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Users' knowledge contribution behaviors are critical for online Q&A communities to thrive. Well-organized question threads in online Q&A communities enable users to clearly read existing answers and their evaluations before contributing. Based on the social comparison and peer influence literature, the authors examine peer influence on the informativeness of knowledge contributions in competitive settings. The authors also consider three levels of moderating factors concerning individuals' perception of competitiveness: question level, thread level and contributor level.

The authors collected data from one of the largest online Q&A communities in China. The hypotheses were validated using hierarchical linear models with cross-classified random effects. The generalized propensity score weighting method was employed for the robustness check.

The authors demonstrate the peer influence due to social comparison concerns among knowledge contribution behaviors in the same question thread. If more prior knowledge contributors choose to contribute long answers in the question thread, the subsequent contributions are more informative. This peer influence is stronger for factual questions and questions with higher popularity of answering but weaker in recommendation-type and well-answered questions and for contributors with higher social status.

This research provides a new cue of peer influence on online UGC contributions in competitive settings initiated by social comparison concerns. Additionally, the authors identify three levels of moderating factors (question level, thread level and contributor level) that are specific to online Q&A settings and are related to a contributor's perception of competitiveness, which affect the direct effect of peer influence on knowledge contributions. Rather than focus on motivation and quality evaluation, the authors concentrate on the specific content of online knowledge contributions. Peer influence here is not based on an actual acquaintance or a following relationship but on answering the same question. The authors also illustrate the competitive peer influence in subjective and personalized behaviors in online UGC communities.

Gender disparity is a global phenomenon where females outnumber male participants. It has been observed that males are the early leaver from higher education, thus reflecting a severe concern about social instability. Malaysia is a prominent example where females outnumber males in higher education. In this context, this paper aims to examine the effect of individual, social and financial factors on the higher education self-efficacy of male and female students. It develops a comprehensive understanding of gender-based decision factors in pursuing higher education.

The hypothesis was formed based on a comprehensive literature review following the hypothetico-deductive positivist approach. These hypotheses were tested based on a sample of 250 respondents. A multiple regression analysis was deployed to test the relationship between the dependent variable and its predictors.

The results suggest that male and female students’ self-efficacy depends on five determinants, i.e. family influence, peer influence, career expectancy outcome, gender roles and institutional factors. Male students tend to be influenced more by these five determinants than females. Additionally, male students with better financial backgrounds are more likely to have higher self-efficacy, whereas gender roles negatively affect male and female students’ self-efficacy for higher education.

The breakout of COVID-19 resulted in the selection of limited students in Malaysia. Due to restricted movement orders, it was impossible to reach out to the students for data collection. Future research could include a broader area to include multiple other regions of Malaysia. For a broader aspect, the study could be conducted in other areas/countries where the problem of less male participation exists.

The relationship between higher education self-efficacy is assessed with social, financial and institutional factors for male and female students. It will enable the stakeholders and policymakers to make better decisions in increasing the self-efficacy of students to attain equity in higher education institutions.

The finding of this paper will assist in increasing male participation in higher education institutions to avoid any social instability.

This paper contributes to the literature in understanding the causes of gender gap reversal, focusing on Malaysian higher education institutions. It also provides empirical evidence to look at potential factors that affect the higher education self-efficacy of male and female students.

The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.

Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.

This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.

This study explores whether the peer effects of internationalization exist within the subdivision industry of enterprises in the engineering field and assesses the imitation paths for the peer engineering enterprises within the industry when implementing internationalization strategies under the peer effects.

This study collected secondary and objective data on 38 Chinese engineering enterprises from the Engineering News-Record's list of the top 250 international contractors between 2013 and 2021. It employed a regression analysis to test the research hypotheses.

The findings reveal that in the process of internationalization: (1) peer effects exist within the subdivision industry of internationalization of engineering enterprises; (2) engineering enterprises within the same industry and region imitate each other; (3) non-state-owned engineering enterprises imitate state-owned engineering enterprises within the same industry; and (4) in the industry follower–leader imitation process, industry followers imitate leaders according to enterprise size and return on assets.

