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The study provides an initial empirical examination of Jin et al.’s (2024) new READINESS model through the expert opinions of crisis communication academics and practitioners. Through this examination, the goal is to understand crisis READINESS and how it relates to other key concepts in the crisis literature, such as preparedness and resilience.

An exploratory quantitative online survey of 30 experts in crisis communication was conducted. Our participant pool consisted of members from the Crisis Communication Think Tank, which is an established crisis thought leadership network (Jin, 2023). Data collection took place in November and December 2023.

Key findings include the dual nature of crisis READINESS as both a process and an outcome, resilience as both a process and an outcome, and preparedness as an antecedent to READINESS. A key distinction between READINESS and preparedness emerged with the former conceived of as a mindset and the latter conceived of as physical tools, training and planning.

Preparedness and resilience alone are not enough to effectively manage crises and risks, and given this, it is important to study READINESS as a concept beyond (yet connected to) preparedness and resilience. It is our hope that the findings can lead to understanding indicators of crisis READINESS and developing crisis READINESS measurement tools which can equip organizations to more effectively manage crises.

As a sticky crisis challenge, toxic polarization continues to mutate and confront organizations and democratic society. How corporations engage stakeholders in social-political issue communication without exacerbating the situation unexpectedly, has become a critical question for corporate communicators and crisis managers. Taking a readiness approach to proactively manage polarization-triggered threats as corporations are engaged in social-political issue communication on social media, this study examines whether and how corporations might contribute to alleviating socio-political issue polarization and facilitating stakeholder issue engagement.

The study is a 3 (corporate political engagement approach: pro-issue stance vs anti-issue stance vs political CSR) × 2 (stakeholder comment valence: positive vs negative) × 2 (issue: gun control vs refugee immigration) mixed-design online experiment conducted among 1,589 US adults.

Our findings reveal both challenges and opportunities should a corporation choose to explicitly communicate its issue stance with stakeholders on social media: On one hand, it unavoidably increased stakeholders’ perceived issue polarization; on the other, the increased issue polarization perception seemed to motivate stakeholders to engage more in social-political discussion led by the corporation.

Our findings showcased what type of corporate engagement in controversial social-political issues is more expected in terms of its impact on perceived polarization or political discussion among stakeholders, contributing theoretically and practically to organizational readiness for social-political issue polarization challenges.

This study explores virtual platforms’ capabilities, particularly emphasising the influence of educational movies embedded with lifelike narratives to serve as a potent medium for immersive learning within the auditing discipline. Through this exploration, we aim to discern how cinematic depictions can educate and encapsulate the intricate dynamics of real-world auditing scenarios, thereby enriching the educational experience for budding auditors.

By employing an action research methodology, this study engaged 134 auditing students from China in an experiment, using a questionnaire to assess their grasp of auditing concepts like internal control, corporate governance, and professional ethics.

Preliminary findings underscore the efficacy of movies as pedagogical tools. These movie experiences bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and its real-world application, particularly highlighting the nuances of professional ethics and corporate governance. Results show that such a method amplifies students’ comprehension of auditor skillsets, practical complications, and ethical insight and nurtures professional scepticism about tangible audit issues.

This study illuminates a novel virtual learning approach using movies that primes students to exercise critical thinking and augments cognitive skillsets, especially when navigating ethical conundrums. The broader implication is the potential enhancement of auditing education quality in China, presenting educators with an innovative teaching modality that bolsters students’ critical analysis and cognitive development.

This study has multiple implications for auditing education policy. It underscores the imperative need for curriculum revision in contemporary auditing education. Our study can significantly change contemporary auditing education by incorporating movie-based experiential learning. Educators and institutions in China and other parts of the world explore this avenue, customising it to fit the unique requirements of their respective courses and the country’s contexts. Our study also highlights the challenges and recommendations for real-world audit simulation for auditing education. While our research highlights the promise of educational movies, it also sheds light on the potential difficulties in their integration. Audit educators need adequate support and training for effective assimilation, ensuring they leverage educational movies to maximise learning outcomes. Careful curation and selection of movies, combined with strategic planning, are paramount to this teaching method’s success. With the continual evolution of video tools, there is an opportunity for a more immersive and holistic education model, shaping the next generation of auditors.

This study offers insights into innovative strategies to imbue real-world experience into traditional curricula, ensuring relevance and applicability across diverse educational landscapes.

The idea of value co-creation involves the benefit actors gain from integrating resources through activities and interactions within a service network, with the environment enabling high-quality collaboration. This paradigm highlights customers’ ability to co-create value with service providers and other customers. This idea is gaining traction in health care. These days, patients are no longer passive recipients of health-care services; rather they have started taking proactive roles in their self-health management. This study aims to understand the phenomenon of value co-creation among patients within online health communities (OHCs).

A systematic literature review of papers published from 2003 to 2024 in Web of Science-indexed journals was conducted. The review highlights theories, contexts, characteristics and methodologies in this area, synthesizing insights from previous research and presenting a future research agenda for underexplored and unexplored contexts using emerging theoretical perspectives and analytical methodologies.

The review illuminates theoretical and empirical studies on value co-creation among patients in OHCs. Previous research shows that value co-creation among patients leads to cognitive, affective and physical benefits such as reduced anxiety and stress, increased assurance and self-confidence, improved quality of life, enhanced patient empowerment, acceptance of disease and treatment effectiveness and a sense of self-worth and well-being.

