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This paper investigated the extent to which the predictive power of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) was robust against cultural variations and to what extent its predictive power could be improved by including face-valid individual differences (i.e. perceived risk and personal innovativeness) and cultural factors (i.e. individualism and uncertainty avoidance).

Data were collected from web surveys of Chinese, American and Belgian mobile Internet users (total n = 1,068).

The authors found that the UTAUT2 model was less predictive in the country where the adoption of mobile payment service (MPS) is high (i.e. China). In contrast, the UTAUT2 model was more predictive in countries where the adoption of MPS is lower (i.e. the United States and Belgium). The authors did not find additional variance explained by individual differences. Regarding the cultural variables, the authors found that individualism moderated the effect of social influence on behavioral intention to use MPS, such that the effect was more substantial among people with individualistic cultural traits. However, the authors found no moderation effect of uncertainty avoidance.

This research contributes to existing work on technology acceptance by exploring whether it is helpful to introduce individual and cultural factors into the UTAUT2 model when predicting technology adoption in different cultures. This research further examines the moderating role of cultural factors in predicting the adoption of MPS. The authors conclude that the UTAUT2 model is generally robust and appears to capture the predictive of face-valid individual and cultural factors.

This study investigated the internal factors that influence the adoption of cryptocurrencies for remittance transactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by examining the relationships between behavioural intention (BI) and perceived risk (PR), as well as the mediating effect of consumer innovation (CI).

The authors developed a structural model using scales from the literature. The authors distributed an online questionnaire, evaluated by five cryptocurrency experts, using a snowball approach and collected 270 responses.

The results revealed that CI mediates the relationship between PR and BI. Also, CI enhances intentions to use cryptocurrencies for remittance transactions. However, PR has a negative impact on BI.

This research adds to the body of knowledge by examining the acceptance and implementation of cryptocurrencies in the UAE and by developing and evaluating new constructs based on current notions. The study also contributes to the current understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain adoption. This article focusses on the mediating impact of CI on intentions to employ cryptocurrency instruments for international money transfers.

The conclusions of the research give advice for marketers on how to boost the commercialisation of cryptocurrencies in the UAE remittance market and may pave the way for other studies to assist impending developments in the UAE cryptocurrency industry.

This research offers novel insights into CI as a significant predictor of bitcoin product uptake in the remittance business.

This study aims to analyse the association between country-level ethical judgement and earnings management and the role that firm-level enforcement and the quality of accounting standards play in this association.

The analyses are based on a sample of 45,889 firm-year observations from 34 countries between 1998 and 2018. Based on the World Values Survey questionnaire, this study constructs a comprehensive index of the ethical judgement of each country.

The empirical findings suggest that firms from countries where ethically suspect behaviours are less acceptable are associated with lower levels of accruals-based earnings management and that firm-level enforcement and the quality of accounting standards dampen such association.

The results contribute to the debate about ethical issues in the accounting profession in an international context, adding to the sustainable development debate given that the creation of long-term value for firms is intrinsically related to business ethics and good quality financial reporting.

When it is known that countries’ ethically-related judgements reduce the level of earnings management, actions can be taken by regulators and other stakeholders to build fairer societies with a more sustainable view, given that the quality of the financial reporting is inextricably linked to how income and wealth are distributed.

While previous literature documents that ethical judgement at both the individual and organizational levels matter as key determinants of the way managers are involved with unethical accounting practices, this study investigates the role of ethical judgement at the country level in explaining earnings management.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the 2011 mandatory introduction of integrated reporting (<IR>) on the financial performance, risk and institutional shareholding of listed companies in South Africa to assess whether there is a benefit to <IR> and which may encourage greater adoption of it globally. It contrasts the results with two other African stock exchanges (Nigeria and Egypt with no mandatory <IR>) and examines whether <IR> quality also has an impact on these and on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure scores.

A series of multivariate ordinary least squares regressions was estimated on a range of financial, risk, institutional and ESG data from firms on the three African stock exchanges, between 2006 and 2015.

