Search results

This study aims to explore how and when negative workplace gossip damages hospitality employees’ career growth, based on social information processing (SIP) and social cognitive career theories.

The authors gathered data from 379 individuals working in Guangzhou’s hospitality industry with a multi-wave survey.

This research found that negative workplace gossip harms career growth by damaging one’s personal reputation, and concern for reputation plays a moderating role. In particular, employees displaying greater concern for reputation are more inclined to perceive a diminished personal reputation when exposed to negative workplace gossip, resulting in more negative assessments of their career growth prospects in their organization.

This study has some practical implications. It highlights the need to mitigate negative workplace gossip by fostering a harmonious work environment, implementing reputation-focused training programs and providing support to employees who are particularly concerned about their personal reputations.

This research contributes to the knowledge by empirically revealing the career consequences of negative workplace gossip, incorporating personal reputation and concern for reputation in the theoretical model and advancing research in the vocational and gossip domains. It also enriches SIP and social cognitive career theories while focusing on the hospitality industry.

Illegitimate tasks are pervasive in organizations, presenting a challenge for employees to mitigate their impact. However, despite their significance, there has been limited research on when and how employees can adapt to these tasks successfully. To address this gap, this study aimed to discover the relationship between illegitimate tasks and adaptive performance, drawing upon the job demands-resources theory. Specifically, this study aimed to examine the moderating role of general self-efficacy and the mediating roles of employee problem-focused and emotion-focused coping.

To examine our hypotheses, we conducted a time-lagged survey, comprising 3 waves and involving 313 employees from twenty enterprises situated in Guangzhou and Sichuan, China. Ordinary least squares (OLS) was adopted to examine our hypotheses.

Our results suggested that general self-efficacy played a crucial role in determining how employees would cope with illegitimate tasks and their subsequent adaptive performance when confronted with illegitimate tasks. Notably, employees who possess high levels of general self-efficacy utilize problem-focused coping, improving adaptive performance in handling illegitimate tasks. Conversely, employees who possess low levels of general self-efficacy rely on emotion-focused coping, leading to lower levels of adaptive performance.

This research contributes to the literature on illegitimate tasks by uncovering when and how such tasks can either promote or hinder adaptive performance. These findings offer practical insights into ways to assist employees in managing illegitimate tasks effectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated unprecedented public fear, impeding both individuals’ social life and the travel industry as a whole. China was one of the first major countries to experience the COVID-19 outbreaks and recovery from the pandemic. The demand for outings is increasing in the post-COVID-19 world, leading to the recovery of the ride-sharing industry. Integrating protection motivation theory and the theory of reasoned action, this study aims to investigate ride-sharing customers’ self-protection motivation to provide anti-pandemic measures and promote the resilience of ride-sharing industry.

This study followed a two-phase mixed-methods design. In the first phase, the authors executed a qualitative study with 30 interviews. In the second phase, the authors used the results of the interviews to inform the design of a survey, with which 272 responses were collected. Both studies were conducted in China.

The present results indicate that customers’ perceived vulnerability of COVID-19 and perceived COVID protection efficacy (self-efficacy and response efficacy) are positively correlated with their attitude toward self-protection, thus leading to their self-protection motivation during the rides. Moreover, subjective norms and customers’ distrust appear to also impact their self-protection motivation during the ride-sharing service.

The present research provides one of the first in-depth studies, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, on customers’ protection motivation in ride-sharing services in the new normal. The empirical evidence provides important insights for ride-sharing service providers and managers in the post-pandemic world and promote the resilience of ride-sharing industry.

This study aims to investigate the most effective approach for governments and enterprises to combat desertification by considering the governance cycle. The focus is on understanding how the government can incentivize enterprises to actively engage in desertification combat efforts.

Both the government and the enterprise are treated as rational entities, making strategic choices for joint participation in combating desertification. Recognizing the dynamic nature of the desertification combat area, differential game models are employed to identify the optimal mode for combating desertification.

The findings underscore the significant influence of the governance cycle duration on the selection of desertification combat modes for government and enterprise. A cooperative mode is best suited to a short governance cycle, while an ecological subsidy mode is optimal for a longer cycle. Enhancing governance technology and shortening the governance cycle are conducive to combating desertification. Reducing taxes alone may not be an effective control strategy; rather, the government can better motivate enterprises by adopting tax rate policies aligned with the chosen governance mode.

This research contributes by elucidating the impact mechanism of the government cycle’s length on the desertification combat process. The results may offer valuable insights for governments in formulating strategies to encourage corporate participation in combating desertification and provide theoretical support for selecting optimal desertification combat modes.

Images and caption descriptions serve as important visual stimuli that influence consumer preferences; therefore, the current study focuses on property images and captions illustrated on the home pages of accommodation-sharing platforms. Specifically, this study investigates the relative importance of hue, brightness and saturation of a property image and caption description styles on potential consumers’ preferences.

A mixed-method approach was used, and a total of 293 valid responses were collected through a discrete choice experiment approach. Interviews were conducted for additional analyses to explore the detailed explanations.

The utility model demonstrated that the image’s saturation was the most critical attribute perceived by the respondents, followed by caption description style, hue and brightness.

This is one of the first studies to investigate the display of attributes on a digital accommodation platform by exploring potential customers’ stated preferences. This study focuses explicitly on images and captions illustrated on the home page of an accommodation booking platform. Detailed image investigation is also a new research area in sharing economy-related research.

With the great changes brought by information technology, there is also a challenge for the elderly's acceptance. This study aimed to determine the antecedents of elderly people's usage intention of financial artificial intelligent customer service (FAICS) and to examine the relationships between various factors and thus to help them better adapt to the digital age.

