Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation and help companies better operating the virtual brand community.

Based on social cognitive theory and the features of the virtual brand community, this paper constructed a model of factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation. Then this paper quantitatively analyzed the mediating effect and the moderating effect.

The empirical analysis came to the following conclusions: first, in virtual brand communities, customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation would be influenced by subject factors, environment factors, brand factors and perceived value factor. Second, customer involvement is an important moderator. The more involved the customer is, the more he/she will rely on the virtual brand community. Particularly, customer involvement has a positive moderating effect on the influence of subject factors, while it has a negative moderating effect on the influence of community experience and community trust. Third, perceived value plays a significant mediating role between subject factors and customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation.

The results of this study can help companies better understand the influence of external factors like environment and brand so that they can better operate the virtual brand community and encourage customers to contribute to the development of the community and the brand.

Most of the existing studies focused on the formation of virtual brand communities and customers’ participation behaviors, but there is limited research focusing on what contributes to customers’ participation in value co-creation of virtual brand communities. This study, therefore, attempts to bridge the research gap.

Citizen willingness to participate in social action depends, in part, on certain beliefs about the world and one's power to initiate change. This study examines how belief in a just world (BJW) affects willingness to participate in social action. The model also incorporates antecedents to BJW, including personality factors (authoritarianism, self-esteem, powerlessness); political orientation (national identity, patriotism); social characteristics (religiosity, ethnicity, education, income); and the relationships among these factors. Data are from a representative sample of the Jewish Israeli population. Findings indicate that as BJW decreases, so to does the willingness to act, and that personality, political, and social characteristics influence both BJW and willingness to participate in social action.

The purpose of this paper is to assess farmers’ willingness to participate and pay for weather-based index insurance in the Upper East Region of Ghana, and what factors influence the participation and purchase of crop insurance schemes.

A survey of 200 farmers in the region was carried out in 2018 to measure demographic information, farm characteristics, risks and risk-management practices and attitudes to crop insurance programs. The survey also captured maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for crop insurance. The double-bounded contingent valuation technique was used to estimate the WTP for crop insurance and the variables that affected WTP.

Farmers, in general, had an indifferent attitude to crop insurance in the region, but were willing to participate in the crop insurance programme, and were willing to pay between 7.5 and 12.5 per cent of the cost of growing maize as a premium for crop insurance. Demographic and economic variables did not impact WTP, but attitude towards crop insurance, farm diversification and frequency of drought negatively impacted on the WTP for crop insurance.

Education programs could be undertaken to improve the attitude and understanding towards crop insurance, as some farmers perceived the programme as not trustworthy, and others did not truly understand the operation of the programme.

Drought can have a significant impact on household welfare, particularly in food insecure countries or regions. Crop insurance can provide a method of securing income for farmers allowing them to purchase food rather than other choices, such as removing children from education to reduce household expenses, improving the long-term welfare of the farm household.

This paper considers willingness to participate and WTP for a crop insurance programme in Ghana, it is one of a small number of papers that consider attitude to, and willingness to participate and WTP for crop insurance in developing countries. The value of the research is the expanded understanding of farmer attitude to crop insurance and their lack of knowledge of crop insurance operations.

Patient-centric exchanges, a major type of Health Information Exchange (HIE), empower patients to aggregate and manage their health information. This exchange model helps patients access, modify and share their medical information with multiple healthcare organizations. Although existing studies examine patient engagement, more research is required to investigate patients' attitudes and willingness to play an active role in patient-centered information exchange. The study's main objective is to develop a model based on the belief-attitude-intention paradigm to empirically examine the effects of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care on their willingness to participate in patient-centric HIE.

The authors conducted an online survey study to identify the antecedents and consequences of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care. To empirically test the research model, the authors collected data from a national sample (n = 357) of individuals in the United States. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The proposed model categorizes the antecedents to patients' attitudes toward engagement in patient-related and healthcare system factors. The results show that patient-related factors (perceived health literacy and perceived coping ability) and health system factors (perceived experience with the healthcare organization and perceived patient-provider interaction) significantly shape patient attitude toward care management engagement. The results indicate that patients' attitudes toward engaging in their healthcare significantly contribute to their willingness to participate in medical information sharing through patient-centric HIE initiatives. Moreover, the authors’ findings also demonstrate that the link between patient engagement and willingness to participate in HIE is stronger for individuals who perceive lower levels of privacy and security concerns.

The authors validate the proposed model explaining patients' perceptions about their characteristics and the healthcare system significantly influence their attitude toward engaging in their care. This study also suggests that patients' favorable attitude toward engagement can bring patient-centric HIE efforts onto a path to success. The authors’ research attempts to shed light on the importance of patients' roles in adopting patient-centric HIE initiatives. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are noticeable since they could result in a deeper understanding of the concept of patient engagement and how it may affect healthcare services in an evolving digital world. The authors’ findings can help healthcare organizations provide public citizen-centric services by introducing user-oriented approaches in healthcare delivery systems.

The issue of educational activity of elderly people is very important. It is an area not only closely related to the productivity of the employees in the company and their retention but also to the broadly understood quality of life of the elderly. The purpose of this study was to develop a model of conditions for the willingness to learn in the case of older employees.

The study group consisted of employees aged 50+, the so-called older employees. The selection of the group was intentional. The questionnaires were completed by employees of companies that agreed to participate in the survey.

