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In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the B2B customers’ perspective regarding salespeople’s social media use.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 26 key informants performing their job in customer role in various industries.

The authors inductively identify five themes regarding the B2B customers’ perspective of social media use in B2B selling. These themes allow for valuable implications for social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Against a growing body of literature on drivers, best practices and outcomes of social media use by B2B salespeople, less attention has been paid to the customer’s side. The authors extend current research by providing a more complete picture of social selling activities and expected outcomes.

This study aims to determine how the most sustainable brands in Italy and Spain developed communication and awareness-raising actions during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether these companies were truly involved in raising public awareness of the pandemic. The authors specifically focus on sustainable companies, as health communication is considered to be an important corporate social responsibility task.

To answer these questions, the authors have used data on the social media activity (Twitter and Instagram) of these brands in Spain and Italy, extracting the posts and associated hashtags that each of them has published throughout the pandemic to be processed using social network analysis and visualization techniques.

The detailed analysis of both the levels of activity and the content of the messages provides interesting insights into the communication models of the companies and the influence of factors such as time, country and the specific social media platform used.

The authors analyze the communication of the most sustainable businesses on social media during the pandemic, adopting a highly innovative approach. The particular originality of this study lies in the parallel analysis of two different countries that were simultaneously shaken by the pandemic in very similar circumstances. This study also presents a novel use of graphical representation tools in terms of companies’ behavior for health communication on social media.

El objetivo de esta investigación es determinar cómo las marcas reconocidas como las más sostenibles en Italia y España han desarrollado acciones de comunicación durante la pandemia del Covid-19 y si estas empresas se han involucrado realmente en la sensibilización pública de la pandemia. Nos centramos específicamente en las empresas sostenibles dado que la Comunicación en Salud se considera una tarea importante de responsabilidad social corporativa.

Para responder a estas preguntas, hemos utilizado datos de actividad en medios sociales (Twitter e Instagram) de estas marcas en España e Italia, extrayendo los posts y hashtags asociados que cada una ha publicado a lo largo de la pandemia para procesarlos usando técnicas de análisis y visualización de redes sociales.

El análisis detallado tanto de los niveles de actividad como del contenido de los mensajes permite obtener conclusiones interesantes sobre los modelos de comunicación de las empresas y la influencia de factores como el tiempo, el país y el medio social concreto utilizado.

Analizamos la comunicación realizada por las compañías más sostenibles en medios sociales durante la pandemia, adoptando un enfoque muy innovador. La particularidad de este estudio radica en el análisis paralelo de dos países diferentes que fueron sacudidos simultáneamente por la pandemia en circunstancias muy similares. Este estudio también conlleva un uso novedoso de herramientas de representación gráfica en términos del comportamiento de las empresas para Comunicación en Salud en medios sociales.

本研究的目的是确定在意大利和西班牙被认为是最可持续发展的品牌在Covid-19大流行期间是如何开展传播行动的, 以及这些公司是否真正参与了提高公众对该大流行病的认识。我们特别关注可持续发展的公司, 因为健康传播被认为是企业社会责任的一项重要任务。

为了回答这些问题, 我们使用了这些品牌在西班牙和意大利的社交媒体活动数据（Twitter和Instagram）, 提取了每个品牌在整个大流行期间发布的帖子和相关标签, 并使用社交网络分析和可视化技术进行处理。

通过对活动水平和信息内容的详细分析, 可以得出关于这些公司的传播模式以及诸如时间、国家和所使用的特定社交媒体等因素的影响的有趣结论。

我们分析了最可持续的公司在大流行期间在社交媒体上进行的传播, 采取了一种非常创新的方法。这项研究的特殊性在于对两个不同国家的平行分析, 这两个国家在非常相似的情况下同时受到大流行病的冲击。这项研究还包括在社交媒体上对公司健康传播行为的图形表示工具的新颖使用。

The study aims to analyze the relationship between tourists' satisfaction and their sense of belonging in a specific cultural destination by also investigating the moderating role of their on-site involvement, both offline (on-site activities at the destination) and online (social media activities). A further objective lies in exploring the relationship between tourists' sense of belonging and their adoption of environmentally responsible behavior while at the destination. Finally, the paper attempts to determine whether said behavior can predict tourists' pro-environmental behavior and recommendation intention.

To reach these objectives, a survey and a structural equation model, based on a sample of 647 visitors of an important world Heritage site UNESCO (i.e. Urbino), have been adopted.

Findings reveal a positive influence of sense of belonging on satisfaction and environmentally responsible behavior, which, in turn, influences pro-environmental behavior and Recommendation intention, thus triggering a virtuous process in the tourists' formation as responsible and loyal travelers. Moreover, results underline how the relationship between satisfaction and sense of belonging is significantly strengthened when tourists' on-site activity involvement increases. Conversely, the moderating role of social media involvement is not supported.

The present study offers important implications for different actors in the tourism sector, such as policy makers, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and tourism operators.

The present study explores the role of social media involvement, specifically during the tourist's holiday.

This study enriches the empirical evidence in the cultural tourism through an analysis focused on the tourists' perspective, especially by investigating the relationship between satisfaction and emotional constructs (i.e. sense of belonging) that are able to bring environmental and loyalty benefits to the destination. Moreover, although existing research has highlighted the positive influence of the tourists' involvement on their experience, there is a paucity of studies jointly analyzing the on-site and online activities in the sustainability field.

Social media has become an inescapable part of our lives. However, recent research suggests that excessive use of social media may lead to fatigue and users’ disengagement. This study aims to examine which brand-related factors contribute to social media fatigue (SMF) and its subsequent role on driving lurking behaviors, particularly among young consumers.

