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This study aims to examine the role of face consciousness, materialism and risk of embarrassment in determining consumer purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury brand. In addition, the authors explore boundary conditions of these relationships.

Study 1, a survey research (N = 321), examines the mediating role of risk of embarrassment between face consciousness on the purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits. Study 2 (N = 345), an experimental study, examines the moderating role of brand prominence of counterfeit (i.e. whether it contains prominent brand signals). Study 3 (N = 315) explores how the above-mentioned relationships are moderated by consumers’ moral rationalization (i.e. whether consumers seek rationalization when behaving unethically).

First, this research shows that risk of embarrassment mediates the negative relationship between face consciousness and Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits, whereas this relationship was not found between materialism and counterfeit purchase intentions. Second, this negative mediating effect holds only when the counterfeit brand is highly prominent. Third, the mediating effect depends on consumers’ moral rationalization, with a positive impact on the purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits, regardless of brand prominence.

This study represents a preliminary inquiry into the dynamics between face consciousness and materialism in influencing Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury products. Unlike their Western counterparts, whose materialistic views of possessions predict their counterfeit luxury consumption (Davidson et al., 2019), Chinese consumers are more likely to be driven by the social implications of counterfeit luxury to communicate a prestigious social image to others on account of genuine luxuries’ high social recognition.

While Chinese consumers are one of the most potent global luxury buyers, they are immersed in the world’s biggest counterfeit luxury market. By digging into the core value of Chinese consumers (i.e. face consciousness), this research provides a number of managerial implications for luxury goods companies to engage in international efforts to educate consumers against counterfeit luxury.

This study makes at least three contributions to the counterfeit consumption literature. First, this study represents a preliminary inquiry into the dynamics between face consciousness and materialism in influencing Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury products. Second, this research identified the complex mechanism of face consciousness as an independent variable on consumers’ purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits. Finally, the authors examined the boundary conditions of brand prominence and consumers’ moral rationalization. The findings may help luxury brand managers identify strategies to discourage counterfeit consumption.

The rapid growth in cruise shipping coupled with increasing public awareness of climate change has led to increasing concerns about the impact cruise shipping poses on the environment, especially regarding air emissions. This study analyses the cruise shipping network of ports in and around the emission control areas (ECAs) to understand the structural properties of the network and ports.

A complex network approach was used to analyse the network data of 239 voyages serviced by 14 international cruise lines, visiting 127 ports across 44 countries in the Caribbean Sea.

It is found that the network has a small-world property with a short average path length and a high clustering coefficient. The regulations affect connections among ports, in which most ports in ECAs have lower connections than ports outside ECAs. A few ports in ECAs play important key roles, but many ports outside ECAs play a more important role in the network because the regulations are barriers for cruise ships entering the ports.

The findings of this study have drawn useful guidelines for cruise lines and port authorities to improve their operations. Constrictive recommendations are suggested to policymakers for designing reasonable regulations to attract more cruise shipping to travel in ECAs.

This study aims to examine the direct and indirect relationships between Personality Traits (PTs) and Conflict Management Styles (CMSs) through Job Performance (JP) in Pakistan.

This is a quantitative study that employed a survey questionnaire to collect cross-sectional data from academic leaders of Pakistan's Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). The researchers derived this study's findings from 320 useable responses.

The authors used a Structural Equation Model (SEM) which shows a positive and significant effect of agreeableness on Integrating Styles (IS), Avoiding Styles (AS), Obliging Styles (OS), Compromising Styles (CS) and Dominating Styles (DS). Extraversion has a positive and significant effect on IS, OS, DS and CS. Emotional Stability (ES) is the positive and significant predictor of IS, AS, OS and CS. The conscientiousness trait has a positive and significant effect in predicting IS, OS, DS, CS and AS. Likewise, openness has a positive and significant effect on IS, OS, DS and CS. On the other hand, extraversion and openness have a negative and insignificant effect on AS. Finally, amongst HEIs' academic leaders ES is the negative and insignificant predictor of DS.