Financial performance and risk in South African firms appear to have decreased since the start of mandatory reporting, but institutional shareholding has increased. The production of higher quality reports is associated with decreased financial performance and risk, higher institutional shareholding and increased ESG scores.

This study is first to test the quantitative effects of <IR> and <IR> quality on a broad range of financial performance and risk measures and the level of institutional shareholding. It also adds to the literature by assessing how the quality of <IR> can impact the ESG scoring of the business. Hence, this study is of interest to firms looking to adopt <IR> for its benefits and to regulatory bodies considering the mandatory adoption of <IR> in support of achievement of national social and environmental goals.

This paper aims to review the literature on mobile information services. It considers only peer-reviewed papers published in English between 2004 and 2014.

The method of systematic review was adopted to collect and analyse the relevant literature. The searches were conducted during the last week of July 2014 on different databases, and in total, 76 papers were considered after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Seven themes emerged: “introducing mobile libraries”, “reporting on current trends”, “exploring users’ perceptions of libraries’ mobile services”, “presenting libraries’ mobile services”, “presenting mobile technology use in libraries”, “reporting case studies” and “reporting on evaluation of libraries’ mobile services”. It is evident that research on mobile libraries is very recent and focuses mainly on raising the Library and Information Science profession’s awareness of providing mobile information services.

This literature review focused only on peer-reviewed papers published between 2004 and 2014 in English.

This paper summarises and critically presents the relevant literature on libraries offering mobile information services. It informs libraries and librarians’ understanding of recent developments in mobile technology for the successful provision of information services.

This paper aims to illustrate how virtual assets are used in such criminal offenses as money laundering and seeks to study the role of financial intelligence (monitoring) of transactions with virtual assets effectively in combating money laundering.

This research methodology includes system and structural methods that help analyze the theoretical, organizational and legal bases of the financial intelligence (monitoring) of transactions with virtual assets. The authors use the doctrinal legal research approach to analyze and describe the legislation connected to the financial intelligence (monitoring) operations with virtual assets. To identify critical issues of understanding the “virtual assets” and “cryptocurrency” essence, the peculiarities of the scientific community views on the given definitions, the authors use the method of terminological analysis and concepts operationalization. The authors use the extrapolation method to determine the possibility of implementing the analyzed best practices of foreign countries in the domestic practice of financial intelligence (monitoring) of transactions with virtual assets as an effective way in combating money laundering.

This study demonstrates the role of financial intelligence (monitoring) of transactions with virtual assets as an effective way to combat money laundering.

The article is devoted to comprehensively studying “virtual assets” and “cryptocurrency” concepts. The authors carried out a comparative analysis of these two concepts with the definition of their features and the main characteristics and features that separate them from each other. The authors also stressed the need for countries to strengthen the requirements for situations and activities with virtual assets, where there is a high level of risk in a risk-based approach.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for evaluating the progress of individual countries worldwide in their adoption of electronic government (e‐government) with the rapid advance in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Recognising the multi‐dimensional nature of the progress evaluation and comparison process, this paper formulates the inter‐country performance evaluation process in e‐government adoption as a multi‐criteria analysis problem and presents an objective multi‐criteria approach for solving the problem in an effective and straightforward manner.

Several indicators (criteria) for measuring the progress of individual countries for adopting e‐government have been reviewed, and existing approaches for carrying out inter‐country comparison on e‐government have been analysed. The need for the use of an objective approach for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem is discussed. This leads to the development of an objective multi‐criteria approach for effectively solving the problem in a straightforward and effective manner. The proposed objective approach is based on the concept of information entropy which is emitted from e‐government criteria used for determining the objective weights of the e‐government criteria. The principle of ideal solutions is used for effectively incorporating the objective criteria weights into the process of calculating the overall performance index for each country. As a result, an unbiased overall ranking of individual countries on e‐government can be obtained.

With the use of an example in the paper, the proposed approach is proved to be of practical use for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem on the progress of individual countries in their adoption of e‐government. The proposed approach is not only able to provide an objective view of the relative progress of those countries concerned but also pinpoint the areas that these countries can further improve to lift their overall profile worldwide on the adoption of e‐government.

