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This study aims to explore residents’ trust in local government councils and to examine the effect of political efficacy and good governance on that trust and on the performance of local government councils in an emerging nation.

Data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative research designs. Firstly, a thematic analysis was performed to explore residents’ trust in local government councils and compare it with the data gathered in the literature review. Thereafter, a partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to investigate the hypothesised linkages.

The thematic analysis of the face-to-face semi-structured interviews discovered four themes (trust, performance, political efficacy and good governance). Additional analysis of these themes via the PLS-SEM approach revealed good governance to be the most influential factor in promoting residents’ trust in local government councils. Political efficacy was the second most influential factor. Residents expect local government councils’ officers to demonstrate a strong commitment to the rule of law and comply with all relevant laws and regulations.

Local government councils should openly accept residents’ requests and suggestions, be more flexible in policy delivery and be responsive to policy demands given the relatively small constituencies and greater policy latitudes. Multiple avenues should be available for interaction between residents and local government councils in the mission to achieve sustainable urban growth.

This study is unique in that it advances existing research that is lacking in the context of the Malaysian local government council. The result alerts are crucial in that they alert local government councils to the need for high levels of governance and accountability in terms of resident support to gain more trust and confidence.

The purpose of this paper is to identify individual level perception-based determinants influencing participation in government innovation and to examine the moderating effect of innovation cynicism upon those determinants.

Focusing on the case of Government 3.0, a Korean National Government innovation initiative, this study analyzes survey data regarding local public employee perceptions of the initiative through ordered logistic regression.

Multiple theoretical correlates of perceived desirability, perceived efficacy, performance expectancy, facilitating leadership, peer influence and demonstrable symbols have positive influences on participation in Government 3.0. Surprisingly, cynics of government innovation reported more active participation in Government 3.0 than non-cynics. While cynicism negatively moderates the influence of perceived desirability, performance expectancy and peer influence on Government 3.0 participation, the expected negative moderating effect does not correspond with the influence of perceived efficacy on innovation participation.

The study highlights the importance of innovation cynics, who are probably neither skeptics nor pessimists regarding recent changes but rather are concerned about recurring rhetoric and poor performance of government innovation.

This paper uses a supplemented health belief model (HBM) to explain the risk perception of COVID-19 coronavirus infection by potential and actual domestic and international travelers (from primarily European countries) in the early pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic and its influence on their travel intentions, decisions, and actions. With a health crisis of this magnitude, it is vital to understand the effect of COVID-19-associated containment measures and safety industry strategies in abating public fear and apprehension associated with non-essential travel.

The authors used a sequential transformative design consisting of a (QUAN + Qual) survey to explore the HBM dimensions. The questions in the quantitative part of the survey were disseminated online examine perceptions of the severity and susceptibility of the disease, travel risks and willingness to travel. The questions in the qualitative face-to-face survey examined, how international/cross-border travelers (from Spain and Germany) perceive the benefits and barriers of personal protective behavior and the potential influence of cues to action.

Results suggest that despite potential fear arousal and confusion associated with this infectious disease, people were willing to travel during periodic on-and-off travel restrictions and perceive the benefits of such travel as outweighing barriers like wearing masks, social distancing and other containment measures.

The conceptual model enabled the capture of real-time traveler's feelings about the benefits of traveling in the presence of the coronavirus and their perceptions of COVID-19 safety strategies used at destinations. This study adds to the lack of existing knowledge about potential psychological factors influencing travel decisions and behavior, including self-protective behavior. As borders reopen and we progress towards tourism and hospitality recovery, the results of this study can assist organizations, including health officials and governments, by reminding them of the likelihood of residual public fear when planning their COVID-19 safety strategies.

Given the scarcity of COVID-19 research on people's travel intentions and behavior following periods of social isolation due to lockdowns and border closures, this study captures sample public perceptions at two stages early in the pandemic. It is the first to apply all of the HBM dimensions with the addition of travel risk as a construct to investigate people's travel intentions and behaviors without vaccinations or treatments and to include cues to action in the investigation.

Despite the fact that the success of e-government services is contingent on their continuous usage, the continuance intention to use e-government services has received extremely little scholarly attention. This study aims to investigate the determinants of the residents’ continuous intention to use e-government services.

