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A health learning program relying on the scientific method was designed to promote reducing the intake of foods high in sugar, sodium and saturated fat in a group of school-aged children.

The scientific method was a core approach for creating intervention activities. We conducted mixed-methods research consisting of a quasi-experimental study and supplemented with a qualitative study.

After the intervention, mean scores of knowledge (F = 16.052, p < 0.05) and intrinsic motivation of the intervention group (IG) were significantly increased (t = 4.277, p < 0.05). Although basic science process skills before and after intervention were not significantly different, it found positive correlations with intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and dietary behavior.

The selected sample size is relatively small. The intervention program should be repeated with larger and more diverse students to ensure the effectiveness of this program.

This intervention program relying on the scientific method evokes the knowledge of grade 5–6 students about good diet and nutrition, emphasizing reducing the intake of foods high in sugar, sodium and saturated fat. Teachers should also observe and encourage students to steadily drive healthy food consumption behaviors according to the theoretical behavior change stage at least during their time at school.

The developed program could be a feasible option for teachers to integrate into the lessons in the classroom. This program also motivates students’ healthy food consumption.

This study aims to examine the impact of customer experience of cannabis-infused food and beverage perception (sensory experience, novelty experience, health concerns and restaurant experience) on favouring these products and subsequent customer citizenship behaviour.

Using a purposive sampling approach, an onsite survey was administered to Thai Gen Z customers in consuming cannabis-infused foods and/or beverages. Subsequently, the sample consisted of 330 respondents. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used for the analyses.

The results indicated that sensory experience, health concerns and restaurant experience had significant positive effects on favouring cannabis-infused foods and beverages. This favourability, in turn, positively affected customer citizenship behaviour. In addition, favouring cannabis-infused foods and beverages partially mediated the relationships between customer citizenship behaviour and sensory experience, health concerns and restaurant experience.

This study provides a new contribution to the literature with a first empirical examination showing positive favouring of cannabis-infused foods and beverages among young consumers in Thailand. It provides practical insights for managers in emerging markets to leverage cannabis-infused products as part of the enhancement of the global food and beverage industry. The study also offers an example of how to move forward through an unknown territory regarding perceptions of consumer experiences.

This study investigates how firm-specific exposure to COVID-19 influences capital structure choices, a topic of significant importance due to the pandemic’s unprecedented economic disruption. We leverage a novel text-based measure of firm-specific COVID exposure to explore these dynamics.

Our research adopts an innovative text-based approach to measure firm-specific COVID exposure, developed by prior studies, which analyzes earnings conference call transcripts using advanced machine learning algorithms. The analysis is based on a comprehensive sample of US firms spanning over 20 years. Various statistical techniques, including firm-fixed effects, propensity score matching, entropy balancing and instrumental-variable analysis, are employed to ensure robust results.

Our findings indicate that firms with higher COVID exposure significantly alter their leverage, favoring debt financing over equity financing. This effect is less pronounced in larger and more profitable firms as well as those more vulnerable to climate change risk. The unique impact of COVID on leverage is contrasted with other infectious diseases, which do not exhibit similar effects.

Our study’s originality lies in its application of a novel text-based metric, borrowed from existing research, to measure firm-specific COVID exposure, marking a significant advancement in the field. This method provides a timely and precise assessment of exposure, offering insights that traditional metrics cannot capture. It is the first study to document the significant role of COVID exposure in determining corporate leverage, enhancing the understanding of capital structure dynamics in the context of unprecedented global disruptions.

The China-plus-one strategy is an increasingly attractive supply chain risk management strategy and has been adopted by many multinational enterprises. However, relevant research remains limited and warrants empirical validation. This paper addresses this research gap by investigating the determinants of emerging multinational enterprises’ adoption of a China-plus-one strategy.

The China-plus-one adoption decision of 1,527 firms was predicted using a logistic model based on Taiwan’s official data – Investigation of Foreign Sales and Manufacturing, for the years 2020–2022. This database is administered by the Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (DSMEA) in Taiwan. Analysis was conducted using SPSS 25.0.