This study's findings offer additional insights into understanding the direct and indirect connections between PTs and CMSs through JP. These support the development of effective policies and organizational arrangements to resolve and manage conflict and employee behaviours. Finally, through another contribution of empirical evidence, these findings further enrich the worth of the literature.

This study’s findings provide both, directly and indirectly, the original contributions of Pakistan’s HEIs’ academic leaders PTs and CMSs.

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study analyzes the role that domination plays in conflicts among intimates. As the family engages in repeated conflicts over roles, the family also engages in negotiations over the family order, what role each party should play, interpretations of past events, and plans for the future. These conflicts take place against a backdrop of patriarchy that asymmetrically distributes power in the family to determine the family order. The data from this study come from a content analysis of mothers with substance use problems as depicted in the reality television show Intervention. The conflicts in these families reveal that these families develop a grinding family order in which families engaged in repeated conflict but also continued to operate as and identify as a family. These conflicts are shaped by and reinforce patriarchal expectations that mothers are central to family operation. The intervention at the end of each episode offered an opportunity for the family to engage in a concerted campaign to try to force the mother into treatment and reestablish the family order.

Online games are popular applications of Internet technology, with over 2.8 billion users worldwide. Many players engage in team gameplay, indicating that online games are suitable media through which players connect with their friends. However, past studies have not examined the ability of games to assist players in connecting with their friends, indicating a gap. To fill this gap, the authors propose a new concept, the friend-connecting affordance, which is the ability of an online game to enable players to contact friends within the game.

The authors built a model to explain how games' friend-connecting affordances influence game loyalty. The authors gathered responses from 1,347 online players and used structural equation modeling to test the model.

The authors found that friend-connecting affordances and team participation influence game loyalty. Gaming intensity and gaming history can moderate the impact of friend-connecting affordances.

This new affordance can be realized through various game elements, offering unique and actionable insights to game makers. The authors also compared the friend-connecting affordances among a number of popular online games, providing insights specific to each game and increasing the practical value of the findings.

The present study examines the relationship between personality traits (PTs) and conflict management styles (CMSs) directly and indirectly through leadership effectiveness (LE) in Pakistan.

This quantitative study employs a survey questionnaire to collect cross-sectional data from academic leaders of higher education institutes (HEIs) in Pakistan. The authors utilized 325 useable cases to conclude the results.

The findings through the structural equation model (SEM) resulted in a positive and significant effect of agreeableness (AGS) on integrating (ITG), avoiding (AVG), obliging (OBG), compromising (COG) and dominating (DOG) styles. Extraversion (EXN) positively and significantly affects ITG, OBG, DOG and COG. Emotional stability (EMSY) is a positive and significant predictor of ITG, AVG, OBG and COG. The conscientiousness (CNS) trait significantly and positively predicts ITG, OBG, DOG, COG and AVG. Likewise, openness (OPS) positively and significantly affects ITG, OBG, DOG and COG styles. On the other hand, EXN and OPS negatively and insignificantly affect AVG. Finally, EMSY is the negative and insignificant predictor of DOG among academic leaders.

This study offers additional insights into understanding direct and indirect connections between PTs and CMSs through EL. It would support the development of effective policies and organizational setup to resolve and manage conflict and employees' behaviour. Finally, the findings would further enrich the worth of literature through another empirical confirmation.

This study offers the original contribution of PTs and CMSs among academic leaders in HEIs of Pakistan.

The objective of this study is to examine the drivers of retail apps satisfaction and continuance intention. An integrative theoretical framework was developed based on the IS success model, E-S-QUAL and expectancy and disconfirmation model to explain retail apps users’ satisfaction and continuance intention.

A total of 359 useable data were collected from the targeted Malaysian respondents who had experience in using retail apps services. Data were analysed using the partial least squares technique.

