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This study aims to explore why Chinese consumers pay for digital content products by investigating the experiences of Chinese consumers living in first-tier and second-tier cities regarding paid digital knowledge products.

A total of 19 in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data, and the phenomenological reduction was adopted to analyze data.

This study reveals that Chinese consumers use paid digital knowledge products to alleviate stress and anxiety stemming from real-life competition and the fear of falling behind. While consumers acknowledge the limited assistance that paid knowledge products can offer, their acceptance and expectations of paid digital knowledge products remain positive.

Paid digital knowledge represents an innovative phenomenon, with few scholars outside China having studied it. This study contributes a conceptual framework to understand the motivations of Chinese consumers with high purchasing power residing in first-tier and second-tier cities to invest in digital content.

Restaurant and foodservice workers who were formally “essential” throughout the global pandemic were disproportionately subjected to layoffs and furloughs, and are now slowly returning to the industry with expectations of equitable pay and benefits. Given the recent acceleration of the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals and its focus on decent work, the purpose of this study was to determine if restaurant consumers would be willing to pay for decent work that supported the social sustainability of restaurant workers.

Data were collected from 317 restaurant consumers during August 2023. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the Decent Work Scale adapted for consumers. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the full behavioral model of decent work predicting willingness to pay, while bootstrapping was used to test the mediation.

The adapted Decent Work Scale for consumers strongly predicted their willingness to pay through a full mediation of Theory of Planned Behavior constructs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control).

This study demonstrated that restaurant consumers were willing to pay for the decent work and social sustainability of restaurant workers. This study validated an adapted Decent Work Scale in the consumer context, whereas prior research utilizing the scale was of worker self-reports of decent work.

This study aims to understand differences in perceptions of CEO compensation between working adults and business students in the USA before and after reading CEO pay information.

Participants completed a survey about their perceptions of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation before and after reading CEO compensation information that included the median CEO-to-employee ratio and salary in 2021.

Working adults and business students had similar levels of concern about CEO compensation. Participants were more concerned with CEO compensation after reading information about CEO pay but also believed CEO pay was more justified, contrary to equity theory (Adams, 1965). Among the student and adult samples, women and noninvestors were more likely to have concerns about CEO compensation than other participants.

Individuals may not understand the components of CEO compensation, and the size of CEO salaries may be difficult to comprehend. Educators and the media should consider presenting CEO compensation information in a different way, for example, how long it takes a CEO to earn as much as an average employee does annually, for the public to understand how much more CEOs are paid than their employees.

Little research exists on CEO compensation understanding and concerns. This research opens the opportunity for future studies on CEO compensation, for example, that consider variables other than CEO pay (e.g. equity and other forms of compensation) and what individuals believe CEOs do that justifies their high compensation.

This study investigates the relationship between media and social media sentiment and the likelihood of CEO pay cuts. The purpose is to examine whether and how these pay cuts influence market reactions. The study aims to provide insights into how external sentiment affects corporate decision-making and market perceptions, particularly in the context of CEO compensation.

Using a sample of 6,331 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2021, this paper employs quantitative analysis to assess the association between media and social media sentiment and CEO pay cuts. We utilise company DEF14A SEC filings to identify CEO pay cut dates and capture traditional media and Twitter sentiment 30-days prior to these filing dates.

We find a negative association between media and social media sentiment and CEO pay cuts, indicating that firms facing more negative sentiment are more likely to engage in pay cuts. We find evidence that CEO pay cuts are negatively correlated with market reactions, suggesting markets generally do not seem to favour decisions to cut CEO pay. This relationship, however, is complex and influenced by multiple factors, including the nature of sentiment and the specific components of CEO compensation.

The study faces limitations in identifying the varying degrees of pay cuts and their motivations. Additionally, the content of news articles and Twitter posts used to measure sentiment was not specifically identified, which may affect the accuracy of sentiment measurement.

This research offers valuable insights for managers and corporate decision-makers, highlighting the potential impact of public sentiment on critical executive compensation decisions.

The study underscores the influence of media and social media in shaping public opinion and driving corporate actions, highlighting the growing intersection between social perceptions and corporate governance. This has broader implications for how firms engage with media platforms and manage their public image, particularly in the realm of executive compensation.

We are the first to study the impact of media and social media sentiment on CEO compensation decisions and market reactions. By employing DEF14A filings as event dates for market reaction studies, we offer a novel approach to analysing the impact of executive compensation changes on market behaviour.

Conceptually, pay transparency is in its infancy. But it is highly likely to stay – and organisations need to get their head around it before they are caught on the back foot. This study will advise organisations on their approach to total compensation and performance.

This study specifically focused on the following: There are many positives, not least saving time and effort, plus creating synchronicity between expectations from the moment a role is advertised to the moment someone leaves. The difficulty is the current cost of living crisis – for some employees, full pay transparency will show that they are already well paid, whereas others will feel frustrated with their pay, as well as any pay freezes. Transparency also needs to go deeper than the pay itself and should factor total compensation and “life” at the organisation. It needs to show flexible working, supporting employees as people – the employee value proposition.