The methodology developed can be used as a decision‐making tool to support various levels of government and consultancy organizations worldwide in their effort to evaluate the adoption of ICTs in the government sector so that effective decisions can be made for enhancing and improving the use of the technology for more efficient and effective government.

The advantages of the proposed approach for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem on e‐government are the capacity of the proposed approach for adequately handling the multi‐dimensional nature of the inter‐country comparison problem and the provision of an objective view of the overall performance of those countries in the process of evaluating the progress of these countries in their adoption of e‐government. In addition the application of the approach can also help those countries pinpoint the areas that they can further invest their effort for further improvement.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a revolutionary innovation in the construction industry to virtually design and mange projects throughout the building lifecycle. Although Estonia is one of the foremost countries in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, BIM adoption in the Estonian construction industry is still lagging behind other countries. This paper is part of doctoral research that aims to determine the barriers to BIM adoption and develop a framework for effective implementation of BIM in the Estonian construction industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of BIM adoption, BIM benefits and common barriers to BIM adoption in the construction industry worldwide.

The methodology used in this study is a literature review of journal articles, conference proceedings and published reports from various sources.

This study showed BIM benefits through building lifecycle phases and explored the BIM adoption rate in the construction industry of various countries. Eighteen barriers to BIM adoption were also identified.

The study presented is limited to a literature review – some related literature may have been missed.

The main practical significance of this study is that the findings can be used to inform a further survey to model the barriers to BIM adoption in the Estonian construction industry.

This study offers information on BIM adoption in the construction industry and will form the basis of further research.

This paper aims to identify the key barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana.

The study adopts face-to-face and telephonic interviews with ten built environment professionals, using a semi-structured interview guide. Qualitative responses to the interview were thematically analysed using NVivo 11 Pro analysis application software.

The findings suggest that “lack of information on existing green buildings”, “lack of incentives”, “conservative nature of Ghanaians”, “lack of active government participation”, “inadequate human resource”, “lack of awareness of the benefits”, “cost and financing” and “lack of legal backing” are the eight key barriers that hinder the adoption of green certification of buildings.

The research is limited to built environment professionals registered with their appropriate professional bodies. The findings cannot be generalized and extended to other developing countries that do not share similar characteristics and context with Ghana.

Practically, this study highlights, for the benefit of the construction industry and the government, the critical barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana. Identification of these barriers provides a pathway for the provision of pragmatic solutions towards the adoption of green buildings in Ghana.

Findings of the research make significant contribution to the debate on the barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings. Four out of the eight barriers (inadequate awareness of the benefits of green certification of buildings, inadequate human resource, conservative nature of Ghanaian and lack of information on existing green buildings) identified are unique in the context of other related studies and advanced knowledge on the subject matter.

This paper tries to shed light on the international progress regarding the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), to accentuate the benefits resulting from the application of IPSAS, and to highlight the main differences between IPSAS and IFRS.

A comprehensive literature review is conducted which focuses on issues concerning the factors that induce the adoption of IPSAS, the obstacles that must be overcome, the degree of IPSAS’ proliferation worldwide, the repercussions from adopting IPSAS, the benefits of IPSAS, and the differences between IPSAS and IFRS. The selection process of the cited articles focuses on journals with high rankings in the ABS list.

It is accentuated that IPSAS carry significant benefits regarding the improved quality of the financial information reported by the public sector, the enhancement of transparency and accountability, the upgrading of the decision-making process and the restored trust in public finances. However, there is more work that needs to be done toward the global proliferation of IPSAS.

This study provides insights regarding the implementation process of IPSAS, which should be useful to all the parties engaged in the reform of the public administration, such as national governments, local or international regulators, accounting standard setters and institutional organizations.

The current study clarifies whether the public sector should move from using the business focused IFRS, as it is frequently the case, to the adoption of IPSAS. In addition, this study comprehensive literature review can be used by academics and researchers as a basis for further research on the issue. More importantly, policymakers and other officials who need to make informed decisions about financial reporting issues at the government level and the public sector in general can benefit from this study.