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The purpose of this study is to examine post-crisis (COVID) futures for major city destinations that are dependent on live entertainment and tourism. Destinations that live from entertainment and tourism must consider the implications of the pandemic and plan strategies for their future.

Based on the Manoa School of Future Studies, four scenarios were identified following a review of current literature. These scenarios (alternate futures) were then discussed in two videoconference focus groups by tourism marketing and entertainment expert professionals from five major North American entertainment cities.

Typical tourism responses to crises and disasters do not appear to apply to the current pandemic and entertainment-dependent destinations (EDDs) are not prepared to thrive in any of the potential outcomes.

This is the first study addressing the future of EDDs in a COVID world. This study cannot predict the future, but this study can make some forecasts. It is important for scholars and professionals to work together toward identifying what can be.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a within-gender analysis and between-gender differences in seeking (personal and interpersonal) and escaping (personal and interpersonal) motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia. Specific objectives were: to conduct a within-gender analysis in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia; and to examine between-gender differences in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia.

Based on the data collected from 458 attendees at a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia, the authors employed network analysis for within-gender analysis and MANOVA and ANOVA for between-gender comparison. The network analysis served two purposes, in that it examined each item’s predictability for each gender, and analyzed the correlations among motivation items within each gender. In addition, the General Linear Model served to compare the male and female groups’ motivations to attend the non-traditional festival. The authors first performed MANOVA for each dimension and then ANOVA for each dimension’s individual items.

Within-gender analysis reveals that several sets of motivations were associated strongly for both genders. This suggests that Saudi Arabians seem to enjoy entertainment because it projects the festival mood; they want to escape both from home and work and attend the festival to relieve stress by changing their routine pace. However, gender differences were apparent in several other items, especially for the group of women. Between-group comparison analysis shows significant gender differences in several elements of motivation. Overall, personal seeking and escaping were greater for males than females. In contrast, interpersonal seeking was greater for females than males.

Entertainment seems to be a key contributor to the festival mood because entertainment and the festival mood were related closely for both genders. In fact, personal and interpersonal escaping means were greater than personal interpersonal seeking means for both genders. Indeed, opportunities exist to develop non-traditional festivals in the country further. Gender differences were identified in several items of personal seeking and escaping, and interpersonal seeking. With respect to personal seeking, men tend to seek the entertainment, festival mood and the event’s uniqueness more than do women, a finding that their higher means in personal escaping supported. It is clear that men view the festival as a way to enjoy themselves to escape from their jobs and daily stress to a greater degree than do their female counterparts. Women are more likely to seek interpersonal experiences in that they are more likely to enjoy the festival because it offers the opportunity to meet new people and spend quality time with family and friends. This study has several limitations, leading to suggestions for future research. Because seeking and escaping motivations have been used relatively little in the festival setting, future researchers should develop a valid scale of personal and interpersonal seeking and escaping motivations specifically for festivals employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Second, while the data were collected at a single non-traditional festival, future research can use multiple sites to increase the ability to generalize the findings. Third, although this study was limited to Saudi Arabia, further research can apply seeking and escaping motivations, both at the personal and interpersonal levels, to other cultures to extend the applicability of the framework used in this study.

Non-traditional festival managers need to focus on an atmosphere that provides festivities, as many people in the Saudi Arabian culture appear to be escaping from their everyday lives to enjoy themselves and with family and friends. To appeal to male workers, festival organizers and managers need to advertise and market the events’ mood and liveliness overall with photos of workers leaving the office free of stress and looking forward to attending an event. To appeal to women who desire unique experiences that a variety of forms of entertainment provide, event managers must ensure that the entertainment is innovative and creative, and differs from what other festivals provide to attract more female attendees. Also, festival planners must focus on events that incorporate the family unit and promote the opportunity to meet new people to appeal to women in Saudi Arabia.

This is the first study to examine gender differences in festival motivations in Saudi Arabia. The relaxation of the historically strict and conservative cultural values, coupled with the country’s desire to develop its tourism and event sector, provides an ideal opportunity for future research. The authors hope that this research will stimulate further interest in the country with the goal to develop and market its tourism sector and products on the world’s stage.

The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.

Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.

The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.

The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.

Gifting is a typical monetization strategy for live streaming platforms to motivate providers’ live content contribution. However, research regarding the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention is still at an infant stage. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention during live streaming.

The authors build a model to uncover the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention from a streamer–content perspective, and the hypotheses are largely validated by online survey data through structural equation model analysis.

Individuals’ perceived attractiveness of the streamers is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related live streaming, whereas individuals’ perceived similarity with the streamers is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related and non-leisure-related live streaming. For live content-related factors, the individuals’ perceived utilitarian value of content is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for non-leisure-related live streaming, whereas the individuals’ perceived hedonic value is significantly positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related live streaming. Perceived symbolic value is insignificantly associated with gifting intention for neither type of live streaming.

The research is an original work and significantly contributes to live streaming and PWYW literature, and the findings derived from this study can guide live streaming platforms to regulate individuals’ gifting intentions/behaviors better.

This study aimed to determine the motivations of a select group of South Africans in terms of their potential engagement with cultural tourism; more specifically, the study set out to show whether these motivations influence the cultural activities that the tourists want to participate in and whether their interest in specific cultural activities determines their destination choices. Furthermore, the mediating role of activities in the relationship between cultural motivations and destination choice was also assessed.

An online panel survey collected responses from 1,530 potential cultural tourists across South Africa. Hypotheses were tested, using structural equation modelling.

