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The advent of ChatGPT has fundamentally changed the way people approach and access information. While we are encouraged to embrace the tool for its various benefits, it is yet to be known how to drive people to adopt this technology, especially to improve their life skills. Using implicit self-theories, the current research delineated the distinct way incremental (vs entity) theorists use ChatGPT, which in turn influences their attitude and hence the behavioural intention towards this technology.

The research employed a between-subject experimental design with 100 prolific participants. The manipulation materials were also pre-tested (N = 50). No confound effects such as content clarity, personal interest, and cognitive load were found. For the mediating effect, PROCESS Model 4 with bootstraps 5,000 and CI 95% were employed.

Individuals who believed that human ability to use technological applications was malleable, i.e. incremental theorists, were more likely to use ChatGPT to improve their life skills. On the other hand, when people believed that such an ability was fixed, i.e. entity theorist, they were less likely to use this new technology. The reason was that through the implicit belief, attitude towards ChatGPT was (more vs less) positively influenced which in turn motivated the behavioural intention. Further, the effect held beyond the impact of demographic factors such as age, gender, occupation, and educational level.

Even though implicit self-theories have received tremendous interest and empirical support, be it generic or domain-specific, the effect of implicit belief in technological applications was not clearly determined. The current research helps to extend the implicit self-theories into the technological domain, and in this case, the usage of ChatGPT. Moreover, the full mediating effect of attitude offers some thought about the revised models of technology acceptance. That is, perhaps it is the combination of (implicit) belief and attitude that may have better predictive power for technological adoption behaviour.

The study explores the impact of food influencers on consumer behaviour in the social media context. It assesses the interplay between the number of followers an influencer has and the type of content this influencer communicates to the audience. Doing so, the research contributes to the strategic refinement of influencer marketing practices, especially in the food industry.

The study employed an experimental between-subject design 2 (influencer type: micro vs macro) x 2 (content type: informational vs entertaining). It recruited 197 Prolific participants (45.7% female, Mage = 45.076), testing their perceptions towards the influencer and the endorsed product in the social media post.

There was a significant interaction between influencer type and content type on consumers’ attitudes towards and their willingness to buy the advertised product. Specifically, the notion that “the more followers, the better” may only be applicable when consumers peruse the content for entertainment purposes, whereas while they read it for information purposes, a micro influencer (with hundreds to thousands of followers) may have as much impact on consumer behaviour as a macro influencer (with hundreds of thousands to a million followers).

Our findings offer a nuanced understanding into the conventional wisdom that people often follow crowd behaviour. Using the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), we explicate when the number of followers matters and when the content type prevails.

The study attempts to examine the impact of the US-China trade war on Vietnamese exports to the United States, which has consistently served as a key market for Vietnamese goods and services in recent decades. The heterogeneous effects of the trade war on different export sectors are also evaluated.

The secondary data on Vietnamese exports to the US at a 6-digit level is collected from UN Comtrade. Besides, the difference-in-differences (DiD) method is employed to analyze the impact of the trade war on exports from Vietnam to the United States.

The findings revealed a 14% increase in total Vietnamese exports to the United States due to the trade war. Examining heterogeneous effects, certain industries, such as plastics, iron or steel articles, textiles and garments, and machinery and mechanical appliances, experience significant benefits. However, the study did not identify statistically significant effects on other sectors, such as electrical machinery products, agricultural and forestry, and furniture.

The paper is one among limited studies considering the causal effects of the trade war on a developing country, accounting for the heterogeneous effects on different export sectors.