Search results

Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings.

We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects.

The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare.

These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare.

We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies.

Drawing on affective events theory, the purpose of this paper was to investigate direct and indirect relationships between perceived organizational politics and workplace cyberbullying (WCB) perpetration mediated through anger, as well as to examine the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

The sample comprised 534 white-collar employees who were employed in a variety of service industries, including banking, higher education, telecommunications, health care and insurance in Islamabad, Pakistan. Data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique in Amos.

Results demonstrated that perceived organizational politics has a direct positive effect on WCB perpetration. Moreover, results indicated that perceived organizational politics evokes anger among employees that, in turn, triggers WCB perpetration. Results of a multigroup analysis revealed that the positive effect of perceived organizational politics on WCB perpetration was not significantly different between men and women. However, the positive relationship between perceived organizational politics and anger was significantly stronger for men than for women. Likewise, this study found a significantly stronger relationship for men than for women between anger and WCB perpetration. Anger partially mediated the relationship between perceived organizational politics and WCB perpetration only among men.

This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that perceived organizational politics triggers WCB perpetration directly and indirectly through its impact on anger. Moreover, this study identified gender differences in the experience and expression of anger in response to perceived organizational politics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of the literature on the variables associated with self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence.

Studies were identified through online databases, namely, PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC and EBSCOhost, as well as manual searches of reference lists of the selected studies. The target population included women who committed a criminal offence and have engaged in self-harm and aggressive behaviors during their incarceration, either in correctional institutions or in forensic psychiatric settings.

Of the 1,178 studies identified, nine met inclusion criteria. The studies were conducted in six different countries and included data from 6360 female participants. Few studies examine self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence which speaks to the still sparse literature on this topic. This review of the association between self-harm and aggression in women offenders highlights the finding that a small group of women is often involved in both self-harm and aggression. The authors have identified possible psychological factors associated with women engaging in both self-harm and aggression. The findings also reveal a possible connection between types of aggressive behaviors and specific time periods during sentences or stays in forensic psychiatry.

The findings of this scoping review have clinical implications which may be considered by both researchers and the case management teams of women involved in both self-harm and aggression.

Despite the limited number of studies examining self-harm and aggression in women, this scoping review highlights gaps in the literature as well as notable psychological correlates of women who engage in self-harm and aggression.

Algorithms are widely used to manage various activities in the gig economy. Online car-hailing platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, are exemplary embodiments of such algorithmic management, where drivers are managed by algorithms for task allocation, work monitoring and performance evaluation. Despite employing substantially, the platforms face the challenge of maintaining and fostering drivers' work engagement. Thus, this study aims to examine how the algorithmic management of online car-hailing platforms affects drivers' work engagement.

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress, the authors examined the effects of algorithmic monitoring and fairness on online car-hailing drivers' work engagement and revealed the mediation effects of challenge-hindrance appraisals. Based on survey data collected from 364 drivers, the authors' hypotheses were examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The authors also applied path comparison analyses to further compare the effects of algorithmic monitoring and fairness on the two types of appraisals.

This study finds that online car-hailing drivers' challenge-hindrance appraisals mediate the relationship between algorithmic management characteristics and work engagement. Algorithmic monitoring positively affects both challenge and hindrance appraisals in online car-hailing drivers. However, algorithmic fairness promotes challenge appraisal and reduces hindrance appraisal. Consequently, challenge and hindrance appraisals lead to higher and lower work engagement, respectively. Further, the additional path comparison analysis showed that the hindering effect of algorithmic monitoring exceeds its challenging effect, and the challenge-promoting effect of algorithmic fairness is greater than the algorithm's hindrance-reducing effect.

This paper reveals the underlying mechanisms concerning how algorithmic monitoring and fairness affect online car-hailing drivers' work engagement and fills the gap in the research on algorithmic management in the context of online car-hailing platforms. The authors' findings also provide practical guidance for online car-hailing platforms on how to improve the platforms' algorithmic management systems.

Motivated by the real-world practice that the boom of the online selling induces a higher product return as well, selecting which online channel mode indicates who takes ownership over the product and thus bears the loss of the product return. This paper aims to seek the optimal online channel modes for the two members in a platform supply chain in the presence of product returns.

This study aims to develop a platform supply chain that consists of one platform company and one supplier. Along with an offline distribution channel, the supplier can choose two alternative online selling modes (i.e. the reselling and agency modes) to sell its product through the online marketplace. This paper applies Stackelberg game to derive the equilibrium with different business scenarios and selects the optimal online channel modes for two parties, respectively. Moreover, this paper extends to a different supply chain with a reverse channel leadership and a different product return policy for testing the robustness.

Several interesting and important results are derived in this paper. Firstly, it is found that the relative pricing are largely relied on the costs of two channels. Secondly, the platform supply chain may benefit from a pure channel rather than the dual-channel when this channel enjoys a relatively low cost and/or a sufficiently high consumer preference. Then, the platform and the supplier act contradictorily when selecting their optimal online channel modes. To be specific, the platform motivates to choose the online reselling mode when both the commission rate and the slotting fee are relatively low, whereas the supplier is likely to select the online agency mode under this circumstance. Finally, a win-win situation in regards to the optimal online channel mode for two parties is achievable with numerical experiments.