It is suggested that customer pressure and supplier relocation, functioning as push forces, lead to the China-plus-one strategy adopted by Taiwanese firms. Regarding pull forces, lower production cost has a positive association with China-plus-one adoption, whereas sufficient local workforce supply does not have a significant effect. Finally, in terms of the mooring forces, local sales performance is negatively related to the strategy adoption, whereas local access to components shows a positive association with such strategy.

This research uniquely adopts the push–pull–mooring framework to examine factors affecting supply chain restructuring in international business, representing a novel domain for this framework.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the use of videoconferencing for communication between the audit committee (AC) and auditors affects the quality of client firms’ audits.

This paper analyzes the mandatory disclosure information on AC–auditors communication using 1,065 Korean listed firm-years for the fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The details of AC–auditor communication (i.e. the extent of firms’ use of videoconferencing) are manually collected from audit reports.

This study finds that videoconferencing has a negative impact on audit quality, suggesting that it is not an effective communication medium between AC and auditors. The results are robust to alternative research designs (e.g. entropy-balanced sample, propensity score matching analysis and change analysis) that address endogeneity concerns. This study also finds that while the negative effect of videoconferencing is mitigated by holding more frequent AC meetings, neither AC independence nor expertise mitigates this effect.

This paper suggests that videoconferencing may affect audit quality by hurting the discussion between the AC and auditors.

The findings that videoconferencing impairs the effectiveness of ACs and thus lowers audit quality have practical implications as the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed how AC members and auditors interact. This study offers timely and valuable insights into the potential implications of these pandemic-induced changes on audit environments.

This study provides large-sample empirical evidence that directly examines the effect of videoconferencing on audit quality, enhancing the understanding of the communication dynamics between the AC and auditors. This study also contributes to the literature on the role of ACs in emerging markets by highlighting the information processing role of the AC.

Although consumers are aware of the importance of sustainable consumption, there is a persistent gap between positive attitudes and actual behavior. This disconnect is particularly pronounced in the fashion industry, where consumers often suppress their positive attitudes towards sustainability in the face of tempting fast fashion offers. This paper analyzes how consumers attempt to reconcile this attitude-behavior gap through using rationalization or neutralization techniques.

We surveyed more than 1,300 fashion consumers in the USA, Europe and Asia. Based on their last fashion purchase, respondents indicated various purchase details as well as their agreement/disagreement to 32 neutralization statements. Additional scales capture pertinent attitude and awareness measures. To scrutinize the role of neutralization statements, we use a series of logistic regression and multinomial regression analyses.

Country of residence, age and education level are the key determinants when employing neutralization techniques. Logistic regression results also reveal an inverse relationship between age and the propensity of buying sustainable fashion. Ethics, awareness and attitudes all play a role in purchasing sustainable products, but to different degrees in different countries.

Research on how consumers attempt to bridge the gap between attitude-behavior inconsistencies is scarce and primarily qualitative. Our study identifies how fast fashion consumers attempt to reconcile their divergent attitudes and behavior. Uncovering these rationalization or neutralization techniques improves the understanding of the attitude-behavior gap and enables marketers and policymakers to design more effective strategies to promote sustainable consumption.

This study aims to evaluate the semantic relationships between category terms that are used in open government data (OGD) portals and those identified in policy documents through the implementation of a semantic network analysis.

This study was conducted in three stages. Firstly, the study examined the semantic relationships between category terms in OGD portals by constructing a similarity matrix based on the terms’ co-occurrence and visualizing six-word groups. Secondly, the study investigated the semantic relationships among terms in OGD policy documents using latent semantic analysis and community detection methods, resulting in the identification and visualization of three network groups. Finally, the study used chi-squared and Z-tests to analyse differences in category terms between countries with and without redefined categories.

The results indicate that the three-word groups were identified by community detection, covering various aspects of government. In addition, there is a significant difference between the two country groups, with category terms being more prevalent in countries with predefined categories. This emphasizes the impact of categorization on term prevalence within OGD portals.

