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This paper delves into evaluating the effectiveness of warning messages as a deterrent against excessive fat consumption. It examines how consumers perceive the fat content of food products when presented with two distinct label types: (1) a textual warning, providing succinct information about the fat content, and (2) a pictorial warning, offering a visual representation that immediately signifies the fat content.

Two quantitative studies were carried out. Study 1 employed a questionnaire to evaluate the efficacy of textual and pictorial warning messages on high- and low-fat food products. Similarly, Study 2 replicated this comparison while incorporating a neuromarketing instrument to gauge participants’ cerebral reactions.

Results indicate that pictorial warnings on high-fat foods significantly deter consumers’ purchasing intentions. Notably, these pictorial warnings stimulate the left prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex, inducing negative emotions in consumers and driving them away from high-fat food items.

While the influence of images over text in shaping consumer decisions is well understood in marketing, this study accentuates the underlying mechanism of such an impact through the elicitation of negative emotions. By understanding this emotional pathway, the paper presents fresh academic and managerial perspectives, underscoring the potency of pictorial warnings in guiding consumers towards healthier food choices.

1. Textual warnings do not seem to discourage high-fat product consumption.

2. A pictorial warning represents the fat content of an equivalent product.

3. Pictorial warnings decrease the intention to purchase a high-fat product.

4. Pictorial warnings determine an increase in negative emotions.

Textual warnings do not seem to discourage high-fat product consumption.

A pictorial warning represents the fat content of an equivalent product.

Pictorial warnings decrease the intention to purchase a high-fat product.

Pictorial warnings determine an increase in negative emotions.

Although governments have used social media platforms to interact with the public in an attempt to minimize anxiety and provide a forum for public discussion during the pandemic, governments require sufficient crisis communication skills to engage citizens in taking appropriate action effectively. This study aims to examine how the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) has used TikTok, the leading short video–based platform, to facilitate public engagement during COVID-19.

Building upon dual process theories, this study integrates the activation of information exposure, prosocial interaction theory and social sharing of emotion theory to explore how public engagement is related to message sensation value (MSV), media character, content theme and emotional valence. A total of 354 TikTok videos posted by NHCC were collected during the pandemic to explore the determinants of public engagement in crises.

The findings demonstrate that MSV negatively predicts public engagement with government TikTok, but that instructional information increases engagement. The presence of celebrities and health-care professionals negatively affects public engagement with government TikTok accounts. In addition, emotional valence serves a moderating role between MSV, media characters and public engagement.

Government agencies must be fully aware of the different combinations of MSV and emotion use in the video title when releasing crisis-related videos. Government agencies can also leverage media characters – health professionals in particular – to enhance public engagement. Government agencies are encouraged to solicit public demand for the specific content of instructing information through data mining techniques.

The current study aims to investigate the factors that impact the feedback received on answers to questions in social Q&A communities and whether the expertise-required question influences the role of these factors on the feedback.

To understand the antecedents and consequences that influence the feedback received on answers to online community questions, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is applied in this study. The authors use web data crawling methods and a combination of quantitative analyses. The data for this study came from Zhihu; in total, 353,775 responses were obtained to 1,531 questions, ranging from 49 to 23,681 responses per question. Each answer received 0 to 113,892 likes and 0 to 6,250 comments.

The answers' cognitive and emotional components and the answerer's influence positively affect user feedback behavior. In addition, the expertise-required question moderates the effects of the answer's cognitive component and emotional component on the user feedback, moderating the effects of the answerer's influence on the user approval feedback.

This study builds upon a limited yet growing body of literature on a theme of great relevance to scholars, practitioners and social media users concerning the effects of the connotation of answers (i.e. their cognitive and emotional components) and the answerer's influence on user feedback (i.e. approval and collaborative feedback) in social Q&A communities. The authors further consider the moderating role of the domain expertise required by the question (expertise-required question). The ELM model is applied to explore the relationships between questions, answers and feedback. The findings of this study add a new perspective to the research on user feedback and have implications for the management of social Q&A communities.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

This study aims to explore the intelligibility of communication with stakeholders as a result of accrual accounting adoption. It focuses on changes in the use of visual forms and the readability of text that occurred immediately after the adoption of accrual accounting in performance reports of Italian public universities.

The authors collect the stakeholder section of performance reports published before and after accrual accounting adoption. Then, the authors use manual and computer-assisted textual analysis. Finally, the authors explore the data using principal component analysis and qualitative comparative analysis.

This study demonstrates that switching from cash to accrual accounting provokes immediate changes in communication patterns. It confirms the significant reduction of readability and increase in visual forms after accruals accounting adoption. The results indicate that smaller universities especially put effort into increasing intelligibility while implementing a more complex accounting system. This study also finds a relation between the change in readability and the change in visual forms that are complementary, with the exception of several very large universities.

The findings underline the possibility of neutralising the adverse effects of accounting reform associated with its complexity and difficulties in understanding by the use of visual forms and attention to the document’s readability.

This paper adds a new dimension to the study of public sector accounting from the external stakeholder perspective. It provides further insight into the link between accrual accounting adoption and readability, together with the use of visual forms by universities.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic on the public’s online information behaviour, offering insights critical for shaping effective informational responses in future public health emergencies.

