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The online purchasing behaviour of consumers has recently become a topic of increased interest and attention for marketers, policymakers, and researchers. However, due to its complex nature, this phenomenon is still in its infancy in many developing countries and needs to be paid more attention. Using the technology acceptance model (TAM), the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of utilitarian and hedonic shopping motivations, as well as the trust and privacy concerns of consumers in their online purchasing intentions, in a developing South Asian country: Pakistan.

Data were collected from 859 respondents through a self-administrated questionnaire using the non-probability convenience sampling technique and were analysed using the structural equation modelling.

The results of this study demonstrate that, more than hedonic values, trust, and privacy concerns, utilitarian values positively influence consumers’ attitudes to online purchasing. Consequently, consumers’ attitudes positively influence their online purchasing intentions. The findings indicate that Pakistani consumers buy online for goal-oriented reasons. Not surprisingly, they feel unsafe buying online due to concerns over trust and data privacy.

The findings of this study have various practical and managerial implications for electronic businesses in developing countries. This study serves as a guide for the development of effective online marketing and selling strategies.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on business to consumer e-commerce by identifying and empirically validating motivational factors and factors of concern using the TAM model. The extended TAM model, which integrates shopping motivations, trust, and privacy factors, can provide a solid theoretical foundation for consumers’ online purchasing behaviour in a developing country.

This paper aims to propose a mathematical model for describing and clarifying the relationships among the indicators governing the social values of special customers in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce systems. This mathematical model is also able to describe the degree of adaptability of e-commerce systems to the social values of specific clients, and commercial firms are able to use the parameters described in this paper to increase the versatility and has the power to trade with special customers in different areas.

In this paper, while analyzing the issue of trading from the point of view of the customer as an element of trading, the affecting factors the trading space have been extracted. These affecting factors are categorized in three major groups: culture, technology and customers. This classification is based on the e-commerce and developing the traditional commerce. Using the mapping functions, the effects of each element in these three spaces on the concept of social values have been analyzed. The result of this analysis is the mathematical model governing each parameter and its semantic relation with the concept of social value.

The presence of a mathematical model between the indicators influencing the model adaptability and social values space allows e-commerce system designers to be able to make decisions on the adaptability of the model with a quantitative approach. To examine the proposed mathematical models, important frameworks and patterns in the field of e-commerce have been analyzed with an Islamic approach, as one of the adaptations of B2C e-commerce model.

Regarding the innovation of the work, the case has been made, and the concept of social value and the model governing the elements of social values in this paper, in a B2C e-commerce model, has been discussed in general; the problem is parametric solved.

One of the key concepts in commerce is the ability of the commerce model to adapt to the requirements of special customers. This is more important in costumer-based e-commerce models. In these types of systems, if the commerce cannot match the customer’s characteristics, it will not be accepted and used by customers. This is especially more important in the field of social values for customers.

In this paper, a mathematical model is presented to examine the adaptability of e-commerce systems to the social values of special customers. In examining this model, the relationship between each element affecting the social value of specific customers and the factors affecting trade has been studied.

The main objective of the paper is to understand the reasons why Islamic banking failed in Pakistan despite lots of efforts being made to implement in contrast to its success in other parts of the world.

The paper is based on a debatable conceptual approach. It provides a longitudinal view of the issue of replacing the interest‐based financial system in Pakistan with an interest‐free system by taking the religious, socio‐economic and political factors of the country.

The findings of the paper hold that piecemeal solutions to eliminate interest from the financial sector of Pakistan could never succeed. It concludes that all intellectual, practical, political, constitutional and legal efforts undertaken in Pakistan to enforce an interest‐free system were not meant in earnest and therefore they inflicted serious damage to the cause of Islam as well as Islamic banking. Interest is prohibited in Islam for its exploitative nature. In case of Pakistan, interest institution is not only deep‐rooted, but also strongly interlinked with other exploitative tools that are prevalent in the hands of some selected people to keep their control over political, economic and social spheres of Pakistan. There is an indispensable need to eradicate interest along with its allied forces from the polity of Pakistan. The practical success of interest‐free banking and finance movement in Pakistan could not be materialized unless the state and polity of Pakistan are not convinced seriously to discover the paradigm of their personal and state institutions based on Islamic guidance and principles.

The contents of the paper woven around normative and social disciplines and therefore, it is not possible to devise any statistical model to empirically test the contribution of these socio‐economic factors in a failure of interest‐free banking and finance movement for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.