Pay transparency is harder to unpick and reshape than it is to implement from the start. So, it is more common for start-ups than those with decades of legacy processes across countries, sites, entities or linked, perhaps, to length of service. However, that is out of line with the expectations of many in the modern workforce. Many organisations are being challenged, plus there is a risk that they are seemingly hiding something. There are, too, significant variations between industries, which creates complexities.

This paper is written exclusively for strategic HR review.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

The aim of the study is to explore the links between multiple personal income tax regimes, pay dissatisfaction, employee lateness and absenteeism. Accordingly, this paper examines the relationships between income tax policies, pay dissatisfaction and the work withdrawal behaviours of employees in the public service.

The study adopted a quantitative design, and data were collected through a structured questionnaire from a sample of 252 respondents from the Bayelsa State Civil Service in Nigeria. Data were analysed by applying multivariate regression and structural equation modelling through the use of Stata software version 12 and SmartPLS version 4.

The results demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between personal income tax regimes and pay dissatisfaction; there was a positive relationship between pay dissatisfaction and work withdrawal behaviour of employee tardiness and absenteeism and pay dissatisfaction mediated the relationships between personal income tax regimes and work withdrawal behaviours of public sector employees.

The study appears to be the first to explore the nexus between personal income tax regimes and pay dissatisfaction and withdrawal behaviours of employee tardiness and absenteeism as well as the mediating role of pay dissatisfaction in public service organisations.

Agency theory motivated this study, posing that leverage mitigates the agency problem. The aim was to examine whether leverage influences the relationship between executive-employee pay gaps (EEPGs) and firm performance. The study was conducted in the mining and retail sectors between 2012 and 2021.

Two EEPGs were featured based on their executive fixed pay and variable incentives accumulation. Proxies of firm performance were headline earnings per share; return on assets; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation; and return on stock price. Data were collected from 76 JSE-listed firms in the retail and mining sectors and analysed using the two-step generalised method of moments.

The results revealed the hybrid implication of the pay gap for firm performance in the retail and mining sectors of South Africa, depending on the performance measures emphasised. More importantly, the study shows that with the moderating effects of leverage, firms can improve their performance while shrinking the pay gap.

The results have implications for policy addressing income inequality, debt management, executive compensation and regulatory reforms in South Africa concerning productivity and remuneration decisions.

The article provides specific literature for retail and mining industries on pay gaps, shows that it is possible to reduce the pay gap without compromising performance and suggests a new measure of performance that is more attuned to pay gap effect measurement.

The rapid growth of the mobile money industry has been matched by a rise in mobile money fraud. The technology required to apprehend perpetrators of such fraud is nonexistent in most developing countries. Hence, the need for individuals to be willing to pay for insurance against such frauds is crucial. This paper aims to examine individuals’ willingness to pay for insurance against mobile money fraud in Ghana.

The paper uses nationally representative data collected from 4,266 adults (persons 18 years and above) in Ghana. Individuals’ willingness to pay premiums for protection against mobile money fraud was elicited by a single-bound dichotomous choice and open-ended contingent valuation designs.

On average, 24.34% of Ghanaians are willing to pay premiums for insurance against mobile money frauds, with more men (26.37%) being willing than women (22.56%). Similarly, the average monthly premium that men are willing to pay for protection against mobile money fraud is GH¢32.16 (US$8.16), while that of women is GH¢22.5 (US$5.62). Furthermore, the results show that years of schooling, income, previous fraud experience, and using the accounts for saving are all positively associated with willingness to pay. However, using other networks apart from MTN has a negative association with willingness to pay.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines willingness to pay for insurance against mobile money fraud. Thus, this is the first that estimate quantitatively how much mobile account holders will pay as premiums for insurance against mobile money fraud.

The growth of more contingent pay systems has been a key development in the 1980s and 1990s. Various contextual changes — such as the pattern of employment, the decline of collective bargaining and Government support for particular initiatives to encourage financial participation — has given employers an increasing freedom in determining both the composition and level of remuneration (Brown and Walsh, 1994). This new freedom has allowed new pay systems to develop which are, according to the prescriptive literature, much more contingent on individual business circumstances than in the past (Armstrong and Murlis, 1994; Schuster and Zingheim, 1992). Pay determination has become increasingly linked to the performance of the individual company or business unit, the team or work group and, of course, the individual employee. Concepts such as the “going rate”, the “rate for the job” and pay comparability have been challenged and, in some cases, replaced with new approaches to pay determination. These new approaches include “person related pay”, as opposed to “job related” (Mahoney, 1989; Gomez‐Meja and Balkin, 1992); more decentralised pay determination systems (Millward et al, 1990; Jackson, Leopold and Tuck, 1993); more “variable” or “at risk” pay (CBI, 1994i); and more flexible benefits schemes (IDS, 1991). Most importantly, the concept of “reward strategy” has emerged, the clear linkage of remuneration systems to business objectives and company culture (Hewitt Associates, 1991; Murlis and Armstrong, 1994; Gomez Meja and Balkin, 1992). A recent CBI/Wyatt publication on “Variable Pay” (CBI, 1994) concludes that employers are looking for payment strategies based around three criteria: