Search results

An integrative model that predicts users' stickiness to WeChat is built. In the proposed model, perceived value plays a dual mediating role in the causal pathway from users' immersive experiences of presence and flow to their engagement and stickiness. Furthermore, presence is treated as a bi-dimensional construct made up of spatial feelings and the sense of being in company, and users' engagement is conceived as cognitive, affective and behavioural contributions to WeChat's marketing functions.

The authors develop a measurement instrument and analyse data from a survey of 917 WeChat users. They use a hybrid partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and neural network approach to confirm the reliability and validity of the measurement items and all the relationships between the constructs.

The paper provides robust evidence about the mediating influences of both utilitarian and hedonic value on users' engagement with the immersive experiences of presence and flow. An additional finding highlights the role of social norms in engagement and stickiness.

Rather than studying the effects of the immersive experiences of presence and flow from either a hedonic or a utilitarian perspective, the authors consider how immersive experiences shape both utilitarian and hedonic value, as well as their joint impact (along with that of social norms) on users' engagement and stickiness.

The purpose of this study is to describe an educational virtual reality (VR) photo-based tour used in an online course and investigate the influence of immersive capability on the dimensions of spatial presence and their relationship with learning-related variables.

The study employs a descriptive and an experimental methodological approach. The research objectives were achieved using a two-group (n1 = 29 and n2 = 30) experiment, employing descriptive statistics, t-test and correlation analysis.

The t-test revealed that the immersive capability had a significant effect on the sense of physical space (SP) , Engagement (EN) and negative effects (NE) dimensions. Correlations between the dimensions of spatial presence were found to confirm reports from the literature. Furthermore, some of the dimensions were found to be correlated with motivational and learning variables.

The study reported the results of a one-off experiment among 59 participants. While the results were promising, a longitudinal qualitative study could confirm the results in an actual distance learning context.

The study confirmed that adding VR photo-based tours as learning activities may enhance the learning experience of distance learners.

The study shared a case of a learning activity that can be employed for flexible education. Virtual tours can support the need for context-based learning that the geographical or political constraints may limit.

While the paper confirms previous reports on the benefits of using VR photo-based tours as learning activities, this paper has empirically shown the relationship between the dimensions of spatial presence and immersive capability in this specialized context.

This research investigates the effect of accessibility to points of tourist interest (buffer) and direct and indirect spatial spillover effects of agglomeration economies on tourism industry revenues in Spain.

Data were collected from the Bureau van Dijk's (BvD) Orbis global database. The data were analysed using a spatial econometric model and the Cobb–Douglas production function.

This study reveals that hotels located inside the buffer zone of points of tourist interest achieve better economic outcomes than hotels located outside the buffer. Furthermore, the results show that there is a direct and indirect spatial spillover effect in the hotel industry.

The results provide valuable information for identifying areas where the agglomeration of hotels will produce a spillover effect on hotel revenue and the area of influence of location characteristics. This information is relevant for hotels already established in a destination or when seeking a location for a new hotel.

The results of this study can help city planners in influencing the distribution of hotels to fit desired patterns and improve an area's spatial beauty.

The paper provides insights into how investment, structural characteristics, reputation and location affect hotel revenue.

This study proposes spatial origin-destination threshold Tobit to address spatial interdependence among bilateral trade flows while accounting for zero trade volumes.

This model is designed to capture multiple forms of spatial autocorrelation embedded in “directional” trade flows. The authors apply this improved model to export flows among 32 Asian countries in 1990.

The empirical results indicate the presence of all three types of spatial dependence: exporter-based, importer-based and exporter-to-importer-based. After further considering multifaceted spatial correlation in bilateral trade flows, the authors find that the effect of conventional trade variables changes in a noticeable way.

This finding implies that the standard gravity model may produce biased estimates if it does not take spatial dependence into account.

This paper attempts to offer an improved model of the standard gravity model by taking spatial dependence into account.

This paper presents a study of a system that allows remote and onsite visitors to share a museum visit together in real time. The remote visitors are older adults at a care home and their relatives and/or friends who are at the museum. The museum visits are interactive. Meaningful stories accompany the museum exhibits, and there’s an audio channel between onsite and remote visitors. The aim of the study is to determine whether the remote visitors, i.e. older adults are able to use such technology and to study the mediated sense of spatial presence, social closeness, engagement and enjoyment in the visit. This study discusses the relationship between these aspects and factors leading to a better remote experience for older adults.

This study has 14 onsite and 12 remote older adult participants. Standardized questionnaires measured the mediated sense of spatial presence, the experienced social closeness and the level of participants' engagement and enjoyment in the visit of the older adult participants and traced onsite visitors in their position during the visit. The audio logs were subjected to thematic content analysis.

The results show that older adults enjoy and engage in remote visits, and that there is a positive correlation between enjoyment, engagement and social closeness. The findings argue that both the audio channel and the interactive story are important for creating an affective virtual experience: the audio channel increases the sense of closeness, whereas the interactive story makes the visit more engaging, providing structure, direction and purpose to the visit.