The research model was developed based on the integration of technology continuance theory along with trust, transparency and habit constructs. The authors adopted a survey approach to collect the data. The data were collected using an online questionnaire from 260 residents of Penang in Malaysia.

Results revealed that transparency has a positive effect on both perceived usefulness and trust. Contrary to earlier studies on e-government, perceived ease of use was found to have no significant relationship with residents' perceived usefulness. Similarly, the results also demonstrated that habit was not significantly related to users’ continuous intention to use e-government services. This study also applied importance-performance analysis map analysis and discovered that perceived usefulness has the highest impact on continuous intention to use e-government services, whereas satisfaction was found to have the least effect.

This study used an integrative framework and presented an in-depth knowledge of the basic aspects that contribute to the post-adoption usage process and resident satisfaction, trust and attitude towards e-government services.

During the early SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated masks “may not protect the wearer, but it may keep the wearer from spreading the virus to others”. Health officials revised mask guidelines to include both the wearer and others, but contradiction became a focal point for online debate and credibility. While revised policies eventually became adopted by the public, there was loss time and lives during this critical stage. This study investigates collectivist messaging on public policy support.

COVID-19 public policy hypocrisy was defined as the gap between supporting community policies while rejecting policies more likely to impact the individual. United States participants (N = 1,605) completed questionnaires. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted using SPSS PROCESS.

Those high on collectivism and high on global personal impact associated with lower COVID-19 public policy hypocrisy. These individuals indicated consistent support for community and individual policies, likely requiring personal sacrifices. Indirect conditional effects of lower conscientiousness associated with higher hypocrisy among those collectivistic.

Participants evaluated preference to original public safety ads, representative of basic societal and individual benefits. Those higher on collectivism preferred societal “we” versus individual “me” public safety ads. Implications discuss benefits of personal and communal public health messaging in an individualistic society so businesses can reopen. Entrepreneurs experienced major economic setbacks that effective public health policies could have mitigated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors affecting the intention of social networking sites (SNS) users to comply with government policy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on the theory of appraisal and coping, the research model is tested using survey data collected from 326 SNS users. Structural equation modeling is used to test the research model.

The results show that social support has a positive effect on outbreak self-efficacy but has no significant effect on perceived avoidability. Government information transparency positively affects outbreak self-efficacy and perceived avoidability. Outbreak self-efficacy and perceived avoidability have a strong positive impact on policy compliance intention through problem-focused coping.

The results suggest that both government and policymakers could deliver reliable pandemic information to the citizens via social media.

This study brings novel insights into citizen coping behavior, showing that policy compliance intention is driven by the ability to cope with problems. Moreover, this study enhances the theoretical understanding of the role of social support, outbreak self-efficacy and problem-focused coping.

The Chinese Government encourages firms to diffuse their operational-level environmental management (EM) into their organization’s mission and strategy to develop strategic EM to promote sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to utilize two concepts of institutional theory (isomorphic pressures and decoupling behavior) to assess how different institutional forces arising from Chinese macro-level factors (market pressure, business turbulence, legal voids, carbon policy, structural-level governmental interference and guanxi with government) influence the efficacy of strategic EM.

In partnership with a major consulting firm in China, the authors collect multi-informant survey data from 183 manufacturing firms drawn from a variety of industries for testing the hypotheses posited.

The efficacy of strategic EM in the sampled firms is confirmed by the positive association with environmental performance. The authors also find that the efficacy of strategic EM is weakened by market pressure, business turbulence and legal voids, whereas it is strengthened by structural-level governmental interference. However, carbon policy and guanxi with government do not impact it significantly.

To extend the findings on the environmental importance of strategic EM, future research can develop and validate a management framework to guide the adoption of strategic EM. With regard to the four valid macro-level factors influencing the efficacy of strategic EM, future research can identify the reasons (e.g. conflict with corporate functions) behind them to aid manufacturers to mitigate their negative influence or enhance the positive influence on strategic EM.

China’s Government and its manufacturers (or those sharing a similar institutional environment) can expand the scope of their EM efforts from operational-level EM practices to strategic EM. The findings on the valid macro-level factors have led to practical suggestions for government bodies and manufacturers to improve the efficacy of strategic EM adoption. Overall, the implications help achieve the higher levels of firm-level environmental performance and alleviate the global pollution problem.

