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This article focuses on children’s social quality. Social quality can be understood as the extent to which people can engage in the social, economic, and cultural lives of their communities, under conditions that strengthen their well-being and potential. This article has two purposes. The first is to develop a league table ranking 23 countries’ children’s social quality based on comparative data. The second is to examine the correlation between these countries' commitment to promoting children’s social quality and reducing the child care gap, where childcare is insufficiently covered by child care leave or Early Childhood Education and Care.

We analyse the findings obtained from the children’s social quality league table and the child care gap league table for the 23 countries.

The findings reveal mixed relationships between the children’s social quality league table and the child care gap league table. These findings indicate that we cannot assume that countries prioritizing the reduction of the child care gap automatically possess the capacity or willingness to promote other aspects of children’s welfare. They also highlight the significance of encouraging countries to enhance their children’s social quality as a way to promote children’s welfare rather than solely reducing the child care gap.

Children’s social quality is a new research area. To explore it, this article makes an innovative attempt by exploring the connection between social quality, children’s welfare, and the child care gap. The league table of children’s social quality this article developed is the first of its kind.

Findings in the literature indicate leading financial analysts attract high levels of market attention and provide more accurate earnings forecasts prior to becoming all-star analysts. Furthermore, these analysts significantly impact the investment decisions of other market participants and thus the market price of assets. Therefore, this study examines the information role of leading financial analysts and identifies two significant conclusions. First, the positive outcomes of these analyst leaders are more informative and attract more followers. Second, informational herding by followers of these analysts is not as naïve as suggested in previous studies, as followers who smartly use information from analyst leaders tend to perform better. We also find that analysts who practice smart learning by studying and selectively employing analyst-leader decisions achieve better career outcomes.

The authors examine the role of analysts’ prior experience of forecasting for firms exposed to epidemics on analysts’ forecast accuracy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors examine the impact of analysts’ prior epidemic experience on forecast accuracy by comparing the changes from the pre-COVID-19 period (calendar year 2019) to the post-COVID period extending up to March 2023 across HRE versus non-HRE analysts. The authors consider a full sample (194,980) and a sub-sample (136,836) approach to distinguish “Recent” forecasts from “All” forecasts (including revisions).

The study's findings reveal that forecast accuracy for HRE analysts is significantly higher than that for non-HRE analysts during COVID-19. Specifically, forecast errors significantly decrease by 0.6% and 0.15% for the “Recent” and “All” forecast samples, respectively. This finding suggests that analysts’ prior epidemic experience leads to an enhanced ability to assess the uncertainty around the epidemic, thereby translating to higher forecast accuracy.

The finding that the expertise developed through an experience of following high-risk firms in the past enhances analysts’ performance during the pandemic sheds light on a key differentiator that partially explains the systematic difference in performance across analysts. The authors also show that industry experience alone is not useful in improving forecast accuracy during a pandemic – prior experience of tracking firms during epidemics adds incremental accuracy to analysts’ forecasts during pandemics such as COVID-19.

The study findings should prompt macroeconomic policymakers at the national level, such as the central banks of countries, to include past epidemic experiences as a key determinant when forecasting the economic outlook and making policy-related decisions. Moreover, practitioners and advisory firms can improve the earning prediction models by placing more weight on pandemic-adjusted forecasts made by analysts with past epidemic experience.

The uncertainty induced by the COVID-19 pandemic increases uncertainty in global financial markets. Under such circumstances, the importance of analysts’ role as information intermediaries gains even more importance. This raises the question of what determines analysts’ forecast accuracy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building upon prior literature on the role of analyst experience in shaping analysts’ forecasts, the authors examine whether experience in tracking firms exposed to prior epidemics allows analysts to forecast more accurately during COVID-19. The authors find that analysts who have experience in forecasting for firms with high exposure to epidemics (H1N1, Zika, Ebola, and SARS) exhibit higher accuracy than analysts who lack such experience. Further, this effect of experience on forecast accuracy is more pronounced while forecasting for firms with higher exposure to the risk of COVID-19 and for firms with a poor ex-ante informational environment.

