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The 2008 and 2020 crises reinvigorated discussions on the need to deepen financial inclusion through fintech. Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending facilitates pro-social direct lending to less “bankable” strangers while providing returns to at-times less experienced lenders. Information asymmetries and credit risk are substantial, and previous research finds suboptimal heuristics in for-profit lenders (Gonzalez, 2022). This study examines further the role of gender to facilitate “doing well while doing good”.

This study examines 663 pro-social lending decisions by finance students on a mock P2P site. Testimonials were used to condition participants towards pro-social decision-making. Each participant was asked to make three lending decisions. The three loan applications were identical except for a female or male headshot (vs a control icon), and a randomly assigned difference in the trustworthiness or popularity of the male vs female loan applications among other lenders. Loan popularity is reported as a lower number of days needed to fund half the identical loan amount requested in the three loan applications (3 vs 11 days for headshot applications, and 7 days for control one).

Self-recognition in similar-age borrowers is more pronounced for lenders who have experienced financial trauma. Second, male lenders report higher confidence in their financial literacy and cash collateral. Third, cash collateral increases lending only to female borrowers. Fourth, higher perception of one's financial literacy increases confidence only when lending to females.

This is the first study to examine the role of gender, financial literacy, identification with borrowers, and collateral perception in pro-social P2P lending.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending facilitates direct online lending and aims to provide financial inclusion and investment returns. Lender goals range from for-profit to pro-social and objective information is limited, which highlights the need to examine heuristics.

This study examines 1,347 lending decisions by finance students on a mock P2P site. Testimonials were used to randomly condition the financially literate lenders towards for-profit or pro-social decision-making. Each investor evaluated three loans. The three loan applications were identical except for a female or male headshot (vs an icon) and random reports of 50% funding for the female or male loan in 3 days (vs 11 days for opposite gender and 7 for icon). Previous research surveys students on a mock platform (Gonzalez, 2020) and reports similar heuristics and lifelike decisions in student and general population samples (Gonzalez and Komarova, 2014).

Lenders randomly conditioned towards pro-social lending state lower trust in borrowers. However, pro-social investors state lower risk in P2P lending and higher financial literacy. Second, pro-social investors are more confident when lending to borrowers highly trusted by other lenders, especially if the popular loan applicant is female. Third, pro-social conditioning increases lending to male applicants when the popular loan applicant is female. Fourth, pro-social investors who have experienced financial trauma have greater confidence in bad loan recovery.

This is the first study of heuristics in pro-social vs for-profit P2P lending. In addition, it shows that testimonials can effectively condition lending goals and affect trust and risk perceptions.

The gradual implementation of blockchain technology in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms facilitates safer, transparent and quick access to funds without having to deal with the more complex and costly processes of banks. Beyond that, the purpose of this paper is to examine trust-enhancing heuristics that show a need for blockchain to assist in monitoring and bad loan recovery.

This study examines 909 lending decisions by 303 finance students on a mock P2P site. Each participant was asked to make three lending decisions. The loan applications were identical with the exception of a female or male photo (vs an icon) and reports of having raised half the loan in either 2 or 11 days (vs 7).

Investors who have experienced financial trauma are more likely to herd and lend higher amounts to loan applicants that are highly trusted by other lenders. This effect is more pronounced for male investors lending to highly trusted female loan applicants.

Blockchain can compensate for behavioral biases and improve monitoring by helping track digital money transactions and assisting in bad loan recovery efforts.

This study is the first behavioral experiment to examine herding in P2P lending. The findings complement and corroborate those by Gonzalez and Komarova (2014, 2015) and emphasize the need for blockchain to assist beyond trusted records and safe transfers of funds.

Academic innovation strives to benefit from an ample talent pool, and entrepreneurship and research competitions constitute an integral part of the effort. This prompts discussions about how to optimize the impact of interdisciplinary learning, especially for less-traditional participants. The main purpose of this article is to describe how synergies between research and business plan competitions can facilitate inclusive engagement and enhanced development of transferable skills.

A case illustration addresses the following questions: (1) what skills can be enhanced through a single project toward parallel participation in research and business plan competitions? (2) How can synergies between research and business plan competitions support more inclusive student development? The case illustration outlines the process and outcomes of an initiative with three first-gen business students, two female and two international.

The case illustration describes how synergies and alignments of deadliness between research and business plan competitions enhanced the learning process by facilitating more opportunities to showcase learning and receive feedback. In addition, the parallel preparation facilitated student inclusion by providing purposeful authentic practice in a project envisioned by the students. As a result of the 2019 learning experience, students and their employers continue to value in 2021 the effective development of transferable skills.

Previous studies examine independently entrepreneurship initiatives, science technology engineering arts and mathematics (STEAM) initiatives, transferable skills and pedagogy that support inclusive education. This manuscript describes the option of synergies between research and entrepreneurship competitions to support more inclusive student development. In addition, it provides recommendations for impact when scaling-up synergies.

Place branding research has recently focused on developing more inclusive models to better capture the co-creation of place identities. This paper aims to investigate stakeholder communication interactions in place branding processes to inform alternative, participatory, network governance models of stakeholder engagement.

The literature on stakeholder engagement in place branding processes is sparse. Through a regional case study of the Australian island state of Tasmania, the paper combines participatory action research (PAR) with the method of sociological intervention (SI) to investigate how participants individually and collectively reflect on their practices and patterns of engagement.

By combining PAR with SI, participants were enabled to gain a greater appreciation of how cooperation and collective self-reflection enhance effective place branding practices. Furthermore, by facilitating participants to compile a list of impediments to collaboration, the research informs efforts to develop more inclusive governance models for place branding. Finally, the PAR/SI method itself served as a practical tool to encourage enhanced stakeholder engagement in applied settings.

The approach is based on a single case study in a particular regional context and the findings require replication in other jurisdictions.

PAR/SI is a practical tool to achieve greater stakeholder engagement and enhance collaborative social action through a process of collective, critical reflection in applied settings.

The paper advances understanding of ways to operationalize participatory place branding through more inclusive, multistakeholder governance arrangements.

Depending on their institutional context, for new faculty members to successfully manage their transition from doctoral studies to early career, they must show potential as researchers. The purpose of this study was to learn about supports and barriers to researcher development in new faculty members.

The investigators solicited open-ended responses from early career faculty members (N = 49) in an online survey. Content analysis was used to provide an initial categorization of supports and barriers identified by the participants.

Ten barrier categories (e.g. lack of resources, previous training, lack of mentoring, workload) and eight support categories (e.g. effective research collaborations, supportive university environment, funding) were identified.

Findings were framed with a social cognitive conceptual model, which parallels previous studies in doctoral research training environments and research productivity and builds on our knowledge of early career faculty development. The study was limited in terms of number of participants and online response format.

Practical implications to minimize barriers and enhance supports for new faculty researcher development were identified (also drawing from the conceptual model, SCCT).

Thus, the study has value for university policymakers, administrators, faculty peers, research mentors and assistant professors or doctoral students seeking to develop as researchers.

This study aims to explore whether adopting a sustainability narrative in city branding and urban development strategies results in more inclusive governance arrangements (process) and a more pluralistic approach to generating sustainability value (outcome), in line with the triple bottom line approach advocated by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The authors argue that a necessary step to enable meaningful sustainable urban development is to rethink the way in which “value” and “value creation” are being interpreted in urban development policies and city branding narratives.

Mixed-methods case study of New York City’s (NYC) urban development and city branding strategies (2007–2019) combining analysis of academic and grey literature on NYC’s urban development and city branding, value hierarchies in NYC urban development strategic plans and local media reports covering NYC’s development and branding processes.

Despite claiming commitment to urban sustainability, NYC’s urban development and branding narratives reveal a clear dominance of interpreting “value” primarily as “exchange value”, thus prioritising economic growth.

In the authors’ view, a systemic, systematic and structured approach to generating “sustainability value” is necessary if city branding is to become a governance tool to support sustainable urban development. A “tetravaluation” approach is recommended as a practical, structured framework that can bridge across the ideas of “sustainability value” and “pluralistic governance”, ensuring effective implementation. Further investigation in additional urban contexts is required.

The research contributes to current scholarly debates towards more balanced and pluralistic conceptions of “value” and place branding as a more holistic, participatory and democratic governance model for sustainable urban development.

Mesquite pods offer a high nutritional content; A flour can be produced from them; nevertheless, the moisture content makes the milling process difficult. Then, before the milling operation a drying process must be implemented, but drying technology must be studied in order to characterise the process and identify the effect of drying temperature on the magnitude of drying rate.

Prosopis Laevigata pods were collected in Oaxaca (Southern of Mexico) and they were dried. Three stages of maturity were identified and pods in the stage three of maturity were dried by forced convection. The internal structure of the pods was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The pods were dried in a tunnel dryer at 40, 50, 60 and 70° C, 10% relative humidity and air velocity of 2.6 m/s. From experimental data, a lumped analysis was conducted for drying.

We found that the internal microstructure of this material is a limiting factor for moisture migration. In order to reduce the moisture content in the pods, a minimum air temperature of 60° C must be applied. The characteristic drying curve shows a good agreement with the experimental drying kinetics. The nutritional composition (carbohydrates, sugar and protein) of pods reveals important applications for the food industry.

The mesquite pods are important ethnic foods. In order to obtain flour, the drying of pods is mandatory. Drying must be applied in stage three of maturity which can be identified based on color changes and moisture content. The moisture content affects the performance of milling operation, then a minimum drying temperature of 60° C and low relative humidity must be applied. SEM images show the complex microstructure of the pods which hinders the moisture diffusion. The drying characteristic curve was deduced for the first time; it helps to understand the drying behavior of pods. The chemical composition of mesquite pods reveals interesting applications for the food industry. The methodology for drying is useful for researchers and producers.

Mezquite pods is an interesting ethnic food for people with celiac disease. This is the first time a research paper describes the drying process at detail. The SEM images, the convective drying operation and the characteristic curve are presented for the first time. The information will be useful for the industry and academia.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into peer-to-peer (P2P) lending which has served as one important tool to mitigate financial exclusion. The main proposition of this research is that P2P platforms, which in many ways resemble auctions, naturally instill competitive mindset among lenders; furthermore, given only limited objective decision criteria, certain borrower personal characteristics fuel interpersonal competition enough to impact lending decisions in suboptimal ways. The two experiments support this proposition. As the result, while P2P lending offers unprecedented financial opportunities to some consumer groups, it may unintentionally exclude others, and even pose threat to the financial well-being of lenders.

Two experiments were used to collect data and are reported here. Rigorous pretesting of manipulation stimuli preceded a pilot (exploratory) and the main experiment.

The authors generally find a significant age bias, where ceteris paribus, younger borrowers are offered lower loan amounts as lenders most likely infer greater risk and lower likelihood to repay loans on time. However, and perhaps more interestingly, when age is not a strong indicator of experience (as in the case with 30 something), the authors repeatedly find evidence of lending decisions driven by interpersonal competition: more attractive and financially successful loan applicants of the same gender as lenders are most likely perceived as a personal threat, decreasing lenders’ confidence, which subsequently results in lower amounts being invested into loans that are possibly the most promising.

To the best knowledge, this research is first to demonstrate the impact of interpersonal competition on decision making in the context of P2P lending. Furthermore, this paper contributes to better understanding of P2P lending as a tool to allay financial exclusion, while raising concerns of possible unintended exclusion of certain consumer segments due to the competitive nature of P2P platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current state of the art and trends with regard to business process measurement by means of a systematic review of literature.

The results are obtained through a systematic review carried out according to existing relevant guidelines. Additionally, a specific methodology through which to systematically obtain all the most important journals is followed. In total, 19 relevant articles are selected and later analyzed. A subsequent critical analysis of the data obtained is applied to identify the gaps in the current literature.

A considerable effort has been made by researchers in the field of business process measurement, particularly in recent years. Many of the defined measures for business processes have been applied to models (approximately 77 per cent). Most of the initiatives concerning business measurement have been adapted from the software engineering field. A small percentage of the existing business process measures has been empirically validated.

The results presented contribute towards providing an updated overview of the current state of research into business process measurement, in order to identify existing research gaps and concerns on which ongoing and future research efforts on this topic can be focused.