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This paper aims to model and test the relationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate reputation (CR), word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior and customer trust (CT) within the hotel context.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among 300 hotel guests. Following a two-step approach, a measurement model was estimated and then a structural model was analyzed to test six proposed hypotheses.

The research results show that CSR has a direct and positive effect on CT, CR and WOM; CSR has an indirect and positive influence on CT via CR and WOM as mediating variables; CR is a significant antecedent of WOM; and CR and WOM are positively associated with CT.

The research examines the relationship among CSR, CR, WOM and CT, thus contributing to hospitality management literature theoretically. In addition, relevant implications are provided for managers as to how to improve CT in service industries.

This study aims to contribute to the context of electronic trust (e-trust) research with an emphasis on the determination of tourists’ e-trust in hotel websites. This research used social exchange theory to elaborate how perceived attributes of a hotel website influence purchase behaviour of tourists. This area is often neglected because most studies focus on website users’ adoption or acceptance of other service industries. It is expected that trust-generating mechanisms have different impacts on the e-trust level in the hospitality services.

A comprehensive literature review identified the major antecedents and outcomes of e-trust. Data was collected from an online survey and 586 usable questionnaires were achieved. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the hypothesized model.

The results of this study demonstrated that the more tourists perceive influences positively, the more they are possibly to trust in hotel website. Findings revealed that perceptions about the attributes of hotel website, including security, privacy, usefulness, ease of use and compatibility are the main antecedents of trust in hotel website, which, in turn, lead to actual usage of the website for booking online.

This study is based on a large sample of tourists and broadens the understanding of e-trust in hotel websites by considering factors rarely discussed in prior tourism and hospitality literature.

The exploration of performance determinants in social enterprises has gained increasing relevance among researchers and practitioners, particularly in rural tourism. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contributions of transformational leadership and social entrepreneurship to the performance of social enterprises in the context of rural tourism. Further, the mediating roles of social capital, creativity and social value were investigated.

Data were gathered through a survey of 168 employees of social enterprises operating in the rural tourism setting. Eight surveyors were sent out to conduct the survey. Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 18.0.

The results of the SEM suggested that transformational leadership is positively associated with social value, social capital and performance of social enterprise. In addition, social entrepreneurship had a significant influence on social value, social capital and performance of social enterprise. Creativity and social value predicts the performance of social enterprise. Further, social capital was found to have a positive relationship with creativity. Finally, the mediating roles of social capital, creativity and social value were also confirmed. The findings thus highlight the power of the social value creation and social capital in the social enterprises operating in the rural destinations.

The findings assert that social entrepreneurship and transformational leadership are key sources of social value creation, social capital and creativity in rural tourism context indicating the need for additional efforts on this kind of entrepreneurial activity. The findings can motivate policymakers to promote social entrepreneurship in rural tourism destinations as a means of stimulating bottom-up social capital and social value creation.

This study is among the first to examine the hypothesized relationships focusing on tourism social enterprises.

Industrial tourists can contribute to the local sites income. Apart from large and well-known industrial units, small industrial units can also introduce their products to the market by organizing tourism tours. This study aims to analyze an industrial tourism business network established in Isfahan, a large, industrial and historic city in central of Iran, as a case study.

Participants were managers and experts of organizations operated in the Industrial Tourism Network in Isfahan city. A sample of 30 participates was selected through purposive and snowball sampling approaches. Data was analyzed by qualitative content analysis and social network analysis using UCINET software.

Twenty-eight organizations participated in the Industrial Tourism Business Network of Isfahan. Macro indices of the network revealed that: density is relatively low; most of the relationships among network member organizations are reciprocal; transitivity is relatively weak indicating low network stability against environmental player; clustering is low, indicating a relatively low tendency of members to form different clusters. Micro indices indicated that in-degree and out-degree centralizations are low; overall centralization is poor. In addition, six actors were in the center and 22 actors were in the peripheral. Finally, the number of interactions of central organizations was triple than the peripheral organizations.

Limitations of this study include: The data obtained in this study only reflected the relationships among the actors studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on actors engaged in an industrial tourism network. Therefore, the sample might involve some bias. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of the role of networking in tourism destinations, particularly industrial sites.

According to the results, the authors may be able to advise firms operating in the tourism industry, particularly actors operate in industrial tourism, regarding how to increase their collaboration with both internal and external environment to achieve better performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that has addressed an industrial tourism business network.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize and identify the existing studies on the relationship between technological media and development

The authors conducted a systematic mapping study to identify and analyze the related literature. The authors identified 196 primary studies, dated from 2000 to 2017 and categorized them with respect to research focus, types of research and research method.

