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Extant research mainly focused on potentially negative customer responses to service robots. In contrast, this study is one of the first to explore a service context where service robots are likely to be the preferred service delivery mechanism over human frontline employees. Specifically, the authors examine how customers respond to service robots in the context of embarrassing service encounters.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, whereby an in-depth qualitative study (study 1) is followed by two lab experiments (studies 2 and 3).

Results show that interactions with service robots attenuated customers' anticipated embarrassment. Study 1 identifies a number of factors that can reduce embarrassment. These include the perception that service robots have reduced agency (e.g. are not able to make moral or social judgements) and emotions (e.g. are not able to have feelings). Study 2 tests the base model and shows that people feel less embarrassed during a potentially embarrassing encounter when interacting with service robots compared to frontline employees. Finally, Study 3 confirms that perceived agency, but not emotion, fully mediates frontline counterparty (employee vs robot) effects on anticipated embarrassment.

Service robots can add value by reducing potential customer embarrassment because they are perceived to have less agency than service employees. This makes service robots the preferred service delivery mechanism for at least some customers in potentially embarrassing service encounters (e.g. in certain medical contexts).

This study is one of the first to examine a context where service robots are the preferred service delivery mechanism over human employees.

Firms have begun to introduce virtual agents (VAs) in service encounters, both in online and offline environments. Such VAs typically resemble human frontline employees in several ways (e.g. the VAs may have a gender and a name), which indicates the presence of an assumption by VA designers – and by firms that employ them – that VA humanness is a positively charged characteristic. This study aims to address this assumption by examining antecedents to perceived humanness in terms of attribution of agency, emotionality and morality, and the impact of perceived humanness on customer satisfaction.

A questionnaire was distributed online to participants who had been interacting with existing VAs, and they were asked to focus on one of them for this study. The questionnaire comprised measures of antecedents to perceived humanness of VAs, perceived humanness per se and customer satisfaction. A structural equation modeling approach was used to assess associations between the variables.

Attributions of agency, emotionality and morality to VAs contributed positively to the perceived humanness of the VAs, and perceived humanness was positively associated with customer satisfaction.

Additional humanness capabilities should be explored in further research.

Firms using VAs in service encounters should make attempts to maximize perceived VA humanness, and this study shows that it may be beneficial if such attempts comprise signals that VAs have agency, emotionality and morality.

By examining VAs in terms of a set of fundamental human capabilities, the present study contributes to existing research on human–VA service encounters, which to date has focused on more superficial VA characteristics (such as if the VA has a face and gender).

Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic forced nationwide lockdown in India. During the period of lockdown usage of eWallet increased by 44%. With the increased usage of digital transactions, cyber-crime attacks also increased as much as by 86%. The socio-economic environment and the peoples’ mindset in the country yet not ready for this kind of rise in digital transactions. The purpose of this study is to capture “security concern” and “comfortability” in regard to using eWallet during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The study further investigated the influence of demographics such as gender and income on “security concern” and “comfortability” in using eWallet.

This was an empirical study. The respondents were selected using a purposive sampling method. Only those people who had been using eWallet were included in the survey. The questionnaire was circulated to 100 respondents who agreed to participate in the survey. After scrutiny total of 43 questionnaires were found to be completely filled in all aspects, and thus used for analysis. This study used an innovative multi-method approach for analysis. The hypotheses were tested using two methods: the conventional p-value method and the robust BCa bootstrap method. The effect size was also reported.

The findings suggest that female users are more concerned about eWallet security than male users. This study showed that people from the middle-income group are more concerned about the security of digital payments than the people from the lower-income group.

This study covered the influence of two demographic variables “gender” and “income” on security and comfort in using eWallets. Other demographic variables such as age, education, occupation and area of residence (rural or urban) need to be investigated with the inclusion of rural populations. From the findings of this study, this paper argues that the middle-income group in India is more risk intolerant than the lower-income group while higher and lower-income groups are indifferent. A separate detailed study is recommended for additional support. This study used an innovative multi-method approach of analysis and use of bootstrapping. This may encourage other researchers to adopt such approaches.

This study showed that irrespective of the forceful adoption; security concerns are prevailing and on the rise. This is an alarm to developers and service providers that, although the use of eWallets increased exponentially during this COVID-19 pandemic, it is a forceful adoption and not willful. They should not get deceived by rise in eWallet users and must endeavor to improve the security of eWallets otherwise, there may be a sharp decline in eWallet users once the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

This study attempted to capture the comfortability and security concerns of eWallet users during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study used an innovative multi-method approach of analysis and used bootstrapping in addition to the conventional p-value method to test the significance. This study showed that irrespective of the forceful adoption of eWallets owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, security concerns are prevailing and on the rise. The study confirms that gender has an influence on eWallet security. The findings of this study are in partial conformity with the findings of previous researchers.

