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This paper aims to investigate the impact of digital inclusive finance on entrepreneurial activities in rural areas, as well as the underlying mechanisms and the variations of this impact across regions and household characteristics.

Utilizing the China Household Finance Survey Data, this paper applies the Two-Stage Least Squares with instrumental variables to assess the effect of digital inclusive finance on rural entrepreneurship.

The empirical findings indicate that digital inclusive finance significantly promotes entrepreneurial activities in rural areas by alleviating credit constraints, reducing financial information barriers, and altering risk attitudes for rural households. Additionally, this effect is more pronounced in the eastern region of China and for the “opportunity entrepreneurial activities.” Furthermore, the impact varies across rural households' income and consumption status, as well as the personal characteristics of household heads.

Firstly, this study broadens our understanding of the mechanisms through which digital inclusive finance influences entrepreneurial activities, thereby filling a gap in existing entrepreneurship research. Secondly, the study's findings affirm the inclusive nature of digital finance, contributing significantly to the literature on regional equality and illuminating potential pathways toward achieving “common prosperity.”

In the tourism sector, fully unmanned and partially unmanned hotel models serving customer segments from different income groups are increasing. Analyzing examples of unmanned hotels worldwide and their practices is crucial for understanding the automation systems used, the smart technologies employed, and the opportunities and challenges these hotels present, as well as for gaining insights into their impacts on the tourism sector.

The data used in this research were obtained from secondary sources. One of the qualitative research methods, document analysis, was used for the analysis of these sources. The content analysis technique was used in the analysis of the data. A seven-stage systematic review process was used in the research. This seven-stage review process consists of the following stages: (1) determining the review objectives and formulating research questions; (2) identifying search terms and selection criteria; (3) conducting a search for unmanned hotel applications before clarifying exclusion and inclusion criteria; (4) evaluating the quality and relevance of unmanned hotel applications; (5) identifying content analysis review variables; (6) conducting content analysis; and (7) analyzing and reporting the findings.

In traditional hotel management, the innovations brought by digitalization and automation are transforming the guest experience and increasing operational efficiency. Unmanned smart hotels are equipped with various technological solutions, such as voice-controlled AI assistants, smart room control systems, AI-based concierge services, and robotic room service. These hotels are redefining roles and expectations within traditional hotel management, while simultaneously reducing costs and enhancing efficiency. Analyses indicate that unmanned smart hotels particularly appeal to specific customer segments, such as business travelers, and are becoming increasingly popular. These hotels offer advantages such as allowing guests to perform self-check-in, control their rooms, and receive necessary services via robots.

The universe of the research consists of all currently operating unmanned hotels worldwide. As a result of the research, 18 examples of unmanned smart hotels were identified. Hotels within the same chain with identical applications and processes were considered as a single example. Therefore, the research sample consists of 18 hotels.

By integrating these technological advancements, the hospitality and tourism industries can mitigate the impact of staff shortages, maintain high service standards, and improve operational efficiency. This approach allows businesses to adapt to changing workforce dynamics while continuing to deliver exceptional guest experiences. In conclusion, the significance and impact of unmanned smart hotels in the travel industry are growing. These hotels have the potential to shape the role of technology in the hospitality sector and influence future trends. Therefore, the adoption and development of unmanned smart hotels are important considerations for hotel operators and industry experts.

This study explores the impact of ethical and authentic leadership on employees' workplace perceptions, focusing on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), trust in leader, commitment, employee voice and empowerment in independent hotels across two contrasting Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) clusters: Germanic and Middle-Eastern clusters. It examines how national culture influences these relationships in the hospitality industry.

Data were collected from 1,678 employees in independent hotels in the Germanic European cluster (Germany and the Netherlands) and the Middle-Eastern cluster (Qatar and Turkey) using selective and snowball sampling techniques. Hypotheses were tested using two-stage structural equation modelling.

Ethical leadership significantly affects employee voice in Germany and the Netherlands but not in Qatar and Turkey. Authentic leadership positively influences employee voice in Qatar, Turkey and Germany but does not significantly impact trust in leader in any of the four countries. The study underscores the role of cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping these relationships.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of ethical and authentic leadership on key organisational variables in culturally diverse contexts within the hospitality industry. The findings highlight the necessity of considering national culture in leadership practices and suggest practical implications for independent hotels to adapt their leadership approaches to enhance employee outcomes. Future research should explore cultural dimensions as moderators in organisational relationships.

Given that a prerequisite for COVID-19 transmission is the interaction between individuals, it is reasonable to suspect that transportation networks may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19. This study uses the air transportation network to quantify the risk of COVID-19 spread in the United States. The proposed model is applied at the county level and identifies the risk of importing COVID-19-infected passengers into a given county. We also undertake an examination of the factors influencing the spread of COVID-19 in relation to air travel. Utilizing an extensive dataset encompassing various socioeconomic, demographic, and healthcare-related variables, our results indicate a positive relationship between these factors and the relative risk of COVID-19 spread, highlighting the pronounced impact of population density, air travel volume, and larger household sizes on increasing travel-related risk. Conversely, greater healthcare capacity, particularly in terms of hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) beds, is associated with reduced risk. We provide estimates of expected relative risk for each county and a ranking that can be useful for informing public health policies to stem the spread of the virus by devoting resources such as screening and enhanced travel protocols to airports located in at-risk counties.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mechanisms of the overseas marketing assets needed for marketing dynamic capability in Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) settings. Marketing assets of foreign subsidiaries contribute to the dynamic capability of MNEs, which are crucial for their sustained competitiveness. This kind of mechanism attracts much attention in academia and industry. However, there are few studies on how dynamic capabilities are developed in MNEs considering the organizational structure of geographically dispersed assets in multiple locations. This paper aims to examine the effect of knowledge-based and relational-based marketing assets on dynamic marketing capabilities and the mediating effect of customer orientation on Chinese MNEs.

