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The purpose of this paper is to understand e-loyalty in the travel industry. Specifically, this paper aims to examine the curvilinear relationship between predictors and e-loyalty.

An empirical study was conducted using an online survey with one of the largest travel companies in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the models, and pair-wise nested F-tests were used to compare the models.

Results show that the curvilinear model has greater explanatory power of loyalty than traditional linear models. The results of pair-wise nested F-tests show that the loyalty model exhibits statistically significant R2 improvement compared to the linear model. However, the R2 improvement in the integrated model is not statistically different from that in the linear model. Confirmation and satisfaction are found to be salient factors influencing loyalty.

This study makes important contributions to the online community literature by understanding the drivers of loyalty in the travel industry. However, there are limitations. First, this study addressed member loyalty of an online travel community with data collected from one company. Thus, generalizability is limited. Online communities and firms may have different characteristics, resulting in different factors influencing consumer loyalty. The authors plan in the future to collect data from other online travel companies and examine their model with different samples so as to check the generalizability of the current findings. Second, the authors collected a snapshot view on loyalty. Both researchers and managers note that small changes in loyalty and retention can yield disproportionately large changes in profitability (Reichheld et al., 2000). Consumer loyalty may change over time, so to maintain and increase profits, it is important to monitor such change. In the future, the authors plan to conduct a longitudinal study of community members to evaluate their loyalty over time.

As China seeks to gain additional market share in the global tourism market, travel companies should make use of websites as a marketing tool to attract and retain customers. These actions enable a travel company to enhance its competitiveness. More and more people use the internet for tour deals, bookings and finding tour-related information. Effective use of websites can affect the competitiveness of ecommerce companies. E-vendors could assess and adopt the dimensions recommended in this paper to help better understand areas for improvement. It is common today for consumers to buy travel products online instead of going through a travel agent. Considering the importance of reciprocity in formulating consumer satisfaction and loyalty in the virtual environment, companies should monitor reciprocal behavior on the virtual community. With advancement in technologies, consumer behaviors have changed and more consumers prefer social interactions in the virtual world. Companies can analyze posts in the virtual environment to assess reciprocity and may design a mechanism to foster reciprocal behaviors. By leveraging reciprocity, firms can better connect satisfaction with loyalty. More than 70 per cent of executives surveyed by McKinsey (2012) said that they regularly generate value through their Web communities. In addition, to pay attention to consumer to consumer reciprocity in the virtual world, companies should listen to what customers say in their online community, as this attention is an indication of reciprocity between consumers and companies. The ideas and opinions expressed in the online community tell the company customers’ perception of the value of its products and customers’ needs. Such attention to the voices in the online community will help companies to better tailor products/services to meet customers’ needs. Furthermore, the voices expressed in the virtual community are also effective in developing and maintaining new internet marketing opportunities such as email marketing, giveaways, search engine optimization, pay per click and shopping comparison marketing. Companies interested in retaining and attracting customers should leverage their established virtual communities and pay close attention to online posts and evaluate members’ satisfaction. Such effort will provide tangible benefits. As shown in Ye et al.’s study, traveler reviews produce a significant impact on online sales (Ye et al., 2011), with a 10 per cent increase in traveler review ratings, boosting online bookings by more than 5 per cent. This finding suggests that businesses should link online user-generated reviews to business performance in tourism. Finding incentives for users to share might be one way to improve interactivity and further create stickiness on the part of the website.

This paper is one of the first studies to address the need to move beyond linear models of e-loyalty and to additionally examine potential curvilinear and interactive effects. This study also identifies key variables such as reciprocity and satisfaction as determinants of e-loyalty in the Chinese online travel and tourism industry.

For the purpose of reducing the incidence of hazardous materials transport accident, eliminating the potential threats and ensuring their safety, aiming at the shortcomings in the process of current hazardous materials transportation management, this paper aims to construct the framework of hazardous materials transportation safety management system under the vehicle-infrastructure connected environment.

The system takes the intelligent connected vehicle as the main supporter, integrating GIS, GPS, eye location, GSM, networks and database technology.

By analyzing the transportation characteristics of hazardous materials, this system consists of five subsystems, which are vehicle and driver management subsystem, dangerous sources and hazardous materials management subsystem, route analysis and optimization subsystem, early warning and emergency rescue management subsystem, and basic information query subsystem.

Hazardous materials transportation safety management system includes omnibearing real-time monitoring, timely updating of system database, real-time generation and optimization of emergency rescue route. The system can reduce the transportation cost and improve the ability of accident prevention and emergency rescue of hazardous materials.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of consumers' perceived product promotion and atmosphere promotion strategies on their participation intention, and the possible interaction between product promotion and atmosphere promotion strategies on their participation intention in online shopping festivals.

This paper conceptualized consumer perception of product promotion strategies of online shopping festivals as Perceived Temptation of Price Promotion, Perceived Categories Richness of Promotion and Perceived Fun of Promotion Activities and atmosphere promotion strategies as Perceived Contagiousness of Mass Participation. Based on the Stimulus-Response Theory, this study constructed an influencing model of promotion strategies on consumer participation intention in online shopping festivals. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was used for analyzing the data from a sample of 495 consumers to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that Perceived Temptation of Price Promotion, Perceived Categories Richness of Promotion, Perceived Fun of Promotion Activities and Perceived Contagiousness of Mass Participation significantly and positively affect consumer Participation Intention; Perceived Contagiousness of Mass Participation plays a moderating role in the effect of Perceived Temptation of Price Promotion on Participation Intention.

