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Extensive atomistic simulations of the mechanical deformation of defective nanowires (NWs) were performed using the embedded-atom molecular dynamics modeling approach. The investigation focuses on the coupled effects of various vacancy cluster (VC) defects, operation temperature, and wire cross-sectional area on the mechanical properties and plastic deformations of defective NWs. The stress-strain behaviors show that the elastic modulus is independent of the vacancy cluster defects. Quasi-linear decreasing Young's moduli were observed with increasing operation temperature. For a given operation temperature, NW Young's modulus increased with increasing NW size.

Considering both online and offline service scenarios, this study aims to explore the factors affecting doctors' intention to offer consulting services in eHealth and compare the factors between the free- and paid-service doctors. The theory of reasoned action and social exchange theory are integrated to develop the research model that conceptualizes the role of extrinsic motivations, intrinsic motivations, costs, and attitudes in doctors' behavioral intentions.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was leveraged to analyze 326 valid sample data. To provide robust results, three non-parametric multigroup analysis (MGA) methods, including the PLS-MGA, confidence set, and permutation test approaches, were applied to detect the potential heterogeneity between the free- and paid-service doctors.

The results with overall samples reveal that anticipated rewards, anticipated associations, anticipated contribution, and perceived fee are all positively related to attitude, which in turn positively influences behavioral intention, and that perceived fee positively moderates the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention. Attitude's full mediation is also confirmed. However, results vary between the two groups of doctors. The three MGA approaches return relatively convergent results, indicating that the effects of anticipated associations and perceived fee on attitude are significantly larger for the paid-service doctors, while that of anticipated rewards is found to be significantly larger for the free-service doctors.

eHealth, as a potential contactless alternative to face-to-face diagnoses, has recently attracted widespread attention, especially during the continued spread of COVID-19. Most existing studies have neglected the underlying heterogeneity between free- and paid-service doctors regarding their motivations to engage in online healthcare activities. This study advances the understanding of doctors' participation in eHealth by emphasizing their motivations derived from both online and offline service scenarios and comparing the differences between free- and paid-service doctors. Besides, horizontally comparing the results by applying diverse MGA approaches enriches empirical evidence for the selection of MGA approaches in PLS-SEM.

The basic assumption is that there is a symmetric relationship between review valence and rating, but what if review valence and rating were linked asymmetrically? There are few studies which have investigated the situations in which positive and negative online reviews exert different influences on ratings. This study considers brand strength as having an important moderating role because the average rating of existing reviews for a particular product is a heuristic cue for decision makers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to argue that an asymmetric relationship between review content valence and numerical rating will depend on brand strength.

The authors have conducted a sentiment analysis via text mining, using self-developed computer programs to retrieve a data set from the TripAdvisor website.

This study finds there is an asymmetric relationship between review valence (verbal) and numerical rating. The authors further find brand strength to have an important moderating role. For a stronger brand, negative review content will have a greater impact on numerical ratings than positive review content, while for a weaker brand, positive review content will have a greater impact on numerical ratings than negative review content.

Marketers could adopt sentiment analysis via text mining of online reviews as a valid measure or predictor of consumer satisfaction or numerical ratings. Strong brands should direct more attention to negative reviews, because in such reviews the negative impact transcends the positive. In contrast, weak brands should aim to exploit as many positive reviews as possible to minimize the impact of any negative reviews.

This study finds there is an asymmetric relationship between review valence (verbal) and numerical rating and considers brand strength to play an important moderating role. The authors have used real data from the TripAdvisor website, which allow people to express themselves in an unsolicited manner, and linked these with the results from the sentiment analysis.

Online reviews are increasingly available for a wide range of products and services in e-commerce. Most consumers rely heavily on online reviews when making purchase decisions, so an important topic is that of understanding what makes some online reviews helpful in the eyes of consumers. Researchers have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, however, few studies have investigated how images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’ avatars influence the judgment of online review helpfulness. This study draws on self-construal theory, attribution theory and affect-as-information theory to empirically test a model of the interaction effects of images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’ avatars on online review helpfulness. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to identify an underlying mechanism of causal attribution toward store performance on the above effects.

This study conducted two online experiments. Study 1 is a 2 (images in review content: one person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the reviewer’s avatar: happy vs angry) between-subjects design. Study 2 is a 3 (image: product alone vs one person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the reviewer’s avatar: happy vs angry) ×3 (valence of the review: positive vs negative vs neutral) between-subjects design.

The results indicate that when consumers were exposed to a happy-looking avatar, they were likely to express higher perceptions of online review helpfulness in response to an image showing a group of people in a restaurant than they would for an image of one person in the same situation. In contrast, when consumers were exposed to an angry-looking avatar, their perceptions of online review helpfulness did not differ in response to images of either a group of people or of one person. Furthermore, cause attribution toward store performance mediated the interaction between images in content of reviews and the facial expression of a reviewer’s avatar on the perceptions of online review helpfulness.

The authors provide insights into how to develop guidelines on how online reviews should be written so that readers perceive them to be helpful, and how to design effective reward mechanisms for customer feedback.

Compared with previous studies, this study provides further contributions in three ways. First, it contributes to the literature on review content by showing which images in reviews are deemed to be helpful. Second, it extends previous findings from the literature relating to online peer reviews by demonstrating the importance of facial expressions in reviewers’ avatars (i.e. happy vs angry) when explaining helpfulness, rather than the strength of purchase intent. Third, this study contributes by further highlighting a novel mechanism which shows that a causal attribution toward store performance motivates the perceptions of online review helpfulness.

