Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of human resource management (HRM) reforms on job-related well-being of academics in Chinese universities. It also tests the mediating effect of work intensification (WI) and affective commitment (AC), and the moderating effect of perceived organizational justice (OJ) on the HRM‒well-being relationship to understand the influence mechanisms and boundary conditions.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in 25 Chinese universities, obtaining 638 usable questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used as the analytical technique to examine the model fit and test hypotheses.

The findings reveal that the relationship of HRM and well-being is neither direct nor unconditional, and a win‒win scenario for both management and employee well-being is possible when organizations pursue HRM innovations.

The limitations of this study are that data were collected at once and at a defined time, with no time lag being involved. In addition, all variables were self-reported.

Commitment-oriented HRM practices can create a win‒win scenario; when control-oriented HRM practices are necessary, managers should ensure OJ to offset their negative influence on employees.

This study is among the first to examine the impact of HRM on employee well-being in the context of Chinese higher education, contributing to the limited studies on HRM in Chinese public sector and the on-going debate on the nature of HRM in China.

This paper aims to study whether the upstream foundry in the original design manufacturer (ODM) supply chain will violate the commission contract and engage in the production of pirated products. Based on the conclusion, this study hopes to explain the phenomenon of pirated products in reality and provide management enlightenment for related companies.

To understand when will foundry violates the processing contract, this paper constructs a five-stage decision-making model, this study derives a model to get three situations and draw data images to describe the characteristics of decision-making by the foundry. Finally, this paper also considers some external supervision.

The results show that processing fee and other parameters (special cost, common cost, weakening factor and product difference) jointly determine the possibility of piracy by the foundry. Moreover, the external supervision mechanism has a significant effect on the piracy behavior of the foundry.

The research provides some support for real business activities, which actually involve many participants and mechanisms. Thus, it could be interesting to explore more multi-stage and complex business methods in reality.

The analysis highlights less-concerned moral hazard behaviors in the ODM supply chain. By recreating the complex interactions of participants, the conclusion shed light on how should different roles deal with their risks and take actions in a real business environment.

The biggest contribution of this study is to discuss the issue of moral hazard in the ODM supply chain. Piracy initiated by foundries may be a new type of supply chain risk and should be paid attention to.

Among U.S. children, research indicates that early childhood experiences, including the child care environment, affect later educational outcomes. Yet, research on educational stratification in low-income countries rarely features the preschool years. We investigate the organization of child care among preschoolers in China. In-depth interviews reveal that grandmother care and formal care are highly desirable. Formal care, in particular, is perceived to provide educational advantage. Using China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, and mixed random effects logit models, we explore the determinants of grandmother care and formal care. Results suggest poverty is associated with gender bias; in low-income households, boys without siblings are especially likely to receive formal care. These results call for greater attention to early childhood in research on educational stratification in China and other low-income settings.

Technological development has not only helped in effective integration of renewable sources but also made it possible for consumers to participate in system operation. Different market players are coming up in the electricity market, microgrid being one of them. Thus, this paper aims to investigate consumers’ role in the dispatch of a microgrid system that has a hybrid market structure under varied system conditions.

The mathematical model developed has been solved by the CONOPT solver in the GAMS optimization tool. GAMS-MATLAB interfacing is done to obtain solutions.

The problem formulated shows the effect of consumers in dispatch and overall operational cost. Consumers’ participation has been proposed through a quadratic cost function. The system operation under pool and bilateral contracts has been investigated. It shows that proper incentives to the consumers can help in reduction and effective management of the demand, carbon emission and overall system operational cost.

This paper considers the hybrid market structure to find the load dispatch in a microgrid system. The participation of consumers in the microgrid system has been implemented considering variations in wind power, solar power and load. The power exchange between the grid and microgrid system has been modeled showing the contribution of the consumers in system operation.

Satisfying the gastronomy experience of tourists becomes the most important strategic aim in the hospitality and tourism industries. This study attempts to prove that there is a distinct and specific market segment related to gastronomy from the overall number of tourist arrival of Jeonju City. Furthermore, this study investigates the different factors that affect the overall experience of tourists. The focus of the study is Jeonju City, a popular gastronomy destination in South Korea.