A particular value of this work lies in the demonstration of combining institutional theory (organization decoupling, isomorphic pressures) with practical consideration such as guanxi with government in the particular institutional environment of China to help address an important and context-related problem, environmental performance.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led education institutions to move all face-to-face (F2F) courses online. The situation is unique in that teachers and students can make a direct comparison of their courses before (F2F) and after COVID-19 (online). This study aims to analyze teachers’ viewpoints for this unprecedented change.

The study followed a mixed-method approach within an ex post facto survey research design. Research tools were distributed among 200 Indian secondary school teachers following a heterogeneous purposive sampling technique. As the study was conducted during the pandemic backdrop researchers used Google forms and telephonic interviews to collect data.

Teachers viewed positively to this shift from F2F to online teaching-learning (OTL). They were found to have an overall moderate level of online teaching efficacy and where good efficacy prevails there found minimal concern for infrastructure, an attitude showing least concern for “what is not” and more concerned with “what they can do with what is having.” A statistically significant effect of teacher efficacy was found on their perception of OTL infrastructure that supports this strong conviction among few teachers. Statistical analysis revealed for every 1 standard unit increase in self-efficacy, the perceived OTL infrastructure was to be increased by 0.997 standard units which support the strong correlation between the two chosen cognitive variables (r = 0.8). Besides, teachers were not found as a homogeneous group concerning their reported readiness for online teaching yet, different subgroups of teachers exist which may require different approaches for support and counseling.

The paper reports an original empirical survey conducted in India and the write-up is based strictly on the survey findings only. An exclusive analysis of teachers’ views of their efficacy and perceived OTL infrastructure. At the same time, path-breaking in analyzing the chemistry between the two variables which will help improving apposite culture, practice and understanding of the digital pedagogy securing quality OTL in the long run.

This study aims to explore the efficacy of government policy directions in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by employing a panel of 22 countries throughout the 2020-second quarter of 2022.

The panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is employed to examine this phenomenon and to investigate the long-run effects of government policy decisions on infection and mortality rates from the pandemic.

The study reveals the following key findings: (1) Income support and debt relief facilities and stringent standards of governments are associated with reduced infection and death rates. (2) The response of governments has resulted in decreased mortality rates while simultaneously leading to an unexpected increase in infection rates. (3) Containment and healthcare practices have led to a decrease in infection rates but an increase in mortality rates, presenting another counterintuitive outcome. Despite the expectation that robust government responses would decrease infection rates and that healthcare containment practices would reduce mortality, these results highlight a lack of health equity and the challenge of achieving high vaccination rates across countries.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This study concludes by suggesting the importance of implementing economic support in terms of income, and debt relief has played a crucial role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 infections and reducing fatality rates.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This research makes a unique contribution to the existing literature by investigating the impact of government responses on reducing COVID-19 infections and fatalities, specifically focusing on the period before COVID-19 vaccinations became available.

This paper aims to investigate the role of “perceived risks” in adopting mobile government (m-government) services in India.

Conceding that “privacy risks” are one of the major factors that influence the adoption of e-services, the impact of “perceived risks” alongside “social efficacy,” “influence” of significant others and “attitude” on the adoption of m-government services in India has been underlined here. Specifically, the study has been conducted with 311 actual m-government users and constructs have been derived from existing theories like Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Multiple regression analysis has been conducted to analyze the data focused on constructs as: Perceived Risks (PR), Influence (I), Self-efficacy (SE), Attitude (ATT) and Behavioral Intention to Adopt m-government services (BI).

Results show that while the respondents perceive that adoption of m-government services is risk-free and safe, there is no impact of the interpersonal relationships on m-government adoption. There is more inclination to adopt m-government services conceding that the respondents perceive that they have the self-efficacy to operate such services. M-government services are being tapped regularly by the respondents and there is more inclination to adopt m-government services among the public sector employees and self-employed respondents in comparison with the ones who are students or unemployed. In terms of age, those in the age group of 31–50 are more inclined to adopt m-government services in comparison with the rest.

Exploration of “perceived risks” and other factors has been less in the context of m-government studies. The present study fills the gap in two ways: first, it undertakes the investigation in a developing country conceding that empirical studies on m-government adoption are few in Indian context, and second, it throws light on the role of “adoption” of m-government services in contrast with the “use” of e-government services.