The study examined the mediating and moderating roles of engagement and trust in the relationship between digital marketing and purchase intentions in the banking industry.

The study was quantitative and cross-sectional and used a sample of 462 respondents drawn through a combination of purposive and convenience sampling techniques. The main method of data analysis was the covariance-based structural equation modeling used to assess the paths relationships, using the Amos v.23 software. Prior to that, a confirmatory factor analysis was done to assess the reliability and validity of the instrument.

The empirical findings support the hypothesized relationship between digital marketing and purchase intention of banks’ services. Consumer engagement partially was found to mediate the association between digital marketing and purchase intentions. Finally, consumer trust moderates the relationship between digital marketing and consumer engagement.

Given digital marketing is evolving with new tools and channels coming up by the day, we recommend that future studies should explore others such as search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, content marketing, display advertisement etc. These will help give a broader perspective to the digital marketing strategy and its effect on consumers’ purchase intentions of banks’ services.

The study makes a strong case for the use of multi-channel and/or integrative approach, improving digital infrastructure and systems, adopting new and emerging digital tools/channels such as artificial intelligence, chatbots among others to facilitate digital marketing strategy implementation while ensuring active consumer engagement. It further underscores the need for managers to build trust and regularly engage consumers through their digital marketing channels.

The integration of the variables in the study provides new empirical understanding and extends knowledge in digital marketing theory. It also serves as a foundation for future studies to explore other areas in the digital marketing, especially from a developing digital economies perspective.

This study was conducted to achieve the following objectives: (1) determine the differences and reasons for using outgroup OSNs by gender, age and student groups (Mainland and Hong Kong [HK] students); (2) uncover the impact of online social networks (OSNs) on the development of Mainland–HK friendships and (3) determine the roles of different OSNs (social networking sites [SNSs] and instant messaging platforms [IMPs]) in the development of intercultural friendships in the real world.

To explore how OSNs facilitate (or inhibit) intercultural interactions, 198 students completed a questionnaire and 24 students participated in follow-up semi-structured interviews examining the role of OSNs in intercultural friendship development.

Results revealed that demographic and motivational preferences for using outgroup-OSNs differed among students. Both IMPs and SNSs helped students maintain friendships using little effort, whereas it tended to strengthen their existing social networks, rather than helping to start new friendships. IMPs helped develop a sense of “presence awareness”, strengthening pre-existing friendships and solidifying offline connections. SNSs also assisted students in exploring their shared interests while revealing their values and cultural differences.

The authors’ findings offered empirical evidence on social exchange theory and anxiety-uncertainty management theory regarding the perceived benefit of OSNs on students' friendship development.

The study sheds light on the differences between Mainland Chinese and HK students, including participants' perceptions of different friendship stages.

This study is interested in the roles of different SNSs and IMPs in intercultural friendship development, especially their strengths and weaknesses as perceived by students. Also, the authors are curious about how students select and use IMPs and SNSs differently according to their individual preferences and needs. To the authors’ knowledge, the dynamic link between online communication and intercultural friendship development has not been thoroughly examined in the field of intercultural communication.

In developing countries, rapid industrial growth frequently results in companies with high pollution levels, which in turn exhibit characteristics such as elevated emissions, increased energy consumption and overcapacity. In order to promote sustainable development among these heavily polluting firms, it is essential to implement a system of incentives and penalties that encourages environmentally responsible behaviour. China's environmental protection tax has replaced the previous pollution discharge fee (PDF) system. This tax aims to guide enterprises towards continuous adjustments and improvements in their production methods, increased investments in green technology, adoption of environmentally friendly production methods, reduced pollutant emissions and promotion of high-quality development. This chapter analyses how China's Environmental Protection Tax Law, enforced in 2018, affects the sustainable development capabilities of A-share listed companies in China. We utilise a difference-in-differences (DiD) model and measure total factor productivity (TFP) to quantify the impact of the tax law on these enterprises. TFP is a key indicator used to measure the effectiveness of resources utilised by enterprises in the production process. Our empirical analysis provides compelling evidence that the implementation of environmental protection taxes has significantly enhanced the TFP of heavily polluting enterprises. Importantly, the impact of these taxes is more pronounced for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in comparison to their private counterparts in this sector. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers in developing countries as they consider the design of environmental protection tax systems and supportive measures to promote sustainable development of companies with significant environmental impacts.

