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In today’s dynamic business environment, it’s crucial for companies to employ robust strategies and decision-making tools to remain competitive. This chapter explains the key comprehensive policies that can be applied by any company to maximise the effectiveness of the APPNIE framework. These policies include the following key elements for effective use of the APPNIE model: appointing an APPNIE manager responsible for maintaining and updating the model, collaborating with top executives, and formulating action plans; raising awareness of the APPNIE manager’s role across the organisation to encourage sharing valuable information (establishing clear procedures and channels for data collection); encouraging the communication of valuable data by offering recognition or rewards, ensuring a steady flow of filtered information; monitoring the eight quadrants using qualitative and quantitative data for up-to-date assessments of key APPNIE’s factors; organising regular meetings between APPNIE managers and directors from different functions to share perspectives, discuss action plans, and address challenges and opportunities. The chapter shows that by adopting these practices, companies can navigate ‘complexity’, make informed decisions, and enhance their overall success and competitiveness in the market.

This study aims to identify the ability of gold and cryptocurrency (Cryptocurrency Uncertainty Index (UCRY) Price) as safe haven assets (SHA) for stocks and bonds in both conventional (i.e. stock indices and government bonds) and Islamic markets (i.e. Islamic stock indices and Islamic bonds (IB)).

The authors employed the nonadditive panel quantile regression model by Powell (2016). It measured the safe haven characteristics of gold and UCRY Price for stock indices, government bonds, Islamic stocks, and IB under gold circumstances and level of cryptocurrency uncertainty, respectively. The period spanned from 11 March 2020 to 31 December 2021.

This study discovered three findings, including: (1) gold is a strong safe haven for stocks and bonds in conventional and Islamic markets under bearish conditions; (2) UCRY Price is a strong safe haven for conventional stocks and bonds but only a weak safe haven for Islamic stocks under high crypto uncertainty; and (3) gold offers a safe haven in both emerging and developed countries, while UCRY Price provides a better safe haven in developed than in emerging countries.

Gold always wins big for safe haven properties during unstable economy. It can also win over investors who consider shariah compliant products. Therefore, it should be included in an investor's portfolio. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies are more common for developed countries. Thus, the governments and regulators of emerging countries need to provide more guidance around cryptocurrency so that the societies have better literacy. On top of that, the investors can consider crypto to mitigate risks but with limited safe haven functions.

The originality aspects of this study include: (1) four chosen assets from conventional and Islamic markets altogether (i.e. stock indices, government bonds, Islamic stock indices and IB); (2) indicator countries selected based on the most used and owned cryptocurrencies for the SHA study; and (3) the utilization of UCRY Price as a crypto indicator and a further examination of the SHA study toward four financial assets.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

This paper aims to explore the impact of corporate financialization (CF) on green innovation (GI) and further disclose the moderating role of CEO’s individual characteristics in such relationship from the perspective of corporate governance.

This paper uses empirical research methods to study the impact of CF on GI based on the evidence from China capital market.

The findings indicate that: CF has a significant inhibiting effect on GI; female CEOs weaken the inhibiting effect of CF on GI compared to male CEOs; and CEO’s financial background positively moderates the inhibiting effect of CF on GI.

This paper, first, supplements the research literature on the economic consequences of CF and influencing factors of GI in non-financial firms. Then, it opens up the internal impact mechanism of CF on GI, which is moderated by the individual characteristics of corporate CEOs. Finally, it provides important reference for how to suppress CF of non-financial firms, cultivate CEOs that meet the needs of corporate development and promote GI development of enterprises through empirical evidence from China.

The aerodynamic differences between the head car (HC) and tail car (TC) of a high-speed maglev train are significant, resulting in control difficulties and safety challenges in operation. The arch structure has a significant effect on the improvement of the aerodynamic lift of the HC and TC of the maglev train. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of a streamlined arch structure on the aerodynamic performance of a 600 km/h maglev train.

Three typical streamlined arch structures for maglev trains are selected, i.e. single-arch, double-arch and triple-arch maglev trains. The vortex structure, pressure of train surface, boundary layer, slipstream and aerodynamic forces of the maglev trains with different arch structures are compared by adopting improved delayed detached eddy simulation numerical calculation method. The effects of the arch structures on the aerodynamic performance of the maglev train are analyzed.

The dynamic topological structure of the wake flow shows that a change in arch structure can reduce the vortex size in the wake region; the vortex size with double-arch and triple-arch maglev trains is reduced by 15.9% and 23%, respectively, compared with a single-arch maglev train. The peak slipstream decreases with an increase in arch structures; double-arch and triple-arch maglev trains reduce it by 8.89% and 16.67%, respectively, compared with a single-arch maglev train. The aerodynamic force indicates that arch structures improve the lift imbalance between the HC and TC of a maglev train; double-arch and triple-arch maglev trains improve it by 22.4% and 36.8%, respectively, compared to a single-arch maglev train.

This study compares the effects of a streamlined arch structure on a maglev train and its surrounding flow field. The results of the study provide data support for the design and safe operation of high-speed maglev trains.

The study aims to draw on the self-congruity theory to investigate the relationship among destination personality (DP), self-congruity and tourists’ pro-environmental behavioral intention (BI) among Guangzhou citizens who have experienced nature-based tourism (NBT).

