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Extensive research has made it possible for service climate (SC) to establish itself as “a pivotal construct from a practical and theoretical perspective in the services marketing and management literatures” (Auh et al., 2011, p. 427). Key to that interest is the role granted to SC in several important outcomes, such as customer satisfaction and loyalty. A closer look at the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence supporting such role reveals, however, several fragilities. The main purpose of this paper is to present some of those fragilities considered to be particularly relevant to identify possible ways to avoid them.

An extensive review of SC literature was conducted leading to the identification of several fragilities regarding the role of SC in customers experiences.

The literature review conducted revealed several limitations that warrant some caution regarding the general consensus concerning the role of SC in customers experiences.

The originality of this paper lies in the identification of several important issues regarding the arguments and empirical support that have been ignored in the literature regarding the role of SC in customers experiences.

This research addressed online customer-to-customer (C2C) incivility during digital service recovery.

To examine the effectiveness of managerial responses to online C2C incivility post a restaurant service failure, a 2 (Managerial response: general vs specific) x 2 (Failure severity: high vs low) quasi-experimental design was employed. A pretest was conducted with 123 restaurant consumers via Amazon Mechanical Turk, followed by a main study with 174 restaurant consumers. Taking a mixed-method approach, this research first asked open-ended questions to explore how participants perceived the restaurant’s motivation for providing a generic versus a specific response. Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS procedure was then performed for hypotheses testing.

The results revealed significant interaction effects of managerial responses and failure severity on perceived online service climate and revisit intention, mediated by trust with managerial responses.

This research yielded unique insight into C2C incivility management literature and industry practices in the context of digital customer service recovery.

Shifting to OLSL classes during the pandemic can bring learners ambivalent experiences: negative, positive or both appraisals toward the technologies. However, few studies have examined how ambivalent experiences can influence students' learning behaviors, specifically cyberslacking and active participation. Using the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, this study investigates the impact of challenge and hindrance appraisals on these learning behaviors.

This study uses a mixed methods approach to answer research questions. An interview was conducted to identify the key components of ambivalent appraisals, and a survey was conducted to empirically examine the impact of challenge and hindrance appraisals on learners' behaviors in online live streaming learning (OLSL) contexts. The data of 675 university students were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study found that hindrance appraisal leads to cyberslacking while challenge appraisal leads to active participation, but it can also cause cyberslacking. Social presence has a double-edged effect, acting as both a facilitator and inhibitor, strengthening the effect of hindrance appraisal on cyberslacking and the impact of challenge appraisal on active participation.

Prior studies have primarily focused on the negative side (techno-distress) of technology appraisals. This study simultaneously examines the positive side, techno-eustress, on learners' behaviors in OLSL contexts, and explores the moderating effects of social presence. This study contributes to the technostress and technology adaptation literature by revealing how technology-induced ambivalent appraisals impact behavioral responses. It offers important theoretical and practical implications for education tool designers.

With the increasing popularity of live streaming, the exploration of online behaviors on live streaming platforms has become a research hot spot in academia. However, the literature lacks cross-cultural investigations into live streaming addictive (LSA) behaviors among viewers. To address this gap, based on stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory and motivation theory, this study investigates how information seeking, sensation seeking and community commitment (stimulus) affect hedonic and utilitarian motivation (organism), which in turn influence viewers’ LSA behaviors (response). This study also compares American and Chinese viewers to understand how LSA behaviors differ across national cultures.

We surveyed live stream viewers in both nations, collecting 758 valid samples including 377 Chinese respondents and 381 American respondents for use with the research model. A partial least squares (PLS) approach is employed for data analysis.

The results show that information seeking increases utilitarian motivation, sensation seeking increases hedonic motivation, and community commitment strengthens both hedonic and utilitarian motivation. Both hedonic motivation and utilitarian motivation positively affect LSA behaviors. In addition, based on cross-cultural analysis, we found that there was a significant mediating path common to the respondents in China and the USA (i.e. sensation seeking ? Hedonic motivation ? LSA).

The findings of this study make theoretical contributions to live streaming research and offer practical guidance for live streaming firms to formulate proper marketing strategies. Last, this study outlines several limitations and possible directions for future research.

This paper investigates whether China's R&D tax deduction policy triggers firms to manipulate their R&D expenditures upward.

This paper employs the ratio of actual tax savings as a proxy for the benefits of the R&D tax deduction policy based on manually collected and systematically cross-checked data. The relationship between tax benefits and abnormal R&D spending is estimated in a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies for the period 2007–2018.

The findings suggest that tax deductions lead to positive abnormal R&D spending and that this deviation in R&D spending may be attributed to firms' upward R&D manipulation for tax avoidance. The results also indicate that this behavior is more significant for the period after the policy revision, in non-HNTEs (high and new technology enterprises), and in firms with a high ratio of R&D expenses.

It is difficult to establish a sophisticated and unified model to identify the specific strategy of upward R&D manipulation that firms use to obtain tax benefits.

Managers should take into account upward R&D manipulation when designing governance mechanisms. Policymakers in developing countries may further pursue preferential tax policies that cover every stage of innovation activities gradually; the local provincial governments need to leverage their proximity and flexibility advantages to develop a tax collection and administration system.

This study contributes to the understanding of the complex effect of R&D tax incentives and helps more fully illuminate firms' upward R&D manipulation behavior from the perspective of tax planning strategies, which are underexplored in previous research.

