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The purpose of this study is to dope silver (Ag) and fluorine (F) in zinc oxide (ZnO) for the enhancement of electrical and optical properties of ZnO, as previous studies reported the improvement of these properties using individual doping of F and Ag. In this paper, F and Ag co-doped ZnO nanorods were synthesized using a modified hydrothermal method.

The hydrothermal method was modified and used for the synthesis of the doped ZnO nanostructures, where stainless autoclave and oven were replaced with the Duran laboratory bottle and water boiler system in the process. The ultraviolet metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector (PD) was fabricated using DC sputtering method.

Vertically aligned nanorods images were captured from field emission scanning electron microscopy. XPS analysis confirmed greater spin-orbital interaction in the F and Ag co-doped ZnO sample and revealed the presence of F, Ag, Zn and O in the samples, indicating a successful doping process. X-ray diffraction revealed a hexagonal wurtzite structure with enhanced crystal quality upon co-doping. The bandgap decreased from 3.19 to 3.14 eV upon co-doping because of reduced defects density in the sample. Finally, an ultra-violet PD was fabricated with enhanced sensitivity and response times upon co-doping.

The low-cost, less energy-consuming Duran laboratory bottle and water boiler system were used as the substitute of expensive, more energy-consuming stainless autoclave and oven in a hydrothermal method for synthesis of F and Ag co-doped ZnO and subsequent fabrication of PD.

This paper aims to measure the change and the sources of change in total factor productivity (TFP) of the Indian non-life insurance sector over the period 2005–2016.

This study employs the bootstrapped Malmquist index (MI) to assess the changes in the TFP and adopts a decomposition approach proposed by Balk and Zofío (2018). Moreover, it utilises truncated regression to identify the determinants of the TFP. In addition, it employs Wilcoxon-W test and t-test to scrutinise the difference between the state-owned and the private insurers in terms of variations in TFP and its various components.

The results divulge a miniature improvement in TFP of the insurance sector, which is primarily attributable to the improvement in scale efficiency (economies of scale). The results also reveal that there are no significant TFP differences across the ownership. However, private insurers have better scale efficiency and lower input-mix efficiency than state-owned insurers. In addition, the results unveil that size, diversification and reinsurance have a negative impact on the TFP, while age has a positive impact on it.

The results may help the policymakers to frame new consolidation policies. Moreover, the findings may guide the decision-makers of the Indian non-life insurance companies to abate inefficiency and improve TFP.

This study estimates bias-corrected changes in TFP and efficiency in the non-life insurance sector. Moreover, it adopts an elaborated decomposition of the MI to identify the true sources of change in the TFP.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact on brand love of consumption experience at the dimensional level and to determine whether brand love mediates between consumption experience and customer engagement in the context of Generation M.

A sample of 265 Muslim smartphone users responded to a structured questionnaire adapted from existing literature. First, confirmatory factor analysis was carried out, and then data were analyzed through structural equation modeling using MPlus.

The findings indicate that hedonic pleasure and escapism directly, while flow, challenge and learning indirectly affect brand love and that brand love mediates the relationship between consumption experience and customer engagement.

This paper explicates Generation M’s consumption experience, ascertains ways to supplement their love for brand and engage them in gainful relationships and provides suggestions for further investigation. From a managerial perspective, the paper has implications for the management of consumer experience, identifies the most valuable dimensions of consumption experience and proposes that managers can develop customer-engagement strategies via brand love.

The paper validates the mediating role of brand love in the relationship between consumption experience and customer engagement; is the first to investigate the relationship between all dimensions of consumption experience and brand love; is one of few studies to investigate consumption experience, brand love and customer engagement in developing countries; and is one of first investigations to use a sample of Generation M.

This study aims to examine the publishing and citation trends on library service quality (LSQ) in the past five decades (1972–2020). Additionally, this bibliometric study investigates the top authors, countries, organizations, journals, nature of collaboration, highly cited articles and LSQ sub-areas.

