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This paper aims to offer an integrated framework for branded apps (BAs) that highlights research gaps and points to areas for future research.

Using a systematic literature review approach, the authors analyzed more than 100 articles published between 2009 and the present. This research used databases such as SCOPUS, Web of Science, EBSCO and Elsevier’s Science Direct, with a particular focus on articles listed in the 2021 ABS index. The reviewed papers were coded and organized into four categories in terms of themes and concepts: antecedents, mechanisms, outcomes and moderators.

The study identified four types of antecedents (app benefits, personal traits, brand benefits and others) that influence outcomes via cognitive, affective and a mix of both mechanisms, which is termed multipaths. The authors classified outcomes into five areas (financial gains; app benefits; brand benefits; customer benefits; and others). Moderators were grouped into four types (customer individuality; app features; brand characteristics; and others). The authors concluded by recommending promising directions for future research. Specifically, the authors suggested an inverted U-shaped relationship between escapism and customer responses to BAs.

This paper focused exclusively on BAs, differentiating them from other mobile apps. The authors integrated nearly 100+ studies conducted over two decades. This integrated model serves as a guiding tool for understanding the past, present and future of BAs.

This paper aims to address the gaps in current research by exploring how blockchain technology influences corporate green innovation.

This study investigates the potential of blockchain technology to stimulate the green innovation of companies using the difference-in-difference model with a panel data set of 1,803 Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2019.

The application of blockchain significantly increases the number of green invention patents obtained by companies but has no significant impact on green utility model patents, that is, blockchain applications improve the quality rather than the quantity of green innovation. The role of blockchain in promoting green innovation is particularly pronounced in state-owned enterprises, non-heavily polluting industries and older companies. The use of blockchain technology helps reduce sales costs and boosts research and development investments, thereby encouraging green innovation. Additionally, a company’s internal control quality plays a moderating effect.

Firstly, previous research on blockchain has primarily centered on its relationship with supply chain management. This article empirically tests the impact of blockchain applications on the green innovation of companies using the DID method. Secondly, current studies mainly explore the influencing factors on green invention patents. This article examines the impact of blockchain applications on both green invention patents and green utility model patents and identifies distinct influencing effects. Finally, this article introduces the internal control mechanism of enterprises into the DID model and explores the potential impact of the quality of internal control on the relationship between blockchain and green innovation.

Previous studies on social influence and virtual product adoption have mainly taken users’ purchase behavior as a dichotomous variable (i.e. purchasing or not). Given the prevalence of competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product in online communities, this paper investigated the differences in the effect of social influence on users’ adoption of basic and upgraded choices of a virtual product. It also examined how the effect varies with users’ social status and user-level network density.

A natural experiment was conducted in an online game community. Two competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product were provided for in-game purchase while a random set of users selected from 897,765 players received the notification of their friends’ adoption information. A competing-risk model was used to test the hypotheses.

Social influence exerts a stronger positive effect on users’ adoption of the upgraded virtual product than of the basic virtual product. Middle-status users have the greatest (least) susceptibility to social influence in adopting the upgraded (basic) virtual product than low- and high-status users. User’s network density enhances the effect of social influence on adoption of both virtual products, even more for the upgraded one.

This research contributes to the social influence and product adoption literature by disentangling the different effects of social influence on basic and upgraded versions of a virtual product. It also identifies the boundary conditions that social influence works for each version of the virtual product.

Adopting the context, input, process and product (CIPP) evaluation assessment model, this study aims to achieve three objectives: (1) to identify the characteristics of educational activities conducted by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) museum; (2) to explore the key factors that promote and optimize the educational objectives of the ITTF museum and (3) to develop a framework that attempts to unpack the complex and dynamic processes of activities conducted by the ITTF museum.

A qualitative research using in-depth interviews was conducted to explore the functions and activities of the ITTF museum.