This study is the first empirical attempt to examine the moderating role of atmosphere promotion between product promotion and consumer participation intention in online shopping festivals. The findings provide theoretical basis and practical guidance for e-commerce platforms and merchants for improving their online shopping festival promotion strategies.

Singles’ Day Online Shopping Festival was originated in China and is characterized by gathering promotions to create consumer shopping atmosphere. Its rapid rise has affected Asia and the world, becoming the world’s largest shopping festival beyond Black Friday. The success of Singles’ Day Online Shopping Festival demonstrates Chinese experience of online shopping festive atmosphere marketing. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of Singles’ Day Online Shopping Festival atmosphere and Chinese cultural background, especially Confucian values, on Chinese consumers’ purchase intention in Singles’ Day Online Shopping Festival.

This paper conceptualized consumers’ most perceptive atmosphere characteristics as the three dimensions of perceived economic temptation, perceived festival entertainment and perceived mass participation. Taking Confucian values as moderators, based on the stimulus-response theory, this study constructed an influencing factor model of consumer purchase intention in online shopping festival, collected data of 398 Chinese consumers by questionnaire, and used structural equation modeling for hypotheses testing.

The results showed that online shopping festival atmosphere and Confucian values affect purchase intention; the two factors of “keeping face” and “listening to others” of Confucian values play moderating roles in the effect of online shopping festival atmosphere on purchase intention.

The sample of this study was biased toward the young and well-educated consumers; besides, this study focused on young consumers’ purchase intention of online shopping festival, rather than their actual consumption behaviors.

Confucian values have deeply influenced China and other Asian countries, especially East and Southeast Asian countries. Meanwhile they are the fastest growing regions of e-commerce in the world, the paper provides theoretical basis and reference for the e-commerce enterprises in the Confucian cultural societies to improve the atmosphere marketing of online shopping festivals, and attracts consumers to shop online, having particular significance in shedding light on the Asian “e-commerce Miracle.”

This study found that Singles’ Day purchase intention is dependent on online shopping festival atmosphere stimuli, Confucian values and their interaction. Marketing researchers should consider both online shopping festival atmosphere as a marketing tool and the influence of consumer cultural values, so as to help e-commerce platforms and e-commerce merchants establish shopping festival marketing strategies that suit consumers’ cultural values.

This paper addressed an interesting practical issue related to the effects of online shopping festival atmosphere stimuli and cultural values on consumer online purchase intention.

Consumer adoption of shared products is a prerequisite for successful commercialization. The purpose of this paper is to explore what innovative characteristics of entity shared products can accommodate consumers' concerns and are likely to motivate adoption of consumers.

This paper used a conceptual model that combined the innovation diffusion theory and technology acceptance model to explore shared products adoption. It identified the direct and indirect effects of perceived app ease of use/online, perceived convenience of access/offline, perceived utility advantages and personal innovativeness on shared products adoption intention. Structural equation modeling was used for analyzing the questionnaire data from a sample of 479 users who used entity shared products such as shared cars, shared bicycles and shared power banks for mobile phones.

The empirical tests indicate that perceived utility advantages based on market innovation, perceived accessibility of usage rights based on technology innovation (including perceived app ease of use/online and perceived convenience of access/offline) and consumer personal innovativeness are the key factors affecting consumer adoption.

This paper constructs an innovation-adoption coupling model of entity shared products to understand shared products usage. The findings provide useful practical guidance for the design and development of shared products and “usage rights economy” business applications.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare a higher chloromethylation degree (CD) modified macroporous adsorption resin (MAR, LX1180-Cl) and further study their adsorption performance.

CD and crosslinking degree were evaluated using stationary potential step and rotating-disk method, the adsorption performance of LX1180-Cl and LX1180 for flavonoids were studied using the UV-VIS spectrophotometry.

This research realized high CD (9.6 mass %) on high crosslinking MAR, LX1180. In tandem, the adsorption performance of them to flavonoids finds that the matching degree of polarity (presented with CD) and size were the critical factor to adsorption. It was also found that the reaction time had reduced to 24 h with the addition of iron particles into the zinc chloride (ZnCl₂) catalyst.

The study on reaction mechanism and the function principle of hybrid catalyst were speculated, but not the rigid experimental result.

This contribution can provide a rule for the separation and purification of natural products with the aim to improve food additive removal or isolation and purification of flavonoids used for healthcare applications.

This contribution provided a novel way to obtain high degree of CD with high crosslinking MAR, CD of commercially available MAR was improved by 2.5 times to 9.6 percent under crosslinking degree at 58.2 percent, compared with reported CD value (ca. 4.2 percent under crosslinking degree at 20.0 percent), which will be useful in the following further systematically research about the adsorption and separation selectivity of MAR. Besides, the primitive chosen principle of MAR according to the substrate was also presented. Moreover, the chloromethylation mechanism, although speculative, was briefly presented, which will stimulate the related study.

