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This study aims to examine the impact of communication style focusing on the family business brand’s roots and virtues on inferences of manipulative intent and willingness to pay a price premium, applying the persuasion knowledge model.

This study collects data involving 337 participants from France and applies partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that communication style plays an important role in inferences of manipulative intent: focusing on the family business brand’s virtues has a positive effect while focusing on the family business brand’s roots has a nonsignificant effect. In turn, inferences of manipulative intent have a negative and significant effect on willingness to pay a price premium. Furthermore, age does not moderate the effect of communication style focusing on the family restaurant brand’s roots and inferences of manipulative intent but positively moderates the effect of communication style focusing on the family restaurant brand’s virtues on inferences of manipulative intent.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to try to unpack the differing effects of communication styles in the context of family business brands. In this vein, it has insightful theoretical and managerial implications for family business brands.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the theme park industry, particularly following the financial stresses induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. CAPEX drivers are poorly understood due to the idiosyncratic nature of this industry, which is dominated by a few large players. It also aims to identify the variables influencing both the growth and maintenance components of CAPEX among U.S. theme park operators.

The paper uses contingency theory to analyze both financial and nonfinancial data from U.S. theme park operators between 2009 and 2021. The paper also uses partial least squares structural equation modeling to manage issues of multicollinearity and to ensure robustness in the findings.

The analysis identifies several key determinants of CAPEX. Resources and the presence of competing theme parks in proximity to an operator’s parks positively affect CAPEX. Conversely, higher leverage, dividend payouts, intellectual property (IP) dominance and population density in areas with their active parks correlate with reduced CAPEX. The paper also notes distinct trends in maintenance versus growth CAPEX post-COVID-19, with maintenance CAPEX increasing as operators invest in existing assets while growth CAPEX trending downwards.

The study’s scope is confined to U.S.-based theme park operators, limiting the generalizability of the findings internationally. Moreover, data limitations restrict the sample size due to the consolidation of the industry players, potentially affecting the statistical power of the analysis.

This research offers significant insights for theme park operators, industry analysts and policymakers. Understanding the factors influencing CAPEX can aid operators in strategic planning and investment decisions, especially in a post-pandemic economic environment where efficient capital allocation will be crucial for recovery and growth. A major contribution of this research is the development of a new measure for IP dominance, which allows theme park operators to quantify the impact of IP on their investment strategies.

This study contributes uniquely by incorporating both financial and nonfinancial determinants in analyzing CAPEX within the theme park industry, a sector significantly impacted by the pandemic. It introduces novel metrics for assessing the impact of IP on CAPEX and differentiates between the factors driving maintenance and growth expenditures. The findings enrich the existing literature on hospitality management and provide actionable insights that could guide the strategic financial decisions of theme park operators.

In the wake of severe socio-economic damage, many firms have made creative and technological progress in their responses to the COVID-19 crisis. This paper examines internal and external environmental complexity elements as antecedents of business responses and builds a framework for tourism firms to respond to the pandemic crisis.

This study obtained survey data from 395 respondents in the Vietnamese tourism and hospitality industry. A partial least squares structural equation modeling–artificial neural network approach was used to examine various combinations of internal and external environmental complexity elements that have different impacts on business responses and firms' performance.

The knowledge and practice created by the firm's employees (individual creativity), obtained from traditional contexts (traditionality) were identified as internal environmental complexity factors while practice learned from other firms (mimetic pressure), information processing (status certainty) and digital transformation (digital technology speed) were treated as external environmental complexity factors. Internal and external environmental complexity factors influence business responses and firms' performance positively but differently.

This study demonstrates that firms should integrate their internal environment of creativity and traditionality with external environmental factors of mimetic pressure, status certainty and digital technology speed to create better business responses, and thus firm performance in the COVID-19 era.

This investigation contributes to environmental research and narrows the existing research gap relating to the association between types of environmental complexity and firms' responsive action, which then influence firms' performance in terms of sustainable competitiveness.