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This study aims to empirically reveal how marketing mix elements are used in Ponzi schemes to trigger herd behavior. Thus, it was aimed to determine how Ponzi schemes use marketing tools to approach and persuade victims. Clarifying this issue is vital in identifying critical points in diagnosing and detecting Ponzi schemes and in de-marketing practices to be used against them.

In this study, content analysis was used to analyze in-text expressions most practically. The population of this study is the Ponzi scheme cases that took place in Turkey between January 1, 2016, and May 31, 2023, which appeared in the press. The study sample consists of 44 cases accessible in terms of parameters, including the research subject in the research population.

In order to reach the widest audiences, Ponzi schemes have generally emerged in metropolitan cities that produce a significant portion of the country's gross national product. The minimum fee to enter these systems is usually between 40 and 50 USD. Although Ponzi Schemes appear to be a financial product, the product they claim to make money is usually intangible and complex. Furthermore, the system's return rate is always higher than the market rate. It is seen that other people influence people in their social and professional environments. Promotion in Ponzi schemes is carried out by word of mouth, social media, direct persuasion, introductory meetings and individual communication. When the herd behavior patterns in Ponzi are examined, it is seen that most of them are “Heuristic Simplification” and “Social Interaction.” As a result, it has been understood that marketing mix elements are used consciously and actively to trigger herd behavior in Ponzi schemes.

The most important limitation of the study is that the data compiled about the cases are not standardized, and the newspaper reports did not provide some details at a sufficient level.

Using a qualitative method and an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach, this study reveals how marketing mix elements are used in Ponzi schemes, a type of financial fraud. In addition, the research is original in that no other study with similar content and scope was found in the literature.

This study aims to understand the social cooperative model's empowerment and social cohesion impacts based on the case of a cooperative with the partnership of local and refugee women in southern Türkiye to give evidence for the potential and challenges of women cooperatives.

The authors conducted surveys and focus group interviews with both members and board members. The authors grounded the findings in dimensions extracted from literature on the impact of cooperatives on their members and the wider community.

The social cooperative economically empowers women through employment and income generation, and skill training while enhancing them socially with increased decision-making power, autonomy, self-esteem and respect. It fosters social cohesion between local and refugee members by building trust and peace, solidarity, knowledge sharing and collective action. However, the cooperative faces challenges in managing sustainable business models, and cooperative membership does not ensure a steady income, social security, economic independence or a fairer division of domestic work.

The challenges and limited outcomes of social cooperatives are primarily due to resource scarcity. Hence, these needs must be considered by policymakers and sponsors of women empowerment programmes so that they can offer response actions to empower social women cooperatives. During the research period, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a significant threat to the survival of the cooperative. Moreover, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic made it impossible to engage Syrian women in focus group discussions. Consequently, the focus group interactions were limited to two Palestinian members, while Syrian members were included in survey interviews.

This study is one of the few attempts to examine the social cooperative model’s impact on women’s empowerment and social cohesion in the context of a mixed membership of local and refugee women in Türkiye. Fieldwork evidence on cooperatives that improve gender equality and inclusive growth can contribute to the advocacy of support for women’s cooperatives in the context of refugees.

The author’s interest in vernacular architecture, over the years, has attracted the author’s attention to three distinctive and similar forms of architecture in faraway regions of the globe. These are; Asir region of Saudi Arabia, The Caucasus including the republic of Georgia, Chechenia, and North Ossetia, and Sichuan region in China. Stone towers dominate the landscape of these remote regions. The similarity of these towers in these far away regions is quite remarkable.

This paper will introduce these towers in their geographic, social and natural context. Although several studies have been done on these regions, it is the aim of this paper to introduce their architecture in a comparative approach to explore how these remotes corners of the globe with different historical, ethnic and cultural backgrounds developed similar architectural forms in total isolation from each other.

Architecture is a physical production of different and diverse factors. Geographically, isolated regions with similar natural and social factors, mountainous landscape, tribally-based, agrarian societies, produces similar architectural forms.

This paper is a clear testimony to the human nature and how people think, react and build, under similar conditions. Architecture becomes a manifestation of human oneness, unity, believes and behaviour.