The results indicate that system quality and e-service quality positively influence retail apps usage satisfaction and have positive direct and indirect effects through satisfaction on continuance intention. The price level has a negative effect on retail apps usage satisfaction. Even though price level has no direct effect on continuance intention to use retail apps, it has an indirect effect on continuance intention through satisfaction.

Although the success of a marketing channel mainly depends on its continuance usage rather than first-time usage, few studies have paid attention to retail apps services. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge on retail apps by explaining the roles of system quality, e-service quality and price level on retail apps satisfaction and continuance intention. Interestingly, the findings of multi-group analysis imply that female Gen Y app users are more satisfied than males while such differences do not impact their continuance intention to use the retail apps. The findings also suggested that frequency of using apps has no relevance to retail apps user satisfaction, but highly relevant to their continuance intention to use retail Apps services.

Drawing on social information processing theory (SIP), this paper examines whether and how humble leadership affects employees' service improvisation (ESI) in the hospitality industry. Further, the study investigates the mediating role of psychological safety and the moderating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE).

To test the proposed relationships, the study adopts a cross-sectional design, administering questionnaires to 456 frontline staff in Egypt’s hospitality industry across three main sectors: restaurants, hotels and travel agencies. SPSS 27 and AMOS 22 were used for statistical analysis.

The study reveals a positive relationship between humble leadership and ESI, partially mediated by psychological safety. Furthermore, CSE not only strengthens the relationship between psychological safety and ESI but also enhances the indirect effect of humble leadership on ESI via psychological safety.

The study offers valuable insights for practitioners in the hospitality industry. To boost ESI, organizations can incorporate humble leadership attributes into their leadership development programs. Fostering a psychologically safe workplace would facilitate the positive impact of humble leadership on ESI. Recognizing CSE as a pivotal moderator underscores the importance of strategically selecting and developing employees with high CSE. These insights aim to cultivate a more service-oriented and effective workforce in the hospitality industry.

This study significantly contributes to leadership research in the hospitality industry by uncovering a previously unexplored link between humble leadership and ESI. Exploring psychological safety as a mediator and CSE as a moderator enhances our comprehension of how and when humble leadership influences ESI.

The focus of this chapter is on micro-credentials in higher education. In the current complex and fluid context, there is a demand for higher education providers to be able to respond with flexible and targeted provision of learning opportunities. Crafting micro-credentials, or disaggregating credentials, can be effective in reaching target audiences. For students, the availability of micro-credentials allows them to satisfy immediate learning needs. For industry, micro-credentials can provide elements of vocational training. On the other hand, it is a challenge to design micro-credentials that provide the cognitive perspective associated with higher education to ensure an appreciation of an associated body of knowledge or field of study. Further, education offered by universities and other higher education providers needs to have the potential to support the ongoing academic life of the institution, which is dependent on teaching being informed by research and current understandings in the field, and the research area being refreshed with talent with an appreciation of their field of study and associated bodies of knowledge. This, therefore, can be seen as something of an eco-system, which is dependent for its sustenance on learners acquiring more than fragments of knowledge or information. There are consequences for devising policies and procedures for the design, recognition, and provision of micro-credentials in higher education. Policies and procedures need to explicitly relate micro-credentials to the current and emerging understandings in an academic discipline or field of study. Academic standards that apply to offering credentials need to be maintained. Associated staff support and development is a requirement.

This study investigates the relationship between feelings of loneliness in the workplace, life satisfaction, affect, hope and expressivity among hotel employees.

The research model was tested via structural equation modeling based on the empirical data collected from hotel employees in Antalya, Turkey.

The research findings suggest that emotional deprivation and social companionship have a significant impact on life satisfaction, that life satisfaction has a significant impact on positive and negative emotions, and that positive and negative emotions have the same impact on pathways and agencies.

The research findings should assist researchers and practitioners to understand the behaviors of hotel employees in continuous interaction and relationship with individuals to motivate them while providing more effective services.