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Vietnam is experiencing rapid expansion in the provision of higher education that requires quality assurance appropriate for the Vietnamese-centralised Confucian cultural context. This paper aims to examine the concept of quality from the perspectives of academic leaders, quality assurance members and academics at three higher education institutions in Vietnam.

Based on an interpretative study, semi-structured interviews were used as a major research instrument augmented with document analysis across three case studies. Interviews were conducted with 35 participants from three groups of stakeholders.

The concept of quality was found to be under-conceptualised in this Vietnamese context. Quality was conceptualised as meeting societal needs across the case studies underpinned by the belief that the purpose of higher education is to prepare graduates for employment.

The study was conducted in similar disciplines at three state-owned universities in Vietnam in 2011. This provides insight within this context and timeframe that may not be generalised. It is suggested to extend this research to other disciplines, the private sector and other groups of stakeholders.

The paper discusses the necessity of revisiting the philosophy of higher education and re-conceptualising quality in Vietnam that informs quality assurance processes that are relevant to the cultural context.

This paper provides a centralised Confucian perspective to the literature on quality assurance in higher education. How quality is perceived by academic leaders, quality assurance members and, in particular, academic staff can be used to inform policy. In a centralised country such as Vietnam, academic leaders and quality assurance members may indicate their “obedient” attitudes to policies, leading to the same view with what is centrally enacted, while the academic staff have a different perception of quality.

This study aims to enhance to corrosion protection of NiZn-plated steel by electroplating multilayer coating.

The multilayer coating consists of three layers on mild steel substrate, such as Cr³⁺ chromate conversion layer (CCC), electrodeposited nanosilica zinc-nickel composite layer (ZnNiSi) and electrodeposited zinc-nickel alloy layer (ZnNi). Its morphology, composition and corrosion behaviour were investigated by various methods.

Polarization curves indicated that polarization resistance and corrosion current density of CCC/ZnNiSi/ZnNi/Fe (6.956 kO.cm2; 2.56 µA.cm⁻²) were two times higher and five times lower than that of ZnNiSi/ZnNi/Fe (3.42 kO.cm²; 12.52 µA.cm⁻²), respectively. From electrochemical impedance spectroscopy data, charge transfer resistances were 1.344, 2.550 and 2.312 kO.cm² for ZnNi, ZnNiSi/ZnNi and CCC/ZnNiSi/ZnNi, respectively. Salt spray test indicated that after 48 h, surface of ZnNi and ZnNiSi was covered by white rust, whereas no white rust was observed on surface of CCC/ZnNiSi/ZnNi. After 600 h, there were red rust spots (1% surface coverage) on surface of Zn-Ni, whereas only white rust was observed on both ZnNiSi/ZnNi (100% surface coverage) and CCC/ZnNiSi/ZnNi (10% surface coverage).

Multilayer coating enhanced significantly the corrosion protection for steel, as compared to the single-layer coating.

COVID-19 hits every country’s health-care system and economy. There is a trend toward using automation technology in response to the COVID-19 crisis not only in developed countries but also in those with lower levels of technology development. However, current studies mainly focus on the world level, and only a few ones report deployments at the country level. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of automation solutions in Vietnam with locally available materials mainly in the first wave from January to July 2020.

The authors collected COVID-related automation solutions during the first wave of COVID-19 in Vietnam from January to July 2020 through a search process. The analysis and insights of a panel consisting of various disciplines (i.e. academia, health care, government, entrepreneur and media) aim at providing a clear picture of how and to what extent these solutions have been deployed.

The authors found seven groups of solutions from low to high research and development (R&D) levels deployed across the country with various funding sources. Low R&D solutions were widely spread owing to simplicity and affordability. High R&D solutions were mainly deployed in big cities. Most of the solutions were deployed during the first phases when international supply chains were limited with a significant contribution of the media. Higher R&D solutions have opportunities to be deployed in the reopening phase. However, challenges can be listed as limited interdisciplinary research teams, market demand, the local supporting industry, end-user validation and social-ethical issues.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the use of automation technology in response to COVID-19 in Vietnam and also in a country in Southeast Asia. Lessons learned from these current deployments are useful for future emerging infectious diseases. The reality of Vietnam’s automation solutions in response to COVID-19 might be a reference for other developing countries with similar social-economic circumstances and contributes to the global picture of how different countries adopt technology to combat COVID-19.

