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When encountering novel technology, customers often use the term “cool” to express their thoughts; therefore, coolness has become crucial for launching service robots. However, research on the impact mechanism of “coolness” is lacking. This study explored the relationship between delight and behavioral intention regarding the coolness of service robots in the food and beverage industry while discussing the mediating roles of utilitarian and hedonic values.

Questionnaires were distributed online with links to the survey posted on restaurant discussion boards on Facebook and online community platforms such as Dcard. In total, 540 responses were deemed valid. The hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method.

The results indicate that coolness positively impacted both utilitarian and hedonic values and that both perceived values positively impacted delight. Moreover, coolness does not directly impact delight but must be mediated by perceived value to be effective.

Increasing customer perceptions of the coolness of service robots is recommended. Moreover, regarding customer revisits, utilitarian value services can delight customers more effectively than hedonic value services.

The stimulus-organism-response model was used to identify the relationships among coolness, perceived value, delight and behavioral intention. Moreover, the authors investigated the impact of coolness on utilitarian and hedonic values. These findings are significant for the development of smart restaurants and provide a critical reference for exploring service robots.

This paper takes the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experiment and investigates the impact of capital market liberalization on the corporate debt maturity structure. It also aims to provide some policy implications for corporate debt financing and further liberalization of the capital market in China.

Employing the exogenous event of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect and using the data of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the relationship between capital market liberalization and corporate debt maturity structure. To validate the results, this study performed several robustness tests, including the parallel test, the placebo test, the Heckman two-stage regression and the propensity score matching.

This paper finds that capital market liberalization has significantly increased the proportion of long-term debt of target firms. Further analyses suggest that the impact of capital market liberalization on the debt maturity structure is more pronounced for firms with lower management ownership and non-Big 4 audit. Channel tests show that capital market liberalization improves firms’ information environment and curbs self-interested management behavior.

This research provides empirical evidence for the consequences of capital market liberalization and enriches the literature on the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure. Further this study makes a reference for regulators and financial institutions to improve corporate financing through the governance role of capital market liberalization.

This paper aims to prepare high corrosion-resistant chromium-free zinc-aluminum (Zn–Al) coatings reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and nano-ZnO particle composites.

The morphology, composition and corrosion resistance of the coatings were analyzed by electrochemical tests, water contact angle tests, immersion tests, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectrometer and X-ray diffraction.

The composite coating with 0.3% MWCNTs and 0.5% nano-ZnO particles demonstrated both high shielding performance and cathodic protection performance, which was attributed to the porosity filling of MWCNTs and nano-ZnO particles together with the electrical connection of MWCNTs between the zinc and aluminum powders.

This work laid an experimental foundation for the preparation and corrosion mechanism of high corrosion-resistant chromium-free Zn–Al coating reinforced with MWCNTs and nano-ZnO particles.

In this paper, we ask: how do individual factors affect individuals’ intentions of adopting fast payment systems (FPS)? We examine the role of financial literacy and beliefs about cash as individual-related variables that complement the technology acceptance model (TAM) in explaining the individuals’ intention to adopt financial innovations.

We surveyed consumers in 11 Latin American countries to measure relevant variables. By applying structural equation modeling, we extended the TAM. We demonstrated that financial literacy and beliefs about cash contribute to developing a fine-grained understanding of what stimulates individuals’ adoption of financial innovations like FPS.

Our results support the claim that individuals with higher levels of financial literacy exhibit a higher intention to adopt FPS through the mediation role of beliefs about cash, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and attitude.

To improve FPS’s acceptance probability, designers must add highly usable platforms. However, it could be more important to increase the perceived usefulness of FPS as the system competes directly with traditional payment methods such as cash. If individuals exhibit strong positive beliefs about cash, their attitudes and intentions of adopting FPS will decrease. In addition, policymakers and designers may modify beliefs about cash individuals exhibit by identifying and intervening in their determinants (e.g. financial literacy).

Besides technology-related factors, we demonstrate that beliefs about alternative technologies (e.g. cash) influence the intention to adopt financial innovations like FPS.

Research on the underlying mechanisms that transfer the effects of performance appraisal (PA) on employees’ behaviors and intentions remains scarce. The social exchange view of performance appraisal can be a source of deeper understanding about these underlying mechanisms. This study aims to investigate how psychological empowerment (PE) and organizational commitment (OC) explain the link between performance appraisal and three important distal outcomes: voice behavior (VB), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and turnover intentions (TOI).

The current study utilizes two wave – two source data from a sample of 250 employees and their supervisors from private organizations in Pakistan and tested the mediation model using SMART-PLS.

Results demonstrated that organizational commitment mediated the effects of performance appraisal on VB, OCB, and TOI, whereas psychological empowerment mediated the effects of performance appraisal on VB and OCB. These results have significant implications for theory and practice.

This study adopts the social exchange perspective to examine the mediation mechanisms linking PA with the three distal outcomes: VB, OCB and TOI. The paper identifies two novel mediators of PA – outcome relationship, i.e., psychological empowerment and organizational commitment.

