Search results

Governments in Southeast Asia have introduced and enforced harsh legal measures to stem the spread of COVID-19. These measures are disproportionate to the crisis and disregard fundamental human rights. Against this backdrop, public trust in government among Southeast Asians nevertheless remains relatively high – paradoxically, people living in authoritarian regimes tend to trust their governments more compared to people living in democratic regimes. The chapter examines the impacts that anti-COVID-19 legal measures have left on the protection of human rights and the seemingly paradoxical divorce between public trust and the diminished respect for fundamental human rights. Based on this examination, this chapter also proposes elements that any global treaty for future pandemic response must include in order to ensure the protection of human rights.

Drought and salinity intrusion aggravated by climate change threaten agricultural livelihoods in Viet Nan's Mekong Delta. In response, authorities have built water management infrastructure for irrigation and salinity protection. This study assessed the impact of one such project, the Ba Lai dam in Ben Tre province, on the livelihoods of aquaculture farmers.

This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to assess the impact of the Ba Lai dam on the livelihood capitals of 18 farming households in four communes, located both upstream and downstream of the dam.

The authors find that, apart from some positive effects, the dam has also brought negative environmental consequences, such as increased water pollution. The authors also find that farmers have responded to the changes by adapting their livelihood practices.

The samples were relatively small, encompassing four communes in Ben Tre province. On the other hand, this case study is instructive to the many ongoing infrastructure projects in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta.

The project have caused an increase in water-related social conflict.

The case of the Ba Lai dam provides a cautionary example for infrastructure-based water management plans, both in Viet Nam and more broadly. The study suggests the need to strengthen community participation and prioritize impacts of farmers' capital assets when constructing water management infrastructure for climate change adaptation.

This research explores the intricate dynamics of national interests realised through Japan's official development assistance (ODA) to China. It aims to deepen the understanding of these mechanisms, detailing the extent to which Japan has accomplished its national interests.

The paper applies the role theory and narrative analysis to elucidate Japan's national role conception and its categories of national interests with regards to its ODA policy. It utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the success rate in achieving Japan's diplomatic objectives and how those interests have manifested over time.

The findings suggest a mixed outcome. Whilst Japan's ODA to China has helped in expanding trade and fostering mutual understanding and cooperation, it has been less successful in promoting democratic governance in China or effectively counterbalancing China's regional power. Hence, the realisation of national interests through ODA is a complex process contingent upon numerous factors.

This study stands out for its multifaceted approach in examining Japan's ODA policy towards China, integrating both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and applying the role theory in the context of international development aid. It fills a significant gap in the literature by analysing the interplay between national interests and foreign aid, providing nuanced insights into the successes and challenges of Japan's pursuit of its diplomatic objectives. The study's findings have important implications for understanding the complexity of international aid dynamics and can inform future policy decisions in the realm of international relations and foreign aid.

With the advancement of technology, microlearning has emerged as a promising method to improve the efficacy of teaching and learning. This study aims to investigate the document types, volume, growth trajectory, geographic contribution, coauthor relationships, prominent authors, research groups, influential documents and publication outlets in the microlearning literature.

We adapt the PRISMA guidelines to assess the eligibility of 297 Scopus-indexed documents from 2002 to 2021. Each was manually labeled by educational level. Descriptive statistics and science mapping were conducted to highlight relevant objects and their patterns in the knowledge base.

This study confirms the increasing trend of microlearning publications over the last two decades, with conference papers dominating the microlearning literature (178 documents, 59.86%). Despite global contributions, a concentrated effort from scholars in 15 countries (22.39%) yielded 68.8% of all documents, while the remaining papers were dispersed across 52 other nations (77.61%). Another significant finding is that most documents pertain to three educational level categories: lifelong learning, higher education and all educational levels. In addition, this research highlights six key themes in the microlearning domain, encompassing (1) Design and evaluation of mobile learning, (2) Microlearning adaptation in MOOCs, (3) Language teaching and learning, (4) Workflow of a microlearning system, (5) Microlearning content design, (6) Health competence and health behaviors. Other aspects analyzed in this study include the most prominent authors, research groups, documents and references.