This work focused on the sulphonation modification research of highly crosslinking non-polarity macroporous adsorption resin (MAR) LX1180; the adsorption behaviour of LX1180 and its chloromethylation- and sulphonation-modified products (LX1180-Cl and LX1180-SO₃₋); and the influence of the structure parameters matching degree of MAR and flavonoids on the adsorption feature and adsorption kinetics.

LX1180-SO₃₋ was obtained by the processes of chloromethylation first and then sulphonation. LX1180-Cl and LX1180-SO₃₋ were prepared through the principle of substitution reaction from LX1180 and LX1180-Cl, respectively. First, Monochloromethyl ether (ME), pre-treated ZnCl₂, NaCl and iron powder were added into the swollen LX1180 to obtain the chloromethylated LX1180. Thereafter, NaCl, NaOH and SAA were added into the swollen LX1180-Cl to obtain the sulphonation modification LX1180. The conditions were investigated and optimised; the structures of LX1180-Cl and LX1180-SO₃₋ were characterised by Fourier transform infrared chromatography (FTIR) and a specific surface area instrument. Finally, the adsorption kinetics and adsorption isotherm were used to evaluate the adsorption capacity of LX1180-Cl and LX1180-SO₃₋ for flavonoids, and the adsorptions and desorptions of LX1180-SO₃₋ with different sulphonation degree on different flavonoids were investigated systemically.

Results showed that LX1180-Cl and LX1180-SO₃₋ had been prepared successfully, and that after the sulphonation, the adsorption capacity tended to increase with the increase of adsorption time, and the equilibrium adsorption capacity of LX1180-SO₃₋ was also higher than that of LX1180.

The research only investigated the adsorption and desorption properties for only one kind of functional group, and other functional groups should also be studied in future work.

This contribution can provide a further base for the research of separation and purification of natural products with the aim to improve food additive removal or isolation and purification of flavonoids used for healthcare applications.

The adsorptions and desorptions of LX1180-SO₃₋ with different sulphonation degree on different flavonoids were investigated. The relationship between sulphonation degree and the adsorption and desorption capacities of flavonoids were also explored, and the results showed that with the increase of sulphonation degree, the adsorption of LX1180-SO₃₋ to rutin and cyanidin was maximum, while the desorption ratio was minimum at the same sulphonation degree; this phenomenon could be ascribed to the variation in the polarity matching degree.

The purpose of this paper is to separate and purify flavonoids from glycyrrhiza by macroporous adsorption resin (MAR) mixed-bed technology.

The adsorption performance of MAR and MAR mixed bed for flavonoids was studied using ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry.

The research shows that the MAR mixed bed of LZ-50+LZ-59 with a mass ratio of LZ-50:LZ-59(m:m) = 1:1 was the optimized combination with the optimal conditions of adsorption (pH = 6, T = 45°C) and desorption (liquid ratio R = 70%, T = 50°C, pH = 8) obtained, relatively.

This paper provides a novel way to separate flavonoids from glycyrrhiza. Under the optimal conditions, the adsorption rate (F) of MAR mixed-bed LZ-50+LZ-59 to the flavonoids was 62.5 per cent/g, the desorption rate (D) was 89.23 per cent and the purity was achieved at 80 per cent.

Drawing on social network and information diffusion theories, the authors study the impact of the structural characteristics of a seller’s local social network on her promotion effectiveness in social commerce.

The authors define a local social network as one formed by a focal seller, her directly connected users and all links among these users. Using data from a large social commerce website in China, the authors build econometric models to investigate how the density, grouping and centralization of local social networks affect the number of likes received by products posted by sellers.

Local social networks with low density, grouping and centralization are associated with more likes on sellers’ posted products. The negative effects of grouping and centralization are reduced when density is high.

The paper deepens the understanding of the determinants of social commerce success from a network structure perspective. In particular, it draws attention to the role of sellers’ local social networks, forming a foundation for future research on social commerce.

Effective knowledge integration is vital for decision making in interdisciplinary research (IDR) teams. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the antecedents of knowledge integration. This study aims to examine how social capital at different levels and their interaction influences knowledge integration in IDR teams. Specifically, this study explores the moderating role of team social capital in the relationship between individual social capital and knowledge integration.

A survey on 346 individuals from 46 IDR teams in a research university in China is conducted. A multilevel analysis of the hierarchical linear model is used to process the sociometric data.

Results reveal that team social capital interacts with individual social capital by influencing knowledge integration. At the individual level, tie strength and structural equivalence have a positive influence on knowledge integration. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between betweenness centrality and knowledge integration. Furthermore, team cohesion negatively moderates the positive effect of tie strength and structural equivalence on knowledge integration. No support is found for the moderating role of team cohesion on the effect of betweenness centrality.

First, different from previous research on social capital at single levels, this study links the individual-level and the team-level views to explore the effects of social capital on knowledge integration. Second, this study enriches research on inducing factors of knowledge integration. Third, this study extends social capital research and knowledge integration research to the IDR team context.