Based on the analytical studies, the results derived in the authors’ work can provide managerial insights to assist the supplier and the platform company in determining the operational decision and selecting the optimal online channel mode to deal with consumer returns. In addition, appropriate commission rate along with slotting fee will make both parties achieve a win-win situation in determining their optimal online channel mode.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this paper makes the first move to determine the optimal online channel mode in the content of consumer returns and study how it is affected by different product return policies.

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate if the fear of career harm influences employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. The study further examines felt violation as the predictor of employees’ fear of career harm. The study also explores leader-member exchange as a boundary factor influencing the effect of felt violation on employees’ fear of career harm.

The data were collected in three waves from 402 professionals working in the information technology industry in Bengaluru, popularly known as the Silicon Valley of India.

The findings indicate fear of career harm as a critical predictor of employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. Moreover, felt violation indirectly impacts knowledge-hoarding behavior by enhancing employees’ fear of career harm. The adverse effect of felt violation was found to be stronger for employees with poor-quality relationships with their leaders.

The study carries important managerial implications as it uncovers the antecedents of knowledge hoarding. First, the human resource department can devise specific guidelines to ensure that the employees are treated the way they were promised. They can also organize training opportunities and mentoring so that the employees’ performance and growth do not get hampered, even if there is a violation. Moreover, such cases should be addressed in an adequate and expedited manner. More significantly, leaders can compensate for the failure of organizational-level levers by developing quality relationships with their subordinates.

The study advances the existing literature on knowledge hoarding by establishing a novel antecedent. Furthermore, it identifies how the employee-leader relationship’s quality can mitigate the adverse effect of felt violation.

Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to users' information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge – on online users' information privacy empowerment.

An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European population.

The main results show that users' procedural knowledge is positively linked to users' privacy empowerment. The relationship between users' declarative knowledge and users' privacy empowerment is partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users' privacy empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy is associated with heightened users' information privacy empowerment.

While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users' information privacy control. Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users' privacy literacy shaped by both users' declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users' information privacy empowerment. The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users' information privacy empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users' control over information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise users' awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more confidential transactions.

Disinformation on social media is a serious issue. This study examines the effects of disinformation on COVID-19 vaccination decision-making to understand how social media users make healthcare decisions when disinformation is presented in their social media feeds. It examines trust in post owners as a moderator on the relationship between information types (i.e. disinformation and factual information) and vaccination decision-making.

This study conducts a scenario-based web survey experiment to collect extensive survey data from social media users.

This study reveals that information types differently affect social media users' COVID-19 vaccination decision-making and finds a moderating effect of trust in post owners on the relationship between information types and vaccination decision-making. For those who have a high degree of trust in post owners, the effect of information types on vaccination decision-making becomes large. In contrast, information types do not affect the decision-making of those who have a very low degree of trust in post owners. Besides, identification and compliance are found to affect trust in post owners.

This study contributes to the literature on online disinformation and individual healthcare decision-making by demonstrating the effect of disinformation on vaccination decision-making and providing empirical evidence on how trust in post owners impacts the effects of information types on vaccination decision-making. This study focuses on trust in post owners, unlike prior studies that focus on trust in information or social media platforms.

The purpose of this study is to understand the psychological mechanism that affects consumer trust by focusing on the formation and influence process of psychological contracts, and taking this opportunity, explore the influence paths of food quality, food safety and service quality on consumer trust in the online food market, and provide theoretical suggestions for building trust in food businesses' consumers.

This study is based on an empirical investigation and uses partial least square structural equation modeling for analysis. Survey data were collected online from 359 APP users of online food transaction platforms in China.

Food quality, food safety and service quality influence consumer trust through the mediating effects of relational and transactional psychological contracts. However, the differences between these influencing paths are obvious and shift with changes in the marketing channels.

This study contributes to the body of consumer trust research by exploring online food transactions as an emerging trend in China. Some optimization strategies for food quality, food safety and service quality are provided for enterprises involved in online food transactions.

This is a pioneering study revealing psychological contracts as a missing but significant mediator between consumer trust and its antecedents.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of using the well-established Shared Lives approach to support survivors of domestic abuse with complex needs including those with learning and physical disabilities, older people and carers.

Survivors with complex needs are often excluded from traditional domestic abuse support services thus increasing their risk and making recovery impossible. Using the Shared Lives approach in suitable cases could address gaps in provision and improve the outcomes for survivors with disabilities, older survivors and carers.

The paper draws on evidence from reports and research about the experiences of these cohorts of survivors to explain how the Shared Lives approach could increase support options for specific categories of survivors.

Using the Shared Lives approach to support cohorts of victims/survivors who experience barriers to accessing support could improve outcomes for these people, reduce risk of serious harm and improve quality of life.

With the recent recommendation from Association of Directors of Adult Social Services around increasing use of Shared Lives, this paper provides one potential way to meet this recommendation.