The finding represents all topics at various educational levels to offer a comprehensive view of the knowledge base.

The role of customers has moved from reactive to proactive, and they require more control over digital touchpoints. The quest for authenticity is their response to the dark side of interactive marketing – forms of faking, manipulation and exploitation. Authenticity becomes a key topic in interactive marketing as it reflects how customers assess digital touchpoints. However, there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge of authenticity in the interactive environment.

This article consolidates the authenticity studies in various digital touchpoints using the entity-referent correspondence framework. This research employs bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis of 103 articles in the last 15 years.

Five research clusters are identified: (1) human, (2) brand-generated content, (3) user-generated content, (4) branded platforms and (5) new technologies-based touchpoints (artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality). Most interactive marketing studies focus on human and content authenticity, and new technologies-based touchpoints lack comprehensive conceptualization. The review synthesizes the types of authenticity used in each touchpoint and highlights the importance of true-to-creator-self and true-to-customer-self in customer evaluation. We further propose a research framework with four antecedent groups and outcomes.

Our research supports managers by highlighting the type of authenticity prioritized in each touchpoint's development.

To answer the call from interactive marketing researchers, this research highlights the distinct definitions of authenticity at various digital touchpoints rather than looking at the overall brand. Trends, gaps and future research agenda of the authenticity concept in technology adoption and customer behavior are discussed.

The paper aims to examine the impact of tighter banking regulation on banks’ loan loss provisioning in an emerging market context.

The authors exploit the adoption of the Basel II Accord in Vietnam as a quasi-natural experiment and use Difference-to-Difference (DiD) method to examine the impact of tighter banking regulation on Vietnamese banks’ provisioning during the period of 2010–2019.

The paper finds that affected banks (i.e. those taking part in the pilot adoption programme) manage to reduce their provisions significantly compared to their control peers in the post-adoption period. More importantly, this paper further finds that the affected banks manage their provisions primarily for incomes smoothing and signalling. This paper also finds that those banks expand their lending significantly and experience an increase in financial performance in the post-adoption period. Overall, the results provide supports for the “borrowing from the future” proposition that banks may perceive that a tighter banking regulation provides them with growth opportunities, so they have the tendency to manipulate their provisions to facilitate their current income.

This paper contributes to the established literature on the manipulation of bank provisioning as well as the impact of banking regulation, and especially Basel II on bank economic decisions. As compared to prior literature, the adoption of Basel II in Vietnam provided an ideal shock for us to conduct a DiD design to estimate the causal impact of tighter banking regulation on banks’ provisioning practices.

This study aims to investigate the impact of AI chatbots on customer trust in AI chatbots for hotel services.

The probability sampling method was employed to develop a research sample. The research uses correlation analysis and structural equation modeling to analyze the data of 413 valid observations collected in the structured questionnaire survey in Vietnam.

The paper reports that empathy response, anonymity and customization significantly impact interaction. Empathy response is found to be the strongest influence on interaction. Meanwhile, empathy response and anonymity were revealed to indirectly affect customer trust. This paper also contributes several implications for hotel providers in emerging economies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to shed light on the role of AI chatbots in explaining customers’ behavior. The results provide an enhanced understanding of how the AI chatbot system influences customers’ decision-making. It has been used to plan the chatbot application and highlight which implementation issues need the most attention in the hospitality industry.

This paper examines the impact of leadership behaviors on startup's entrepreneurship in Vietnamese southern areas in the time of Covid-19.

The paper uses OLS regression model to evaluate the impact of leadership behaviors on startup's entrepreneurship in Vietnamese southern areas. Besides, the paper also uses AHP method to identify the factors that influence leadership behaviors in startups in the context of economic shock like the Covid-19 pandemic.

Results reveal that the transformational leadership behavior has a positive correlation with startup's entrepreneurship while the transactional and laissez-faire leadership behaviors are negatively related to startup's entrepreneurship. In addition, using AHP method, certain determinants of leadership behaviors in startups have been specified; among which, the most profound influencing factors are respectively hi-tech use (0.081), training policy (0.079) and check (0.78). In contrast, the factors with negligible impacts include recruitment policy (0.004) and culture (0.037) in startups in the context of economic shock like the Covid-19 pandemic.