The results contribute to a better understanding of how peer effects influence engineering enterprises' internationalization process. This study also proposes imitation paths based on the law of imitation to provide recommendations for engineering enterprises' better development in the international market.

This study is devoted to examining the peer effects of engineering enterprises’ internationalization from the viewpoint of industry subdivision and how information and competition alter peer effects. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of peer effects is analyzed based on manager characteristics.

In this study, multiple regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 38 Chinese engineering enterprises listed in the Engineering News-Record’s top 250 international contractors over the period of 2013–2021. This study collected the paired data from the enterprise annual reports and the China Stock Market & Accounting Research database.

The results reveal that (1) there exist peer effects within the subdivided industry of the engineering field; the quality of information disclosure of peer enterprises and degree of market competition moderate the peer effects; (2) the peer effects of internationalization are more pronounced in engineering enterprises with managers who have lower ability, hold greater power or are older.

The findings of this study contribute to understanding the peer effect in the process of internationalization of engineering enterprises, and help enterprises to effectively supervise the irrational behavior of top managers, so as to develop better internationalization strategies.

The results extend peer effects to the subdivision industry of the engineering field. Furthermore, this study also enriches the relevant research on peer effects among enterprises by empirically supporting the moderating role of information and competition as well as analyzing the heterogeneity of the peer effects from the perspective of manager characteristics.

The research aims to explore the influence mechanism of peer feedback and users' knowledge contribution behavior. This study draws on the social identity theory and considers social identity as a mediating factor into the research framework.

This paper collected users' activity data of 142,191 ideas submitted by 76,647 users from the MIUI community between October 2010 and May 2018 via Python software, and data were processed using Stata 16.0.

The results indicate that knowledge feedback and social feedback positively influence users' knowledge contribution (quantity and quality), respectively. User's cognitive identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution behavior, affective identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution behavior, while evaluative identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution quality, but there is no mediating effect between peer feedback and knowledge contribution quantity.

This study advances knowledge management by highlighting peer feedback on online innovation communities. By demonstrating the significant mediating effect of social identity, this study empirically clarifies the relationships of peer feedback (knowledge feedback and social feedback) to specific dimensions of knowledge contribution, thereby providing managerial guidance to the online innovation community on incentivizing and managing user interaction to foster the innovation development of firms.

Based on the perspectives of social capital, image motivation and motivation affordances, this paper explores the direct and moderation effects of different kinds of motivations (i.e. relationship-based motivation, community-based motivation and individual-based motivation) on users' continuous knowledge contributions in social question and answer (Q&A) communities.

The authors collect the panel data of 10,193 users from a popular social Q&A community in China. Then, a negative binomial regression model is adopted to analyze the collected data.

The paper demonstrates that social learning, peer recognition and knowledge seeking positively affect users' continuous contribution behaviors. However, the results also show that social exposure has the opposite effect. In addition, self-presentation is found to moderate the influence of social factors on users' continuous use behaviors, while the moderation effect of motivation affordances has no significance.

First, this study develops a comprehensive motivation framework that helps gain deeper insights into the underlying mechanism of knowledge contribution in social Q&A communities. Second, this study conducts panel data analysis to capture the impacts of motivations over time, rather than intentions at a fixed time point. Third, the findings can help operators of social Q&A communities to optimize community norms and incentive mechanisms.

Despite the well-recognized importance of recycled water, the study of industry-peer pressure on recycled water is relatively new. This study investigates how organizations experience and react to industry-peer pressure to set recycled water targets. Additionally, this study investigates the role of board chairs involved in sustainability committees in contributing to responses to industry-peer pressure.

Using Eviews 12, this study employed a pooled logistic regression model to analyze data from 1,346 firms on Taiwan and Taipei exchanges (2017–2020).

The findings revealed that frequency-based imitation drives recycled water target-setting diffusion. However, there is no direct relationship between outcome-based imitation and recycled water target-setting. Notably, outcome-based imitation drives the adoption of recycled water target-setting of firms with board-chair membership in sustainability committees.

