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Nowadays, star athletes are global brand personalities. The increased popularity of the professional sport has contributed to elevating exceptional athletes to international star status. This empirical study aims to assess the impact of athlete performance and brand social value on product involvement with the mediation effect of celebrity athlete endorsement.

A quantitative survey was conducted with 399 Chinese participants. PLS-SEM is adopted to examine the associated paths and the mediating effect of celebrity endorsement.

The results demonstrate the significant impact of athlete performance and brand social value on product involvement. Celebrity endorsement partially mediates the effects of athlete performance and brand social value on product involvement.

This study extends understanding of celebrity athlete endorsement and provides insight into the strategic implications for Chinese social media-based marketing initiatives in the context of the recent Olympic Game in Tokyo 2021.

Numerous electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of persuasive eWOM messages. Despite the impact of eWOM messages in decision-making processes, few researches have directly tested potential antecedents of persuasive eWOM messages among message recipients in social media context. The purpose of this paper is to critically discuss and examine the determinants of persuasive eWOM messages when message recipients intend to accept and use eWOM messages.

The authors reviewed extant literature of eWOM and proposed hypotheses regarding persuasive eWOM messages in social media context. A survey of 78 respondents was conducted and the data were analysed using SmartPLS.

This study found that argument quality, source credibility, source attractiveness, source perception and source style are critical antecedents of persuasive eWOM messages. The PLS results suggested that source credibility (trustworthiness), source perception (usefulness, social ties) and source style (visual cues, number) are main characteristics of credible eWOM messages in relation to users’ intention to accept and use online reviews. The variance of information acceptance and intention to use were also explained in the findings.

This paper identified critical antecedents of persuasive eWOM messages and suggested eWOM messages as a credible source. An integrated conceptual framework was developed to illustrate comprehensive antecedents of persuasive eWOM messages, and the relationships between these messages, information acceptance and intention to use.

The significance of the study is to identify the effectiveness of eWOM messages and its impact on intention to accept and use these messages. Moreover, this study will provide insightful guidelines for marketers with practical implications in approaching emerging markets via eWOM initiatives.

Prefabricated buildings (PBs) have proven to effectively mitigate carbon emissions in the construction industry. Existing studies have analyzed the environmental performance of PBs considering the shift in construction methods, ignoring the emissions abatement effects of the low-carbon practices adopted by participants in the prefabricated building supply chain (PBSC). Thus, it is challenging to exploit the environmental advantages of PBs. To further reveal the carbon reduction potential of PBs and assist participants in making low-carbon practice strategy decisions, this paper constructs a system dynamics (SD) model to explore the performance of PBSC in low-carbon practices.

This study adopts the SD approach to integrate the complex dynamic relationship between variables and explicitly considers the environmental and economic impacts of PBSC to explore the carbon emission reduction effects of low-carbon practices by enterprises under environmental policies from the supply chain perspective.

Results show that with the advance of prefabrication level, the carbon emissions from production and transportation processes increase, and the total carbon emissions of PBSC show an upward trend. Low-carbon practices of rational transportation route planning and carbon-reduction energy investment can effectively reduce carbon emissions with negative economic impacts on transportation enterprises. The application of sustainable materials in low-carbon practices is both economically and environmentally friendly. In addition, carbon tax does not always promote the implementation of low-carbon practices, and the improvement of enterprises' environmental awareness can further strengthen the effect of low-carbon practices.

This study dynamically assesses the carbon reduction effects of low-carbon practices in PBSC, informing the low-carbon decision-making of participants in building construction projects and guiding the government to formulate environmental policies.