Search results

Social group system and social tagging system, which leverage the psychological mechanisms underlying group influence and social tags to drive consumer behaviors, have been prevalent in the social commerce platform. However, limited studies have examined how the affordances of social group system and social tagging system influence consumers’ social shopping behavior. The purpose of this study is to examine the formation of social shopping behavior in the social commerce platform.

Combining affordance theory with dual-congruity theory, we develop a model to examine how the affordances of social group system and social tagging system influence consumers’ social shopping behavior through the underlying self-congruity and functional-congruity processes. We empirically validate the research model using a multimethod approach, including an instrument development study and a field survey study.

Our empirical findings show that social support positively influences relational identity, while it has a nonsignificant effect on social identity. Social interactivity positively influences relational identity and social identity. Furthermore, social tagging quality and social endorser credibility positively affect perceived diagnosticity and perceived serendipity. Finally, relational identity, social identity, perceived diagnosticity and perceived serendipity collectively determine consumers’ social shopping intention.

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of social shopping in social commerce and offers practical implications for designing an effective social group system and social tagging system to boost product sales.

Value, also known as co-creation, is recognized as the outcome of collaborative efforts between both parties. However, knowledge is currently limited regarding the motivations and mechanisms driving customers to engage in co-production and value co-creation. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate co-production in enhancing value co-creation. Previous research has predominantly explored the linear effects of commitment and asset specificity on co-production. To expand on this foundation, our study goes a step further by including the potential quadratic effects of commitment and asset specificity on co-production. Although moderate levels of commitment and asset specificity may enhance co-production, higher levels are implied to possibly impede it. Considering that co-production requires collaboration between customers and service employees, this study includes the characteristics of service employees, such as self-monitoring and self-efficacy, identifying their moderating roles in aiding active co-production and ultimately enhancing the value co-creation.

We employed linear, nonlinear and hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test our hypotheses.

Our findings provide evidence for the positive linear effects and negative quadratic effects between commitment, asset specificity and co-production. The inverted-U relationships suggest an existing optimal commitment and asset specificity that maximize co-production. Results also suggest that co-production influences value co-creation and self-efficacy and self-monitoring positively moderates the relationship between co-production and value co-creation.

By applying the core provisions of S-D logic, this study contributes to marketing literature by analyzing the dyadic process of co-production. Dyadic data collection from both customers and service employees provides a comprehensive understanding of the co-production process, allowing academics to recognize service employees’ self-efficacy and self-monitoring that contribute to effective co-production and value co-creation in service processes.

This study aims to investigate how women’s entrepreneurial self-identity influences their experience of well-being through entrepreneurship.

This study tested and validated a model using survey data from 210 women entrepreneurs in China. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods were used to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that women’s entrepreneurial self-identity not only has a direct positive effect on entrepreneurial well-being but also an indirect positive effect on entrepreneurial well-being through the mediating role of entrepreneurial work autonomy and work meaning. Moreover, in mediation analyses, the autonomy and meaning of entrepreneurial work simultaneously mediate the relationship between women’s entrepreneurial self-identity and entrepreneurial well-being, and further play a chain mediating role between the two.

Little is known about how women perceive well-being through entrepreneurship. Moreover, the available literature has mostly overlooked the impact of women’s entrepreneurial self-identity on their entrepreneurial well-being. This study reveals the influence mechanism from the perspectives of identity and self-determination theories, with a focus on women entrepreneurs in China.

The primary objectives of this article are to systematically explore whether and how certain WeChat use motives could lead to bridging social capital, bonding social capital and civic engagement among young people.

The data was collected from a large-scale online survey of 1208 young people in mainland China. Zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were carried out to examine the corresponding hypotheses.

Obtained findings show that WeChat use for informational and social motivations are positively associated with bonding and bridging social capital. Moreover, bonding social capital could mediate the relationship between WeChat usage for informational and relational motivations and civic engagement.

Theoretically, this article underlines the unique social and technological affordances of WeChat by exploring mobile social media use and how it would contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering young people's engagement in civic life. Practically, bridging and bonding social capital play significant roles in enhancing young people's civic engagement, which could be the meaningful resource for mobile social media designers, managers and government officials.

These obtained outcomes underlined the vital role of these newly emerging communication technologies in fostering democratic involvement and production of social capital in contemporary socially networked society.

The phenomenon of friction and wear in parallel groove clamps under wind vibration in 10 kV distribution networks represents a significant challenge that can lead to their failure. This study aims to elucidate the wear mechanism of parallel groove clamps under wind-induced vibration through simulation and experimentation.

FLUENT software was used to simulate the flow around the conductor and the parallel groove fixture, and the Karman vortex street phenomenon was discussed. The stress fluctuations of each component under breeze vibration conditions were investigated using ANSYS, and fretting experimentations were conducted at varying amplitudes.