Bibliometric analysis has been used to extract data from the Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) databases. A comprehensive search strategy was devised to extract relevant data from both data sources. Finally, 341 Scopus and 212 WOS records were selected. Data analysis has been performed using VOS viewer software, Biblioshiny, Cite Space and Excel.

It was found that a total of 443 items were published in Scopus (n = 341) and WOS (n = 212) during this period. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2019 (n = 29), and the USA was found to be the most productive country, with the most productive organizations, authors and author collaborations. The Texas A&M University in Texas, USA, had the top three most productive authors (Cook C, Thompson B and Heath F) and was the most productive organization. The Performance Measurement and Metrics Journal is on the top of the list. The single author was the prevailing authorship pattern, followed by the two-authors pattern. The most collaborating countries were identified as the UK, Japan, Spain and Bangladesh. The keyword analysis informed that the published literature on LSQ mainly concentrated on academic libraries, Therefore, there is a need further to examine other types of libraries including public, national, special libraries.

To the best of the knowledge, this seems to be the first comprehensive bibliometric study that combined productivity and citations, citation impact to present a holistic picture of the LSQ literature.

The eco-innovation is considered one of the possible ways to tackle climate change. However, the conflicting empirical evidence related to the role of eco-innovation on environmental quality becomes a motivation to explore the effect of eco-innovation on environmental degradation proxied by ecological footprint. Besides, it controls economic growth, remittance inflows, trade openness and total energy consumption in the environmental degradation function.

Uses the Augmented Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (AARDL) approach to examine the cointegration relation among the series during the period ranging from 1975 to 2017 for India within the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework.

The result suggests that eco-innovation can mitigate climate change by reducing the ecological footprint. Similarly, economic growth reduces the ecological footprint in the short- and long-run. However, the square of economic growth is positive and significant. Thus, it shows evidence against the conventional EKC hypothesis. The results also reveal that remittance inflows have an insignificant negative role on the ecological footprint, while total energy consumption and trade openness harm the environment by enhancing the ecological footprint.

This study provides important implications for climate change mitigation. Thus, the government should promote eco-innovation to mitigate climate change by offering a favorable legal environment to the firms to adopt the same in their production and consumption activities. It also suggests that initiatives like green strategies should give serious attention while incurring research expenditure.

No prior studies assess the impact of eco-innovation on the ecological footprint for the period of 1975–2017 in India.

The use of mobile technologies and learning devices has been increasing in every field of life, and library and information sciences are no exception. This study aims to explore the perceptions of library and information science (LIS) students regarding mobile learning (m-learning) along with their primary purposes, social media applications, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impact and overall satisfaction with using these devices.

A survey method was used, and data was collected from the students of 12 library schools in Pakistan for a total sample of 250 students.

Their main purposes of usage, their needs, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impacts and the level of overall satisfaction were also identified. The inferential statistics (t-test and ANOVA) also identified the difference of opinion on the basis of gender, programs, types and number of m-learning devices. Overall, the findings highlight the need for academic libraries to give mobile access (launching mobile applications) to better use library services. To ensure this, libraries must keep an eye on new advances in mobile technology, researchers’ needs and related electronic library services and observe how these services are being used.

Theoretical and practical implications have been highlighted to understand the perceptions of LIS students about m-learning devices.

The mobile library service providers and management need to improve their services by offering services that fit the diverse needs of their users and should know how to attract modern library users.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of the Indian non-life (general) insurance sector in terms of total factor productivity (TFP) over the period 2005–2016.

This study utilises Färe‒Primont index (FPI) to access the change in TFP and its components: technical change, technical efficiency and mix and scale efficiency over the observation period. Moreover, it employs the Mann–Whitney U-test to scrutinise the difference between the public and the private insurers in terms of growth in productivity.