The results show that tourists' motivations for cultural tourism influence their likelihood of participating in specific cultural activities. Cultural tourism is shown to be influenced by more than learning and includes entertainment, relaxation, novelty and escape dimensions. There also seems to be a difference in the activities engaged in by destination type. For example, tourists likely to take part in indigenous cultural tourism activities are more likely to do so at hedonic destinations.

This paper contributes to the understanding of cultural tourism activities, aiding destinations in attracting cultural tourists. Destinations need to develop activities that match visitor motivations, increase satisfaction and encourage visitors to return.

The paper increases the understanding of cultural tourism in South Africa and underlines the importance of communities in providing distinctive tourism activities. The study also has an important social dimension, highlighting the role of social status in cultural tourism consumption and destination selection.

The purpose of this study is to discover the uniqueness of China's online livestreaming industry and to make preliminary predictions about its future.

Providing a panoramic description of China's online livestreaming industry and a comparative analysis with other countries' online livestreaming industries.

China's online livestreaming industry is world leader in general. In terms of user size and age structure, although China has a high proportion of online livestreaming users, the proportion of anchors is not high, while the age structure of users in both China and other countries shows the characteristics of younger users. In terms of policy, the difference between China and foreign support in online livestreaming is small, but developed countries have stricter regulations.

The research in this paper has great significance in gaining an in-depth understanding of the development status and trends of China's online livestreaming industry and in designing accurate support policies.

The transition to omnichannel retail is the recognized future of retail, which uses digital technologies (e.g. augmented reality shopping assistants) to enhance the customer shopping experience. However, retailers struggle with the implementation of such technologies in brick-and-mortar stores. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of a smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant application, which uses personalized recommendations and explainable artificial intelligence features on customer shopping experiences.

The authors follow a design science research approach to develop a shopping assistant application artifact, evaluated by means of an online experiment (n = 252), providing both qualitative and quantitative data.

Results indicate a positive impact of the augmented reality shopping assistant application on customers' perception of brick-and-mortar shopping experiences. Based on the empirical insights this study also identifies possible improvements of the artifact.

This study's assessment is limited to an online evaluation approach. Therefore, future studies should test actual usage of the technology in brick-and-mortar stores. Contrary to the suggestions of established theories (i.e. technology acceptance model, uses and gratification theory), this study shows that an increase of shopping experience does not always convert into an increase in the intention to purchase or to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Additionally, this study provides novel design principles and ideas for crafting augmented reality shopping assistant applications that can be used by future researchers to create advanced versions of such applications.

This paper demonstrates that a shopping assistant artifact provides a good opportunity to enhance users' shopping experience on their path-to-purchase, as it can support customers by providing rich information (e.g. explainable recommendations) for decision-making along the customer shopping journey.

This paper shows that smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant applications have the potential to increase the competitive power of brick-and-mortar retailers.

The aim of this research is to understand the relationship between cultural buildings, economic powers and social justice and equality in architecture and how this relationship has evolved over the last hundred years. This research seeks to identify architectural and urban elements that enhance social justice and equality to inform architectural and urban designs and public policies.

The author explores the relationship between case studies of museums, cultural centers and libraries, and economic powers between 1920 and 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden. The author conducts a historical analysis and combines it with statistical and geographically referenced information in a Geographic Information System, archival data and in situ observations of selected buildings in the city. The author leverages the median income of household data from Statistics Sweden, with the geographical location of main public buildings and the headquarters of main companies operating in Sweden.

This analysis presents a gradual commercialization of cultural buildings in terms of location, inner layout and management, and the parallel filtering and transforming of the role of users. The author assesses how these cultural buildings gradually conformed to a system in the city and engaged with the market from a more local and national level to global networks. Findings show a cluster of large public buildings in the center of Stockholm, the largest global companies' headquarters and high-income median households. Results show that large shares of the low-income population now live far away from these buildings and the increasing commercialization of cultural space and inequalities.

This research provides a novel image of urban inequalities in Stockholm focusing on cultural buildings and their relationship with economic powers over the last hundred years. Cultural buildings could be a tool to support equality and stronger democracy beyond their primary use. Public cultural buildings offer a compromise between generating revenue for the private sector while catering to the needs and interests of large numbers of people. Therefore, policymakers should consider emphasizing the construction of more engaging public cultural buildings in more distributed locations.

The last decade has seen a significant increase in self-initiated expatriation research across various cohorts; however, limited research exists on the self-initiated expatriation of medical doctors despite their high mobility rates. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of cross-cultural adjustment among self-initiated medical doctors working and living in a host culture.

A questionnaire was distributed to self-initiated expatriate (SIE) doctors working in Irish hospitals. In total, 193 valid responses were collected. Three linear regression analyses were conducted to explore factors influencing cross-cultural adjustment among SIE medical doctors, along with qualitative insight into their adjustment to working and living in Ireland.

This study found that age, marital status, cultural novelty, previous international work experience, length of time working in the host culture did not influence the cross-cultural adjustment of SIE doctors. However, gender, language ability and perceived fair treatment were found to influence their cross-cultural adjustment in the study. Specifically, female SIE doctors reported higher levels of general adjustment to that of SIE male doctors. SIE doctors' language ability was found to influence their work adjustment, and those who perceived unfair treatment in the host culture reported lower levels of general adjustment.

This paper contributes to the limited knowledge and understanding surrounding the self-initiated expatriation of medical doctors and their cross-cultural adjustment to the host hospital and host culture.