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This research aims to investigates whether and why choice overload (CO) occurs when people select a vacation destination.

This is a two-group (large choice-set vs small choice-set) between-subject factorial design. Dependent variables representing CO-effects are post-choice satisfaction and regret. Choice confusion and choice uncertainty are mediators.

Relative to people choosing from a small destination portfolio, people who choose from a large portfolio are less satisfied and more regretful about their choice. Choosing from a large choice-set confuses people, which then makes them less certain about their choice, and subsequently, have less satisfaction and more regret about their decision.

A critical consideration is essential when providing a number of destination choices to tourists. A few destinations should be offered in a travel portfolio. If the number of destination offers must remain large, travel agents should cluster these offers based on a market segmentation analysis to ease the decision-making process for travellers.

The findings add to evidence of CO-effects to the current literature of travel destination choice, and contribute to CO literature by showing evidence of CO-effects in complex service contexts, especially in holiday destination choices. This study is the first to provide evidence of CO-effects at the early stages of the travel destination decision-making process; it uses hypothetical destinations to avoid potential confounds associated with real destinations; and it measures CO-effects via post-choice satisfaction and regret. In addition, while the only available study on CO in tourism (Park and Jang, 2013) does not explain why CO-effects occur, this research provides and explains the psychological underlying process of the CO phenomenon in destination choice-making.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out free vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded material (FGM) plate.

Equilibrium and stability equations of FGM rectangular plate under different boundary conditions are derived using finite element method-based inverse trigonometric shear deformation theory (ITSDT). Eight-noded rectangular plate element with seven degrees of freedom at each node is used for the present analysis. The power-law distribution method has been considered for the continuously graded variation in composition of the ceramic and metal phases across the thickness of a functionally graded plate.

The finite element formulation incorporated with ITSDT and provisions of the constitutive model of FGM plate has been implemented in a numerical code to obtain the natural frequency and critical buckling load under uniaxial and biaxial compressive load. The influence of material gradation, volume fraction index, span to thickness ratio and boundary constraints over free vibration and buckling response has been studied.

Development and validation of finite element methodology using ITSDT to predict the structural response of the FGM plates under different loading, geometric and boundary conditions.

This paper aims to find out what product features become salient when consumers are exposed to many market offerings, demonstrating how choice set size influences construal mindset, which then affects the type of product consumers choose.

Experiment 1 provides preliminary evidence that being exposed to a large (vs small) choice set may drive people to focus more on the feasibility (i.e. a secondary feature) of a product and less on the desirability (i.e. a primary feature) when making a choice. Experiment 2 unveils the serial mediating roles of construal level and importance of price/design.

Consumers are more likely to select feasible (i.e. affordable) market offerings and not desirable (i.e. well-designed) ones when choosing from a large (vs small) choice set. This effect is serially mediated by mental construals and by the importance of price or design. Choosing from a large (vs small) choice set leads to low-level mental construals, which increase the importance of price (a feasibility attribute) while decreasing the importance of design (a desirability attribute), resulting in choice of feasible (affordable) market offerings over well-designed ones.

Although consumers generally focus on the desirability of a choice or an action, choosing from large choice sets makes them focus more on the feasibility of market offerings because of low-level mental construals.

In today’s era of e-commerce, as consumers are exposed to too many product offerings, retailers should emphasize the feasibility of their market offerings (e.g. affordability) to increase the chance that consumers purchase their products. This research shows that people rely very much on product price to make selections when provided with a large choice set.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to show that large choice sets make consumers choose affordable products over well-designed ones and introduces the serial mediation effect of construal level and importance of price/design. Accordingly, this research establishes that large choice sets activate low-level mental construals, which associate with a feasibility mindset that ultimately makes consumers choose an affordable product instead of a well-designed one. It adds to the literature on choice overload by showing that the importance of price overshadows the importance of design (aesthetics) when people are exposed to large choice sets.

Employees’ job engagement is a key driver for organizational success and competitive advantage. Based on Kahn’s engagement theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between job engagement, transformational leadership, high-performance human resource (HR) practices, climate for innovation, and contextual performance.

A questionnaire survey, conducted at two different points in time, was employed to collect data from 394 pairs of Vietnamese university academics and their leaders. Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and multilevel SEM using the Statistical Package for Social Science Version 24 and Mplus Version 7.4.

The findings indicated that transformational leadership and high-performance HR practices were key drivers of employees’ job engagement. A climate for innovation contributed effectively to mediate the effect of transformational leadership on employees’ job engagement. Further, employees’ job engagement was positively and significantly related to contextual performance.

The short time lag between the two data collection phases might limit the ability to reach definite causal conclusions. Future research using a longitudinal design is needed to provide stronger validation for the underlying model.