The path of educational activities carried out is expressed in four aspects: (1) educational background including philosophy and purpose, advantages possessed and the learning needs and readiness of the audience; (2) the resource input includes resource allocation, venue structure, funding channels and the basis of activity program design; (3) the educational activity process includes external cooperation and exchange, the specific content of the activity programs, the teaching strategies and methods during the activities and the response to the challenges of the epidemic and (4) the results of the activities include the number of audience and population distribution, evaluation and feedback of the activities, ways and means of promoting the activities and difficulties and challenges faced.

In the follow-up studies, quantitative research can be conducted by developing a questionnaire based on the current study’s findings. Evaluation scales can be set to continue to enrich and improve the uncovered research content, which is conducive to promoting the objectives of the ITTF museum and giving full play to the educational function, thus enriching the research of sports museums.

The contributions of this study are as follows. First, it enriches the application of the CIPP assessment model in the context of sports museums. It helps the ITTP museum better perform its educational function and provides a reference for future activities of sports museums.

Owing to its leverage of high deposition rate, the wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process is being adopted for the development of IN718 alloy used in aerospace, transportation and energy sectors. The purpose of this study is to observe the effect of process parameters on the mechanical properties of the IN718 superalloy.

This study emphasizes the effect of WAAM process parameters on mechanical and metallurgical properties of developed multilayer structures of IN718 alloy by means of orthogonally designed experiments.

The results show that high current and voltage settings, combined with low welding speed, provide increase bead width, height and effective wall area, while resulting in decrease surface waviness, hardness and tensile properties. The scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy results show the presence of secondary precipitates such as NbC and Ni3(Al, Ti) in low-heat samples, which improve the mechanical properties of the material. However, the presence of Laves phases deteriorates the mechanical properties in high-heat samples. The electron backscatter diffraction results confirmed the presence of more grain boundaries and highly textured surfaces in lower heat samples, which improves mechanical properties.

The effect of process parameters on the microstructural features and mechanical properties along with bead characteristic are studied in-depth and influence of each parameter are discussed.

A green innovation strategy is an important step for enterprises to balance economic and environmental. As the executors of strategic decisions, the attitude and capabilities of senior managers determine the effectiveness of implementing green innovation. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the relationship between executive compensation incentives and green innovation.

Based on the data of heavily polluting enterprises listed in China's A-share market from 2015 to 2020, this study constructs an OLS model with fixed effects of time and industry, and uses the mediation three-step method to verify the correlation between executive compensation incentives, innovation openness and green innovation. Meanwhile, the grouping regression was used to test the moderating effect of environmental regulation on executive compensation incentives.

The empirical results show that executive salary incentives promote green innovation and equity incentives inhibit green innovation; the openness breadth partially mediates the relationship between salary incentives, equity incentives and green innovation, while the openness depth only partially mediates the relationship between equity incentives and green innovation; and environmental regulation positively moderates executive incentives.

Due to sample selection and variable measurement, the study lacks certain generality. Therefore, future research needs to further analyze the internal factors affecting green innovation from multiple dimensions.

This study provides a new evidence for analyzing how executive compensation measures affect green innovation, and further enhances the mediating mechanism of open innovation.

This study has significant theoretical implications for examining the intra-firm factors that affect green innovation.

In the face of frequent supply chain disruptions, this study aims to identify the relationships between human capital (HC), digital supply chain practice (DSCP) and supply chain robustness and resilience (i.e. SCRO and SCRE).

To examine the proposed conceptual model based on the resource-based view and organizational information processing theory, an empirical study was conducted using a sample of Chinese manufacturers. Hierarchical regression is applied to understand the direct effect, mediating effect and moderating effect among HC, DSCP, SCRO, SCRE and digital culture.

The results reveal that HC positively influences digital maturity and supply chain resilience. DSCP positively affects both SCRO and SCRE. However, HC does not significantly influence the adoption of digital tools, and only employees’ capital has a positive relationship with SCRO. In addition, the moderating effect of digital culture on the relationship between HC and DSCP was examined.