This paper uses a structured online survey with 27 targeted questions using a five-point Likert scale to measure eight variables. Data analysis is conducted through structural equation modelling on 307 valid responses to rigorously test the research hypotheses.

This paper indicates that information quality significantly impacts the public’s capacity to select, share and use online information. Additionally, the comprehensibility of information plays a crucial role in shaping the public’s behaviours in terms of online information exchange and usage. The credibility of information sources emerges as a key determinant influencing the public’s online information selection, exchange and utilization behaviour. Moreover, social influence exerts a substantial effect on the public’s online information selection, acquisition, exchange and utilization behaviour. These findings highlight the presence of universality and sociality, mediation and guidance, as well as the purposefulness and selectivity performed by the public’s online information behaviour during an infodemic.

This paper introduces a novel research model for assessing the influence and identifies the patterns of the public’s online information behaviour during the COVID-19 infodemic. The findings have significant implications for developing strategies to tackle information dissemination challenges in future major public health emergencies.

Although the phenomenon of the corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) has derived the interest of several scholars, in recent years, the comparative studies between Islamic banks (IBs) regarding CSRD quantity versus quality have not been the subject matter of studies till now. In this perspective, this chapter aims to investigate the importance given by IBs to the quality and quantity disclosure of CSR. Moreover, it seeks to explore the impact of CSRD quality and quantity on the IBs' financial performance (FP). To meet these objectives, we used a sample of 59 IBs from 2011 to 2016 in the Arab world and non-Arab world. Then, by adopting the content analysis approach, the authors constructed two CSRD indexes (quality and quantity). The empirical results indicated that IBs give more importance to the qualitative disclosure than the quantitative. Our findings will be very helpful for the policymakers and the managers of IBs because maintaining a good CSRD policy increases the capacity of IBs to deal with possible reputational events, thus protecting their profits and financial results. As far as the comparison between the Arabian and non-Arabian IBs, based on financial reports and Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) governance standard N°7 is concerned, our study is among the first studies that provides two new CSRD indexes (quantity and quality).

The proliferation of health misinformation on social media has increasingly engaged scholarly interest. This research examines the determinants influencing users’ proactive correction of health misinformation, a crucial strategy in combatting health misbeliefs. Grounded in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this research investigates how factors including issue involvement, information literacy and active social media use impact health misinformation recognition and intention to correct it.

A total of 413 social media users finished a national online questionnaire. SPSS 26.0, AMOS 21.0 and PROCESS Macro 4.1 were used to address the research hypotheses and questions.

Results indicated that issue involvement and information literacy both contribute to health misinformation correction intention (HMCI), while misinformation recognition acts as a mediator between information literacy and HMCI. Moreover, active social media use moderated the influence of information literacy on HMCI.

This study not only extends the ELM into the research domain of correcting health misinformation on social media but also enriches the perspective of individual fact-checking intention research by incorporating dimensions of users’ motivation, capability and behavioral patterns.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-09-2023-0505

This research aims to examine the factors that influence customers' product return intentions and proposes that YouTube product reviews can mitigate customers' desire to return a product.

The proposed theoretical research model and hypothesized relationship were investigated using a quantitative process. This study used 302 data from Indonesian young adult respondents to examine the structural model, which was analyzed using the SmartPLS 3.2 software package.

The results show that YouTube product reviews, product fit uncertainty and customer satisfaction are the key determinants of customers' product return intention. Furthermore, the results show that the credibility of YouTube product reviews has a major impact on customers' familiarity with a product, satisfaction and the likelihood of returning goods to sellers.

In the e-commerce industry, increasing the use of YouTube product reviews will help businesses eliminate unnecessary product returns. Sellers are also encouraged to collaborate with YouTube producers to review specific products, which can benefit companies by raising brand awareness and gaining customer feedback. Furthermore, YouTube online product reviews can help consumers avoid having an unpleasant shopping experience that causes emotional reactions and lowers satisfaction.

Most research has not considered antecedents in observing the product return phenomenon; this study observes a prerequisite of consumer product returns (i.e. information asymmetry and product familiarity) and investigates the relationships between YouTube product reviews, customer satisfaction and product return intention.

This paper according to the logic of the “digital access divide--digital capability divide--digital outcome divide” aims to systematically discuss the impact of the digital divide on individual happiness in China, accounting for the variations that exist across different groups, as well as the corresponding mechanisms.

This paper presents cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between the digital divide and individual happiness in China. The analyses are based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2017, which academic institutions run on the Chinese Mainland. This database contains information on respondents' Internet access, skills and consequences of use, which can measure the digital divide of Chinese individuals at three levels.

First, individual happiness declined when they experienced the digital access divide in China. For the digital capability divide, the lower the usage skills, the more individual happiness declined. When analyzing the digital outcome divide, the greater the negative consequences, the more individual happiness declined. Second, the impacts of digital access, capability and outcome divide vary according to age, gender, education degrees, hukou, region and sub-dimensions. Third, the digital access and capability divide reduce individuals' happiness by lowering their self-rated social and economic status, whereas the digital outcome divide reduce individual happiness by lowering their fairness perception and social trust.

The authors believe that this is the first study to examine the impact and its variations among different groups of the three-level digital divide on individual happiness, as well as its mechanisms.