This research only evaluates this impact in the Covid-19 times. In the future, comparisons between the time after the Covid-19 at traditional enterprises and state enterprises are to be done to clarify the difference of this impact.

By using OLS model and AHP model with the data collected from 209 start-ups, the paper examines the impact of leadership behaviors on start-up's entrepreneurship in the time context of economic shock like the Covid-19 pandemic and propose some recommendations to enhance entrepreneurship in startups in the developing countries.

This study is a step forward in the entrepreneurship research branch that investigates the entrepreneurship issue from the perspectives of social and interpersonal processes. With the identification of the leadership behaviors’ role in shaping start-up's entrepreneurship come highly applicable implications towards the emergence of more effective entrepreneurial startups in the time of Covid-19 and this prevalent digital context.

With the identification of the leadership behaviors' role in shaping startup's entrepreneurship come highly applicable implications toward the emergence of more effective entrepreneurial startups in the time of Covid-19 and this prevalent digital context. This study is conducted to analyze the impact of leadership behaviors on startup's entrepreneurship in the southern areas of Viet Nam having the most startups but affected the most seriously by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has not research on this topic for startups in a developing country like Vietnam in the context of an economic shock.

Recognition that not every climate adaptation policy is a good one has shifted attention to new tools and methods to measure the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation policies. This study aims to propose and apply and applies an innovative adaptation policy assessment framework to identify the extent to which climate adaptation policies in Vietnam exhibit conditions that are likely to ensure a sufficient, credible and effective adaptation.

In total, 21 conditions, categorized under five normative principles and covering critical issue areas in adaptation domain, form the climate adaptation policy assessment framework. The principles were double-checked and tested in case studies through observations and analyses of policy documents to ensure that each condition should be distinct and not overlapping across principles. To see if the principles and attendant conditions were able to capture all relevant aspects of adaptation, the authors used structured expert judgment. In total, 39 policy documents pertaining to climate change adaptation were selected for qualitative document analysis. In-depth interviews with local officials and experts were conducted to address data gaps.

The study reveals major weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation policies in Vietnam since several critical conditions were underrepresented. These results shed new light on why some adaptation policies falter or are posing adverse impacts. The findings suggest that a sound policy assessment framework can provide evidence on what effective adaptation policy looks like and how it can be enabled. The framework for climate adaptation policy assessment in this study can be easily adjusted and used for different socio-environmental contexts in which new conditions for policy assessment might emerge.

The findings show underlying weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation regime in Vietnam. In the absence of mechanisms and measures for accountability and transparency in policy processes, adaptation in Vietnam appears more likely to be prone to maladaptation and corruption. While solving these problems will not be easy for Vietnam, the government needs to evaluate whether the short-term gains in sustaining the existing adaptation policies really make progress and serve its long-term climate-adaptive development goals.

Although interpretations of adaptation effectiveness may be very divergent in different normative views on adaptation outcomes, the authors argue that a common, agreed-upon effectiveness can be reached if it is clearly defined and measurable in adaptation policies. Thus, the climate adaptation policy assessment framework proposed in this study is critical for policymakers, practitioners, donors and stakeholders dealing with adaptation to better understand the weaknesses in policymaking processes, pinpoint priority areas of action and timely prevent or prepare for possible adverse impacts of policies.

The present study is performed to identify the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect as well as examine the simultaneous impact of risks on supply chain (SC) performance.

A theoretical framework with many hypotheses regarding the relationships between SC risk types and performance is established. The data are collected from a large-scale survey supported by a project of the Japanese government to promote sustainable socioeconomic development for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, with the participation of 207 firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the hypotheses of the theoretical framework.

It is indicated that human-made risk causes operational risk, while natural risk causes both supply risk and operational risk. Furthermore, the impacts of human-made risk and natural risk on performance are amplified through operational risk.

This study is one of the first attempts that identifies the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect and examines the simultaneous impact of risks on performance in construction SCs.

Although many studies on risk management in construction SCs have been carried out, they mainly focus on risk identification or quantification of risk impact. It is observed that research on the ripple effect of disruptions has been very scarce.