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This paper aims to develop a novel grey Bernoulli model with memory characteristics, which is designed to dynamically choose the optimal memory kernel function and the length of memory dependence period, ultimately enhancing the model's predictive accuracy.

This paper enhances the traditional grey Bernoulli model by introducing memory-dependent derivatives, resulting in a novel memory-dependent derivative grey model. Additionally, fractional-order accumulation is employed for preprocessing the original data. The length of the memory dependence period for memory-dependent derivatives is determined through grey correlation analysis. Furthermore, the whale optimization algorithm is utilized to optimize the cumulative order, power index and memory kernel function index of the model, enabling adaptability to diverse scenarios.

The selection of appropriate memory kernel functions and memory dependency lengths will improve model prediction performance. The model can adaptively select the memory kernel function and memory dependence length, and the performance of the model is better than other comparison models.

The model presented in this article has some limitations. The grey model is itself suitable for small sample data, and memory-dependent derivatives mainly consider the memory effect on a fixed length. Therefore, this model is mainly applicable to data prediction with short-term memory effect and has certain limitations on time series of long-term memory.

In practical systems, memory effects typically exhibit a decaying pattern, which is effectively characterized by the memory kernel function. The model in this study skillfully determines the appropriate kernel functions and memory dependency lengths to capture these memory effects, enhancing its alignment with real-world scenarios.

Based on the memory-dependent derivative method, a memory-dependent derivative grey Bernoulli model that more accurately reflects the actual memory effect is constructed and applied to power generation forecasting in China, South Korea and India.

This study aims to investigate motivators, mediator and moderator of users' sustained information seeking on academic social networking sites (ASNSs).

Drawing upon the expectancy–value theory and related information-seeking literature, the study developed a theoretical model to explain why and how users intend to continue seeking information on ASNSs. Thereafter, a field survey with 385 participants was conducted to test the model. Finally, a content analysis of participants' post-survey feedback was performed to complement the model test results by showing more fine-grained findings.

Results suggest that information usefulness and information adoption (IA) are significant to users' sustained information seeking on ASNSs, while users' satisfaction with ASNSs may play a mediating role in the relationship between information usefulness and sustained information seeking. Additionally, self-efficacy for critical thinking (SCT) weakens the impact of IA on users' satisfaction with ASNSs. The post-survey feedback analysis indicates that information usefulness is more critical to sustained information seeking for users with high SCT, whereas IA becomes more crucial to users' satisfaction with ASNSs and sustained information seeking for users with low SCT.

Although the extant literature has distinguished between information seeking and sustained information seeking, empirical research into users' sustained information seeking on ASNSs is limited. The study fills this gap by proposing and validating relevant factors and the boundary condition of users' sustained information seeking.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the fast growth of online music festivals. This paper explores how festivalgoers' experience affects their satisfaction and drives their loyalty to re-attend online music festivals in China.

Based on an understanding of the music festival experience and the characteristics of live-streamed performances, this paper investigates five factors that affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty, namely the music experience, ambience experience, separation experience, social experience and novelty experience. The relationships between festivalgoers' experience, satisfaction and loyalty are also explored using structural equation modelling techniques.

The empirical results suggest that four of the above-mentioned five factors of the online music festival experience directly affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty. The online mode is a rapid adaptation of and preferred alternative to offline music festivals, whilst the creation of the experience, along with satisfaction with and loyalty to the online music festival, are determined by different factors compared to offline modes. Overall festival satisfaction positively enhances the relationship between festivalgoers' experience and loyalty to online music festivals.

This study offers a range of practical and managerial implications for organisers of online music festival, similar activities such as live-streaming concerts and stage performances and hybrid events.

This study explores a phenomenon that has evolved quickly since COVID-19 and will, potentially, have an ongoing and enduring impact on the music festival sector. It differentiates the understanding of festivalgoers' experience in online and offline modes, which is a new addition to the literature. It also enriches the theoretical understanding of the experience of, satisfaction with and loyalty to online music festivals.

This study aims to examine how business executives' political connections are associated with government subsidies and strategic change, and how they, in turn, influence firm performance, measured by return on assets (ROA) and market share.

Hypotheses were tested using the large firm-level dataset provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China for the period 2003–2013. This is one of the most comprehensive datasets of Chinese manufacturing companies and includes 321,722 firms on average per year, which spans over 37 industries.

The authors found that political connections, measured by senior executives' membership in the National People's Congress of China (NPC), were positively associated with government subsidies but were not associated with strategic change. Also, government subsidies, as the underlying mechanism, mediated the relationships between NPC membership and firm performance but strategic change did not.

By examining the possible mediators between corporate political strategies and firm performance, the authors confirmed the thought that the impact of political connections on firm performance is a complex phenomenon and goes beyond a simple direct effect. However, future research could explore other mediators in this relationship.

While the direct relationship between political connections and firm performance has been examined in management literature, the results are mixed. For the first time, the authors addressed the gap and opened the “black box” – the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. This study's findings contribute to the literature on corporate political activity, strategic change, and their influences on firm performance.

Online retailers are pioneering the incentivization of customers to generate more product reviews by rewarding them. However, little is known about the impact of reward types on customers' review behavior, including review frequency and sentiment. To address this gap, we investigated the effects of different reward types on customers' review behavior and how these rewards influence customers' review behavior.

We collected secondary data and empirically tested the hypothesis by analyzing the change in reward policy. Regression and two-stage Heckman models were applied to investigate the effects, with the latter used to control potential selection issues.

The results revealed that monetary rewards can stimulate customers to generate more positive product reviews. Furthermore, the reward amount has a negative moderating effect on the aforementioned relationship. Additionally, customer tenure negatively moderates the relationship between monetary rewards and review behavior.