The results demonstrate that the impact of breeze vibration on the internal stress of the parallel groove clamps is considerable. The maximum stress observed on the lower clamping block was found to be up to 300 MPa. As wind speed increased, the maximum vibration frequency was observed to reach 72.6 Hz. Concurrently, as the vibration amplitude increased, the damage in the contact zone of the lower clamping block also increased, with the maximum contact resistance reaching 78.0 µO at a vibration amplitude of 1.2 mm. This was accompanied by a shift in the wear mechanism from adhesive wear to oxidative wear and fatigue wear.

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the fretting wear phenomenon associated with parallel groove clamps under wind vibration. The findings provide a reference basis for the design and protection of parallel groove clamps.

This paper focuses on managerial practices in the context of supply chain. It focuses on the innovation of monitoring and control practices and proposes a holistic approach to managing social sustainability in the supply chain, extending the point of view beyond the traditional boundaries of individual factories or their immediate suppliers.

The analysis is based on a systematic review of scientific literature on managerial practices in supply chains, with a specific focus on social sustainability. The primary goal is to identify essential measurement strategies and key indicator factors within this domain.

Our findings highlight that most of scientific literature focuses on qualitative approaches, though quantitative approaches are also used. Despite the extensive research, an under-investigated area is the use of hybrid models for measuring social sustainability in the supply chain.

This framework is designed to identify the main categories of measurement and relative indicators for assessing social sustainability in supply chains.

This research proposes an innovative and integrated framework, leveraging a hybrid approach that addresses the limitations observed in existing management practices. Additionally, it provides directions for future research.

In the past 10 years, the scale of running events in China has increased dramatically, and the forms of running events have also become rich and diverse. Running is not only a social phenomenon but also a historical and cultural phenomenon as an organic part of human culture with its own sociological values in China. This chapter offers insight into the development of Chinese running culture and how this has emerged from ancient and modern Chinese running cultures based on Foucault's disciplinary power theory, biopower and the technologies of the self. This chapter argues that running culture in China constructs the subjectivity of the Chinese runners under the joint action of the technologies of power and the technologies of the self. The findings acknowledge how Chinese Runners present and express themselves by showing a ‘sense of presence’. Runners illustrate the implicit or explicit meaning and value of a particular way of life through running. Runners regard running as the technology of the self for self-expression and self-creation so that individuals can control their bodies and soul, thoughts, behaviours and ways of existence. Emerging technologies of power provide possibilities for the production of running culture in China, and the current policy under the technologies of power meets the needs of runners. In Chinese running culture, power was not oppressive but productive.

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 chapter reviews the competition between full-service carrier (FSC) and low-cost carrier (LCC) in China. More importantly, we discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on FSC–LCC competition. Specifically, the airlines' route choices and also the market contact between FSCs and LCCs in China are examined and discussed. Our review results suggest that, despite the rapid growth of the independent LCC Spring Airlines and the establishment of new subsidiary LCCs by FSCs, China's LCC sector still plays relatively minor roles compared with many fully deregulated markets. Subsidiary LCCs serve more as competitive tools for their parent FSCs, primarily deployed on their parent FSCs' routes to jointly compete against rival FSCs. This competition is primarily focused on niche regional markets rather than engaging in full-scale competition. Spring Airlines also strategically avoided direct head-to-head competition with FSCs before the pandemic by mainly connecting with the secondary cities. However, the pandemic has introduced significant changes, notably the network differentiation between FSCs and LCCs in mainland China. With the relaxation of government's regulations on airline route entries into hub airports during pandemic, Chinese LCCs have shifted their focus toward serving more dense routes, especially those connected to the top five cities. This shift has led to an intensified head-to-head competition between LCCs and FSCs following the outbreak of the pandemic. Such a process is likely to continue in the years to come. This chapter's discussions could also provide new insights into LCC development and the impact of the pandemic on FSC–LCC competition interactions to supplement existing literature studying other major airline markets.

To improve the robustness of carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with actuator faults attitude tracking control system, this paper aims to propose a fixed-time backstepping (FXTBSC) fault-tolerant control based on a fixed-time extended state observer.

A fixed-time extended state observer (FXTESO) is designed to estimate the total disturbance including nonlinear, coupling, actuator faults and external disturbances. The integration of backstepping control and fixed-time technology ensures fixed-time convergence.

The simulation results of tracking the desired attitude angle show that the anti-interference, fault tolerance and tracking accuracy of FXTBSC-FXTESO are better than the BSC-ESO control method.

Different from the traditional BSC-ESO, the convergence speed and convergence accuracy of FXTBSC-FXTESO proposed in this paper are better than conventional extended state observer. And the fixed time controller has the advantages of high tracking accuracy, fault tolerance and anti-interference ability.