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Since public sector organizations provide services to citizens but struggle with poor perceptions of their functioning, it is valuable to examine how their online responses to complaints on social media could impact their reputation. Yet, surprisingly little is known about effects of public organizations' webcare. Therefore, this study assesses the impact of the webcare's tone, response strategy and user's involvement on participants’ continuance intention and perceptions of reputation.

Two experimental studies (Study 1: N = 424; Study 2: N = 203) with an interval of one week were carried out to assess the effects of singular and repeated exposure to webcare by a Dutch public transport organization on the participants' continuance intention and perceived organizational reputation. Study 1 examined the effects of the webcare's tone (corporate vs conversational human voice (CHV)) and response strategy (accommodative vs defensive); Study 2 contained tone of voice and user's involvement (observer vs complainer). The effects of repeated exposure to the webcare's tone were also examined.

The results indicate that perceptions of CHV in webcare contribute to webcare as reputation management tool, since it leads to immediate higher reputation scores that also remain stable after repeated exposure. Furthermore, people's continuance intention increased after repeated exposure to webcare responses that were perceived as CHV, thus a natural and engaging communication style, indicating this is an effective strategy for customer care as well. No substantial impact was found for response strategy and user's involvement in the complaint handling.

The novelty of this study is that the authors assess the effects of the webcare's tone combined with response strategy and user's involvement in a public sector context with a sector-specific conceptualization of reputation and continuance intention measured after singular and repeated exposure to webcare.

This study examined how audience characteristics and attitudes relate to their perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness of apologies by public figures posted on YouTube.

Four hundred twenty-seven adult participants recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk completed an online survey via Qualtrics. Participants were randomly assigned to view two of four public figure apologies posted on YouTube.

Results indicated that audience fandom and perceived reputation and attractiveness of the public figure were related to perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness; and perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness were related to intentions of future support.

“Sameness” between the public figure and audience did not garner a more favorable response to the apology, and this is not consistent with earlier studies. For race similarity, the results could have been a reflection of the low number of non-White participants. However, results could indicate that “sameness” is not as simplistic as demographic sameness, such as race, sex or age.

The authors’ findings elevate the importance of gathering and benchmarking pre-crisis attitudinal research to better equip and inform communication professionals for crisis response. In addition, the study suggests that a public figure's strong reputation and fanbase provide a type of inoculation, lessening reputational damage.

The finding that perceived attractiveness relates positively to perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness is consistent with psychological research indicating attractiveness has many positive social implications – even in mediated communication.

Evidence suggests social media apologies matter. Communication professionals need to approach apology opportunities with a keen awareness that relational outcomes and intentions of future support can shift based on social media audiences' attitudes related to the public figure.

Scholarly research on e-procurement has been limited and, like e-government, e-procurement has been researched primarily from the perspective of adoption/non-adoption. This paper aims to focus on public administration employees’ perceptions of the quality of národní elektronický nástroj (NEN) – the Czech national e-procurement tool they are required to use.

The paper is based primarily on statistical analysis of data obtained through two questionnaire surveys addressed to contacts from of all Czech central state administration bodies using NEN; 175 completed questionnaires were gathered in 2020 and 128 in 2022 and subjected to statistical analysis in SPSS.

NEN was launched as fully operational in August 2015. The research indicates that in 2022 there were still important gaps in the quality of NEN as perceived by public employees.

The paper has important practical implications for e-procurement policymakers. It shows that making the e-procurement system compulsory is not sufficient. The government needs to guarantee that it would be competitive with tools that would otherwise be preferred. Otherwise, the application of the digital-by-default principle may lead to institutionalisation of services that are not user-friendly. This has important implications for e-government/e-procurement management and change management.

Little is known about public employees’ perceptions of the quality of e-government and e-procurement. Although e-procurement is an area where the digital-by-default principle was implemented rather early, the quality of e-procurement has still received limited attention in research.

Coastal zone ecological restoration project is of great significance to alleviate marine ecological degradation. Evaluating the effect of coastal ecological restoration projects and identifying the obstacle factors affecting their restoration level can provide an empirical basis for future Marine ecological restoration projects.

However, due to the initial stage of coastal zone ecological restoration projects, the actual monitoring data of coastal zone ecological restoration is relatively lacking. Based on the CRITIC-TOPSIS (combination of CRITIC method and TOPSIS method) method, combined with the subjective perception of the public and the actual data of the restoration project, this paper proposes an evaluation method of the coastal zone ecological restoration effect to obtain the specific implementation effect of the coastal zone ecological restoration project. The main obstacle factors affecting the evaluation of coastal ecological restoration effect are identified by using the obstacle degree model.

This paper conducted an empirical study on the restoration of sandy shoreline and coastal wetland in Qinhuangdao city. Based on the data of restoration projects and the subjective perception of ecological restoration by the public in Qinhuangdao city, the research results showed that the coastal zone ecological restoration effect of Qinhuangdao city was general. The quality of the restoration project and the public perception have an important influence on the evaluation of the restoration effect. Improving the quality of the restoration project, strengthening the public's participation in ecological restoration and allowing the public to better participate in the ecological restoration of the coastal zone can improve the effect of ecological restoration of the coastal zone in an all-round way.

The research results of this paper have a guiding role in the ecological restoration of coastal cities in the future, and also have a demonstration and reference role for the assessment of the effect of ecological restoration of coastal zones.