The melamine milk scandal caused a crisis of confidence in food containing dairy products. The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of precautionary behaviour to avoid food containing dairy products among Taiwanese college students.

Of the total respondents selected using a multistage cluster sampling plan, 1,213 respondents completed the questionnaire.

The survey results showed that subjective norms, attitude, perceived behavioural control, attention to news, and perceived credibility of information are significantly associated with the intention to take precautionary behaviour.

The paper developed a modified theory of planned behaviour (TPB) that focused on attention and perceived credibility of milk scandal‐related information as additional determinants of precautionary behaviour to avoid food containing dairy products. The inclusion of attention and perceived credibility of information constructs enabled a better model fit than that of the TPB model.

Online reviews are increasingly available for a wide range of products and services. Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, but the issue of what makes online reviews helpful to a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision remains uninvestigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Given the strategic potential of online reviews, this study drew on past research to develop a conceptual understanding of the components of helpfulness and to further empirically test the model using actual online review data from iPeen.com in Taiwan. A content analysis of 989 reviews across four products identified the interplay effects of review sidedness, reviewer’s expertise, and product type on the helpfulness of an online review.

For search goods, consumers consider two-sided reviews to be more helpful than one-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing such articles, whereas they consider two-sided reviews to be equally helpful as one-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices. Conversely, for experience goods, consumers consider one-sided reviews to be more helpful than two-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing review articles, but they consider one-sided reviews to be equally helpful as two-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices.

With an understanding of how review sidedness affects online review helpfulness, online retailers could establish the policy for promoting the helpfulness of reviews more effectively.

This research yields at least three important contributions: first, it contributes to the message sidedness literature by showing which arguments (one- or two-sided) are deemed to be helpful; second, it contributes to the online peer review literature by demonstrating the importance of considering product type and heuristic cues (i.e. the reviewer’s expertise) when explaining helpfulness; and third, the results in this research demonstrate that people are drawn to dual-processing; that is, the judgment of online review helpfulness is determined by heuristic cues (e.g. the status of the reviewer) and systematic processing (e.g. review content).

The aims of this study are twofold: to explore the influence of the typicality of brand story and regulatory focus on the effectiveness of argument strength and product evaluations and to examine the mediating role of being hooked.

The study performed two experiments which showed how the measured or induced regulatory focus of a consumer in a given situation moderates the relationship between typicality of the brand story and product evaluations.

The results show that prevention-focused individuals rely on the substance of the message after reading an atypical brand story, whereas promotion-focused individuals are more likely to be hooked by an atypical brand story. Moreover, the findings have also revealed that being hooked mediated the results of the interaction effects of the typicality of brand story and regulatory focus on product evaluation.

A better understanding of the interplay effects between the perceived typicality of brand story and the regulatory focus of target audiences has the potential to help marketers increase the persuasiveness of their communication messages.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first piece of research to examine how the typicality of brand story and regulatory focus can influence the likelihood of a consumer being hooked. Moreover, the present study is among the first to show that regulatory focus is an important moderator of the effects of typicality, and this contributes to the literature of categorization theory.

This paper develops a generalizable, machine-learning-based method for measuring established marketing constructs using passive analysis of consumer-generated textual data from service reviews. The method is demonstrated using topic and sentiment analysis along dimensions of an existing scale: lodging quality index (LQI).

The method induces numerical scale ratings from text-based data such as consumer reviews. This is accomplished by automatically developing a dictionary from words within a set of existing scale items, rather a more manual process. This dictionary is used to analyze textual consumer review data, inducing topic and sentiment along various dimensions. Data produced is equivalent with Likert scores.

Paired t-tests reveal that the text analysis technique the authors develop produces data that is equivalent to Likert data from the same individual. Results from the authors’ second study apply the method to real-world consumer hotel reviews.

Results demonstrate a novel means of using natural language processing in a way to complement or replace traditional survey methods. The approach the authors outline unlocks the ability to rapidly and efficiently analyze text in terms of any existing scale without the need to first manually develop a dictionary.

The technique makes a methodological contribution by outlining a new means of generating scale-equivalent data from text alone. The method has the potential to both unlock entirely new sources of data and potentially change how service satisfaction is assessed and opens the door for analysis of text in terms of a wider range of constructs.

This study examines the effects of incentive compensation and guanxi, a type of informal personal relationship between people, on the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Given that the objectivity of internal auditors is essential for promoting financial reporting quality, it is important to investigate the effectiveness of internal audit functions, especially in emerging markets where the corporate governance mechanisms designed to promote objectivity are less mature.

The research employs a 2 × 2 between participants experiment with 116 graduate accounting student participants.

After controlling for internal auditors’ ethicality, we find that close-guanxi between management and internal auditors and incentive compensation in the form of bonuses based upon meeting earnings targets both have the capacity to impair the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Participants were more tolerant of management’s attempts to manage earnings when there was close guanxi or bonus compensation. Further, compensation structure only influenced internal auditors’ support of management when guanxi was distant, but when there was close guanxi between internal auditors and management, internal auditors were unlikely to challenge management regardless of the compensation structure.