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Downward line extension is a valuable growth strategy that enables multiple products and services to meet diverse customer needs. However, downward extended products launched by high-status brands may be challenged by horizontal extended products launched by relatively low-status brands when these two types of products target similar consumers. This study aims to examine the impact of product type (horizontal extended versus downward extended) on consumers’ purchase intentions, the underlying mechanism and the moderating role of power distance belief.

Four scenario-based experiments were conducted to probe the research questions.

Consumers develop lower purchase intentions for downward (versus horizontal) extended products due to the reduction of perceived fit and self-congruity (Study 1). Beyond that, power distance belief moderates the impact of product type on consumers’ purchase intentions, as a low power distance belief reduces the negative effect of downward line extension (Studies 2a, 2b and 2c). Perceived fit and self-congruity mediate the interaction effect between product type and power distance belief on consumers’ purchase intentions (Study 2c).

This study provides marketing practitioners with guidance on implementing the strategy of downward line extension.

This study serves as a preliminary effort to compare consumers’ responses between downward and horizontal extended products, which deepens the understanding of downward line extension. It also contributes to the body of knowledge about line extension and power distance belief by demonstrating the moderating role of power distance belief in a line extension context.

Although idea implementation is a praised useful resource, the psychological and behavioral costs that employees may pay for idea implementation are rarely discussed. This study aims to examine the buffer effect of intrinsic interest on dark side of idea implementation.

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study tested hypotheses with a multi-wave survey study of four information technology companies in China.

First, idea implementation increased emotional exhaustion. Second, emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between employee idea implementation and negative workplace gossip about a leader. Third, intrinsic interest negatively moderated the relationship between idea implementation and emotional exhaustion. Fourth, idea implementation increased workplace negative gossip about a leader as a result of increased emotional exhaustion when intrinsic interest was low.

These findings are conducive to further understanding of the psychological mechanism and boundary condition of the negative impact of idea implementation. It provides practical guidance for buffering the dark side of idea implementation and effectively controlling the workplace negative gossip in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to investigate when and why supervisor negative feedback is associated with employees' job performance via two different pathways (i.e. emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping) and to introduce proactive personality as a moderator.

Time-lagged data were collected using a field survey research design. Participants included 389 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors from five companies in China.

Supervisor negative feedback can lead to employees' emotion-focused coping, which in turn impairs their job performance. Meanwhile, supervisor negative feedback can trigger employees’ problem-focused coping, which subsequently promotes their job performance. Furthermore, proactive personality moderates the indirect effect of supervisor negative feedback on employee performance through emotion-focused coping.

This study explored the double-edged effects of supervisor negative feedback on employee job performance from a coping strategy perspective and investigated how proactive personality influences the choice of coping strategies.

The importance of service firms cooperating with digital platforms is widely acknowledged. The authors study three contractual relationships (fixed-cost, cost-sharing, and profit-sharing) between service firms (specifically hotels) and digital platforms in a highly fragmented service supply chain to examine which of these contract types optimizes profits.

The authors extend prior models analyzing the optimal expected total profit from the travel service firm (hotel)–digital platform relationship, providing new insights into each contract type’s ability to coordinate decentralized systems and optimize profits for both parties.

This study finds that fixed cost contracts cannot coordinate the decentralized system. Cost-sharing contracts can coordinate the decentralized system but only allow one channel profit split. In contrast, profit-sharing contracts may not always perfectly coordinate the decentralized system but support alternative profit allocations. Practically, both profit-sharing and cost-sharing contracts are preferable to fixed-cost contracts.

The paper includes implications for travel service firm managers to consider when structuring contracts with digital platforms to focus on profit optimization. Profit-sharing contracts are most preferable when cost and revenue data are fully shared between parties, while cost-sharing contracts are preferable over fixed-cost contracts.

This study extends prior investigations into the utility of different contract types on the optimal profit of a travel service firm (hotel)-digital platform provider relationship. The research fills a gap in the literature concerning the contracts used in these relationship types.

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media use on healthcare workers’ psychological safety and task performance and the moderating role of perceived respect from patients during public health crises.

To test the proposed moderated mediation model, a survey was conducted in 12 Chinese medical institutions. A total of 637 valid questionnaires were collected for data analysis.

The results revealed that psychological safety mediated the relationships between task-related social media (TSM) use and social-related social media (SSM) use and task performance. In addition, perceived respect from patients moderated the relationship between TSM use and psychological safety, as well as the indirect relationship between TSM use and task performance through psychological safety.

This study sheds new light on understanding how different types of social media use influence task performance in the context of public health crises. Furthermore, this study considers the interactions of healthcare workers with colleagues and patients and examines the potential synergistic effects of these interactions on healthcare workers’ psychological state and task performance.

This study explores whether herd behavior exists for equity crowdfunding investors in China and whether this herding is rational.

Based on signaling theory and social learning theory, two hypotheses were proposed. This study employed two approaches to collect data. First, this paper analyzed 3,041 investments on an equity crowdfunding platform in China using Python programming and built a panel data model. Second, based on a unique experiment design, this study conducted several relevant herd behavior simulation experiments.

We found that investors in the Chinese equity crowdfunding market exhibit herd behavior and that this herding is rational. Project attributes play a negative role in moderating the relationship between the current investment amount and cumulative investments. Experimental results further support our findings.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on herding in crowdfunding by focusing on equity crowdfunding in China. We are the first to explore whether Chinese equity crowdfunding investors exhibit rational herding behavior. The study is also original in applying social learning theory to equity crowdfunding and in using both actual crowdfunding campaigns and experimental approaches to collect data. This study has valuable implications to practice.