In most developing countries, indigenous emerging construction contractors (ECCs) face severe problems of not adopting a project management framework (PMF) in their business activities. It has increased their business risk and threatened their sustainability. Studies showed that government policy support (GPS) helps mitigate business risks. Thus, there is a paucity of literature concerning GPS on emerging Nigerian construction contractors' business sustainability. Therefore, the paper aims to investigate the moderating effect of GPS on the relationship between PMF and ECCs in Nigeria.

SmartPLS was used to analyse the collected data from the useable 310 questionnaires retrieved from respondents in Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria. Systems Theory was used to support the developed framework.

Findings show that government policy support significantly moderates the relationships between PMF and ECCs in the Nigerian construction sector. It implies that the study's results offer more understanding regarding issues affecting construction entrepreneurs' sustainable business cycle via applying PMF to mitigate business sustainable associated risks.

The study will stir Nigeria's ECCs and policymakers to promote construction business sustainability for a new entrepreneur, emphasising business risk management via PMF and GPS to enhance the sustainable business cycle.

The research (PMF and GPS) is strategies to enhance ECCs business sustainability in the Nigerian construction sector and other developing countries with similar political and economic attributes. Besides the study guiding old and intending ECCs and policymakers in the developing countries industries, it would contribute to bridge the theoretical gap regarding PMF and ECC, especially ECCs in developing countries with similar business sustainability issues.

This study aims to analyse whether and when victim incivility may be related to work-to-family conflict and then burnout among emergency workers.

A total of 304 Italian emergency workers from five firehouses and six emergency rooms completed questionnaires, examining: victim incivility, work-to-family conflict, social support seeking and burnout symptoms. Descriptive analyses, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models were conducted.

Victim incivility was positively associated with burnout symptoms, both directly and indirectly, as mediated by work-to-family conflict. Additionally, social support seeking exacerbated (rather than mitigated) the impact of work-to-family conflict on burnout symptoms.

Organisations can greatly benefit from implementing family-friendly practices and providing their workers with training programmes on how to deal with difficult victims.

This study contributes to the existing literature on workplace incivility and work–life interface by supporting for the first time the notion that victim incivility can spill over into emergency workers' family domain and by clarifying how and when victim incivility is related to burnout symptoms.

This paper extends entrepreneurial ecosystems theory by testing how aspects of the local business environment affect individual entrepreneurs' ability to translate their personal resources into firm performance.

Data were collected from 223 business owners across Australia. Moderation hypotheses were tested using multiple hierarchical regression and confirmed with the Preacher and Hayes (2004) bootstrapping method.

The results show that business owners' psychological capital, social capital and entrepreneurial education directly affect their individual firm performance. These positive relations are moderated by specific aspects of the business environment, such that they are stronger when the environment is more favorable.

This study puts individual business owners back into entrepreneurial ecosystems theory and explains how they can make the most of their personal resources, suggesting a complex interplay where one size does not fit all. Far-reaching practical implications for policymakers are discussed.

This paper aims to examine the comovement among green bonds, energy commodities and stock market to determine the advantages of adding green bonds to a diversified portfolio.

Generic 1 Natural Gas and Energy Select SPDR Fund are used as proxies to measure energy commodities, bonds index of S&P Dow Jones and Bloomberg Barclays MSCI are used to represent green bonds and the New York Stock Exchange is considered to measure the stock market. Granger causality test, wavelet analysis and network analysis are applied to daily price for the select markets from August 26, 2014, to March 30, 2021.

Results from the Granger causality test indicate no causality between any pair of variables, while cross wavelet transform and wavelet coherence analysis confirm strong coherence at a high scale during the pandemic, validating comovement among the three asset classes. In addition, network analysis further corroborates this connectedness, implying a strong association of the stock market with the energy commodity market.

This study offers new evidence of the temporal association among the US stock market, energy commodities and green bonds during the COVID-19 crisis. It presents a novel approach that measures and evaluates comovement among the constituent series, simultaneously using both wavelet and network analysis.

Recently, many firms have reshored manufacturing activities back to their home countries to increase customer perceptions of product quality. However, there is no evidence that relocating production to the home country improves customer-perceived quality. This study intends to address this gap by assessing the variations between pre- and post-reshoring product quality, as perceived by domestic customers.

Data were collected through a questionnaire, which used the case of an Italian fashion brand that had reshored its manufacturing from Romania to Italy as the stimulus. Two analyses of the collected data (n = 399) were conducted, applying both 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design and partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM) multigroup analysis.

Reshoring increased the level of perceived product quality only for customers that both were aware of the firm's past offshoring decision and had high levels of affective ethnocentrism. For all other customers, no significant variations between pre- and post-reshoring product quality were observed.

This study challenges previous findings, revealing that only a minor share of customers perceived products to be of higher quality after reshoring.

Increasing customer-perceived quality may not be a sufficient motivation to select the reshoring strategy. In addition, when announcing reshoring strategies, producers should appeal to customers' emotions and not use rational arguments about objective product quality.

This is the first study to assess variations between pre- and post-reshoring customer-perceived quality and to identify factors that explain such variations.