A mixed method, including the qualitative and quantitative study, was utilized to explore answers of the research questions. As the qualitative study, the authors used semi-structured interviews and data coding to uncover the influencing factors. As the quantitative study, the authors collected data through questionnaires and tested hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The results of data analysis from interviews and questionnaires suggested that perceived anthropomorphism and virtual identity of elderly users have a positive impact on their perceived ease of use, and the perceived intelligence of elderly users positively influences their perceived ease of use, satisfaction and perceived usefulness. Additionally, the elderly's cognition age can moderate the effects of perceived usefulness and satisfaction on their usage intention of FAICS.

This study contributes to the literature by taking the elderly group as the research participants and combining those influencing factors with technology acceptance model and information systems success model. The findings provide a basis for accelerating the promotion of FAICS and help address the problem that the elderly have difficulty adapting to a new technology.

Work interruptions (WIs) due to social media are becoming more and more common in the daily lives of organizations. However, the relationship between WI and work performance of employees is still unclear. This study aims to investigate the effects of WIs due to social media on employees' work performance in terms of different mechanisms; it also considers the moderating role of social media usage.

Using the jobs demands-resource (JD-R) model, this paper proposes a research model to investigate the effects of WIs on employee work performance from the perspective of the enabling mechanism and burden mechanism. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data of 444 employees.

The results show that (1) with regard to the enabling mechanism path, WI has a positive effect on employees' sense of belonging, which further has a positive effect on employees' work performance; (2) with regard to the burden mechanism path, WI has a positive effect on employees' interruption overload; however, the effect of employee interruption overload on employees' work performance is not significant, and (3) social media used for either work or social purposes can strengthen the relationship between WI and interruption overload, while social media used for work-related purposes can reduce the relationship between WI and a sense of belonging.

First, this paper contributes to the WI literature by clarifying how WI affects employees' work performance through different mechanisms, namely the enabling mechanism and the burden mechanism. Second, this paper contributes to the WI literature by revealing a boundary condition, namely social media use, between WI and a sense of belonging and between WI and employees' interruption overload.

Prior research on user-generated content (UGC) contributions has primarily focused on self-centered or other-centered motives, paying limited attention to the concept of enlightened self-interest, in which both motives coexist in a single organism. Additionally, the factors influencing enlightened self-interest and their effects in different circumstances are yet to be explored. Drawing on theoretical lenses rooted in the switching barriers perspective and stimulus–organism–response framework, this study posits that dedication-based switching barriers (community–member relationship quality, member–member relationship quality, and content attractiveness) positively relate to enlightened self-interest, whereas constraint-based switching barriers (switching costs) moderate the relationship between dedication-based switching barriers and enlightened self-interest in social media communities (SMCs). Members' enlightened self-interest in turn influences both the creation and co-creation of UGC.

This study comprised two quantitative studies: an online survey-based study (Study 1) and an online scenario-based experiment (Study 2). Study 1 surveyed 613 respondents, while Study 2 included 749 participants. Both studies employed structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques for analysis.

The findings indicate that dedication-based switching barriers positively affect users' enlightened self-interest, which in turn is positively associated with UGC creation and co-creation. Switching costs moderate the relationship between relationship quality (community–member and member–member) and enlightened self-interest.

This study complements the current understanding of how the association between dedication- and constraint-based switching barriers and users' enlightened self-interests influence user-generated contributions.

Chatbots have been explored as a novel approach to enhancing consumer engagement by delivering more enjoyable, personalized services. This research aims to investigate the mechanism through which anthropomorphic elements of chatbots influence consumers' intentions to use the technology.

This research introduces five key concepts framed through the “computers-are-social-actors” (CASA) paradigm: form realism (FR), behavioral realism (BR), cognitive trust (CT), entertainment (EM) and chatbot usage intention (CUI). An online questionnaire garnered 280 responses from China and 207 responses from Indonesia. Data collection employed a combination of purposive and snowball sampling techniques. This research utilized structural equation modeling through the analysis of moment structures (AMOS) 27 software to test the hypotheses.

(1) FR positively predicts CT and EM, (2) FR negatively predicts CUI, (3) BR positively predicts CT and EM, (4) BR positively predicts CUI and (5) Both CT and EM mediate the relationship between FR and CUI, as well as between BR and CUI.

This research enriches the current literature on interactive marketing by exploring how the anthropomorphic features of chatbots enhance consumers' intentions to use such technology. It pioneers the exploration of CT and EM as mediating factors in the relationship between chatbot anthropomorphism and consumer behavioral intention. Moreover, this research makes a methodological contribution by developing and validating new measurement scales for measuring chatbot anthropomorphic elements.

Compared to traditional (domestic) e-commerce consumers, cross-border electronic commerce (CBEC) consumers may face greater information asymmetry in the CBEC purchase process. Given this background, however, the literature has paid limited attention to the informational antecedents that influence consumers' perceptions of transaction costs and their CBEC purchase intentions. To fill this gap, this study integrates the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and transaction cost theory (TCT) to develop a model for exploring how product (website informativeness, product diagnosticity and website interactivity as the central route) and external (country brand, website policy and vendor reputation as the peripheral route) informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs in terms of uncertainty and asset specificity and their CBEC purchase intentions.

This study employs a survey approach to validate the model with 766 Generation Z CBEC consumers based on judgment sampling. The partial least squares (PLS) technique is adopted for data analysis.

The results show that all the proposed central and peripheral informational antecedents reduce consumers’ perceptions of uncertainty and asset specificity, which in turn negatively influences their CBEC purchase intentions.

Through this investigation, this study increases our understanding of how product and external informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs, which subsequently determine their CBEC purchase decisions. This study offers theoretical contributions to existing CBEC research and has practical implications for CBEC organizations and managers.