Based on survey data from 282 young users of social media, a holistic model of brand-related drivers and outcomes of SMF was tested, emphasizing the contribution of brands’ social media presence to users’ disengagement.

Research shows that branded content overload and irrelevance, as well as branded ads intrusiveness significantly impact SMF, which in turn plays a mediating role between brand-related drivers and lurking behaviors. The authors further conclude that the impact of SMF on lurking is stronger for users who follow a larger set of brands.

The study contributes to social media research by addressing its “dark side” and empirically validating the role of brands’ social media presence in developing young users’ fatigue and disengagement. The study further adds to the scant literature on SMF, which was mostly developed outside the branding field. Research also provides valuable insights to brands on how to improve their social media performance.

This study aims to examine adolescents’ social media environment connected to unhealthy food marketing. As social media have become a ubiquitous part of young people’s everyday lives, marketers have also shifted their focus to these channels. Literature on this phenomenon is still scarce and often takes a quite narrow view of the role of marketing in social media. Furthermore, the experiences of the adolescents are seldom considered.

Using a sociocultural approach and netnographic methodology, this study presents findings from a research project conducted in Finland. The data consist of both social media material and focus group interviews with adolescents.

The findings elaborate on unhealthy food marketing to adolescents in social media from two perspectives: sociocultural representations of unhealthy foods in social media marketing and social media influencers connecting with adolescents.

The study broadens and deepens the current understanding of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents taking place in social media. The study introduces a novel perspective to the topic by looking at it as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the factors related to the adoption of social media by women entrepreneurial small businesses (ESBs).

Using a structured survey instrument, this study gathered data from 101 women entrepreneurs in Yemen. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

The results confirm that social media has been widely applied by women ESBs in Yemen and has made a significant contribution to different business strategies and processes, mainly marketing, promotion and communication. Social media adoption is linked mainly with nontechnical obstacles and challenges, in specific, those “soft” factors such as management attitude, as well as “hard” technical obstacles and challenges involving cost and other practical aspects regarding social media nature.

This study contributes to the increase in awareness of the impact of social media among female ESB owners. A greater understanding of the impact of social media will eventually lead to better use of the tool to increase performance.

This study highlights the perceived benefits and challenges that give Yemeni female business owners strong decision-making power in their businesses. This study provides insight into the numerous drivers that affect owners/managers’ decisions to adopt and continuously use social media in the future.

Increasing incidents of privacy invasion on social networking sites (SNS) are intensifying the concerns among stakeholders about the misuse of personal data. However, there seems to be limited research on exploring the impact of specific privacy concerns on users’ intention to engage in various privacy protection behaviors. This study aims to examine the role of social privacy concerns, institutional privacy concerns and privacy self-efficacy as antecedents of privacy protection–related control activities intention among young adults active on SNS.

Data collected from 284 young adults active on SNS was analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling using Smart PLS.

The results indicate that institutional privacy concerns, social privacy concerns and privacy self-efficacy positively influence the control activities intention of SNS users. The extent of privacy self-efficacy and privacy protection-related control activities intention differs among users based on gender.

This study is limited to a population of young adults in the age group of 18–25 years.

The findings of this study form the basis for specific recommendations addressing the different types of privacy concerns experienced by social media users, promoting responsible privacy control behaviors on online platforms and discouraging the possible misuse of information by third parties.

This study validates a theoretical framework that can contribute to future investigations concerning the use of SNS. The study findings form the basis for a set of practical recommendations for policymakers, SNS platforms and users.

The study utilises unique survey data gathered from 12,427 party members. The dependent variable measures party members’ in-party commitment and is based on willingness to donate money, to contribute effort, the feeling of belonging in the party network and social trust in the party network.

In this article, we study how different extra-parliamentary online and offline activities are associated with in-party commitment amongst political party members from the six largest Finnish parties. We especially delve into the differences between members of the Finnish parties.

We found that extra-parliamentary political activity, including connective action through social media networks and collective action through civic organisations, is highly associated with members’ in-party commitment. Additionally, members of the newer identity parties more effectively utilised social media networks, whilst the traditional interest parties were still more linked to traditional forms of extra-parliamentary political action.

By employing the sociological network theory perspective, the study contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding the impact of social media on political participation amongst party members, both within and beyond the confines of political parties.

The research paper examines the impact of perceived social media marketing activities (SMMAs) (interaction, entertainment, customization, trendiness and word of mouth (WOM)) on customer loyalty (CL) toward e-commerce providers. The study also explores the mediating role of customer relationship quality (CRQ) (commitment, trust and satisfaction) on the relationship between perceived SMMAs and CL.

The study is based on the S-O-R model, which states that characteristics of the environment (stimulus) arouse a cognitive state (organism) that results in positive or negative behavior (response). The present study proposes the characteristics of the e-commerce environment as stimuli (S), the inner state of customers as an organism (O) and consumer behavior as the response (R). This study investigated the responses of 487 social media users through structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results offer three crucial findings. First, the study validated that perceived SMMA comprises five dimensions (interaction, entertainment, customization, trendiness and WOM) in the Indian e-commerce context. Second, perceived SMMA significantly influences CRQ (commitment, trust and satisfaction). Third, CRQ significantly mediates the relationship between perceived SMMA and CL.

The study attempts to understand the effect of perceived SMMA on CL via CRQ in an e-commerce context, especially in an emerging economy like India. The present study argues that the SMMA of e-commerce is likely to be reflected in CL when the consumers experience CRQ through commitment, trust and satisfaction. Thus exploring the mediating role of CRQ is the authors' contribution.