This research examines the impact of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP) on poverty reduction and income growth in rural China.

The study develops a theoretical framework, which considers the role of geographical, technological, institutional and cultural factors for the e-commerce poverty alleviation (e-CPA) model. Empirically, this study applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the event study approach to evaluate the effectiveness of NRECDP on the basis of large-scale county-level and household-level panel data spanning 2010 to 2020.

The study found that the NRECDP, as a government-led, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, market-based program, has led to a significant increase in per capita output of primary industry employees, as well as in the disposable income of rural residents, especially those in national-level poverty-stricken (NP) counties. The interventions of the NRECDP achieved these positive outcomes through transportation and Internet infrastructure improvement, ICT adoption and human capital accumulation in impoverished towns and villages in remote rural areas. These effects are larger in the eastern region of China, followed by the central region, whereas the weakest effects were found in the western region. However, we found little evidence of the NRECDP increasing household developmental expenditure.

The study findings have important practical and policy implications for rural e-commerce development and self-sustained poverty alleviation solutions. The research revealed the significance of government NRECDP interventions for increasing rural income, reducing living costs, and empowering the rural population in its multiple social roles, namely, as consumers, producers, employees and microentrepreneurs. The local cultural context may also play a role in ICT adoption and entrepreneurship cultivation with a downstream effect on the effectiveness of e-CPA practices. Policymakers would need to ensure a supportive entrepreneur-friendly environment for rural e-commerce development and continue implementing progressive policies for poverty alleviation.

This study explores poverty alleviation issues in China by developing for the first time a multi-faceted framework that is subsequently tested by both county-level and household-level large-scale observations. Also, it is the first study to provide nationwide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of e-CPA in narrowing down the spatial and digital divides in China. In addition to the impact of geography, technology and governmental support, this study also sheds light on the role of culture in the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies and as a source of local entrepreneurial opportunities.

This paper posits the need for English language arts (ELA) teachers to foster students’ use of languaging about their relations with ecosystems and peers, leading to their engaging in collective action to critique and transform status-quo systems impacting the climate crisis.

This paper reviews the current theory of languaging theory and research that focuses on the use of languaging to enact relations with ecosystems and others and voice emotions for transforming communities and reducing emissions contributing to climate change.

This review of languaging theory/research leads to identifying examples of teachers having students critique the use of languaging constituting status quo energy and community/transportation systems, respond to examples of characters using languaging in literary texts, using languaging in discussing or writing about the need to address climate change, critiquing languaging in media promoting consumption, using media to interact with audiences and using languaging through engaging in role-play activities.

This focus on languaging in ELA classrooms is a unique perspective application of languaging theory, leading students to engage in collective, communal action to address the climate crisis.

The study examines the effects of corporate governance and countrywide institutions and risk factors on corporate liquidity.

Using firm-level data, the authors analyze the effect of corporate governance and various economic, regulatory and social institutions on the liquidity of firms operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The authors use fixed-effects, firm-specific and country-level controls, disaggregated analysis, sensitivity and endogeneity analysis to test the robustness of the estimates.

The corporate governance characteristics of firms influence in diverse ways their liquidity decisions. The independence and diversity of the board and institutional ownership are especially strong predictors. The effect also depends on the size of the firm and the degree of economic development and exhibits time sensitivity and nonlinearity. Enforcement institutions and risk factors play a strong role.

The analysis contributes to the literature by using a large sample of countries and firms over a larger period, distinguishing between poorer and richer countries and using sensitivity and endogeneity analysis. The analysis considers explicitly the role of regulatory and enforcement conditions, social structures and religious beliefs.

The purpose of this study is to critically explore the linkage between adolescent work, parent–child relationships and offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. It examines the aforementioned in light of the stay/go decision faced by adolescent family members.

Findings are derived from semi-structured interviews with 15 individuals from five Italian families operating family catering businesses in Yorkshire (UK). The approach represents a sample spanning four generations, designed to capture data from individuals who had experienced adolescent work at the family business.