The health and environmental hazards associated with synthetic dyes have led to a revival of natural dyes that are non-toxic, environmentally benign and coupled with various functions. The study aims to investigate and develop the potentiality of a popular herb called Chromolaena odorata (C. odorata) as a sustainable and stable dyestuff in textiles.

Natural colorant extracted from C. odorata leaves is used to dye the worsted fabric, which is one of the premier end-use of wool in fashion, via the padding method associated with pre-, simultaneous and post-mordanting with chitosan, tannic acid and copper sulfate pentahydrate. The effects of extraction, dyeing and mordanting processes on fabric’s color strength K/S and color difference ΔE_CMC are investigated via International Commission on Illumination’s L*a*b* color space, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, color fastness to washing, rubbing, perspiration and light.

The results obtained indicate extraction with ethanol 90% with a solid/liquid ratio of 1:5 within 1 h, and coloration with a liquor ratio of 1:5 (pH 5) within 2 h under padding pressure of 0.3 MPa are the most effective for coloring worsted fabric.

The C. odorata’s application as a highly effective dyestuff possessing good colorimetric effectiveness has expanded this herb's economic potential, contributing partly to economic growth and adding value to wool in global supply chain.

C. odorata dyestuff has prevailed over other natural colorants because of its impressive color fastness against washing, rubbing, perspiration and especially color stability for pH change.

This paper investigates the key determinants affecting household spending for university degree in Vietnam. This paper serves as empirical evidence for policymakers to select appropriate factors to estimate financial needs for university students in Vietnam.

We employ an innovative variable selection approach with adaptive LASSO for Tobit Regression Model.

The results suggest income, region and ethnicity play significant roles in determining higher education expenditure at Vietnamese households. Gender-related indicators (such as gender of household head, student’s gender), distance to school, occupations, etc. are empirically insignificant.

This study proposes a data-driven method by interfering regulation and Tobit regression to understand the divergence in higher education spending. Especially, adaptive LASSO was first introduced to identify key determinants of higher education expenditure at household level in Vietnam. It hopes to tackle over-fitting problems of traditional OLS regression in previous literature.

This study aims to integrate the perspective of consumer social responsibility with the theory of planned behavior to explore the impact of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) initiatives on intention to buy environmentally friendly products among Vietnamese consumers. Also, the moderating role of gender on the associations of antecedents and green purchase intention is tested in this study.

The data of 823 consumers using the tool of the mall-intercept survey recruited from several big cities in Vietnam. Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis has been used to test the reliability and validity of scales; then, structural equation modeling and PROCESS approach was used to test the fitness of the research model, formulated hypotheses and the indirect associations.

This study presented that ECSR initiatives were strongly and positively correlated with attitude towards green products, subjective norms, perceived behavioral and green purchase intention. Perceived behavioral control was found to be a partial mediator in the link between ECSR initiatives and intention to engage in pro-environmental consumption while the meditating roles of attitude towards green products and subjective norms in this linkage were not statistically significant. Additionally, this study illustrated that the impacts of subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and ECSR initiatives on green purchase intention were stronger for females than males.

This study provides several useful insights for policymakers and administrators to foster pro-environmental behavior of consumers as well as to inspire corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of firms.

Even though there is a growing interest in investigating the impacts of CSR activities on consumers’ purchase behaviors, there is a lack of studies considering the aspect of consumer social responsibility on their sustainable consumption behavior. There is a need to enrich one’s knowledge about the effect of ECSR initiatives on consumer’ green purchase intention.

Widespread technology adoption in tourism enables tourists to be active content creators, thus, influencing destination brands through co-creation. This study examines value co-creation, social commerce information sharing, and destination brand equity.

A quantitative approach was applied to analyse data collected from a global online survey. Hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM analysis.

Results show that destination brand equity is positively influenced by value co-creation. Additionally, social commerce information sharing mediates the relationship between value co-creation and destination brand equity.