Integrating the dynamic capability approach and the international marketing literature, this study examines the impact of two types of marketing assets of foreign subsidiaries, focusing on knowledge-based and relationship-based marketing assets, on the dynamic marketing capabilities of Chinese MNEs. A large-scale empirical study of Chinese MNEs operating in overseas markets was performed, and the questionnaires were distributed and collected.

The results suggest a positive impact of knowledge-based and relationship-based marketing assets on marketing dynamic capability. We find that customer orientation has a positive mediating effect on the relationship between marketing assets and marketing dynamic capability. We also find that the competitive strength of the overseas market negatively moderates this relationship.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature with a more fine-grained understanding of marketing assets and marketing dynamic capability, then provides theoretical guidance and management suggestions for the formulation and implementation of internationalization strategies of Chinese MNEs.

The findings outline several important implications for MNEs seeking into expand to overseas markets.

This paper contributes a novel, combined perspective on marketing assets and marketing dynamic capability.

Along with the development of the robotics industry, service robots have been gradually used in the hospitality industry. Nevertheless, service robot categorization and the fulfillment of the cognitive and emotional needs of consumers by hotel service robots have yet to be fully explored. Hence, the purpose of this study are to categorize hotel service robots, to explore consumers’ robot hotel experience, to identify the consumers’ preference of hotel service robot in general, to reveal consumers’ preference for hotel service robots based on their fulfillment of emotional needs and to examine the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks.

Through in-depth interviews with technology managers and questionnaire survey among consumers who have and have not had robot hotel stay experience to achieve the aforementioned research objectives.

Findings of in-depth interviews show that service robots can be categorized as check-in/out robots, artificial intelligence (AI) robots and service delivery robots. Results of questionnaire survey indicate that consumers prefer non-humanoid robots (n = 213, p = 47.87%) among check-in/out robots, the Xiaodu Smart Display (n = 163, p = 36. 63%) among the AI robots and the machine-shaped robot porter (I) (n = 178, p = 40.00%) among the service delivery robots.

This study provides implications, such as the adoption of robot-shaped AI with a screen display, to hotel managers to meet the needs of consumers regarding the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks of robots.

This study extends uncanny valley theory by identifying preference for the shape and functions of different categories of service robots and contributes to the limited literature on hotel robots.

This study explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations in Malaysia.

Following a detailed literature review, 37 ramifications are identified and divided into nine aspects. A self-designed survey is then employed to seek the perceptions of construction practitioners around the Klang Valley region regarding the significance of the ramifications. A total of 203 valid responses are subjected to statistical analyses to prioritise the ramifications.

All the potential ramifications are perceived to be significant, with the five utmost critical ramifications being rescheduling the project timeline, compliance with government SOP, delay in the handover project, compulsory COVID-19 test for all workers and the extra cost incurred to provide COVID-19 test for workers.

This study highlights the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations and deliberately informs construction organizations regarding the shortcomings of recent construction management. Besides, the insights suggested that industry practitioners devise corresponding strategies for project sustainability in future similar crises.

The findings serve as a valuable reference and are benign to industry professionals and researchers from developing nations, especially nations that share similar characteristics to Malaysia.

Stakeholder interests are complex, sensitive and highly uncertain and may influence the development of net zero carbon building (NZCB). However, this study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to explore the stakeholder interests towards achieving NZCB.

A total of 62 articles were identified from the Scopus database and thoroughly reviewed to extract relevant information on stakeholders' interest towards achieving NZCB.

A total of 28 stakeholder interests influencing the development of NZCB were identified from the literature and were classified into six major groups according to their uniqueness (economic, social, environmental, technological, political, regulatory and legal).

The findings of this study provide insight into the specific stakeholder interests towards achieving NZCB. Thus, the findings of this study could serve as a guide for future research, policy formulation and implementation to expedite the practice of building towards net zero carbon (NZC). Empirical studies are suggested in future studies to test and consolidate the theoretical claims of this study.

This paper undertakes a comprehensive systematic review of studies on stakeholder interests towards achieving NZCB, which is the least investigated in the literature.

Conceptual and empirical research over the past 20 years has moved the social media (SM) literature beyond the embryotic stage to a well-developed academic discipline. As the lead article in the special issue in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing on Cutting-Edge Research in Social Media and Interactive Marketing, this review and agenda article has two key goals: (1) to review key SM and interactive marketing research over the past three years and (2) to identify the next wave of high priority challenges and research opportunities.

Given the “cutting-edge” research focus of the special issue, this review and research agenda paper focused on articles published in 25 key marketing journals between January 2021 and March 2024. Initially, the search request was for articles with “social media, social selling, social commerce” located in the article title, author-selected key words and journal-selected keywords. Later, we conducted searches based on terminology from articles presented in the final review. In total, over 1,000 articles were reviewed across the 25 journals, plus additional ones that were cited in those journals that were not on the initial list.

Our review uncovered eight key content areas: (1) data sources, methodology and scale development; (2) emergent SM technologies; (3) artificial intelligence; (4) virtual reality; (5) sales and sales management; (6) consumer welfare; (7) influencer marketing; and (8) social commerce. Table I provides a summer of key articles and research findings for each of the content areas.

As a literature review and research agenda article, this paper is one of the most extensive to date on SM marketing, and particularly with regard to emergent research over the past three years. Recommendations for future research are integrated through the paper and summarized in Figure 2.

Consumer welfare is one of the eight emergent content areas uncovered in the literature review. Specific focus is on SM privacy, misinformation, mental health and misbehavior.