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In the 21st century, libraries are experiencing a significant decline in users due to shifting reading habits and the impact of technology, necessitating library transformation and a heightened emphasis on library marketing. Special libraries, in particular, rely heavily on patrons for survival, often due to their private ownership and limited resources. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

This paper examines the Taste Library, a special library in Hong Kong, and analyzes its current practices based on an interview with its founder, website content, and social media presence. The 7Ps Marketing Mix model is employed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the library's current market position.

The Taste Library's existing practices exhibit limitations in attracting young patrons. To address this issue, we propose marketing strategies focused on enhancing social network presence, offering digitized content, and engaging in school outreach.

By concentrating on youth marketing, this study offers valuable insights for special libraries in developing strategic plans for transitioning and maintaining sustainability.

Few studies concentrate on marketing small special libraries, particularly in the East, within today's digitized economy.

Christmas is the most consumed event of the year, always full of traditions, namely family ones, which are very significant. In this way, it is intended to find out the importance of traditions at Christmas time and analyze their implications for family businesses.

The study is quantitative in nature, based on a questionnaire survey carried out with 551 Portuguese individuals, over 18 years of age, where different issues related to Christmas traditions and family are addressed.

The results demonstrate that the Christmas traditions scale is made up of four factors: family traditions on Christmas Eve, aspects related to the Christmas spirit, changes in Christmas traditions with the COVID-19 pandemic and traditions of participating in events with family at Christmas. Cod and octopus dishes are the most popular dishes on Christmas Eve. In relation to sweets/desserts, king cake, rabanadas, vermicelli, children's bread and sponge cake are the most common on Christmas Eve.

The study helps to understand Portuguese Christmas traditions, providing knowledge that allows defining strategies for family businesses, improving the experience and relationship with consumers at a special time of year. It is hoped that the trends in Christmas traditions in this study will contribute to unveiling the Christmas spirit, also serve as a marketing image and create curiosity and motivation on the part of other cultures to visit Portugal during this festive season, in order to experience Christmas traditions.

Focussing on the perspective of business event leaders, this study aims to explore the future of transformative experience (TE) events, recognising a paradigm shift from organising conventional events to designing and guiding TEs in the meetings, incentives and conferences as exhibitions (MICE) context.

Using a qualitative interview-based design, insights from 20 international business events industry leaders were gathered and analysed by using thematic analysis through a multi-step process with MAXQDA.

The findings discuss the future of transformative events by identifying the paradigm shift towards TE in business events and outline key dimensions of the leader’s and team’s mindset and skills. Five design principles for TE events in the MICE sector are identified: design for change; emotionally experiential environments; personal engagement; responsibility; and transformative measurement.

The study offers a snapshot of how transformative events of the future could be designed and suggests a series of practical insights for MICE event leaders and organisers seeking to leverage events as a catalyst for intentional transformation, positive impact and long-lasting change.

The study adds to the emerging body of knowledge on TEs and contributes to an extended stakeholder perspective, namely, that of business event leaders and their teams who are instrumental in facilitating transformative events. An original framework for designing TE MICE events is offered as a theoretical contribution.

An S-curve is an essential project-management tool. However, it is difficult to adjust S-curve to deal with a force majeure event. The present study develops four valuable adjustment approaches, designed to achieve a compromise between the views of the client and contractor. These can be used to control projects after a force majeure event.

The present study develops four adjustment approaches, which can be used to achieve a compromise between the views of the client and those of the contractor when controlling projects after a force majeure. To determine the S-curves during a force majeure event, two approaches can be selected: BCWS (budgeted cost of scheduled work)-base approach, or BCWP (budgeted cost of work performed)-base approach. To determine the rest of S-curves after a force majeure event, two approaches can be considered: maintaining the original curve of the remaining BCWS, or allocating the original curve of the remaining BCWS. Based on the validation of three empirical cases, drawn from a professional project-management website, this study confirms the feasibility of four proposed empirical approaches and a selection procedure for S-curve adjustment.

The S-curve-adjustment approaches presented here can be used to deal with cases that are ahead of, on and behind schedule. Using the proposed approaches and selection procedure, contractors can easily revise S-curves and control projects more effectively. To deal with a force majeure event, such as COVID-19, they are strongly advised to adopt the approaches labeled SA-A1 (to adjust the S-curve based on the extension ratio multiplied by the difference in progress during the force majeure) and SA-B1 (to maintain the original curve of the remaining BCWS) for the A/E and E/F curves, respectively.

The proposed approaches can be used in cases of continuous construction during force majeure events. If construction work is totally suspended during such an event, it will be necessary to fine-tune the proposed approaches.

Previous studies have used case-oriented or mathematical-simulation approaches to forecast S-curves. The present study proposes simple approaches that allow the client and contractor to adjust the S-curve easily after a force majeure event. These approaches can be used to adjust work and project-completion targets within an extended duration. Selecting the right S-curve adjustment approach can help to control the remainder of the project, reducing the possibility of delay claims.

This study aims to explore the risk spillover effects among different sectors of the Chinese stock market after the outbreak of COVID-19 from both Internet sentiment and price fluctuations.

The authors develop four indicators used for risk contagion analysis, including Internet investors and news sentiments constructed by the FinBERT model, together with realized and jump volatilities yielded by high-frequency data. The authors also apply the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model-based and the tail-based connectedness framework to investigate the interdependence of tail risk during catastrophic events.

