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Though many conceptual and empirical studies have been conducted on the servicescape, limited research has focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped factors influencing the servicescape. This paper aims to propose an extension of Bitner’s original conceptualization, including pandemic-induced physical and social constraints on servicescape in the form of crowding, consumer risk perception during the crisis and their impact on consumers' and employees’ behavioral changes in retail and hospitality sectors.

This paper critically reviewed the past and emerging servicescape and risk literature. It then examines and delineates the concepts of crowding, density and associated risk perceptions to offer an extended servicescape framework. Alongside, scales were proposed to measure the constructs and guidelines given to conduct future empirical studies.

This paper discussed the major impact on servicescape during a pandemic situation, to what extent risk is perceived during consumption and the impact of crowding and store density on employee and customer behavioral responses.

This paper principally contributes by explicitly including specific risk dimensions and crowding and proposes the scales to measure consumers’ understanding of pandemic-induced perceptions of risk, crowding and density within servicescapes for further empirical testing. Alongside this, the identification and concretization of different types of perceived risks under COVID-19 provide critical and useful marketing implications.

This study identifies relevant risk dimensions, proposes crowding as an independent construct apart from servicescape physicality and proposes relevant measures for empirical verification.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teachers’ use of digital learning tools for teaching in higher education. Moreover, it investigates how the use of digital tools affects educational practices and how teachers experience the culture of sharing among colleagues and within the organisation.

A qualitative methodology was chosen, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers at a higher education institution in Norway. The study uses the TPACK-framework, which illustrates the relationship between technology, professional content knowledge and pedagogical approaches as its theoretical foundation.

The findings conclude that teachers are concerned with the convergence of how technology and digital learning tools can support educational processes by engaging and involving the students. The findings further indicate that they are committed to using digital tools to motivate, engage and facilitate student-based education, which in turn leads to more reflection on teachers’ own teaching practices. Based on the theory of Professional Learning Communities, the respondents agree that sharing is a basic prerequisite for a learning organisation. They experience, however, that sharing between colleagues is easier in formal forums than at informal settings.

The rapid development of technology suggests that many sectors including the education sector must adapt to the new changes in their teaching practices. Nevertheless, many teachers merely use the basic form of digital learning tools to distribute the teaching materials, as such tools are less utilised to support students’ learning process (Fossland, 2015). The research indicates that digital learning tools have positive effect on teaching practices and that they can function as tools to improve the teachers’ own teaching practices. Positive teaching practices should also be shared in a learning organisation to improve teaching practices on an organisational level. Hence, sharing at a professional level can impact learning and the organisational culture in academic institutions.

This paper aims to verify weather atmospheric plasma spray (APS) in situ remelting posttreatment is effective for densifying the porous FeCoCrMoCBY amorphous alloy (FAA) coating and improving the antiabrasion and anticorrosion performances or not.

APS was used to deposit and in situ densify FAA coating on the 40Cr substrate. Scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffractometer, energy dispersive spectroscopy, neutral salt spray, hardness and wear behavior test were used to evaluate the densifying effects.

APS remelting technology can effectively improve the hardness of the coating by reducing the porosity. After remelting at 30 kW power, the hardness of the coating increased by about 260 HV0.2 and the porosity decreased to 2.78%. The amorphous content of the coating is 93.9%, which is about 3.5% lower than original powders. The electrochemical impedance spectrum and neutral salt spray test results show that APS remelting can reduce the corrosion rate by about 62.7%.

APS remelting method is firstly proposed in this work to replace laser remelting or laser cladding methods. APS remelting method can effectively improve the corrosion and abrasion resistance of the FAA coating by increasing the densification with much low recrystallization, which is big progress for application of FAA coatings.

Swift guanxi and trust can influence consumers’ decision making in social commerce. What factors will influence the formation of swift guanxi and trust between buyers and sellers in social commerce has not been clearly investigated. The purpose of this paper is to identify antecedents and impacts of swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.

An online questionnaire was used to collect the data, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed for data analysis. Social support and presence are introduced as the antecedents for swift guanxi and trust, leading to the repurchase intention (RI) and social sharing intention of customers.

The results indicate that social support and presence can influence swift guanxi and trust. Social support and presence are positively associated with swift guanxi and trust which further lead to RI and social sharing intention.

The findings can be used to guide sellers in social commerce platforms to improve their services and make good use of platform features to improve customers’ perception of presence. To attract new customers and retain old customers, sellers should also build swift guanxi and trust through the recommendation and experience sharing of previous buyers on social media.

This study combines social support theory and presence theory to investigate the factors that influence customers’ purchase decision and social sharing intention in the context of social commerce in China. The integration of social support theory and presence theory explains both the social and technical factors that influence swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a three-dimensional (3D) assembly model retrieval method based on assembling semantic information to address semantic mismatches, poor accuracy and low efficiency in existing 3D assembly model retrieval methods.

The paper proposes an assembly model retrieval method. First, assembly information retrieval is performed, and 3D models that conform to the design intention of the assembly are found by retrieving the code. On this basis, because there are conjugate subgraphs between attributed adjacency graphs (AAG) that have an assembly relationship, the assembly model geometric retrieval is translated into a problem of finding AAGs with a conjugate subgraph. Finally, the frequent subgraph mining method is used to retrieve AAGs with conjugate subgraphs.