Survey questionnaires were distributed to 680 tourists in Jeonju City during two survey periods. Descriptive statistics and regressions were utilized to treat the data. The predictors that affect the overall experience of tourists were identified through the different literature. The hypotheses were formulated and tested to examine the relationship between the assessments of the distinct gastronomy-tourist market and tourists' overall experience.

The results indicate that there are 17.20% of the respondents indicated that their main reason for traveling was for the food. Descriptive statistics revealed that local food satisfaction, destination image perceived quality, perceived value, tourist expectations, and costs and risks have a positive and significant influence on tourist overall experience.

The findings of this study could provide guidelines for both the hospitality and tourism industries of the country, and tourist destination operators to further positioned approaches to satisfy gastronomy tourists in the “new normal”.

Tourism researchers proposed that service quality dimensions of tourist destinations can contribute in developing a favorable or unfavorable image among travelers which affect visitors’ loyalty or disloyalty as well as destination image. However, such claims are seldom evaluated into in avitourism locations, which are a niche tourism, but fast growing. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service quality, visitor satisfaction and destination image and destination loyalty among avian tourists.

Following a positivist research philosophy with a quantitative, cross-sectional descriptive study design, the study addressed five direct and two indirect relationships in the model. The research followed expectation dis-confirmation theory of Gartner to test the theoretical model. Following purposive sampling, a sample of 384 international avitourists was collected from five avitourism locations of Malaysia. The study applied SmartPLS SEM to analyze the data.

The results show that the service quality provided by the park management has a positive impact on visitor satisfaction, destination image and destination loyalty. The study also shows partial mediation effect of visitor satisfaction on destination image and destination loyalty among avitourists. The study extends practical, policy and theoretical implications to the stakeholders of avitourism.

The study limits the possibility for generalization of the findings into five avitourism sites located in three states of Malaysia. Hence, the scope of the study needs to be augmented with samples from more regions to meet the expected generalization. Add to the point, this study lacks qualitative data observations to get an in-depth understanding of the issues pertaining to visitor’s expectations on serviced quality, satisfaction, destination image and loyalty. Hence, it is suggested that more qualitative research interventions need to be made with the tools of in-depth interviews, content analysis and with the method of focus group discussions and Delphi applications.

This study provides the park management a clearer understanding on service quality critical factors in enhancing the satisfaction of avian tourists and building a better avitourism destination image and destination loyalty. The avitourism park management may look into the services for these niche tourists, as these resources are directly linked to nature-based tourism with its diverse requirements to keep visitors satisfied. Park authorities require a sound understanding and skills in managing the biodiversity of the natural resources, birds and animals, to match their services with tourists’ expectations.

Biodiversity is important in supporting vital ecosystem services (ES) for human as well as animals. The study has its social implications in generating a greater number of employment opportunity for people surrounding the area of avian destinations preserving the biodiverse area. The people in the surroundings area of avitourism locations will get better employment opportunity as guides and nature trail experts, if the avian tourism develops in its real principle.

Avitourism is a niche tourism. The expectations of the visitors of avitourism locations are entirely varied in comparison with general tourism. Very less studies focused into expectations of the visitors linking human factor of service quality, emotional intelligence, visitor satisfaction, etc. like dimensions that will contribute into dynamic destination image and destination loyalty among avitourists. With the support of quantitative research tools, representative sampling and theoretical selection, the study findings are original in their form, ensuring external validity further to generalize into other birdwatching locations across the countries. The study observations are highly valuable to all stakeholders of avitourism.

Known as the major capital providers in Belt and Road countries and the largest carbon emitter in the world, what role China's outward direct investment (ODI) plays in carbon neutralization has become a matter of concern. This study aims to measure the impact of China's ODI on the carbon emissions of Belt and Road countries.

Based on an econometric model and an inter-regional input–output model, a new model measuring the carbon emission effects of ODI is developed.

The empirical results show that (1) in general, China's ODI generates an emission-reduction effect in Belt and Road countries; (2) The relationship between the emission-reduction effect and income level of host countries shows an approximate inverted U-shaped trend; and (3) China's ODI generates stronger emission-reduction effects on capital-intensive industries.