The empirical analysis provides meaningful results related to the COVID-19 pandemic, stock market conditions and tail behavior. The results show that after the outbreak of COVID-19, the connectivity between risk spillovers in China's stock market has grown, indicating the increased instability of the connected system and enhanced connectivity in the tail. The changes in network structure during COVID-19 pandemic are not only reflected by the increased spillover connectivity but also by the closer relationships between some industries. The authors also found that major public events could significantly impact total connectedness. In addition, spillovers and network structures vary with market conditions and tend to exhibit a highly connected network structure during extreme market status.

The results confirm the connectivity between sentiments and volatilities spillovers in China's stock market, especially in the tails. The conclusion further expands the practical application and theoretical framework of behavioral finance and also lays a theoretical basis for investors to focus on the practical application of volatility prediction and risk management across stock sectors.

This paper aims to consider the relationship between urban events and urban public space, asking whether cities have enough space for events and whether events have enough space in cities.

Policy analysis surrounding events and festivals in the Netherlands is used to understand the dynamics of urban events, supported by content analysis of policy documents. A vignette of event space struggles in Amsterdam illustrates the contradictions of the event/space relationship.

The research identifies a policy shift in the Netherlands towards urban events from expansive, festivalisation strategies to defensive, NIMBYist policies. It exposes contradictions between protecting space as a living resource and the exploitation of space for regenerative purposes. Three future scenarios for urban events are outlined: conflict and competition, growth and harmony and digitalisation and virtualisation.

Develops scenarios for the future relationship between events and urban space.

Provides an analysis of the recursive spatial implications of the growth of the events sector for cities and the growth of cities for events.

This study aims to explore a potential conference experience design strategy, namely, festivalization. It investigates the potential festivalization effects on conference attendees in two formats of business conferences: virtual and in-person.

A series of two scenario-based experimental studies were conducted. A series of one-way analysis of covariance and PROCESS procedures (Model 6) were performed for data analysis.

The inclusion of festivalization elements significantly enhances positive responses of attendees, especially for in-person conferences. This effect is further explained by a serial mediation effect, where enhanced perceived values and conference engagement play key roles in improving attendees’ conference experience.

By incorporating festivalization elements, conference organizers can create a more engaging and satisfying event experience for attendees. This can lead to greater satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth and increased registrations.

This study represents a pioneering effort in revealing the underlining mechanisms that explain how festivalization affects attendee engagement and subsequent behaviors in business event management in both face-to-face and virtual settings.

This study aims to investigate whether objective and subjective rationality affects individual voters’ use of accounting information and if such use affects voting behavior. While prior accounting studies assume voter rationality concerning financial performance and political outcomes, this study distinguishes between two types of voters: objective rational voters (who make voting decisions about multiple alternatives based on objective information) and subjective rational voters (who make decisions based on their subjective values, and thus do not explore information or explore only information biased toward one alternative). This study expects that accounting information can influence the voting behavior of objective and subjective rational voters.

Focusing on the 2020 Osaka Metropolitan Plan Referendum, this study used an online survey conducted on 768 respondents after the referendum.

This study finds that objective rational voters use accounting information more than subjective rational voters, voters who used accounting information were more likely to vote against the referendum, and voting behavior is not directly affected by the type of rationality of voters; rather, objective rational voters are more likely to use accounting information that has a mediating effect on voting behavior.

The results advance the understanding of public sector accounting research and practices by providing evidence of the individual voter’s use of accounting information and their voting behavior in political contexts.

Food marketing has long been recognized to influence food preferences, consumption and health, yet little is known about the nature and extent of food marketing to young adults – especially with respect to their real-world encounters with food marketing and the appeals they find persuasive. This study aims to engage young adults to explore the persuasive power of food marketing and its platforms of exposure.

Participatory research with 45 young adults, who used a specially designed mobile app to capture the food marketing they encountered for seven days, including information on brand, product, platform and “power” (i.e. the specific techniques that made the advertisement persuasive).

A total of 618 ads were captured for analysis. Results revealed the dominance of digital platforms (especially Instagram, comprising 43% of ads), fast food and beverage brands (48% of ads) and the top persuasive techniques of visual style, special offer and theme.

This study uniquely draws from framing theory to advance the notions of selection and salience to understand food marketing power. It is the first study of its kind to provide a comprehensive look at the platforms and persuasive techniques of food marketing to adults as selected, captured and tagged by participants. It provides timely insights into young adults and food marketing to adults, including where it is encountered, the (generally unhealthy) brands and products promoted and how it is made meaningful.

Earthquake stressful events cause many consequences and need for survivors. Housing reconstruction is one of the most urgent needs; due to traumatic experiences, dialectical changes in people–place relationships occur.

The present study uses the Poe method and Q methodology to identify the hidden dimensions of trauma-informed housing reconstruction. A questionnaire with 74 items on the Likert scale was developed based on indicative Poe. It was completed by the purposive sampling method by Bam households. The influential factors in housing reconstruction with a psychological recovery approach were extracted by q-factor analysis in communities with different traumatic experiences.

According to the findings, first, people who had experienced complete home destruction; severe physical injuries; loss of family members and relatives; and were trapped under the earthquake rubble have different place-based needs in housing reconstruction for coping with fears and environmental concerns, protective behaviors, safety perception and as result safety reassurance. Second, regardless of the traumatic experience and losses, reconstruction acceleration and economic-social dignity have a positive effect on the communities’ psychological recovery.

It is noteworthy that housing reconstruction with a psychological recovery approach has two basic aspects. Although some independent factors of traumatic experiences will be efficient in this approach, it was found that the type of earthquake traumatic experiences will also be effective in the survivors’ place-based needs and biases.