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This study investigates how individuals' self-awareness (specifically, private and public self-awareness) and environment-awareness (perceived expertise, similarity and familiarity) shape herd behavior, encompassing discounting one’s information and imitating others. Drawing from latent state-trait theory, this research aims to discern the impact of these factors on purchase intention and behavior.

Longitudinal data from 231 users in Xiaohongshu, China’s leading social commerce platform, were collected to test the proposed model and hypotheses.

The findings from this study show that private self-awareness negatively influences discounting one’s own information and imitating others. Public self-awareness positively affects imitating others, while it does not affect discounting one’s own information. Perceived expertise diminishes discounting one’s own information but does not significantly affect imitating others. Perceived similarity and perceived familiarity are positively related to discounting one’s own information and imitating others. The results confirm different interaction effects between self-awareness and environment-awareness on herd behavior.

First, this contributes back to the latent state-trait theory by expanding the applicability of this theory to explain the phenomenon of herd behavior. Second, this study takes an important step toward theoretical advancement in the extant literature by qualifying that both self- and environment-awareness should be considered to trigger additional effects on herd behavior. Third, this study provides a more enlightened understanding of herd behavior by highlighting the significance of considering the interplay between self- and environment-awareness on herd behavior. Finally, this study also empirically confirms the validity of classifying self-awareness into private and public aspects.

This study aims to explore the relationship between board diversity and financial performance, examining how the presence of women on corporate boards affects metrics such as profitability. In addition, this study investigates how corporate governance and ownership structure influence gender diversity policies and the appointment of women to boards.

Two hypotheses were proposed and following regression models were developed for data analysis. The sample for this study consists of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in five years (2015–2019). The data was extracted from the Taiwan Economic Journal Taiwan database with the final data set comprised 9,379 firm-year observations.

This study indicates a positive association between board diversity and financial performance. Moreover, the relationship between female directors on the board and financial performance is stronger for firms with a higher percentage of institutional investors.

By highlighting how gender-balanced boards and engaged institutional shareholders improve profitability, this study suggests that actively recruiting women directors and pursuing governance reforms that empower shareholders can pay dividends for Taiwanese companies. The results make an important contribution to the limited research on diversity's impact within Asian corporate settings.