Previous studies have reached inconsistent conclusions on foreign direct investment (FDI) technology spillovers and corporate innovation. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the technological spillover effects of FDI from the microperspective of firm linkages induced by geographic distance. Further analysis is conducted on the impact and mechanism of this spillover on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. The conclusions drawn from this paper can guide Chinese enterprises' foreign capital utilization and innovation strategy choices.

Using the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper explores the role of FDI technology spillover in enterprise innovation quality through a two-way fixed-effect model. The robustness of the results is proven by substituting variables, adding industry fixed effects and excluding high-profit groups, and further using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method to alleviate the empirical endogeneity problem.

These findings indicate that FDI technology spillover based on geographic proximity has a positive impact on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. However, there are different impacts for different types of enterprises. FDI technology spillover has a positive impact on the innovation quality of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while it has no effect on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and large enterprises. The authors also find that the degree of financing constraints and R&D investment are important transmission mechanisms between FDI technology spillover and enterprise innovation quality.

This study ignores industry characteristics when considering foreign enterprises around Chinese enterprises. In fact, technology spillover effects differ across industries. When the authors matched microdata to regions, only the provincial level was considered. Therefore, there is still room for further research. In future research, the authors should consider industry characteristics and group foreign enterprises and Chinese enterprises in the same industry and in different industries to explore industry differences in technology spillover. In addition, when matching corporate data to regions, the authors can match to the city level and draw city-level conclusions.

This study is different from previous studies that focus on the quantity of enterprise innovation or innovation output. The authors focus on the role of technological spillovers in the quality of Chinese enterprise innovation, enriching research in the field of enterprise innovation quality. In addition, the current FDI technology spillover indicators are technically difficult to measure at the micro level. The authors draw inspiration from the theory of the geographical structure of financial supply and combine the creation methods of macro and micro indicators in existing articles in other fields. The authors ingeniously construct a new FDI technical spillover indicator. This indicator combines the commonly used regional FDI technology spillover with the geographic proximity of enterprises at the microlevel by constructing an interaction term between the two. This indicator not only alleviates the endogeneity problem to a certain extent but also has implications for future research in the field of FDI technology spillovers at the micro level.

(1) FDI technology spillovers are an effective way to improve the innovation quality of local enterprises, especially for non-SOEs and SMEs. Therefore, The authors suggest that in the context of dual circulation, the Chinese government should continue to open wider to the outside world and encourage foreign enterprises to invest in China. (2) In future development, managers of SOEs and large enterprises should create an innovation incentive mechanism. Moreover, they should change their vertical management structure and make full use of their policy advantages and budget advantages to increase innovation activities. In the process of acquiring technology spillovers, enterprises need to solve their own financing constraints.

First, this study solves a technical problem. It is technically difficult to measure the current FDI technical spillover indicators at the micro level. This study innovatively constructs a new FDI technology spillover indicator that combines regional FDI technology spillovers with the microperspective of the geographical proximity of enterprises. This approach not only alleviates certain endogeneity problems in the empirical evidence but also enriches relevant research in the field of technology spillover. In addition, this study focuses on the impact and mechanism of this spillover, which addresses the current research gap among previous studies that mainly focus on innovation quantity and ignore innovation quality.

In the extant research on online knowledge communities (OKCs), little attention has been paid to the influence of membership fluidity on the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems. This article aims to fill this gap.

Based on the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) framework, this paper constructs a simulation model to study the coevolution of these two systems under different levels of membership fluidity.

By analyzing the evolution of these systems with the vector autoregression (VAR) method, we find that social and knowledge systems become more orderly as the coevolution progresses. Furthermore, in communities with low membership fluidity, the microlevel of the social system (i.e. users) drives the coevolution, whereas in communities with high membership fluidity, the microlevel of the knowledge system (i.e. users' views) drives the coevolution.

This paper extends the application of the ASA framework and enriches the literature on membership fluidity of online communities and the literature on driving factors for coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs. On a practical level, our work suggests that community administrators should adopt different strategies for different membership fluidity to efficiently promote the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs.

This paper aims to straighten out the research progress in the field of maker education, summarize the research hotspots and frontiers of maker education at home and abroad and provide path optimization suggestions for the research and development of this field.

In total, 751 pieces of domestic and the foreign maker education research literature from 2014 to 2021 are retrieved and screened, and literature analysis methods such as keyword analysis and clustering map analysis are used to quantitatively analyze the quantity distribution, published journals, core authors, research institutions and subject keywords of the maker education literature.

It is found that research in this field is still in the development stage, but the pandemic has severely inhibited maker education and related research. Frontiers at home and abroad have begun to pay attention to the impact of humanistic care on maker education. Strengthening the dialog between multidisciplinary theories requires cross-disciplinary research. Regional and cross-field cooperation and fully grasping the actual situation and constraints of the development of maker education are the cornerstones of bold innovation in maker education research.

This paper uses bibliometric analysis to reveal the severe challenges to the development of maker education due to the normalization of the epidemic. By excavating the research hotspots and research frontiers in this field, it fills the gap that the current research in the field of maker education has not yet formed a complete theoretical framework and evaluation system.

In recent decades, the field of robotic mapping has witnessed widespread research and development in light detection and ranging (LiDAR)-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques. This paper aims to provide a significant reference for researchers and engineers in robotic mapping.

This paper focused on the research state of LiDAR-based SLAM for robotic mapping as well as a literature survey from the perspective of various LiDAR types and configurations.

This paper conducted a comprehensive literature review of the LiDAR-based SLAM system based on three distinct LiDAR forms and configurations. The authors concluded that multi-robot collaborative mapping and multi-source fusion SLAM systems based on 3D LiDAR with deep learning will be new trends in the future.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first thorough survey of robotic mapping from the perspective of various LiDAR types and configurations. It can serve as a theoretical and practical guide for the advancement of academic and industrial robot mapping.