This study contributes to the understanding of user-generated content motivation and provides managerial implications for reward programs.

This study aims to theorize and empirically examine how guanxi in Chinese collectivistic culture affects entrepreneurs to leverage the structural holes they occupy when it comes to promoting knowledge transfer.

To examine the hypotheses, this study used a mixed-methods research approach where quantitative questionnaires and social network analyses were used through 365 Chinese entrepreneurs, and qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted through 50 Chinese entrepreneurs.

In a Chinese entrepreneur’s guanxi network, structural holes will impede knowledge transfer among network members, but guanxi will moderate this impeding effect.

By revealing how “structural hole controllers” become “structural hole fillers” under the moderating influence of guanxi in Chinese collectivistic culture, this study recognizes the different roles that persons who occupy a structural hole play in different situations, which advances structural hole theory. In addition, by exploring how entrepreneurs orchestrate these structural holes to create a strong guanxi network that can be infinitely extended, this study reveals a means to achieve both advantages of bonding and bridging social capital simultaneously, which generates a theoretical contribution to social capital integration.

This study suggests Chinese entrepreneurs to cultivate guanxi to improve their needs in decision-making by giving renqing, returning renqing, earning mianzi and giving mianzi.

By showing how Chinese entrepreneurs leverage their guanxi and structural holes to facilitate knowledge transfer, this study identifies the critical entrepreneurial behavior that promotes business development, thereby contributing to the literature of knowledge management, entrepreneurship and social network.

This study aims to explore the impact of key parameters of brake pads on the dynamic characteristics of the braking system.

This study conducted experimental research based on a friction testing machine with a slider-disc structure. The experiment studied the impact of key parameters of brake pads (rotation speed, pressure, mass, braking radius, etc.) and the braking environment (dry friction, wetness, sand, etc.) on the stability of the braking system. At the same time, a dynamic model of the brake pad braking system was established and compared with experimental results using the mathematical tool of autocorrelation coefficient.

The key parameters of brake pads have a significant impact on the dynamic characteristics of the braking system; under different conditions of brake pad mass, tribological parameters, brake pad radius and braking environment, the chaotic characteristics of the braking friction force signal show a trend of expansion or contraction, which can be suppressed by adjusting the key parameters of brake pads.

This study can provide a reference for optimizing the braking strategy and reducing noise and vibration in brake pad systems.

The paper proposes a research method to verify the perception bias of consumers on the freshness preservation effects of vacuum packaging (VP) and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) chilled pork packages, the influence of “sensory experience” on correcting consumers' perception bias of packaging performance and willingness-to-pay (WTP) enhancement channels.

Using data from 458 and 188 participants who completed the contingent valuation method (CVM) and auction experiment, respectively, the study aimed to uncover consumers' packing quality perception bias and WTP, and investigated the societal factors that contribute to variations in WTP.

The CVM experiment revealed that although consumers' high perception bias rate toward MAP to maintain freshness, as compared to lab test results, came along with low WTP premium to cost rate with sensory experience in the auction experiment, the proportion of consumers with quality perception bias decreased from 49.85% to 34.46%, while the WTP premium to cost rate for MAP increased largely by 36.7%. Perceptive embedding has a positive effect on chilled pork packaging WTP, while normative embedding decreases WTP.

The findings emphasize the need of public policies to promote positive consumption attitudes, while whittling the negative consumption norms, to increase the WTP for packaged child pork and promote the chilled pork market formation.

Consumers worldwide are increasingly ordering groceries from grocery delivery platforms (GDPs). This study aimed to explore the role of brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers and GDPs in online grocery shopping (OGS) experience, attitude and continuous purchase intention under the platform model of online grocery retailing.

This study used a mixed method approach. A qualitative analysis was conducted based on 30 in-depth interviews and relevant literature to identify key attributes of the OGS experience. Then, data from 352 online grocery shoppers was used to examine the associations between service attributes, attitude and continuous purchase intention using a structural equation model.

The authors identified six key attributes of the OGS experience related to B&M retailers and GDPs. The quantitative study results showed that customer service, price value and instant delivery significantly impact attitude towards GDPs, while product quality, product assortment, customer service, price value and attitude toward GDPs positively impact online attitude toward B&M retailers. Online attitude toward B&M retailers significantly influences continuous purchase intention.

B&M retailers and GDPs should strengthen cooperation and joint oversight.

This study identified key attributes of the OGS experience associated with B&M retailers and GDPs under the platform model, giving a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the OGS experience and behavioural intention when B&M retailers collaborate with GDPs.

Companies are increasingly designing pro-environmental games to motivate users to implement pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). However, how different types of virtual interactions affect PEBs in pro-environmental games is not clear. Thus, the authors propose that two types of virtual interaction, interactions with game objects and interactions with other users, can induce platform intimacy and love for nature and that platform intimacy has a direct effect on love for nature. Simultaneously, the authors examine the moderating effect of network externality on the relationship between the two types of virtual interaction and platform intimacy.

The authors, respectively, employed data from 92 students and 574 Chinese mobile users to empirically investigate the research framework.

The findings indicate that participants in interactions with game objects and interactions with other users reported stronger feelings regarding platform intimacy and love for nature, which, in turn, positively influences PEBs. Consumers with stronger perceptions of network externalities were more likely to be affected by the initiation effect of the interaction with game objects.

The authors introduce the notion of love for nature to the pro-environmental behaviors field and discuss the priming effect of two types of interactions on platform intimacy and love for nature. In addition, the authors focus on the important effect of network externality on users' emotions.