The findings offer evidence that the “familiarity” of family business impacts on offspring career choices, providing a safety net or a trap which can impede exit decisions. Returning after periods of study leave that represent the transition from adolescence to adulthood, offspring continue to use the family business as a base from which to explore their career options. Alternatively, when parent–child relationships break down, family business escape strategies assume priority for offspring.

The study focussed exclusively on migrant Italian families within the catering sector. The sample included different generational representations among the five families. It lays the ground for future research of a similar nature among other family business ethnicities and across other economic sectors.

This paper contributes to understanding offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. The empirical evidence suggests that parent–child relationships are instrumental to understanding the stay/go decision as well as previous stages of the socialisation process of embedding in the family business.

This study analyzes the role of cooperative behavior in facing the risk of encouraging innovative agricultural production projects by small-scale farmers in the context of farmers in developing countries.

A within-subjects field experiment was conducted with small-scale Colombian panela cane farmers. The authors used the collected data to run the regression analyses.

The results suggest that when small farmers can follow cooperative behavior by joining a group and pooling resources to face risk, they are more willing to invest in a novel and profitable alternative, albeit riskier. However, the possibility of cooperating with a group to invest in a novel production project depends on its expected risk level.

These results will help develop agricultural policies for sustainable development. Establishing informal networks for small-scale farmers to deal with unpredictable risks may aid in developing innovative systems.

Agriculture is highly vulnerable to climatic impacts, which, combined with the inherent risk of innovation, may reduce small farmers' willingness to adopt innovation. Cooperation appears to be a mechanism for pooling resources and facing risk.

Research has focused on experimentally testing the effect of cooperative behavior when facing risk. The authors contribute to the literature by demonstrating the impact of the ability of small-scale farmers in rural areas to collectively manage risk on investment in innovative projects.

This paper comprehensively investigates the lack of youth involvement in the intricate tapestry of urban policymaking in the Jordanian context. It attempts to present and illustrate the obstacles, challenges, hindrances and complexities facing engaging youth in urban planning in Jordan. Participants aged 18–24 were the primary focus of the investigation, as Jordan's population is predominantly youthful, with approximately 70% of the population under the age of 30.

The research methodology adopted in this study is a mixed-methods approach, which integrates both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the research problem.

Youth involvement in Jordan's urban policymaking is limited and inconsistent. Most notably, the prevalence of adultism emerges as the predominant and most substantive impediment, exerting a considerable influence on constraining the agency of young Jordanians in shaping urban policy.

Detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to each frame of reference.

A total of 12 discernible barriers emerged from a systematic deductive thematic analysis of primary data.

This comprehensive inquiry highlights the pervasive gaps in support for youth participation in urban policymaking within the administrative framework and across Jordanian society. Subsequent quantitative analysis was employed to strengthen the external validity of the research findings, thereby enhancing the generalizability of the qualitative insights. By employing Jordan as a case study, this paper significantly contributes to the expanding corpus of scholarly work on planning processes and practices within the Global South and the Arab world.

The distinctiveness of Japanese management practices offers invaluable insights for the strategic development and operational excellence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. Recognizing this, the purpose of this study is to explore an extensive review of the literature on Japanese SMEs. The aim is to reveal previously explored research domains and to systematically categorize the unique factors contributing to the success and challenges of SMEs. This investigation not only illuminates the peculiarities of Japanese SMEs management but also sets the stage for applying these insights globally to SMEs across diverse industries.

Using a systematic review approach, 63 studies on Japanese SMEs from 1996 to 2021 were identified and analyzed.

This analysis identified six critical themes in Japanese SME management: nuanced firm management practices; forefront innovation and technology; internationalization; supportive government policies; commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development; and vibrant entrepreneurship. The authors also spotlight challenges like navigating global competition and adapting to rapid technological changes. These insights, alongside noted methodological gaps in existing literature, suggest fertile grounds for future research and hold significant implications for SMEs globally.

The investigation of Japanese SMEs in this study highlights valuable insights for SMEs, policymakers and scholars, as it represents a rich and distinctive research phenomenon with various organizational, cultural, economic and political implications.