This study uniquely focuses on the categorization of government portals for sustainable open data management. The findings underscore the importance of effectively structuring and organizing data categories to enhance user discoverability and accessibility in OGD portals.

Companies seek to increase the percentage of acquisitions in different parts of the world by expanding operations. Many companies are adopting strategic mergers to expand their influence. However, most strategic change programs fail to achieve their objectives. This study aims to investigate employees’ reactions after strategic mergers through the mediating role of the employees’ psychological context. It was necessary to identify the most prominent postmerger employees’ behaviors. The study addressed this gap by investigating the outcomes of strategic mergers.

Data for this study were collected from 30 family businesses. Accordingly, 341 questionnaires were collected with an overall response rate of 64%. The structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach and the nonlinear relationships approach were adopted by implementing artificial neural network (ANN) analysis.

The results confirm that there is a clear impact of strategic mergers on employees’ postmerger behavior because of the change at the hierarchical level and the process of distributing roles. Employees’ psychological context (individual incentives, anxiety and individual mobbing) mediates the relationship between strategic mergers and postmerger employees’ behavior. In addition, individual incentives are considered the main contributor to retaining or not retaining employees in family businesses after strategic merger.

Policymakers in organizations must pay attention to employees’ possible reactions to the internal and external policies of the organization by increasing individual incentives and reducing individual mobbing toward strategic merger. This study has theoretical implications that are critical guidelines for academics in mitigating the negative consequences for employees’ postmerger behavior. This study captured linear and nonlinear relationships to discover the determinants and antecedents of a strategic merger in family businesses. However, future studies should focus on using more robust statistical methods by adopting decision-making methods to determine the best and worst companies in terms of adopting strategic mergers.

The scarcity of literature on the most important determinants of postmerger employees’ behavior is considered an encouragement to conduct the current study. To this end, this study enriches the ongoing and future literature by examining the most important factors influencing the strategic merger of family businesses. Family businesses have changed the economic landscape of many countries. The investigation of the strategic merger of these companies is considered a worthy matter of study to improve the nation’s economy.

Consumer behavior is evolving rapidly due to the increasing role of technology in daily life. Online food ordering has emerged as a key channel in this changing landscape. This paper investigates the relationships between online promotions, consumer skepticism, information sharing on social media and the intention to purchase food and beverages through online delivery services.

Measures were developed based on a review of existing literature. Data from 402 participants were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).

The study reveals that online promotions significantly impact consumers' sharing of restaurant posts. Additionally, consumer skepticism about online food sales affects both their sharing behavior and their intention to purchase online. Engagement in sharing restaurant posts online is a strong predictor of online food purchasing intentions.

The findings offer valuable insights for restaurant operators, policymakers and technology developers in the competitive online food delivery sector. They emphasize the importance of implementing innovative promotions and crafting appealing food presentations. These strategies can accelerate customer decision-making, attract new customers and contribute to market expansion and customer base sustainability.

This research provides significant insights for restaurant owners and contributes to the limited literature on online promotions, consumer skepticism and information sharing in the restaurant industry. It also lays the groundwork for future studies aimed at deepening understanding in this field.

Recent trials have found that propolis supplementation can beneficially reduce blood pressure (BP) in adults, but there is no definitive consensus on this topic. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview and update the current documents regarding the effects of propolis supplementation on BP by presenting a systematic review and meta-analysis.

The systematic search was conducted, considering all studies published up to July 2024, in the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library and ISI Web of Science. Data were pooled by using the random-effects model, and weighted mean difference (WMD) was considered as the summary effect size.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, eight clinical trials were included. The obtained results show that propolis supplementation caused a significant decrease in systolic BP (WMD = −3.93 mmHg, 95% CI = −7.05 to −0.82, p = 0.01 and I2 = 45.2%). However, the meta-analysis results showed that propolis supplementation did not significantly change the levels of diastolic BP (WMD = −1.64 mmHg, 95% CI = −4.60 to 1.32, p = 0.27 and I2 = 74.0%).

The findings of this study suggest that propolis supplementation may be used as a dietary supplement to improve systolic BP, but further studies are needed to confirm these results.