The results reveal that the insurance sector possesses a very low level of TFP. Also, the results divulge an improvement of 11.98 per cent in TFP of the insurance sector at an annual average rate of 12.41 per cent over the observation period. The growth in productivity is mainly attributable to the improvement of 10.81 per cent in the scale‒mix efficiency. The progress in scale‒mix efficiency is mainly the result of improvements in residual scale and residual mix efficiency. The results also show that the privately owned insurers have experienced a high productivity growth rate than the state-owned insurers.

The results hold practical implications for the regulators, policymakers and decision makers of the Indian non-life insurance companies.

This study is the first of its kind to use FPI, which satisfies all economically relevant axioms and tests defined by the index number theory to comprehensively access the change in TFP of the Indian non-life insurance sector.

The purpose of this paper was to systematically collect and review all studies which have been conducted on research data services in libraries across the globe.

Six world-renowned scholarly databases were searched and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were used for the identification and selection of eligible studies. The studies were then assessed using a well-renowned framework for the quality assessment of research studies.

The results revealed that the libraries were engaged in providing different types of research data services such as identification, acquisition, management and preservation of research data. They also arranged training programs, supported the publishing and sharing of data and dealt with the licensing and copyright issues related to data.

The results of this study would be helpful for researchers and organizations, especially those engaged in educational activities, in understanding the current scenario of research data services in the world libraries. Furthermore, the findings offer valuable insights to library professionals regarding the types of research support services available globally. This would enable them to play an integral role in planning, designing and implementing such services in their libraries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that systematically collects and reviews the literature on research data services in libraries worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of the Indian non-life (general) insurance sector in terms of efficiency, productivity and returns-to-scale economies. In addition to this, it identifies the determinants of efficiency.

This study employs a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) bootstrap approach to estimate the level and determinants of efficiency. In the first stage, the DEA bootstrap approach is employed to estimate bias-corrected efficiency scores. In the second stage, the truncated bootstrapped regression is used to identify the effect of firm-level characteristics on the efficiency of insurers. Moreover, the bootstrapped Malmquist index is used to examine the productivity growth over the observation period 2005–2016.

The bootstrapped DEA results show that the Indian non-life insurance sector is moderately technical, scale, cost and allocative efficient, and there is a large opportunity for improvement. Moreover, the results reveal that the public insurers are more cost efficient than the private insurers. It is also evident that all the insurers irrespective of size and ownership type are operating under increasing returns to scale. Malmquist index results divulge an improvement in productivity of insurers, which is attributable to the employment of the best available technology. Bootstrapped DEA and bootstrapped Malmquist index results also show that the global financial crisis of 2008 has not severely affected the efficiency and productivity of the Indian non-life insurance sector. The truncated regression results spell that size and reinsurance have a statistically significant negative relationship with efficiency. It also shows a statistically significant positive age–efficiency relationship.

The results hold practical implications for the regulators, policy makers, practitioners and decision makers of the Indian non-life insurance companies.

This study is the first of its kind that comprehensively investigates different types of robust efficiency measures, determinants of efficiency, productivity growth and returns-to-scale economies in the Indian non-life insurance market for an extended time period.

For mitigating climate change, renewable energy consumption is recognized as one of the policy measures worldwide. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies focusing on education as one of the determinants of renewable energy consumption in the existing literature. Thus, this study aims to explore the impact of education, economic growth and foreign direct investment, financial development, CO₂ emissions and urbanization on renewable energy consumption.

This study considers a balanced panel of selected South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, namely, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, during the period 1995–2015. The study uses sophisticated second-generation panel data models for empirical analysis.

The result reveals that education and economic growth significantly enhance renewable energy consumption, whereas foreign direct investment, financial development, CO₂ emissions and urbanization reduce it. Further, unidirectional causality from education, economic growth and urbanization to renewable energy consumption was observed, whereas a bidirectional causality was found between renewable energy consumption and financial development.

The emanated finding of this study is supposed to be helpful for the environmentalists, economists, banking sector and the practitioners in urban development can take insights from the study while framing the energy policy.

This is the first study that examines the role of education on renewable energy consumption in heterogeneous panel data settings for the selected SAARC countries.