The paper provides a broarder perspective over the issue of eliminating interest from the national economy and financial sector of Pakistan. The paper figures out some serious political, social and micro and macro economic constraints that should be first sorted out to pave the way for any viable strategy to succeed in replacing the existing system with risk‐sharing and alternative interest‐free mechanisms. The findings of this paper may be useful for the policy makers, researchers, academicians, financial experts, Islamic Shariah scholars, bankers, regulators, Islamic financial institutions and those Muslim countries who wish to undertake a similar kind of experiment as was attempted in Pakistan. This paper may also help the Western economist to think and debate about an alternative interest‐free economic and financial system of Islam.

The literature argues that human activities are responsible for environmental pollution and world climate change. Africa is the second-largest continent by population and its socio-economic conditions are adversely affected by climate change due to environmental pollution. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between human activities, the environment and the economic growth of 38 African countries from 2000 to 2018.

This study employs a simultaneous equations model called Seemingly unrelated regression.

Human capital development (HDI) and environmental health (EH) have a positive and non-linear relationship, while HDI and ecosystem vitality (EV) are negative and non-linear. The relationship between gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC) and EH is negative and non-linear. However, the GDPPC-EV link is insignificant. Trade openness (TO) and EV have a negative and non-linear relationship, but trade significantly improves EH. Urbanisation-EV relationship is positive and non-linear. However, urbanisation significantly reduces EH. Technology has a positive and non-linear relationship with EH and EV. The study also found that EH and EV positively affects the economy.

This is the first study to analyse the most concerned countries in-depth. Thus, it provides appropriate and sound policies that consider the unique characteristics of the nations. Moreover, it uses a robust estimation technique that overcomes the endogeneity problem and offers insight into the relationship between the variables, including the feedback effect of the environment on growth.

The main purpose of this article is to characterize a novel neutrosophic hypersoft set hybrid called possibility single-valued neutrosophic hypersoft set (psv-NHSS) for evaluation of investment projects by using its aggregation operations and decision-support system.

Two approaches are employed in this article: set-theoretic approach and algorithmic approach. The former one is used to characterize the novel notion of psv-NHSS and its aggregations. The later one is used to construct a decision-support system by using the aggregations like core matrix, maximum-valued decision, minimum-valued decision and scoring-valued decision of psv-NHSS. The adopted algorithm is implemented in real-world scenario of hydroelectric power station project evaluation for investment purpose.

The proposed model is more flexible and reliable as it addresses the limitations of literature on neutrosophic set, neutrosophic soft set and other fuzzy set-like models by considering possibility degree, hypersoft setting and neutrosophic setting collectively.

It has limitations for decision-making situations where selection of parameters is of uncertain nature.

The scope of this study may cover a wide range of applications in many fields of mathematical sciences like artificial intelligence, optimization, multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM), theoretical computer science, soft computing, mathematical statistics, etc.

The proposed model bears the characteristics of most of the relevant existing models collectively and fulfills their insufficiencies by introducing a novel approximate mapping.

In this article, the elementary notions and aggregation operations of single-valued neutrosophic parameterized complex fuzzy hypersoft set (sv-NPCFHSS) are characterized initially. Then by using matrix version of sv-NPCFHSS, a decision-support system is constructed for the evaluation of real estate residential projects by observing various risk factors.

Two approaches are utilized in this research: set-theoretic approach and algorithmic approach. The first approach is used to investigate the notions of sv-NPCFHSS and its some aggregations whereas the second approach is used to propose an algorithm for designing its decision-support system by using the aggregation operations like reduced fuzzy matrix, decision matrix, etc. of sv-NPCFHSS. The adopted algorithm is validated in real estate scenario for the selection of residential project by observing various risk factors to avoid any expected investment loss.

The proposed approach is more flexible and reliable as it copes with the shortcomings of literature on sv-neutrosophic set, sv-neutrosophic soft set and other fuzzy soft set-like structures by considering hypersoft setting, complex setting and neutrosophic setting collectively.

It has limitations for complex intuitionistic fuzzy hypersoft set, complex neutrosophic hypersoft set and other complex neutrosophic hypersoft set-like models.

The scope of this research may cover a wide range of applications in several fields of mathematical sciences like artificial intelligence, optimization, MCDM, theoretical computer science, soft computing, mathematical statistics etc.

The proposed model bears the characteristics of most of the relevant existing fuzzy soft set-like models collectively and fulfills their limitations.

This study aims to examine the impact of social advertising (informative, entertainment, credibility, ease of use, privacy and contents) on the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan along with the moderating role of brand image. Precisely, it focuses on the marketing techniques and strategies in social advertising to enhance buying behavior.

Using the convenience sampling technique, data was collected from 304 Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Questionnaires were self-administered, and data was analyzed via Smart partial least square structural equation modeling.

Social advertising (informative, entertainment, credibility, privacy, ease of use, contents) and brand image have a positive relationship with the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan, while the brand image has nonmoderating effects. Furthermore, social advertising has a positive and significant relationship with the brand image.