Global climate change speeds up ice melting and increases flooding incidents. China launched a sponge city policy as a holistic nature-based solution combined with urban planning and development to address flooding due to climate change. Using Weibo analytics, this paper aims to study public perceptions of sponge city.

This study collected 53,586 sponge city contents from Sina Weibo via Python. Various artificial intelligence tools, such as CX Data Science of Simply Sentiment, KH Coder and Tableau, were applied in the study.

76.8% of public opinion on sponge city were positive, confirming its positive contribution to flooding management and city branding. 17 out of 31 pilot sponge cities recorded the largest number of sponge cities related posts. Other cities with more Weibo posts suffered from rainwater and flooding hazards, such as Xi'an and Zhengzhou.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the public perception of sponge city in Sina Weibo.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how advertising is used by real estate companies as an instrument for managing the adverse effects of a catastrophe.

Through a theoretical analysis, types of post-disaster advertising messages were identified. On the basis of the likely variations in post-disaster advertising, a content analysis was conducted of a sample of 4,150 property print advertisements to identify advertising messages related to the earthquake. Finally, the message changes in these earthquake-related advertisements were evaluated and compared with the dimension of time to explore the development of advertising strategies.

The authors found that 12 types of advertising messages were used by developers in response to the Wenchuan earthquake. The initial advertising strategy was mainly to manage public relations, then the strategy was to reduce or compensate for the increased earthquake risk perceptions of buyers.

The findings provide valuable references for helping enterprises adopt effective advertising messages and strategies to reduce the negative effects of disasters.

There are only a few studies on advertising campaigns, especially in the real estate industry, that have been conducted in the wake of catastrophes. This study sought to expand upon the scarce findings in this particular field.

The hospitality industry in developed countries is under pressure due to labor shortages and it is likely more food and beverage operations will have to be automated in the future. This research investigates the public’s perceptions of the use of robots in food and beverage operations to learn about how the public perceives automation in food and beverage.

Data were collected from a survey disseminated online in 12 languages, resulting in a sample of 1,579 respondents. The data were analyzed using factor analysis and OLS regressions.

The data also reveal that generally positive attitudes toward the use of robots in tourism and hospitality is a strong indicator of positive attitudes toward the use of robots in an F&B setting. The data also illustrate that the public’s perception of appropriateness of the use of robots in F&B operations is positively related to robots’ perceived reliability, functionality and advantages compared to human employees.

The implications illustrate that the public seems to be generally accepting robots in food and beverage operations, even considering the public’s understanding and acceptance of the limitations of such technologies.

The research suggests that a critical element in terms of incorporating automation into future food and beverage operations is encouraging consumers to have generally positive attitudes toward the use of robots in hospitality and tourism industries.

This survey is based upon the data gathered in multiple countries to learn about how individuals perceive the use of robots in food and beverage operations, illustrating the attitudes that will assist or hinder the automation of this service industry.

We conducted consumer research with more than 2,000 adults and more than 100 representatives from retirement housing providers from across the UK to identify the “perception gap” and gathered high-profile representatives from across the retirement housing sector to discuss the data.

Our research shows that the public are unsure about the benefits and services provided by retirement housing schemes – often confusing them with care homes and nursing homes to the detriment of the sector.

We identify an untapped referrer market for retirement living, that men should be targeted with entry-level information and people should be targeted before retirement age when perceptions are less “fixed”.

We show the services that matter most to ABC1 demographic and the sources they use to find information.

We outline how the sector can make retirement housing a model of “want” instead of a model of “need”.

The South Korean government launched the proactive administration initiative in mid-2017, which has been widely implemented throughout the public sector. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to review a behavioral approach to promote proactive administration in the South Korean government.

The research questions are as follows: (1) How did the South Korean government initiate a behavioral approach to administrative reform by promoting proactive administration? (2) What systems or mechanisms has the South Korean government utilized to promote proactive administration? (3) What kind of constraints did the government face in the process of administrative reform and how did it resolve them? (4) What was the preliminary reaction to or evaluation of such reforms in public administration communities?

Although it is still too early to evaluate the overall impact of administrative reform to promote proactive administration on civil servants’ behavior, it has nonetheless contributed greatly to the substantial change in perception that public officials in the administrative field should pursue their work as actively as they can.

This study is meaningful because while many countries have promoted administrative reforms such as structural reorganization, downsizing of human resources, cutback management and fiscal innovation, privatization, regulatory reform and promotion of digital government, cases of behavioral innovation, such as proactive administration, have been relatively scarce. Since a behavioral approach to administrative reform would be essential in many countries, this paper will serve as a useful reference for the consideration of their governments.

Based on the theory of trust and cost-benefit perspective, this paper examines the relationship between citizens’ trust and their digital attitudes by considering the mediating effects of performance expectancy and perceived risk, as well as the moderating effect of media use.

The city digital transformation in Shanghai is chosen as the case in this study. 466 questionnaires were collected through a survey, with Structural Equation Modeling to test the hypotheses in AMOS.

Citizens’ trust of government and trust of technology has no significant direct effect on their digital attitudes. However, performance expectancy mediates between the trust of government and digital attitudes, and perceived risk mediates the effect of trust of technology on attitudes. The use of social media significantly moderates the association between trust of technology and citizens’ attitudes.

Exploring why citizens shape supportive attitudes toward digitalization is critical to achieving digital governance goals in developing countries, especially large cities where digital transformation is accelerating. The originality lies in using cost-benefit analysis as a perspective and media use as a moderator to examine the mechanisms of citizens’ trust and digital attitudes.