The presentation of all required criteria that a facade should fulfill needs to be revised, particularly considering novel perspectives on facade. This study aims to fill this need because leaving it unsolved leads the specialists to evaluate and design facades based on insufficient data resulting in imprecise decisions in both areas.

An exploratory study was conducted based on library resources to identify and extract the criteria, which were coded openly and axially, and categorized via a new standpoint. Shannon method was also used to analyze categories’ frequencies.

In total, 42 criteria were found and organized in five categories: “Environmental Aspects,” “Social Impacts,” “Economic Aspects,” “Efficiency and Effectiveness” and “Technical Issues.” This study adds 20 criteria, including “Natural Resource Depletion” and “Clients’ Preferences,” to facade assessment criteria compared to previous studies. Compared to similar research, “Technical Aspects” is augmented to this field's categorizations, whereas “Social Impacts” and “Environmental Aspects” are provided in a more extensive way.

The research proceeded until theoretical saturation; therefore, there is no claim to be the most comprehensive. The findings are instrumental to professionals for making practical decisions. The concentration and frequency of the literature will offer an insight to academics about the pioneering fields of facade development.

This study presents a comprehensive and up-to-date set of facade assessment criteria based on new approaches that see facade as a multifunctional component that must address various requirements beyond aesthetics.

This review identifies low self-concept clarity (SCC) as a source of consumer vulnerabilities and explains how the uncertainty associated with low SCC leads to processes that result in materialistic behaviors and overspending, product dissatisfaction, and potential self-harm. Processes include uncertainty reduction efforts through symbolic self-completion and social comparison, responses to everyday self-concept threats that result in feelings of deficiency and reduced consumption constraints, and susceptibility to interpersonal and marketer influences. In addition, the negative association between SCC and materialism is explained, risk factors for low SCC are described, and the need for research to help low SCC consumers deal with their vulnerabilities is explored.

Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Philippines has undergone the “new normal” transition, creating a strategic recovery effort to reinvigorate the industry. In tourism, these transitions aim to safeguard employees' and guests' health and safety, ensure continuity of business operations, boost tourism confidence leading to satisfaction, and establish a resilient and sustainable tourism industry in the postpandemic era. Hence, this chapter employs a system thinking leveraging a causal loop diagram (CLD) to construct a comprehensive roadmap for Philippine tourism's postpandemic resurgence through the system thinking lens. The CLD visually illustrates the inter-related factors influencing the recovery process, encompassing collaborative engagements, innovations, economic revitalization, and health and safety protocols. By analyzing the causal relationships among these variables, this chapter explicates the dynamic and interconnected nature of the postpandemic recovery leading to the recovery of the Philippine tourism industry, especially in the context of thinking small. Through this chapter, thinking small could involve a shift toward localized solutions and community-focused initiatives that allow them to foster local economies, build resilience, and create a more inclusive and sustainable postpandemic recovery.

In this study, we examine the influence of a firm’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on analysts’ stock recommendations and earnings forecast accuracy in the Chinese context.

We take a textual analysis approach to analyst research reports issued between 2010 and 2019, and differentiate between two distinct analyst categories: “sustainability analysts,” which refer to those more inclined to incorporate ESG information into their analyses, and “other analysts.”

Our evidence indicates that sustainability analysts tend to be significantly more likely than others to provide positive stock recommendations and demonstrate enhanced accuracy in forecasting earnings for companies with superior ESG performance. Our additional analyses reveal that this finding is particularly prominent for analysts who graduated from institutions emphasizing the protection of the environment, those recognized as star analysts, those affiliated with ESG-oriented brokerages, and forecasts made by analysts in the later part of the sample period. Our findings further indicate that sustainability analysts exhibit a more pronounced negative response when confronted with a negative ESG event.

In general, the evidence from this study reveals the interplay between ESG factors and analyst behavior, offering valuable implications for both financial analysts and sustainable investment strategies.