The article adds new insights to tourism marketing by investigating value co-creation, social commerce information sharing and destination brand equity. It also offers interesting implications for destination managers to improve Vietnam as a destination brand.

This paper is among the first to test the mediating role of social commerce on value co-creation and destination brand equity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting Vietnamese people’s sustainable tourism intention (IN) with extended the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Preliminary quantitative research was carried out before large-scale formal quantitative research with a sample size of 628 Vietnamese people. Using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method with the SmartPLS tool, measurement and structural models 3.0 were evaluated before testing the research hypotheses about the influence of factors on the IN of sustainable tourism.

This study uses the extended TPB model with original constructs and two additional constructs, travel motivation (TM) and moral reflectiveness (MR), to find out the factors affecting the sustainable tourism IN of Vietnamese people. All hypotheses are accepted, except for the hypothesis about the relationship between TM and attitude toward sustainable tourism. MR has been shown to have a more positive and stronger (insignificant) effect than other factors of the proposed research model on sustainable tourism IN. Thereby, this study contributes both theoretically and practically to policymakers, researchers and tourism enterprises in promoting sustainable tourism IN.

The main limitation of this paper is the deliberate sampling method and targeting the demographic proportion corresponding to the population has lost the randomness of the survey sample.

The findings indicate that state management agencies and tourism enterprises in Vietnam need to pay attention to communication to raise awareness of environmentally oriented tourism and promote the ability to participate in sustainable tourism at a reasonable price as well as the opportunity for easy access and, at the same time, take measures to influence TM and have communication strategies that address the ethical value of participating in sustainable tourism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study to contribute to the existing literature on tourism by integrating TPB constructs with TM and MR to predict sustainable tourism IN.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt the theory of planned behavior to close the entrepreneurial attitude–intention–behavior gap in the entrepreneurship field as well as test the key moderators of the entrepreneurial process, starting from entrepreneurial attitude and intention to behavior to engage in entrepreneurial activities – namely, entrepreneurship education.

The research used a sample of 2,566 students from 16 universities in Vietnam. First, Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis have been used to test the reliability and validity of scales. Then the coefficient paths in the conceptual framework were tested through structural equation modeling, and indirect associations were estimated via the PROCESS bootstrapping approach.

The research illustrated that both attitudes toward entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intention serve as the central antecedents in the formation of entrepreneurial behavior. Also, when students are more entrepreneurially educated, the linkage between attitude toward entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior was hypothesized to become stronger, yet the relation between entrepreneurial intention and behavior was weakened.

This research suggests useful recommendations for educators and policymakers to encourage university students’ favorable attitudes toward entrepreneurial activities, their intention to engage in them and their subsequent entrepreneurial behavior.

This research is expected to make a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by closing the entrepreneurial attitude–intention–behavior gap as well as enriching our understanding of the influence of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial process. Importantly, this research reveals that entrepreneurial education significantly moderates the effects of attitude toward entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intention on entrepreneurial behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The paper uses data from the surveys on SMEs in Vietnam conducted by the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen, the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, Central Institute for Economic Management and Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, and applies least squared regressions and 2SLS regressions to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of SMEs.

The authors find that SMEs with innovation tend to perform better than SMEs without innovation. The authors further show that the positive effect of innovation on firm performance mainly comes from the effect of improvement of existing products, an important type of innovation in SMEs. This result is persistent when the authors use propensity matching score and 2SLS regression with instrumental variable approaches. Overall, the results show the important role of innovation in enhancing the firm performance of SMEs, which sheds light on the literature on the controversial relation between innovation and SMEs performance in the world.

The major limitation of the paper is the lack of data. Although the database used in the paper is widely used to analyze SMEs in Vietnam, it covers about 2,500 firms in only nine provinces/cities in Vietnam.

Policymakers should enact relevant policies to support SMEs with innovation activities, thereby increasing firm performance and their competitiveness. For instance, encouragement policies or financial incentives (tax reduction or subsidies) for innovative firms should be implemented and/or fostered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effect of different types of innovation on the performance of SMEs in Vietnam.