This study quantitatively measures the scale of carbon emission-increase and reduction effect, which is relatively lacking in previous studies. This study explores the heterogeneity from the perspectives of regions, countries and industries. The authors have compiled an inter-regional input–output table for the Belt and Road countries for 2014 to provide a broad basis for the study of related issues.

This paper aims to explore the effects of normative and hedonic motivations on continuous knowledge contribution, and how past contribution experience moderates the effects of the motivations on continuous knowledge contribution.

Based on goal-framing theory, the present study proposes a comprehensive theoretical model by integrating normative and hedonic motivations, past contribution experience and continuous knowledge contribution. The data for virtual community members' activities were collected using the Python Scrapy crawler. Logit regression was used to validate the integrative model.

The results show that both normative motivation (reflected by generalized reciprocity and social learning) and hedonic motivation (reflected by peer recognition and online attractiveness) are positively associated with continuous knowledge contribution. Moreover, these effects are found to be significantly influenced by members' past knowledge contribution experience. Specifically, the results suggest that past knowledge contribution experience undermines the influence of generalized reciprocity on continuous knowledge contribution but strengthens the effect of peer recognition and online attractiveness.

Although the emerging literature on continuous knowledge contribution mainly focuses on motivations as antecedents that promote continuous knowledge contribution, most of these studies assume that the relationship between motivating mechanisms and continuous knowledge contribution does not change over time. The study is one of the initial studies to examine whether and how the influence of multiple motivations evolves relative to levels of past contribution experience.

This study aims to propose a consensus model that considers dynamic trust and the hesitation degree of the expert's evaluation, and the model can provide personalized adjustment advice to inconsistent experts.

The trust degree between experts will be affected by the decision-making environment or the behavior of other experts. Therefore, based on the psychological “similarity-attraction paradigm”, an adjustment method for the trust degree between experts is proposed. In addition, we proposed a method to measure the hesitation degree of the expert's evaluation under the multi-granular probabilistic linguistic environment. Based on the hesitation degree of evaluation and trust degree, a method for determining the importance degree of experts is proposed. In the feedback mechanism, we presented a personalized adjustment mechanism that can provide the personalized adjustment advice for inconsistent experts. The personalized adjustment advice is accepted readily by inconsistent experts and ensures that the collective consensus degree will increase after the adjustment.

The results show that the consensus model in this paper can solve the social network group decision-making problem, in which the trust degree among experts is dynamic changing. An illustrative example demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed model in this paper. Simulation experiments have confirmed the effectiveness of the model in promoting consensus.

The authors presented a novel dynamic trust consensus model based on the expert's hesitation degree and a personalized adjustment mechanism under the multi-granular probabilistic linguistic environment. The model can solve a variety of social network group decision-making problems.

When customers feel that they have no choice but to stay with their current provider to obtain a service that they need, they feel captive. This study aims to investigate customer captivity as a type of vulnerability and evaluate its effects on customers’ service evaluation and word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior, as well as to identify solutions that reduce customers’ feelings of captivity and improve their well-being.

This sequential, quantitative–qualitative, mixed-methods study draws from a survey of 1,017 customers and a qualitative analysis of 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews. Moderated mediation analysis is used to test the quantitative hypotheses; a thematic analysis explores the qualitative data.

The results of the quantitative study show that captivity emotions and price unfairness perceptions are two manifestations of customer captivity, which directly and indirectly affect service evaluations and WOM behavior. The findings of the qualitative study highlight how captive customers use emotional support-seeking negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) as a solution to reduce their captivity emotions and improve their well-being, by reinforcing their social ties and regaining a sense of control.

This study advances transformative service research by demonstrating how captivity affects customers’ well-being and customer vulnerability literature by investigating captivity as a type of vulnerability. It contributes to service marketing literature by identifying customer captivity as a boundary condition for generic service evaluation models.

Captive customers seek emotional support and consequently spread NWOM. Therefore, it is critical for service providers to reduce customers’ captivity feelings and implement adequate solutions to prevent NWOM and decrease the risk of negative impacts on their profitability.

Any customer can become vulnerable, due to contextual circumstances. This study focuses on customer captivity as a type of vulnerability and proposes adapted solutions to improve customers’ well-being.