The survey-based quantitative research was divided into two rounds, namely, a preliminary study exploring the dimensions of DP and the verification of whether the DP dimensions that significantly affect pro-environmental BI in step one would be selected for the main research to validate the conceptual model.

The results suggest that wholesome, one of the destination personalities, strongly predicts tourists’ pro-environmental BI, while actual self-congruity plays a mediating role between sincere, another DP, and tourists’ pro-environmental BI.

In practice, it offers multidimensional knowledge and robust evidence-based recommendations for the sustainable development and destination branding of NBT destinations in the post-epidemic era.

The study presents pioneering work that reveals previously underestimated factors influencing pro-environmental BI.

Purpose: FinTech is exploding all over the world. FinTech companies play a critical role in growing the banking industry. This chapter reviews existing literature on FinTech in banking, particularly its publication trend, journal productivity and impact, affiliated organisations and related themes.

Need for the Study: FinTech is reshaping the banking sector as banks move towards digitisation. FinTech has eliminated the need for paper, reduced the requirement for physical presence, and destroyed the necessity for cash. Several researchers have studied the features and benefits of FinTech technologies in the banking field. So, there is a need to analyse the available literature to identify the scope of further research in this field.

Methodology: For a comprehensive review, Bibliometric and content analysis of 77 open access green articles collected through the structured database of ‘Dimensions’ is done. These articles are published in the UGC Journal List Group II.

Findings: It is revealed that the execution of FinTech is continuously increasing in the banking sector, which has resulted in automation in various banking activities. The study revolves around technology and Banking, Financial Inclusion and Growth, and the Impact of the Financial Crisis on Banking and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending.

Practical Implications: The conclusions of this study can help academia and industry improve their understanding of FinTech in Banking, specifically its publication trend, geographical distribution, and creation of coherent themes. Careful analysis of collected articles will help to explore the scope of further research.

The interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become burgeoning in the construction industry as firms are under constant pressure from socially conscious stakeholders to demonstrate their efforts to address various CSR issues. This study aims to unveil the key practices and impact factors (KPIFs) of CSR implementation in construction firms and the interrelationships among different key impact factors toward attaining CSR practices.

Mobilizing the integrated institutional, stakeholder and self-determination theories, a theoretical framework was first developed to elaborate the potential inter-relationships among the key impact factors toward CSR implementation. Data were collected from extra-grade contractors through an online questionnaire survey and was then analyzed by the partial least square structural equation modeling method.

The results show that construction firms' CSR practices could be classified into eight distinct key dimensions, e.g. shareholders' interests, government commitment and environment preservation. It is found that three groups of key impact factors – external institutional factors (especially coercive-normative factors), intrinsic factors (especially strategic business direction and organizational culture) and identified factors (i.e. the perceived importance of CSR practices) – have statistically significant positive impacts on most key dimensions of CSR practices.

The research findings have implications for top management to better understand CSR implementation, thereby helping them secure legitimacy to survive and advance in the competitive construction businesses.

The findings contribute to the theoretical body of knowledge in CSR by modeling and empirically demonstrating the influence mechanism of CSR implementation in construction within an integrated model.

To explore the economical and reasonable semi-rigid permeable base layer ratio, solve the problems caused by rainwater washing over the pavement base layer on the slope, improve its drainage function, improve the water stability and service life of the roadbed pavement and promote the application of semi-rigid permeable base layer materials in the construction of asphalt pavement in cold regions.

In this study, three semi-rigid base course materials were designed, the mechanical strength and drainage properties were tested and the effect and correlation of air voids on their performance indexes were analyzed.

It was found that increasing the cement content increased the strength but reduced the air voids and water permeability coefficient. The permeability performance of the sandless material was superior to the dense; the performance of the two sandless materials was basically the same when the cement content was 7%. Overall, the skeleton void (sand-containing) type gradation between the sandless and dense types is more suitable as permeable semi-rigid base material; its gradation is relatively continuous, with cement content? 4.5%, strength? 1.5 MPa, water permeability coefficient? 0.8 cm/s and voids of 18–20%.

The study of permeable semi-rigid base material with large air voids could help to solve the problems of water damage and freeze-thaw damage of the base layer of asphalt pavements in cold regions and ensure the comfort and durability of asphalt pavements while having good economic and social benefits.

In structural health monitoring, localization of multiple slight damage without baseline data is significant and difficult. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

Damage in the structure causes singularities of displacement modes, which in turn reveals damage. Methods based on the displacement modes may fail to accurately locate the slight damage because the slight damage in engineering structure results in a relatively small variation of the displacement modes. In comparison with the displacement modes, the strain modes are more sensitive to the slight damage because the strain is the derivative of the displacement. As a result, the slight variation in displacement data will be magnified by the derivative, leading to a significant variation of the strain modes. A novel method based on strain modes is proposed for the purpose of accurately locating the multiple slight damage.

In the two bay beam and steel fixed-fixed beams, the numerical simulations and the experimental cases, respectively, illustrate that the proposed method can achieve more accurate localization in comparison with the one based on the displacement modes.

The paper offers a practical approach for more accurate localization of multiple slight damage without baseline data. And the robustness to measurement noise of the proposed method is evaluated for increasing levels of artificially added white Gaussian noise until its limit is reached, defining its range of practical applicability.