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With society’s growing environmental concern, developing a green brand identity provides cities with opportunities to enhance their competitiveness. Nevertheless, few studies have explored green city branding and specifically considered the diverse perceptions of multiple stakeholders. Accordingly, this study aims to explore green city branding from the perceptions of multiple stakeholders.

Based on associative network theory, the study uses brand concept maps and network analysis approaches to construct and analyze the content and structure of mental models among local residents and foreign tourists for a green city brand. This study further seeks empirical support for the findings via a survey, using the sample case of Yilan County in Taiwan.

The results of this study reveal that foreign tourists possess a more diverse and heterogeneous brand perception than local residents. Additionally, the study uncovers significant green city brand associations regarding their influences on the behavioral decisions of local residents and foreign tourists.

This research is the first attempt to advance the knowledge of green city branding by empirically exploring the green city brand perceptions of multiple stakeholders based on associative network theory. The results provide brand researchers with different analytical perspectives on the existing knowledge about city brand perceptions and offer strategic information for city managers.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a perspective of brand-based analysis on green brand positioning differentiation through a network analysis approach.

This study employs centrality and distinctiveness as bases to develop a matrix framework of green brand positioning differentiation. The two dimensions are measured from the techniques of network analysis, including analysis of the core-periphery structure and adjacency matrix.

The results yield four clusters with different positions in a 2×2 matrix, including 23 core brands with high-positioning distinctiveness, ten core brands with low-positioning distinctiveness, ten peripheral brands with high-positioning distinctiveness, and seven peripheral brands with low-positioning distinctiveness.

The results contribute to providing brand researchers with different analytical perspectives on the existing knowledge about green brand positioning and offer strategic positioning information for green brand practitioners.

This research contributes to the literature in three ways. First, this research is a first attempt to offer a brand-based perspective on differentiation of green brand positioning. Second, this research advances the existing knowledge that uses network analysis on green brand positioning by offering different techniques for brand differentiation analysis. Finally, this research complements the strategic positioning information of the current business environment in the context of green branding.

The shipper selects a suitable shipping route and plans for a voyage in order to import and export cargo on the basis of published sailing schedules. The reliability of the sailing schedule will influence the shipper’s logistics expense, which means that the logistics costs will depend on the reliability of schedules published by container shipping companies. Therefore, it is important to consider factors which can cause delays would for container ships sailing on sea routes. The reliability of published sailing schedules can be affected by a number of different factors. This study adopts the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method to estimate the importance of the delaying factors in a sailing schedule. In addition, the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method is applied to identify the subjective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. The entropy weight method combined with the actual performance of the container shipping company are both used when estimating the objective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. According to the analysis results, the criteria can be divided into four quadrants with different management implications, which indicate that instructions for chase strategy, sailing schedule control, fleet allocation, transship operation arrangement and planning for ports in routes are often ignored by container shipping companies. Container shipping companies should consider adjusting their operational strategies, which would greatly improve their operational performance.

This paper aims to investigate the question concerning whether gender diversity in the boardroom matters to lenders or not?

To answer this question, the authors use the data from 2009 to 2015 of all A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The authors use ordinary least squares regression and firm fixed effect regression to draw our inferences. To check and control the issue of endogeneity the authors use one-year lagged gender diversity regression, two-stage least squares regression, propensity score matching method and Heckman two-stage regression.

The results suggest that the presence of female directors on the board reduces managerial opportunistic behavior and information asymmetry and, consequently, creditors’ perceptions about the probability of loan default and the cost of debt. The authors find that lenders charge 4 per cent less from borrowers that have at least one female board member than they do from borrowers with no female board members. The authors also find that the board structure (i.e. gender diversity) of government-owned firms also matters to lenders, as government-owned firms that have gender-diverse boards have a lower cost of debt (i.e. 5 per cent lower interest rate).

The findings have implications for individual borrowers and for regulators. For example, borrowers can get debt financing at lower rates by altering their boards’ composition (i.e. through gender diversity). From the regulatory perspective, the results support recent legislative initiatives around the world regarding female directors’ representation on boards.

This paper makes several contributions. First, beyond the recent studies on boardroom gender, the authors investigate the relationship between gender diversity in the boardroom and the cost of debt. Second, the authors extend the literature on the association between government ownership and cost of debt by first time providing evidence that the board composition (e.g. gender diversity) of government-owned firms also matters to the lenders. The other contributions are discussed in the introduction section.

The purpose of this study is to propose a hybrid system to combine the self‐organizing map (SOM) of a neural network with the data‐mining (DM) method for course recommendation of the e‐learning system.

This research constructs a hybrid system with artificial neural network (ANN) and data‐mining (DM) techniques. First, ANN is used to classify the e‐Learner types. Based on these e‐Learner groups, users can obtain course recommendation from the group's opinions. When groups of related interests have been established, the DM will be used to elicit the rules of the best learning path. It is ideal for this system to stimulate learners' motivation and interest. Moreover, the hybrid approach can be used as a reference when learners are choosing between classes.

In order to enhance the efficiency and capability of e‐learning systems, the SOM method is combined to deal with cluster problems of DM systems, SOM/DM for short. It was found that the SOM/DM method has excellent performance.

This research is limited by the fact that its participants are from a business college of a university in Taiwan, and it is applied by SOM/DM to recommend courses of e‐learners. This research is useful in the domain of the e‐learning system.

The results of this research will provide useful information for educators to classify their e‐learners or students more accurately, and to adapt their teaching strategies accordingly to retain valuable e‐learners subject to limited resources. The experiments prove that it is ideal to stimulate learners' motivation and interest.

This study aims to investigate the cross-sectional differences on the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and future bankruptcy along the dimensions of political connection and corporate governance strength. This study intends to provide evidence on the tangible benefits for firms to invest in social capital of CSR activities and offer insights on what firms may benefit more from CSR expenditure.

Running a logistic regression on the determinants of bankruptcy model after controlling for financial stress factors based on prior literature, this study examines the moderating effect of political connection and corporate governance on the association between corporate social responsibility and future bankruptcy.

Current study documents that the negative association between corporate social responsibility and future bankruptcy is only significant for politically connected firms, but insignificant for non-politically connected firms. Specifically, the authors find that one standard deviation increase of CSR expenditure significantly reduces the propensity of future bankruptcy by 53.20% for politically-connected firms. Conversely, the negative relation between CSR only exits for firms with weak corporate governance but do not exit for firms with strong corporate governance.

Current study provides evidence on the tangible benefits for firms to invest in social capital of CSR activities and offers additional insights on what firms may benefit more from CSR expenditure.

Current study extends the research to examine the cross-sectional variations in the negative association between CSR performance and the propensity of bankruptcy. The positive moderating effect of political connection on CSR and bankruptcy suggests that political connection and CSR are complements in reducing the propensity of future bankruptcy. A more pronounced negative association between CSR and bankruptcy for firms with weaker governance suggests that firms with weak corporate governance benefits more in engaging CSR activities than firms with strong corporate governance.