This study faces certain data limitations. First, this study primarily focuses on water recycling. Future research could explore other ways to reduce water usage, such as using water-efficient equipment. Second, this study gathered information solely on the presence or absence of a board chairperson on the sustainability committee. Future researchers could explore the impact of the composition of sustainability committee on recycled water target-setting. Lastly, the sample used in this study is restricted to Taiwan's corporations that existed during 2017–2020. Future researchers may consider adopting a longitudinal design in other economies to address this limitation.

The findings of this study offer several guidelines and implications for recycled water target-setting and the composition of sustainability committees. It responds to an urgent call for solutions to water shortages when pressure from governments and nongovernmental organizations is relatively absent. The number of industry peers that have already set recycled water targets is indispensable for motivating firms to set their own recycled water targets. In terms of insufficient water-related regulatory pressure and normative pressure, this study found evidence suggesting that the direct motivation for setting recycled water targets stems from mimetic pressures via frequency-based imitation. The evidence in this study suggests that policymakers should require companies to disclose their peers’ recycled water target information, as doing so serves as an alternative means to achieving SDG 6.3.

Recycled water target-setting might be challenging. Water recycling practices may face strong resistance and require substantial additional resources (Zhang and Tang, 2019; Gao et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2023). Therefore, this study suggests that firms should ensure the mindfulness of board members in promoting the welfare of the natural environment when making recycled water target-setting decisions. To reap the second-mover advantage, firms must consider the conditions in which board members can more effectively play their role. Corporations may help their chairpersons in setting recycled water targets by recruiting them as members of sustainability committees. Meanwhile, chairpersons tend to activate accurate mental models when the water conservation performance of pioneering industry peers is strong enough to indicate the potential benefits of adopting recycled water target-setting. Investors’ and stakeholders’ understanding of how the composition of sustainability committees is related to recycled water target-setting may help to identify the potential drivers of firms’ water responsibility. Investors and stakeholders should distinguish firms in terms of the board chair’s membership of their sustainability committee and focus on water-use reduction outcomes in the industry. This study provides insights into circumstances whereby chairpersons help to restore the water ecosystem.

This study explains how frequency-based and outcome-based imitation are two prominent mechanisms underlying the industry-peer pressure concerning recycled water target-setting. Moreover, this study fills literature gaps related to the moderating roles of board-chair membership in sustainability committees concerning industry-peer pressure on recycled water target-setting.

Based on the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior through two different paths: bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation. Besides, the moderating effects of bystander uncertainty tolerance on the two paths are also explored.

In this study, 438 employees and their direct leaders from eight Chinese companies were surveyed in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to develop assertive impression management motivation and, thus, to exhibit more proactive behaviors. At the same time, peer abusive supervision also causes bystanders to develop defensive impression management motivation, which reduces the frequency of performing proactive behaviors. In addition, this study finds that bystander uncertainty tolerance plays a moderating role in influencing bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation in response to peer abusive supervision.

Starting from the bystander perspective, this study verifies the double-edged sword effect of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior as well as the mechanism of differentiated effects through cognitive appraisal, which broadens the scope of the research on abusive supervision, and deepens the academic understanding and development of the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress. At the same time, it also provides new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behavior.

Integrating individual and relational centric voice literature, the authors draw on self-presentation theory to analyse the role of status pursuit in employee voice. Status pursuit is believed to be ubiquitous as it is linked to access to scarce resources and social order pecking.

The authors present a cross-level conceptual model outlining relational nuances of employee status pursuit that drive upward voice.

The model integrates status pursuit with peer- and leader-related facets, focusing on three targets of voice: immediate leader (supervisor), diagonal leader (supervisor of another team/unit) and co-workers. The model highlights how employee voice can be directed to diverse targets, and depending on interpersonal attributes, how it serves as underlying links for upward voice.

While employee voice can help to address important workplace concerns, it can also be used to advance employees' self-interest. Though there is a wealth of research on the importance of employee voice to organisational performance and individual wellbeing, especially through collective representation such as trade unions, there is a lack of literature on how employees navigate the social-relational work setting to promote their interests and develop status.