerned about the possibility of losing their entitlement to aid, of being reprimanded by government officers, and of the threat to their lives and of their loved ones if they expressed criticism to the government’s recovery efforts. Nonetheless, 15 per cent used backchannels while 10 per cent availed of the formal means to express their views about the recovery.

The paper sought to draw links between people’s lack of engagement with the formal feedback mechanisms offered by government and aid agencies in the wake of Haiyan and the restrictive sociopolitical environment in the Philippines. Further research could be undertaken to examine how freedom of expression plays a role in disaster prevention and mitigation. Research into this area could potentially provide concrete steps to help prevent the occurrence of disasters and mitigate their impacts.

Freedom of expression and its place in disaster risk reduction is rarely explored in disaster studies. The paper addresses this oversight by examining the lack of engagement by communities affected by Haiyan with digital feedback channels provided by aid agencies and government. The findings suggest that despite the provisions for community participation in DRR under the Philippine Disaster Law, people are prevented to express criticism and dissent which puts into question the spirit and purpose of the law.

This study aims to help businesses cope with consumers' no-show behaviour from a multistage perspective. It specifically identifies no-show reasons at each stage of appointment services and proposes the corresponding coping strategies.

By focusing on an outpatient appointment service, we interviewed 921 no-show patients to extract no-show reasons, invited 18 hospital managers to propose coping strategies for these reasons using a Delphi method and evaluated the proposed strategies based on EDAS (Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution).

The results reveal ten reasons for no-show behaviour (i.e. system service quality, overuse, did not know the appointment, self-judgment, forget, waiting time, lateness, uncontrollable problems, time conflict and service coordination), which have nine coping strategy themes (i.e. prepayment, system intelligence, target, subjective norm, system integration, ease of navigation, reminder, confirmation and cancellation). We classify the ten reasons and nine themes into scheduling, waiting and execution stages of an appointment service.

This study provides a package of coping strategies for no-show behaviour to deal with no-show reasons at each appointment service stage. It also extends the research in pre-service management through appointment services.

This paper examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to deter and detect fraud, domestically and abroad. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), and other national and foreign professional associations, in promulgating auditing standards and procedures to prevent fraud in financial statements and other white‐collar crimes. It also examines several fraud cases and the impact of management and employee fraud on the various business sectors such as insurance, banking, health care, and manufacturing, as well as the role of management, the boards of directors, the audit committees, auditors, and fraud examiners and their liability in the fraud prevention and investigation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of various internal controls (i.e. hotlines, regular ethics (fraud) training, surprise audits, internal and external audits and background checks) on reducing occupational fraud losses by victim organizations.

The paper, based on data from an occupational fraud report co-authored by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and Peltier-Rivest (2007), uses a multivariate regression analysis to analyze the effect of various internal controls on preventing fraud losses.

The authors’ analyses demonstrate that hotlines, regular ethics (fraud) training, surprise audits and internal audits all decrease fraud losses when used separately. However, hotlines and surprise audits are the only statistically significant controls when controlling for the potential correlation among all internal controls. Hotlines are associated with a reduction of 54 per cent in median fraud losses, while surprise audits cut median losses by 69 per cent.

This study contributes to academia and the anti-fraud profession by assessing the statistical effect of six internal controls on preventing fraud losses, while controlling for the potential correlation among these controls.

This study discusses the relative benefits (loss savings) of various internal controls to organizations, governments, managers and anti-fraud professionals. This information may help determine investment priorities in the context of scarce resources.

This paper is based on proprietary data owned by the ACFE and is the first to analyze the statistical significance of various internal controls on the reduction of fraud losses in Canada.

The purpose of this paper is to examine village heads’ information seeking and decision making in 2014 Kaohsiung Blast and to analyze if the current disaster trainings help those leaders to enhance disaster risk deduction in an unprecedented disaster.

This study adopts after-action review and information seeking and decision making literature both from communication research and disaster research. Document analysis, and in-depth interviews with 13 village heads, 1 district officer, and 15 residents from the affected areas are conducted.

This study finds that the village heads have received trainings of regular types of disasters; however, most of them act like lay people in Kaohsiung Blast. In the beginning of the gas leaking, village heads slack off when first respondents arrive. After the Blast, most of them wait for authority orders and cannot launch minimum self-help and community help which they learned from the trainings.

This study confirms that the leadership research should take different categories and levels of leaders into consideration to distinguish public leaders from non-public leaders, professional disaster risk reduction leaders from non-professional leaders, and higher authorities from basic levels of government. The findings from this study provide a basis for the rational design of the job descriptions of village leaders.

This study is the first empirical research to investigate first-level but non-professional disaster management staffs’ information seeking and decision making after an unprecedented disaster in Taiwan.