Social networking services (SNS) empower users with a robust capability to connect with others and manage their social relationships. However, as the size of users’ social networks increases, coupled with the inherent boundary-spanning technical features of SNS, users are faced with unprecedented role stresses. This, in turn, leads to maladaptive lurking decisions. This study delves into the mechanism of this technology-induced decision-making process among SNS users.

Survey data were collected from 491 Chinese WeChat Moment users. The model and hypotheses testing were conducted using SmartPLS 4.0.

Our findings indicate that both social network size and boundary spanning have a positive influence on role conflict and role overload. Both role conflict and role overload significantly contribute to SNS fatigue, which further intensifies users’ lurking intention. Furthermore, SNS fatigue fully mediated the relationship between role conflict and lurking intention, and partially mediated the relationship between role overload and lurking intention.

Our study offers a fresh viewpoint for comprehending lurking behaviors on SNS, furnishing practical insights for platform providers. Additionally, it paves the way for future research into the deeper mechanisms driving SNS lurking behaviors, by providing a novel construct (i.e. boundary spanning) to distinguish and measure the unique social environment of SNS.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of China’s Green Credit Guidelines (GCG) policy on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores of restricted enterprises and examine firm’s speculative behavior in response to the policy.

This paper views the GCG policy proposed in 2012 as a quasinatural experiment and uses difference-in-differences (DID) model to evaluate its influence on the ESG scores of Chinese nonfinancial A-share listed enterprises from 2007 to 2019. Robustness tests include the propensity score matching (PSM)–DID method and permutation tests.

The GCG policy significantly increases the ESG scores of restricted enterprises, particularly enhancing environmental (E) performance. However, it only improves the social (S) and governance (G) performance of firms heavily reliant on bank credit, indicating speculative behavior by enterprises. Increased Government attention, a higher proportion of female executives and more developed local green finance reduce speculative behavior, while executives with financial backgrounds promote it.

Governments should mandate standardized ESG reporting and monitor restricted enterprises, banks should monitor speculative behavior and firms should integrate ESG into their long-term strategies to support sustainable development.

The results provide evidence of the effectiveness of implementing the GCG policy in China and offer guidance for better promoting green credit policy in developing countries, contributing to the transition toward a more sustainable future.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to explore if the GCG policy’s asymmetric effects on ESG components are due to enterprise speculative behavior and examines the factors influencing this behavior, providing insights for regulators to better implement the GCG policy to promote sustainable development.

With the widespread collection and utilization of user data, privacy security has become a crucial factor influencing online engagement. In response to the growing concern about privacy security issues on social media, this research aims to examine the key causes of social media users' privacy calculus and how the balance between perceived privacy risks and benefits affects users' privacy concerns and their subsequent willingness to disclose personal information.

The characteristics of the privacy calculus were extracted through partially structured interviews. A research model derived from privacy calculus theory was constructed, and latent variable modeling was employed to validate the proposed hypotheses.

Information sensitivity, experiences of privacy violations, social influence and the effectiveness of privacy policies influence users' privacy calculus. Privacy risk positively influences privacy concerns. Personal information disclosure willingness is positively influenced by privacy benefits and negatively influenced by privacy concerns, with both paths moderated by social media identification.

This study explores the key antecedents of users' privacy calculus and how these factors influence privacy concerns and subsequent willingness to disclose information on social media. It offers new insights into the privacy paradox observed within social media by validating the moderating role of social media identification on users' information disclosure willingness.

This study aims to identify which types of information quality influence purchase intentions the most in live streaming commerce and to examine the role of network size in this context.

We propose a model to investigate the correlation among the quality of different information in live streaming commerce, consumer trust, network size and purchase intention. An empirical analysis of 505 questionnaires was conducted by constructing a structural equation model.

The empirical findings indicate that information quality can directly enhance purchase intention and exert an indirect influence through the mediating factors of trust in products and streamers. Perceived network size positively moderates the relationship between information quality and trust in products. Of the five types of information, the quality of bullet-screen comments information is most important to consumers.

This study represents the first systematic analysis of how the quality of multiple types of information in live streaming commerce influences consumer trust and purchase intention, integrated within a unified framework. It uniquely introduces network size as a moderating variable, offering both theoretical insights and practical guidance for balancing information quality with network size in live streaming commerce environments.

This study aims to examine how virtual influencers (VIs) affect purchase intentions in tourism and hospitality e-commerce live streaming (THCLS) by focusing on the roles of VIs’ source credibility, trust in products, trust in VIs, emotional engagement, parasocial relationships and influencer–product congruence.

Survey data from 416 active viewers of VIs in THCLS were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This study highlights the importance of the VIs’ source credibility, which positively affects trust in the product, trust in VIs and emotional engagement. However, source credibility does not have a positive impact on parasocial relationships. Trust in products positively influences trust in VIs. Emotional engagement and trust in VIs significantly influence parasocial relationships, which, positively affects purchase intentions. Influencer–product congruence strengthens the link between parasocial relationships and purchase intentions but does not moderate the relationship between trust in VIs and purchase intentions. No significant gender differences were observed, although minor discrepancies were noted in the effect of trust in products on trust in VIs. The importance–performance map analysis revealed that parasocial relationships are the most important factor influencing purchase intentions, while influencer–product congruence has the highest performance, trust in products is the least important and VIs’ source credibility has the lowest performance.

This study provides actionable insights for marketers leveraging VIs in the THCLS sector, emphasizing strategies to enhance VI credibility, foster parasocial relationships, ensure influencer–product congruence and adopt gender-neutral marketing approaches to effectively influence purchase intentions.

This study offers theoretical and practical insights into the role of VIs in THCLS, illuminating their impact on consumer behaviour and purchase intentions.