A total of 97 studies were identified and mapped, synthesizing the available evidence on the relationship between technological media and development. “Social development” with 54 articles and “communication” with 34 articles were the dominant research focus. Regarding the research type, “Solution proposal” is the most frequently employed research type. “Case study,” “discussion paper” and “interview,” respectively were the most used research methods. However, “SNA,” “focus group” and “time series” were used less often. “Solution proposal” was the most common research type between 2015 and 2017, and after that “philosophical paper” was the dominant research paper type. Further, the number of publications has increased between 2006 and 2017.

This mapping study is the first systematic exploration of the state-of-art on technological media-development nexus. The existing body of knowledge is limited to a few high quality studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of five dimensions of power (coercive, expert, legitimate, referent, and reward) on employees’ affective commitment in the sport organizations using social exchange theory.

Data were collected using a questionnaire including managerial power and affective commitment measures. A sample of 318 employees from a number of sport organizations operating in the Iran was used. Structural equation modeling was used to test the relationship between managerial power and affective commitment.

There are two major findings in this research. First, the relationships among expert power, legitimate power, reward power, referent power, and affective commitment are positive and significant. Second, the construct of coercive power was not associated with employees’ affective commitment. The findings suggest that managerial power relates with a social exchange relationship where employees exchange positive outcomes including strong affective commitment. When people perceive manager power, they feel more affectively attached to their organizations.

Sampling was one of the limitations identified in this study. The fact that convenience sampling was used meant that results were not immediately transferable to the general working population. In addition, the sample subjects in this study were mostly employees who worked in the sport sector of Iran. Future research could look into extending the study population to include collect input from other types of organization. If samples were drawn from a wider range of demographics, then the results become more meaningful.

Power generally refers to the ability, capacity or potential to get others do something, to command, to influence, to determine, or to control the behaviors, intentions, decisions, or actions of others in the pursuit of one’s own goals or interests despite resistance, as well as to induce changes. By utilizing expert power, reward power, legitimate power, and referent power, managers can promote affective organizational commitment and, thus, individual and organizational performance. It is likely that this occurs because people react reciprocally toward an organization that satisfies their needs, makes them feel that they are valued as human beings and that they deserve respectful treatment, and allows them to experience senses of purpose, self-determination, enjoyment, and belonging.

The fact that power can be used as an effective tool to coordinate and manage others appears to be largely ignored in the literature. The paper contributes by filling a gap in the organization and management literature, in which empirical studies on managerial power as an antecedent of affective organizational commitment have been scarce until now.

This study aims to integrate consumer-based brand equity for a tourism destination (CBBETD) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to examine the relationship between branding and customers’ attitudes toward banking services.

A ten-minute pen and paper questionnaire was distributed to customers of Iran’s Melli Bank in Isfahan as the biggest national bank in Iran through a multistage cluster-sampling approach. Data were collected from 364 customers and analyzed by hierarchical regression approach.

Branding constructs including brand image, brand awareness, perceived quality and brand loyalty have a significant relationship with attitude constructs including affective attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention.

This paper provides a practical framework derived from the CBBETD model and applies it in the context of banking services. The role and impact of its dimensions on customers’ attitudes has been demonstrated.

The purpose of the current study is to explore complicated structural relationships among the variables of tourists’ perceptions of quality and the value of a sport tourist destination and their satisfaction level and loyalty that are vital for successful destination marketing and management.

A survey was used to collect data from a sample of 570 sport tourists who traveled to Nowshahr and Chalous cities in Iran during September 2012. These data were gathered by convenience sampling method and analyzed using a structural equation model (SEM).

The results of the SEM revealed that tourists’ perceived quality and perceived value have a significant impact on their satisfaction. Further, tourists’ satisfaction had a positive and significant effect on the level of their loyalty.

Findings of the current study contribute to a better perception of behavioral mechanisms and incentives and provide an acceptable basis to improve tourism industry in both regional and national levels.

This is the first such study of the Iranian sports sector.

The purpose of this paper is to study the empirical assessment of the influence of social capital on women entrepreneurship in rural regions in Iran.

The study involves a questionnaire-based survey of entrepreneurial women from a number of rural regions in the Iran. A total of 265 usable questionnaires were received from rural women who were engaged in entrepreneurial activities from five rural regions. These were subjected to a series of correlational and regression analyses. The measures of the independent (the components of social capital) and dependent (the psychological traits of entrepreneurs) variables are based on literature.

The results reveal that social capital has a positive and significant influence on rural women entrepreneurship. With strong statistical significance, three social capital factors – structural, relational, and cognitive – provide an explanation for variations in psychological traits of entrepreneurs including achievement, innovation, personal control, self-esteem, opportunism, autonomy/independence, and risk/uncertainty.

Although the literature has long pointed out the importance of social capital as a determinant of entrepreneurship activity, entrepreneurship researchers have not focussed on the influence of each dimension of social capital on psychological traits of entrepreneurs. Thus, this study makes a contribution toward filling this gap.