The method improved the efficiency and accuracy of assembly model retrieval.

The examples illustrate the specific retrieval process and verify the feasibility and reasonability of the assembly model retrieval method in practical applications.

The assembly model retrieval method in the paper is an original method. Compared with other methods, good results were obtained.

The purpose of this paper is to present the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China and reveal its trend since the late 1990s.

This study is based on the analysis of 168 university documents regarding the cash-per-publication reward policy at 100 Chinese universities.

Chinese universities offer cash rewards from USD30 to USD165,000 for papers published in journals indexed by Web of Science, and the average reward amount has been increasing for the past ten years.

The cash-per-publication reward policy in China has never been systematically studied and investigated before except for in some case studies. This is the first paper that reveals the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China.

Integrated reporting (IR) aims to improve the quality of information available to capital providers. While IR is associated with decreases in investor uncertainty and increases in firm value, it is unclear how IR information directly influences investment decisions. This paper aims to investigate the investment considerations of Taiwanese investors and their initial impressions of the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRC Framework). In doing so, this study examines the relationships between investment considerations and the IIRC Framework’s concepts.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 16 investors in Taiwan. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected.

In addition to economic and financial outlook, competitive advantages and ownership structure, Taiwanese investors emphasise management credibility as an important factor that influences investment decisions. Investors are reliant on private information sources and quantitative data. Sustainability disclosures and sustainability performance beyond legal requirements are often not considered. Taiwanese investors lack awareness of the IIRC Framework and are sceptical about the premise that integrated reports can provide information material to investment appraisal. The assertion that integrated reports reduce information asymmetry and influence investment decisions has to be treated with caution.

Self-selection bias and a potential lack of transferability in the findings are issues inherent in the research method and sample used.

IR information needs to be frequently updated rather than disclosed in a periodic report. Furthermore, integrated reports need to demonstrate a direct link between non-financial performance and financial value creation.

Mandating the supply of integrated reports is unlikely to influence investors’ capital allocation decisions unless investor demand is a driver of the regulation.

This study is one of the few to investigate IR from the investor’s perspective. Observations from this preliminary study warrant further investigations into the relevance of IR to investment communities globally.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an adaptive assembly, to realize the adaptive changing of the models and to improve the flexibility and reliability of assembly change. For a three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) assembly in a changing process, there are two practical problems. One is delivering parameters’ information not smoothly. The other one is to easily destroy an assembly structure.

The paper establishes associated parameters design structure matrix of related parts, and predicts possible propagation paths of the parameters. Based on the predicted path, structured storage is made for the affected parameters, tolerance range and the calculation relations. The study combines structured path information and all constrained assemblies to build the adaptive assembly, proposes an adaptive change algorithm for assembly changing and discusses the extendibility of the adaptive assembly.

The approach would improve the flexibility and reliability of assembly change and be applied to different CAD platform.

The examples illustrate the construction and adaptive behavior of the assembly and verify the feasibility and reasonability of the adaptive assembly in practical application.

The adaptive assembly model proposed in the paper is an original method to assembly change. And compared with other methods, good results have been obtained.

This paper aims to improve understanding of the reasons why people trust the information about product recommendations on social shopping networks of websites, a new e‐commerce method which combines social networking and shopping, and to investigate the impact of the trust on the consumers' intention to purchase products from the online shop of a website.

An online survey instrument was developed to gather data, and 1,219 questionnaires were used to test the relationships in the proposed model.

The results indicated that perceived ability, perceived benevolence/integrity, perceived critical mass, and trust in a website were four important antecedents of trust in product recommendation in a social networking site. In addition trust in product recommendations can influence the consumers' intention to purchase from the website through increasing their intention to purchase the products.

The research model demonstrated the importance of trust in product recommendations to online consumers' transaction intention.

The results of the study showed that trust in product recommendations will influence consumers' purchase intentions. Therefore a social shopping website or the websites transforming into social shopping websites should put more emphasis on ways to establish the virtual communities or social networks which can provide the information about product recommendations that consumers trust.

The study provides a comprehensive framework of the antecedents and effects of consumers' trust in recommendations in the context of social shopping.

Several service quality studies show how cultural features may influence the way service quality is perceived. However, few studies specifically describe culture's influence on health service quality. Also, there are few studies that take into account patients' health service quality perceptions. This article seeks to present a first step to fill these gaps by examining patients' cultural values and their health service quality assessments.

The study draws on published work and applies its ideas to Chinese healthcare settings. Data consist of hospital service perceptions in the People's Republic of China (PRC), a society that is socially, economically and culturally undergoing major changes. In total, 96 patients were surveyed. Data relationships were tested using partial least square (PLS) analysis.

Findings show that Chinese patients' cultural values and their health service assessments are related and that the cultural values themselves seem to be changing. Additionally, further analyses provided interesting results pointing to which cultural values influenced service quality perceptions. The strongest service quality predictor was power distance.

The sample is relatively small and collected from only one major hospital in China. Therefore, future research should extend the sample size and scope. Follow‐up research could also include cross‐cultural investigations of perceived health service quality to substantiate cultural influences on health service quality perceptions.

In line with similar research in other contexts, the study confirms that power distance has a significant relationship with service quality perceptions.

The study contributes to existing health service literature by offering patients' views on health service quality and by describing relationships between health service perceptions and cultural values ‐ the study's main contribution.