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Evidence suggests that a growing number of consumers across the world are becoming more environmentally responsible in terms of their personal habits and lifestyles. In this paper, the authors aim to use both parametric and non-parametric econometric models to estimate Kuwaiti consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection in Failaka island.

Contingent valuation methods based on log-logistic and log-normal regression models revealed that consumers in Kuwait are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 40 Kuwaiti dinars for environmental protection in Failaka island based on the double-bound dichotomous choice model.

Socio-economic variables have no significant influence on the respondent’s WTP. As expected income has a positive relationship with WTP and bid price has negative relationship with WTP to protect the environment in Failaka island.

This study highlight the fact that understanding consumers’ environmental-friendly behaviors may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or environmental degradation.

The purpose of this paper is to study the role of social factors that determine the length of stay in a mental hospital and also understand the main factors leading to the phenomena as a step to solve it.

A case-control cross-sectional observational study is performed which studies correlates for the lengthy stay in a mental hospital. The study population consists of two groups: Group A (94 patients), taken from the patients hospitalized for more than one year, further subdivided into schizophrenia and schizoaffective inpatient group and bipolar affective inpatient group; and Group B (94 patients), receiving their treatment at the outpatient clinic after being admitted for less than six months, this group was further subdivided into same categories as Group A.

The study showed that the positive score in positive and negative symptoms scale (PANSS) showed highly statistically significant (p<0.01) correlation with the length of hospital stay for the schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients in the inpatient group. The results showed no statistically significant difference (p>0.05) between the inpatient schizophrenic cases and the inpatient affective cases regarding the length of hospital stay.

The linear regression model was used to understand the predictors of increased length of hospital stay. The linear regression analyzing the scale data of schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients found that the length of hospital stay for the schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients depends on the patient’s age and his positive PANSS score. On the other hand, linear regression model for bipolar affective patients in the study found no statistically significant attributes of the length of hospital stay.

The study found that the length of hospital stay for schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients depends on the patient’s age and his positive PANSS score.

The need for this study stems from the large numbers of mental inpatients who have been lengthily admitted in mental health hospitals in Egypt, while trying to understand main factors leading to the phenomena as a step to solve it. The study found that there is a highly significant difference between inpatient group and outpatient group regarding the marital status, education level, and psychosocial class, with inpatient group having more single, illiterate, and very low social class cases.

Research in the area of chronic psychiatric hospitalization and its effect on the course and prognosis of mental illness is still scarce, especially in the Arab world; therefore, the research will open the door for further research efforts in the future with a larger sample of patients to study the pros and cons of deinstitutionalization taking into account the past experience of health systems in other countries.

This study aims to explore the hijab research impactful authors, influential journals, collaboration networks and emerging trends. In addition, keyword co-occurrence techniques are used to scrutinize the field’s major schools of thought.

Hijab research has witnessed a distinct proliferation during the past decade. In this article, the authors apply bibliometric network techniques to examine the conceptual/intellectual structure of this domain based on 485 Web of Science documents written by 848 authors representing 66 nations and spanning almost 40 years (1984–2021).

Results show that the most impactful journals publishing hijab research are Women’s Studies International Forum, Gender, Place and Culture, Ethnic and Racial Studies and the Journal of Islamic Marketing. Results also show that the author collaboration network in hijab research is sparse. Furthermore, results related to collaborative networks between institutions and countries reveal a global “North–South” schism between developed and developing nations. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the hijab research conceptual map reflects the depth and breadth of the field’s foci.

The present analysis has far-reaching implications for aspiring researchers interested in hijab research as the authors retrospectively trace the evolution in research output over the past four decades, establish linkages between the authors and articles and reveal trending topics/hotspots within the broad theme of hijab research.

This study aims to apply novel anticorrosive pigments containing silica fume-phosphates (Si-Ph), which were prepared using core-shell technique by covering 80-90 per cent silica fume (core) with 10-20 per cent phosphates (shell) previously, to play dual functions simultaneously as anticorrosive pigments in coating formulations and as an anticorrosive admixture in concrete even if it is not present in the concrete itself. Two comparisons were held out to show the results of coatings on rebars containing core-shell pigments in concrete, and concrete admixtured with silica fume can perform a dual function as anticorrosive pigment and concrete admixture. The evaluation of corrosion protection efficiency of coatings containing core-shell pigments and those containing phosphates was performed.

Simple chemical techniques were used to prepare core-shell pigments, and their characterization was carried out in a previous work. These pigments were incorporated in solvent-based paint formulations based on epoxy resin. Different electrochemical techniques such as open-circuit potential and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were used to evaluate the anticorrosive efficiency of the new pigments.

The electrochemical measurements showed that concrete containing coated rebars with core-shell pigments exhibited almost similar results to that of concrete admixtured with silica fume. Also, the anticorrosive performance of coatings containing Si-Ph pigments offered protection efficiency almost similar to that of phosphates, proving that these new pigments can perform both roles as anticorrosive pigment and concrete admixture.

Although the new Si-Ph pigments contain more than 80 per cent waste material, its performance can be compared to original phosphate pigments in the reinforced concrete.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between global economic fluctuations and human development through four transmission channels (foreign direct investment (FDI), official development aid (ODA), remittances and export earnings) in Egypt as an open developing economy, in the period 1990–2015.

The paper uses a vector autoregressive model, which implies examining the impulse response functions and variance decompositions.

The results indicate that human development is negatively affected by global economic fluctuations through the four channels, namely, ODA, FDI, export earnings and remittances. In addition, the most effective transmission channels are FDI in the short run and export earnings in the long run.