This study is only limited to fashion clothing brands in the Malaysian Muslim community and is based only on the few dimensions of the theory of reasoned action and technology acceptance model (TAM).

Results clarified the impact of social advertising and brand image on the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan and the moderating role of brand image in achieving the business objectives.

This study has evaluated the effects of social advertising and brand image in enhancing the buying behavior of Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan toward the fashion clothing brands along with the moderating role of brand image based on the theory of reasoned action and TAM model. Precisely, this study examined the unique characteristics of social advertising and the relative importance of informative, entertainment, credibility, ease of use, privacy and content in enhancing the buying behavior of Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan, where consumers are emotionally involved in buying fashion clothing brands due to Eid al Fitr celebration.

The purpose of this research is to examine the validity of the agriculture-induced environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis with evidence from an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach with a structural break including real income and energy consumption in the model for Ghana over the period 1980–2014.

The ARDL approach with a structural break was used to analyze the agriculture-induced EKC model which has not been studied in Ghana. The dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), canonical cointegration regression (CCR) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) econometric methods were further used to validate the robustness of the estimates, and the direction of the relationship between the study variables was also clarified using the Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test.

The ARDL results revealed that GDP, energy consumption and agricultural value added have significant positive effects on CO₂ emissions, while GDP² reduces CO₂ emissions. The Toda-Yamamoto causality test results show a bidirectional causality running from GDP and energy consumption to CO₂ emissions whereas a unidirectional long-term causality runs from GDP² and agriculture value-added to CO₂ emissions.

This finding validated the presence of the agriculture-induced EKC hypothesis in Ghana in both the short run and long run, and the important role of agriculture and energy consumption in economic growth was confirmed by the respective bidirectional and unidirectional causal relationships between the two variables and GDP. Thus, a reduction in unsustainable agricultural practices is recommended through specific policies to strengthen institutional quality in Ghana for a paradigm shift from rudimentary technology to modern sustainable agrarian technologies.

This study is novel in the EKC literature in Ghana, as no study has yet been done on agriculture-induced EKC in Ghana, and the other EKC studies also failed to account for structural breaks which have been done by this study. This study further includes a causality analysis to examine the direction of the relationship which the few EKC studies in Ghana failed to address. Finally, dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), canonical cointegration regression (CCR) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) methods are used for robustness check, unlike other studies with single methodologies.

This paper aims to address the issues of Asian countries toward why females are discouraged and more likely to be removed from the formal financial system than males. Further, whether there is any connection between religion and women’s financial inclusion is also addressed.

This paper explores gender disparities in the use of structured financial services through multilevel models tailored to the individual. The data from 2004 to 2017 have been used for eight South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan. We used a multilevel modeling methodology to estimate the impact of the socio-economic climate on women’s financial inclusion while controlling for individual-level features, with all control variables included, the two-level logistic regression model used for this study.

The results of this study demonstrate that sex appears to be strongly correlated with the usage of financial services. The study also found that in nations where religious restrictions limit women’s willingness to work for a living, they are less likely than males to own a bank account. However, through legislation and regulations, countries that encourage gender equality in the labor market and have effective regulatory mechanisms to maintain these initiatives appear to have more financially active women.

This research advises that government authorities strengthen women’s empowerment in South Asian countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that explains the linkage between financial inclusion and women empowerment and will contribute to existing knowledge.

Entrepreneurship is a vital source of job creation and a key driver in promoting economic growth. The Malaysian government encourages higher educational institutions (HEIs) to develop more competitive and innovative graduates for the economy so that Malaysia achieves high-income nation status by 2025. This study aims to investigate the mediating role of attitude toward entrepreneurship (ATE) in the relationship between key psychological factors, that is, subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), big-five (BF) personality traits, entrepreneurial motivation (EM) and educational factors (EFs) with entrepreneurial intention (EI) among Malaysian university students.

This study used a quantitative design based on a positivist approach. The adopted questionnaire was used as the survey instrument. The primary data were collected from a sample of 251 final-year students in the management field who were enrolled in research-intensive Malaysian universities. Data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using AMOS 24 software.

Findings confirmed that the BF personality traits, EM, PBC, SN, ATE and EFs were positively related to EI. Furthermore, ATE mediated the relationship between BF personality traits, EM, PBC, SN, EF, and EI among Malaysian university students.

This research provides critical insights into the key antecedents, for example, psychological and EFs, in explaining the EI of university students and future graduates. However, results can only be generalized to research-intensive Malaysian universities.

This study investigated the relationship between psychological factors, that is, BF personality traits, EM, PBC, SN and EFs in predicting EI of Malaysian university students. ATE mediated the relationship between BF personality traits, EM, PBC, SN, EF and EI among these students.