This study is a rare attempt that investigates the process from which employees’ job engagement is generated and contributes to improve contextual performance in the higher education sector.

The purpose of this paper is to study the static buckling and free vibration of continuously graded ceramic-metal beams by employing a refined higher-order shear deformation, which is also the primary goal of this paper.

The proposed model is able to catch both the microstructural and shear deformation impacts without employing any shear correction factors, due to the realistic distribution of transverse shear stresses. The material properties are supposed to vary across the thickness direction in a graded form and are estimated by a power-law model. The equations of motion and related boundary conditions are extracted using Hamilton’s principle and then resolved by analytical solutions for calculating the critical buckling loads and natural frequencies.

The obtained results are checked and compared with those of other theories that exist in the literature. At last, a parametric study is provided to exhibit the influence of different parameters such as the power-law index, beam geometrical parameters, modulus ratio and axial load on the dynamic and buckling characteristics of FG beams.

Searching in the literature and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are limited works that consider the coupled effect between the vibration and the axial load of FG beams based on new four-variable refined beam theory. In comparison with a beam model, the number of unknown variables resulting is only four in the general cases, as against five in the case of other shear deformation theories. The actual model represents a real distribution of transverse shear effects besides a parabolic arrangement of the transverse shear strains over the thickness of the beam, so it is needless to use of any shear correction factors.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

The global shipping industry has been rocked by a wave of disruptive innovation driven by a thriving ecosystem of digital technology start-ups that have emerged in the last few years and set up offices in Greece. After the appearance of COVID-19, entrepreneurial leadership has grown in importance for guiding commercial shipping through times of exceptional circumstances. The problem is that there is a lack of understanding of the experiences of Greek digital entrepreneurs launching their tech start-ups within the maritime sector – from the initial vision to a real-world innovative business disruptor. We aim to answer the questions of who the Greek digital entrepreneur in the maritime sector is and how their entrepreneurial actions contribute to a growing knowledge base of digital entrepreneurship for future theoretical research and professional practice. This single-subject, archival case study demonstrates the social and commercial value of the “who” and “how” of digital entrepreneurship in the maritime sector through the case of Harbor Lab, an Athens-based start-up that disrupted the maritime industry through innovative use of emerging technologies to calculate disbursements (port expenses) and through the establishment of a horizontal, empathetic, open workplace culture. The outcomes of this study contributed a fresh perspective of scholarly knowledge on digital entrepreneurship for future theoretical research and professional practice.

This chapter presents a systematic review of over 30 types of online marketing methods. It describes different methods like email marketing, social network marketing, in-game marketing and augmented reality marketing, among other approaches. The researchers discuss that the rationale for using these online marketing strategies is to increase brand awareness, customer-centric marketing and consumer loyalty. They shed light on various personalization methods including recommendation systems and user-generated content in their taxonomy of online marketing terms. Hence, they explain how these online marketing methods are related to each other. The researchers contend that the boundaries between online marketing methods have not been clarified enough within the academic literature. Therefore, this chapter provides a better understanding of different online marketing methods. A review of the literature suggests that the “oldest” online marketing methods including the email and the websites are still very relevant for today’s corporate communication. In conclusion, the researchers put forward their recommendations for future research about contemporary online marketing methods.

This study aims to explore how the inhibitor-loaded nanocontainers can be used in the epoxy coating for protection of steel against corrosion. A self-healing anticorrosive coating can be easily fabricated by embedding the inhibitor-loaded nanocontainers into the epoxy coating matrices. For this purpose, first, cerium (a catholic corrosion inhibitor) is encapsulated into silica nanoparticles (SiO₂@Ce). Thereafter, an epoxy nanocomposite coating has been prepared on steel substrate using these SiO₂@Ce nanoparticles as nanofillers.

To examine the effect of SiO₂@Ce nanocontainers on mechanical properties of epoxy coating, the abrasion resistance, impact resistance and adhesion strength of coating have been evaluated. To reveal the effect of SiO₂@Ce nanocontainer on corrosion behavior of epoxy-coated steel, the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has been conducted in NaCl solution.

Transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy/Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analyses indicate that Ce³⁺ cations have been successfully loaded into the surface of silica nanoparticles (at the content of approximately 2 Wt.%). Mechanical tests of epoxy nanocomposite coatings indicate that the nanocomposite coatings with nanoparticles content of 2.5 Wt.% provide the highest values of abrasion resistance, impact resistance and adhesion strength. EIS results show that the presence of SiO₂@Ce³⁺ nanocontainers increases both coating resistance and polarization resistance. Along with the improvement the coating barrier performance, Ce inhibitor plays an important role in improving the anticorrosive performance at the steel–electrolyte interface.

The application of self-healing epoxy/SiO₂@Ce nanocomposite coatings for the protection of carbon steel is very promising.