While a large body of literature addresses the direct impact of business cycles and economic shocks on human development, only some studies focus on the indirect impact. The contribution is to identify the indirect impact of global economic fluctuations on human development in a developing economy, considering four transmission channels and to determine the most important of these channels. Moreover, using the human development index is an addition in this paper as most previous literature depends on other human development indicators such as children’s health, employment and schooling.

This paper aims to examine the structure and dynamics of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia. The research also aims to investigate how such research evolved since its launch in 2001.

Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. Based on 1,040 PubMed Wikipedia documents written by 5,280 authors over two decades (2001–2021), this paper conducts a bibliometric review of the intellectual structure of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia.

Results show that annual scholarly publications on Wikipedia growth rate is 13.26. Major outlets publishing Wikipedia’s research are PloS One, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Nucleic Acids Research, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Bioinformatics and the International Journal of Medical Informatics. Results also show that the author collaboration network is very sparse, signifying rather negligible collaboration among the authors. Furthermore, results reveal that the Wikipedia research institutions’ collaboration network reflects what is sometimes termed Wikipedia’s “North-South divide,” indicating limited collaboration between rich and poor nations’ institutions. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the Wikipedia research conceptual map and its intellectual structure reveals the intellectual thrust and the diversity of the scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research represents the first application of bibliometric methods to investigate two decades of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia based on the PubMed database.

This purpose of this paper is to clustering Kuwaiti consumers choice of Sharia-complaint financial products and services based on several factors such as religiosity, financial knowledge, customer value, satisfaction, trust, service quality, relationship with service providers and innovation.

The study uses self-organizing maps, a neural network technique, in order to cluster and segment consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products and services in Kuwait. From a marketing perspective, SOM can be viewed as a flexible clustering technique in which different clusters are identified without the rigid traditional statistical assumptions of linearity or normality.

This paper shows that consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products in Kuwait can be clustered into three distinct segments: enthusiasts, laggards and rejectors. The enthusiasts represent the largest cluster with a frequency of around 66 percent, while the Rejectors represent the smallest segment with a frequency of 10 percent.

This paper advances our knowledge about the behavioral aspects of financial consumer choice within a non-traditional Sharia-compliant financial products context.

This study aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 on transforming accountability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and office operation and control. This paper explains how unleashing the rationality of health and safety along with internal CSR made the transformation to telework successfully operable in a periphery of a western multinational corporation.

The study draws upon the theories of governmentality and social accountability. It adopts an interpretative qualitative research approach and uses the case study method. Data were collected from one of the biggest private sector telecommunication companies in Egypt.

This study finds that Covid-19 and its related health and safety discourse represented a good rationale for the western home office to accelerate the initiation of its office transformation plan to reach full working from home policy in a less developed country peripheral subsidiary. Under the guise of CSR, the company spent a large budget to make this transformation quickly operable, while its Egyptian subsidiary is financially distressed. Moreover, the company achieved its objectives from this new rationality as employees currently prefer the telework mode which reduces the company costs in the long run.

The study provides practitioners with evidence and practicable knowledge regarding the impact of Covid-19 on office reconfiguration and the ways used to achieve this in the Egyptian telecommunication sector.

The current study extends the governmentality literature by illustrating that transformation to telework in emerging markets is an operational manifestation of cost reduction and efficiency rationality under the guise of CSR. Moreover, it extends the office transformation literature by bringing early evidence regarding office transition plans during COVID-19 in an emerging market.

This paper aims to provide insights into the complicated relationship between earnings management (EM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) during the financial downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parametric t-tests and non-parametric Wilcoxon rank-sum tests accompanied by ordinary least squares regression analysis, augmented with Newey–West procedure approaches, are used for a sample that consists of 1,984 firms from 47 countries for the period of 2014–2020. EM was proxied once with discretionary accruals using the modified Jones model (1995) and once with real earnings management (REM) using the Roychowdhury model (2006). This study uses environmental, social, and governance scores from the Thomson Reuters database as a proxy for CSR.

The results reveal that firms tend to engage more in EM practices during the pandemic and that more socially responsible firms tend to be honest and transparent during the financial reporting process. Interestingly, it was found that more socially responsible firms engaged less in REM practices during the pandemic.

The findings of this research help lenders, investors, policymakers and managers gain a better understanding of EM practices during a negative shock and shed light on the importance of CSR in being ethical.

The findings extend both the literature on the role of CSR in promoting financial reporting quality and the literature on the impact of COVID-19 on accrual and REM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine female fashion consumer profiles in Kuwait. Drawing on symbolic interactionist, fashion adoption theory, the trickle-down theory, the collective selection theory and the mass-market theory, this study examines the influence of self-identity, social interactions and prestige consumption on Kuwait female apparel consumers.

The study applies self-organizing maps (SOM), discriminant and multiple correspondence analyses to analyze the influence of self-identity, social interaction and prestige consumption on Kuwaiti female apparel consumers.

Results unveiled three distinct clusters: liberals, traditionalists and conservatives. Liberals include students, singles with a low income, less than KD 500. They are younger and wear neither Abaya nor Hijab. Traditionalists include employees, mixed between married and divorced females. They have moderate income between KD 500–1,500, two age groups between 25–30 and 31–35 years. Finally, conservatives include older females of age 36–45 years. They are housewives with a high-income of more than KD 1,500, and wear both Abaya and Hijab. Findings seem to confirm that the younger generations of females in Kuwait are by far living a different life than their mothers and grandmothers. Findings also show that culture, especially religion and traditions, is still exercising an enduring influence on Kuwaiti females purchasing behavior.

This study extends the existing literature dealing with female apparel consumption by applying cluster analysis to an Arab country, which makes it possible to generalize results to other Arab nations. Second, the author uses SOM along with traditional clustering methods to check the robustness of findings.