Visually impaired people usually struggle with doing daily tasks due to a lack of visual cues. For image captioning assistive applications, most applications require an Internet connection for the image captioning generation function to work properly. In this study, we developed MyUEVision, an application that assists visually impaired people by generating image captions that can work with and without the Internet. This work also involves reviewing some image captioning models for this application.

The author has selected and experimented with three image captioning models for online models and two image captioning models for offline models. The user experience (UX) design was designed based on the problems faced by visually impaired users when using mobile applications. The application is developed for the Android platform, and the offline model is integrated into the application for the image captioning generation function to work offline.

After conducting experiments for selecting online and offline models, ExpansionNet V2 is chosen for the online model and VGG16 + long short-term memory (LSTM) is chosen for the offline model. The application is then developed and assessed, and the results show that the application can generate image captions with or without the Internet, providing the best result when having an Internet connection, and the image is captured in good lighting with a few objects.

MyUEVision stands out for its both online and offline functionality. This approach ensures the image captioning generator works with or without the Internet, setting it apart as a unique solution to address the needs of visually impaired individuals.

Corrosion thinning reduces the effective cross-sectional areas of steel structures and degrades their mechanical properties. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the corrosion thinning of carbon steel for transmission towers and the degradation of its mechanical properties.

A macroscopic finite element model of a transmission tower was established and then combined with the corrosion thinning and mechanical properties of Q355 steel in different test periods measured in neutral salt spray, SO₂ atmosphere and wet heat environments to conduct a finite element simulation of a transmission tower with different corrosion thinning of Q355 steel.

When the residual thickness of the tower leg angle was reduced to 4.03 mm, the maximum stress solved in the simulation exceeded the yield strength, with the tower already at risk of collapse owing to corrosion failure under extreme conditions of basic wind speed.

This study innovatively utilises transmission tower finite element models and experimental data from mechanical degradation experiments to quantify the relationship between corrosion thinning and the mechanical properties of Q355 steel, ensuring the effective assessment of the mechanical properties of corroded transmission towers.

This research exclusively focuses on China’s elderly Internet users given how severe a threat disinformation has become for this particular population group as social media platforms thrive and the number of elderly netizens grows in China. The purpose of this study is to explore the mechanism of how elderly social media users’ intention to identify false information is influenced helps supplement the knowledge system of false information governance and provides a basis for correction practices.

This study focuses on the digital literacy of elderly social media users and builds a theoretical model of their intention to identify false information based on the theory of planned behaviour. It introduces two variables – namely, risk perception and self-efficacy – and clarifies the relationships between the variables. Questionnaires were distributed both online and offline, with a total of 468 collected. A structural equation model was built for empirical analysis.

The results show that digital literacy positively influences risk perception, self-efficacy, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Risk perception positively influences subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and the attitude towards the identification of false information. Self-efficacy positively influences perceived behavioural control but does not significantly impact the intention to identify. Subjective norms positively influence the attitude towards identification and the intention to identify. Perceived behavioural control positively influences the attitude towards identification but does not significantly impact the intention to identify. The attitude towards identification positively influences the intention to identify.

Based on relevant theories and the results of the empirical analysis, this study provides suggestions for false information governance from the perspectives of social media platform collaboration and elderly social media users.

We investigated consumers’ environmental, social and local beliefs and their impact on attitudes, subjective norms and willingness to pay for sustainable coffee in the understudied context of Thailand.

The study is based on a survey of 253 Thai consumers, analysed through an extended model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

The study validates the TPB model in the Thai demographic, finding a significant positive impact of environmental and local beliefs and subjective norms on willingness to pay for sustainable coffee. More importantly, it proposes an extended model of TPB, stressing the central role of “local beliefs” in sustainable consumption in a Global South context.

This study demonstrates the importance of “localness” in the practice of sustainable consumption in Thailand, namely the beliefs in the support for the local economy and prosperity for the local community. This expands our understanding of the heterogeneous meanings associated with the practice of sustainable consumption in a South-East Asian context.

This study aims to understand how product attributes (object stimuli), social influences (social-psychological stimuli) and internal factors (internal stimuli) contribute to Chinese Generation Z’s purchase intentions (responses) for new Chinese style apparel (NCSA) through NCSA attitudes (cognitive state) and cultural pride (affective state) based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model.

Data were collected from 989 respondents aged between 18 and 29 years through self-administrated questionnaires via a professional survey panel, Credamo, in China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results showed that among the seven stimuli, NCSA’s design, online social networking communities, cultural identity and personal norms significantly influenced Generation Z’s purchase intentions through both NCSA attitudes and cultural pride. Further, NCSA’s cultural connotations and celebrity influences elicited purchase intentions merely through the affective state – cultural pride. In contrast, NCSA’s functionality did not have a significant influence on NCSA attitudes and adversely affected cultural pride.

This study fills the research gap and extends the application of the S-O-R model within the NCSA context. The findings of this study shed light on the practical implications for marketers, brands and policymakers with regard to a better understanding of Chinese Generation Z’s NCSA consumption.