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This study examines the impact of enhanced financial literacy on the allocation of risky assets within household financial portfolios, while also considering the mediating role of Taoist cultural influences.

The authors applied ordered probit models and ordinary least squares estimation to analyze a sample of 19,015 data collected from the 2019 Chinese Urban Household Consumer Finance Survey.

The results demonstrate that an improvement in financial literacy significantly contributes to an increase in residents’ allocation of risky assets. This enhancement in financial literacy, achieved through financial planning and a reduction in the influence of Taoist culture, effectively bolsters the quantity of risky financial assets held. Moreover, the impact of financial literacy on the allocation of risky financial assets is particularly pronounced among residents aged 45–55 and those aged 35–45 and older.

The practical implications suggest that policymakers and relevant departments may consider strategies to encourage greater participation in the financial market by promoting Taoist culture in an appropriate and reasonable manner while widely carrying out financial education for residents and improving their financial literacy.

While previous studies have not focused on the impact of traditional culture on financial decision-making allocations, this study investigates the significant impact of financial literacy and Taoist culture on risky asset allocations, highlighting in particular the significant impact on middle-aged residents. This provides a nuanced understanding of how financial literacy affects investment behavior and offers insights for policymakers to effectively tailor financial education programs.

As more hotels adopt artificial intelligence (AI), it becomes inevitable for employees to rely on abilities enhanced by the use of AI to complete tasks. However, our understanding of how employees adapt to this shift in work design remains limited. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore hotel employees’ approach and avoidance behavioral reactions to dependence on AI.

A three-wave field study was conducted, collecting data from 303 hotel employees and analyzed using Mplus 8.3.

Dependence on AI can be construed as a positive stimulus, augmenting employees’ harmonious work passion and subsequently promoting approach job crafting. The promotion focus of employees positively moderates this process. On the other hand, dependence on AI also can be perceived as a negative stimulus, heightening employees’ feelings of AI threat and, consequently, fostering avoidance job crafting. In this case, the prevention focus of employees positively moderates the process.

This study provides theoretical foundations and decision-making references for management practice. Managers should implement measures to guide employees in developing a proper understanding of AI and provide them with emotional support and institutional safeguards.

This study unveils the consequences of dependence on AI for employees, offering new perspectives for AI research in the hotel industry. By differentiating job crafting, this study theorizes and tests a dual-path model of how dependence on AI may influence hotel employees’ approach and avoidance job crafting, thereby enriching the AI–job crafting literature.

This paper explores the linkage of digital infrastructure to the cost of debt.

This study uses the implementation of the “Broadband China” policy that improves digital infrastructure as an exogenous shock and exploits the difference-in-differences method (DID).

Empirical analyses show that digital infrastructure leads to increased firms’ borrowing costs, which is robust to several robustness checks. In addition, we find that this unfavourable effect can be attributed to intensified market competition led by digital infrastructure construction. Cross-sectional analysis shows that this effect is greater for non-SOEs and smaller firms. Finally, we offer additional evidence of the unfavourable effect by showing that digital infrastructure construction leads to decreased fundamentals.

Our paper unveils how digital infrastructure construction affects firms’ business strategy in using private debts and extends the determinants of firms’ borrowing costs.

Drawing upon compensatory ethics theory, this study explored the underlying mechanisms through which gossipers engaged in helping behavior as a form of compensation after initiating negative workplace gossip.

Through a two-wave field study of 394 Chinese employees, this study tests theoretical hypotheses using path analysis and bootstrapping methods.

The findings suggested that negative workplace gossip positively influenced the gossipers’ helping behavior through moral self-image and guilt. Moreover, moral reflectiveness not only positively moderated the impacts of negative workplace gossip on moral self-image and guilt but also positively moderated the mediating effects of moral self-image and guilt in the relationship between negative workplace gossip and helping behavior.

These results enrich the theoretical research on negative workplace gossip, offer new perspectives for studying this phenomenon and provide a theoretical basis and decision-making reference for management practices.

This study aims to explore how digital intermediaries interact with individual intermediaries to assist corporate social entrepreneurs (CSEs) in building inclusive markets. In response to the challenge of social exclusion, CSEs craft strategies by leveraging their existing capabilities and resources. However, when it comes to building inclusive markets, CSEs face the liabilities of institutional voids and must rely on intermediaries to establish efficient trading channels. This study focuses on the process by which CSEs firstly construct technology affordances of digital intermediaries, and then actualise affordances through the interactions of digital and individual intermediaries in overcoming technology constraints and triggering involvement cycle in the context of rural e-commerce.

Using a single-case study design, the authors unfolded the process of a rural e-commerce project conducted by a Chinese e-commerce giant. The authors interviewed 35 informants from 2016 to 2018; each interview lasted 45–90 minutes. In addition, archival and observational data were collected for triangulation. After thorough examination, the data was coded and a grounded framework was developed.

This study provides a detailed process of how the interactions of digital and individual intermediaries facilitate CSEs in building inclusive markets through a rural e-commerce project. The authors find that CSEs generate corporate strategy in building inclusive markets by constructing three affordances of digital intermediaries: equality facilitator, harmony maintainer and stickiness creator. Subsequently, in actualising these affordances, CSEs fill institutional voids through the interactions between digital and individual intermediaries. Specifically, the technology constraints of digital intermediaries trigger a four-phase cycle involving individual intermediaries: identification, activation, coaching and empowerment. This involvement cycle effectively overcomes the technology constraints of digital intermediaries. The interactions between digital and individual intermediaries facilitate the dual goals achievement of CSEs and finally restructure the market architecture.

Firstly, this study stands among the pioneering research endeavours exploring the interactions between digital and individual intermediaries in facilitating CSEs to develop inclusive markets. Diverging from existing literature, which often enhances or refines the role of a single intermediary in filling institutional voids, the authors posit that digital and individual intermediaries dynamically complement each other in actualising affordances. This complementary dynamic stands as a substitute for the evolution of a single intermediary in building inclusive markets. Secondly, by zooming out the process of constructing and actualising affordances, this study contributes to the literature on technology affordance in both contextual and relational aspects. Contextually, the authors identify three tenets of affordances generated by the corporate strategy of CSEs. Relationally, the authors argue that affordances can be predeveloped by CSEs and then fully actualised through interactions between digital and individual intermediaries, challenging the conventional view that sees affordances as a relational concept solely determined by users and artefacts during the actualisation process. Thirdly, this study makes a contribution by untangling the process of CSEs in reshaping the market context to make it more inclusive. Departing from the conventional focus on the role of institutional intermediaries for CSEs in filling institutional voids, the authors explore how CSEs develop digital intermediaries and induce their interactions with individual intermediaries to restructure market architecture during the process of constructing and actualising affordances. In conclusion, this study adds valuable insights to the literature on institutional voids, technology affordance and CSE in building inclusive markets.