This work advances the state of art in the domain of technologies for older adults and addresses the needs of this population to stay in contact with both people and places.

This paper investigates the impact of governance on economic growth, considering the spatial dependence between countries.

The study employs spatial regression models to estimate the impact of governance on economic growth in a sample of 116 countries worldwide in 2017.

The findings imply that the influence of governance on economic growth is statistically significant. Moreover, if all other economic control variables are constant, 1% increase in governance raises the economic growth on average by 1% at 10%, 5% and 1% significance levels, respectively. Furthermore, each country's rise in economic growth favorably and substantially influences the economic growth of its bordering nations. The unobserved characteristics or similar unobserved environments in adjacent countries also affect its economic growth.

This study adds to the discussion and investigation of the influence of governance on economic growth by considering the spatial dependence between countries, which is lacking in the literature.

This paper aims to test three hypotheses in city growth literature documenting the poverty reduction observed in Brazil and exploring a rich spatial dataset for 5,564 Brazilian cities observed between 1991 and 2010. The large sample and the author's improved econometric methods allows one to better understand and measure how important income growth is for poverty reduction, the patterns of agglomeration and population growth in all Brazilian cities.

The author identifies literature gaps and use a sizeable spatial dataset for 5,564 Brazilian cities observed in 1991, 2000 and 2010 applying instrumental variables methods. The bias-corrected accelerated bootstrap percentile interval supports the author's point estimates.

This manuscript finds that Brazilian data for cities does not support Gibrat's law, raising the scope for urban planning and associated policies. Second, economic growth on a sustainable basis is still a vital source of poverty reduction (The author estimates the poverty elasticity at four percentage points). Lastly, agglomeration effects positively affect the city's productivity, while negative externalities underlie the city's development patterns.

Data for cities in Brazil possess unique characteristics such as spatial autocorrelation and endogeneity. Applying proper methods to find more reliable answers to the above three questions is a desirable procedure that must be encouraged. As the author points out in the manuscript, dealing with endogenous regressors in regional economics is still a developing matter that regional scientists could more generally apply to many regional issues.

Mobile Facebook (m-Facebook) creates many business opportunities for brands and firms while increasingly drawing interest in scientific literature. However, research is scarce on the immersive experiences prompted by m-Facebook, and how these experiences facilitate users’ engagement, their positive attitude towards Facebook and their continued use of it. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper theoretically and empirically analyses m-Facebook users’ immersive experiences, along with their affective and behavioural effects.

The results reveal the important role of imagery, presence and flow in the context of m-Facebook; the interplay between these three immersive phenomena; and the influence the user’s optimum stimulation level has on them.

The investigation offers a foundation for understanding users’ immersive experiences on m-Facebook, and informs practitioners who aim to enhance users’ engagement with, attitude towards, and continued use of m-Facebook content.

Virtual try-on (VTO) technology offers an opportunity for fashion and beauty brands to provide enriched self-explorative experiences. The increased popularity of VTOs makes it urgent to understand the drivers and consequences of the exploration of styles in VTO contexts (herein called self-explorative engagement). Notably, little is known about the antecedent and outcomes of the personalized self-explorative experience central to VTOs. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap.

An online quasi-experiment (N = 500) was conducted in the context of fashion and beauty VTOs. Participants were asked to virtually try on sunglasses or lipsticks and subsequently answer a questionnaire measuring the key constructs: self-presence (i.e. physical similarity and identification), self-explorative engagement (i.e. exploration of styles in VTO context), brand cognitive processing and brand attitude. The authors analyze the data with structural equation modeling via maximum likelihood estimation in LISREL.

The experience of self-presence during consumers’ use of VTOs in augmented reality environments has a positive effect on self-explorative engagement. Furthermore, a mediation analysis reveals that self-explorative engagement improves brand attitude via brand cognitive processing. The results are confirmed for two popular fashion and beauty brands.

Grounded in extended self theory, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that a realistic VTO experience encourages self-extension via a process starting from the exploration of styles and results in increased brand cognitive processing and more positive brand attitudes. The exploration of styles is enabled by self-presence.

The article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are ephemeral and elusive – like affect, aesthetics, atmosphere, intensity, moods – and proposes to explore affect as spatialized and space as affective.

Fluidity is proposed as a conceptual lens that sits at the conjunction of space and affect, highlighting both the movement in time and space, and the mutable relationships that the capacity of affecting and being affected weaves. It experiments with “writing differently” in affective ethnography, thus performing the space of representation of affective space.

The article enriches the alternative to a conceptualization of organizations as stable entities, considering organizing in its spatial fluidity and in being a fragmented, affective and dispersed phenomenon.

The article's writing is an example of intertextuality constructed through five praxiographic stories that illustrate the multiple fluidity of affective spacing in terms of temporal fluidity, fluidity of boundaries, of participation, of the object of practice, and atmospheric fluidity.