As an early exploration of the relationships among HC, DSCP, SCRO and SCRE, this study enriches the literature by offering new insights and responding to the call for more empirical research and theoretical application. It emphasizes the importance of HC and DSCP as strategic resources and highlights the need for a digital culture to implement DSCP.

As an ancient art form, embroidery has strong practicality and artistic value. However, current embroidery style migration models produce images with unclear textures and a lack of stitch detail. So, in this paper, we propose a cyclic consistent embroidery style migration network with texture constraints, which is called Texture Cycle GAN (TCGAN).

The model is based on the existing Cycle GAN network with an additional texture module. This texture module is implemented using a pre-trained Markovian adversarial network to synthesize embroidery texture features. The overall algorithm consists of two generative adversarial networks (for style migration) and the Markovian adversarial network (for texture synthesis).

Qualitative and quantitative experiments show that, compared with the existing convolutional neural network style transfer algorithm, the introduction of the texture-constrained embroidery style transfer model TCGAN can effectively learn the characteristics of style images, generate digital embroidery works with clear texture and natural stitches and achieve more realistic embroidery simulation effects.

By improving the algorithm for image style migration and designing a reasonable loss function, the generated embroidery patterns are made more detailed, which shows that the model can improve the realism of embroidery style simulation and help to improve the standard of embroidery craftsmanship, thus promoting the development of the embroidery industry.

The purpose of this paper is to optimize the degradation test for products subject to multiple types of inherent stresses and external random shocks. The mechanism that shows how the variables to be optimized influence the considered multiple objectives is also aimed to be explored by using the grey incidence analysis (GIA) model.

The Gamma process is employed to model the influences of different types of stresses and external random shocks. The GIA model is introduced to transfer multiple considered objectives as a comprehensive degree of grey incidence. The particle swarm optimization is integrated to search the globally optimal value of the characteristic variables to be optimized.

The acceleration of tested stresses and external random shocks both make the engineering systems become more vulnerable to the inherent degradation. And, the Kriging model can provide guidance of searching the optimal values of test characteristic variables and mitigate the computation burden. The grey incidence model can make the optimization focused and improve the optimality of objective values.

The proposed method can effectively overcome the drawbacks brought by the limitation of test data and can specify the dependence strength between the inherent degradation and external random shock. The computation cost and accuracy of optimization can be simultaneously ensured by the proposed model.

During the cooperation process between prefabricated building construction enterprises (PBCEs) and Internet platforms (IPs), the sentiments of both parties influence their behavioral strategies. They are the key to improving the informatization and operational efficiency of the prefabricated building industry chain (PBIC).

This paper introduces mental accounting theory and rank-dependent expected utility theory to construct the MA-RDEU game model, exploring the evolutionary mechanism between sentiment and behavioral strategies of PBCEs and IPs.

The study indicates that (1) a mixed strategy equilibrium can be achieved when both parties have no sentiments. (2) PBCEs and IPs are more likely to achieve an optimal equilibrium for cooperation if the latter is optimistic. In contrast, pessimism may lead both parties to prioritize self-interest when only one party has a sentiment. (3) The combined impact of sentiments and behavioral strategies on decision-making is significant: the influence of sentiments from PBCEs or IPs on the optimal strategy for achieving cooperation is contingent upon the behavioral strategies of the other party; different behavioral strategies of IPs or PBCEs can have varying effects on sentiments when both parties have sentiments. (4) The influence of external factors on the sentiments and behavior strategies of PBCEs and IPs is apparent. PBCEs and IPs should concurrently consider the combined influence of external factors and sentiments to contribute to the realization of cooperation between the two parties. Additionally, government supervision is an effective means to restrain “free-riding” behavior.

Finally, based on the above conclusions, the paper proposes measures to improve the construction of service-oriented IPs and establish a mechanism for monitoring and adjusting risk sentiments. Meanwhile, this paper also indicates that under the combined effect of the government, PBCEs and IPs, the influence of external factors on sentiments can be maintained within a controllable scope and the risks of uncertainty can be mitigated.