To identify the direct predictors of the willingness to participate in training, a logistic regression analysis was carried out. The model allows to explain 19.1% of the variance of the dependent variable. Higher age value reduces the chance that a person will want to participate in training, while higher number of employees in the company, the need to learn new things at work, greater emotional demands and a greater sense of effectiveness increase these chances.

Research on training and the willingness to learn is more often carried out among younger employees than the group of employees 50+. Defining what influences the willingness to learn among this group allows to design activities aimed on development and satisfying needs of older employees in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to provide trilogy in the emerging market for the establishment of business, economy and environment which is the new word for the development of any nation to attain sustainable development. This research explores the prospective crowdshipper's willingness to participate in crowdshipping services through a motivational factor.

To understand the trend and future of this concept, Google Trends Analysis (GTA) has been used. The theoretical model has been validated empirically using a survey of 287 Indian (Generation Y and Z) urban participants, but focused is on Generation “Z” participants and subsequent analysis have been carried out using structural equation modelling.

A theoretical framework has been developed connecting the various factions of the crowdsourcing process thus providing an overall view of the process strategy for logistics start-ups. This conceptual framework of sharing economy in emerging market can benefit the prospective suppliers and their target receivers. Particularly trust in crowdshipper plays a significant mediating role between subject factors and next generation user willingness to participate in crowdshipping services for sustainable last-mile delivery.

The present theoretical foundations and frameworks have been studied to get an idea of the main aspects of the field. It has the potential to provide the impetus for collaboration with the various stakeholders thus achieving the sustainable development process. The practical inference of this study is the usability in terms of the plugin application for e-retailer in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the responses of employees, who are identified as talents by their multinational enterprises, in regards to leadership development activities. By applying social exchange and expectancy theories, the authors examine the association between talent identification, perceived effectiveness of leadership development activities, willingness to participate in those activities and actual participation in them.

The data were collected through a web-based questionnaire entitled “Leadership2020 Talent Survey”. Eight multinational enterprises joined the survey and delivered a sample based on the target group definition.

The analysis shows that perceived effectiveness of leadership development activities is positively associated with willingness of employees to undertake those activities. The results also reveal that there is no significant association between the employees’ willingness to participate in leadership development activities and their actual participation in those activities.

Given its cross-sectional nature, the authors cannot completely exclude the possibility of common method bias having impact on the results of this study. The authors thus call for longitudinal research to examine the nature of causality within the relationships analyzed in this study.

Managers and practitioners should keep in mind that willingness to participate in leadership development activities does not always result in actual participation of employees in those activities. Symbolic representations may be very different from representations in real-life situations. Investigations that rely on the willingness as a proxy for actual behaviour must thus be interpreted with caution.

The authors found that employees often fail to act in accordance with their stated eagerness. According to the findings, there is a clear discrepancy between expressed willingness to implement certain behaviour and its actual implementation. This study poses a strong bias in overestimating the likelihood that an employee will engage in a desirable behaviour based on his/her willingness to do so.

Despite the increasing consumers’ intent to support short food networks, the expansion of short food supply chains (SFSCs) remains limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify potential antecedents of farmers’ willingness to participate in SFSCs.

Using data from a sample of Greek farmers the authors examined whether farmers’ citizenship behaviour, the levels of their perceived competencies and the degree to which they feel accepted by their communities affect their willingness to engage in SFSCs.

Results indicate that producers’ citizenship behaviour does indeed have a positive impact on willingness to participate in SFSCs, whereas their perceptions of the acceptance they enjoy within their communities also significantly predict this willingness. On the contrary, self-perceived lack of communication and collaboration competencies diminishes this willingness.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to explore the role of farmers’ competencies in their willingness to participate in SFSCs. In addition, by integrating concepts derived from multiple disciplines, our work adds new factors in the wide spectrum of forces that impel or suppress farmers’ willingness to take part in alternative food distribution networks.

This study aims to examine the influence of reward personalization on financing outcomes in the Industry 5.0 era, where reward-based crowdfunding meets the personalized needs of individuals.

The study utilizes a corpus of 218,822 crowdfunding projects and 1,276,786 reward options on Kickstarter to investigate the effect of reward personalization on investors’ willingness to participate in crowdfunding. The research draws on expectancy theory and employs quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure reward personalization. Quantitatively, the number of reward options is calculated by frequency; whereas text-mining techniques are implemented qualitatively to extract novelty, which serves as a proxy for innovation.

Findings indicate that reward personalization has an inverted U-shaped effect on investors’ willingness to participate, with investors in life-related projects having a stronger need for reward personalization than those interested in art-related projects. The pledge goal and reward text readability have an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on reward personalization from the perspective of reward expectations and reward instrumentality.

This study refines the application of expectancy theory to online financing, providing theoretical insight and practical guidance for crowdfunding platforms and financiers seeking to promote sustainable development through personalized innovation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing citizens' willingness to participate in the development of smart cities.

Citizens drawn from 30 second-tier cities in China were chosen as the research object for this empirical research. Based on citizenship behavior theory, research hypotheses were tested and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicated that information publicity has a direct and positive effect on residents' participation behavior. Perceived benefits, personal responsibility and subjective norms are positively associated with residents' citizenship. Additionally, citizenship was found to affect residents' participation intention positively. Finally, the moderating effect of information credibility in this context was also verified.

As one of the first empirical studies on this topic, this paper offers important guidance for future research regarding residents' participation in the development of smart cities. On this basis, the implications of this research with respect to policies that aim to encourage residents to participate in the construction of smart cities are discussed.