This review synthesizes insights from previous works and outlines a research agenda for future studies in underexplored and unexplored contexts using new theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Considering the role social media plays in an individual’s life, this work will help in deep diving into the role of such online communities in the health-care sector.

The landscape of health information acquisition has shifted from offline to online, and online question-and-answer (Q&A) communities have emerged as prominent sources of health information; however, it is unclear how users identify satisfactory health information. This paper identifies factors that influence users’ adoption of health information in the context of online Q&A communities.

Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and opinion leader theory, we construct a research model to examine how information quality (complexity, image structure and emotional change) and source credibility (authentication status, follower number) affect health information adoption behavior. We verify the hypotheses by Poisson regression and zero-inflation Poisson regression using the data collected from an online Q&A community.

The empirical results indicate that both information quality and source credibility positively affect users’ adoption of health information.

This research can assist designers and managers of online Q&A communities to better comprehend users’ health information needs and their preferences for adoption. This enhanced understanding can facilitate the provision of superior online health information.

This study aims to outline the transformative impacts of technological developments (TD) on architectural education (AE). The focus is on studying the dynamics of convergence and erosion, aiming to understand the impact of current digital transformations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, sustainability considerations and technology integration on AE.

A scientometric analysis and bibliometric search were performed to understand the current knowledge in the field. The Web of Science (WoS) was selected for its comprehensive collection of significant research articles and integrated analytical tools for generating representative data. The study involved an extensive bibliometric analysis of 131 journal articles on TD in AE from 2000 to 2023. Subsequently, the VOSviewer software was employed to illuminate the transformative impacts of technological advancements on AE. Robust methodologies, including citation analysis and co-citation networks, unravel quantitative dimensions such as publication trends, influential authors, prolific journals, geographic distribution and prevalent themes or technological domains within the discourse.

The findings reveal significant evolution in AE due to TD, with notable shifts influenced by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, sustainability concerns and the integration of modern technologies. Key findings include the increasing adoption of online platforms and technologies like Building Information Modeling (BIM), the crucial role of design thinking methodologies and the recognition of innovative modules such as architectural photogrammetry and augmented reality (AR) applications. Furthermore, keyword clusters were classified into six groups: “AE pedagogy and curriculum development,” “Development of architectural design process and studio,” “Educational approaches and digitalization in architectural design,” “Transition to online AE,” “Development/emergence of photogrammetry at architectural education” and “use of AR.”

Although several studies have addressed TD in AE from various perspectives and methods, they have yet to investigate the subject using scientometric analysis from a holistic perspective. A holistic exploration of TD in AE still needs to be improved in the existing literature. In contrast to previous investigations, this study is the first to leverage the quantitative analytical capabilities of VOSviewer. The originality lies in uncovering quantitative dimensions such as publication trends, influential authors and prevalent themes, providing a comprehensive understanding of the nuanced dimensions of this evolving intersection.

This study aims to investigate the impact of news quality on users’ risk perceptions toward online news and its subsequent influence on perceived believability and user engagement in sharing news. Additionally, we explore the moderating effects of fake news awareness and social tie variety.

Drawing upon the social amplification of risk framework, this study investigates the relationship between news quality and users’ news-sharing behaviors, along with its underlying mechanism. An online questionnaire involving 399 eligible participants was employed for hypotheses testing, and the structural equation model served as the main analytical method.

The influence of news quality on users’ news-sharing behavior is sequentially mediated by risk perception and perceived believability. Individuals with a heightened awareness of fake news or a diverse social tie are more inclined to perceive greater risks associated with news-sharing behavior and question news authenticity.

This study contributes to the existing literature on users’ news-sharing behaviors by examining the influence of risk perception on the relationship between news quality, perceived believability and users’ news-sharing behavior. Additionally, it explores the moderating effects of fake news awareness and social tie variety. Our findings offer valuable insights into comprehending user inclinations towards news sharing and mitigating the dissemination of fake news.

Live streaming e-commerce, which integrates real-time video interaction with online shopping, has quickly become a popular sales channel. It not only allows for immediate feedback but also builds a sense of trust and connection between streamers and consumers. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), we investigate how central and peripheral route factors affect consumers’ trust building and purchase intentions. Additionally, we identify consumer involvement as a key moderator affecting the relationship between central route factors and trust in product as well as the relationship between peripheral route factors and trust in streamer.

To test the research model, we collected data from 423 consumers on TaoBao Live.

The findings show that information completeness, accuracy and currency positively affect trust in the product, while perceived physical characteristic similarity, streamer humor attractiveness and passion attractiveness positively affect trust in the streamer. Trust in the streamer positively influences trust in the product, which subsequently impacts purchase intention. Moreover, involvement moderates the effects of information accuracy, currency, perceived physical characteristic similarity and passion attractiveness on trust.

First, we examine the direct influence of product- and streamer-related cues on consumer trust and purchase intention through distinct pathways. Second, we adopt ELM to explain the process of consumer trust building by investigating how central and peripheral route factors influence purchase intention through consumer trust in live streaming settings. Third, we incorporate involvement as a crucial moderator, shedding light on the boundary conditions of trust building in live streaming e-commerce.

The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.

Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.

This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.

This study broadly intends to explore the impact of perceived consumer experience in branchless Islamic banking on consumer satisfaction, which may enhance financial inclusion of rural people in Islamic banking activities. Specifically, this study sets three objectives: first, to explore the effects of Islamic bank consumers’ experience on disconfirmation and satisfaction; second, to investigate the impact of expectations on service performance, disconfirmation and consumer-perceived experience; and third, to examine consumer satisfaction in Islamic branchless banking to broadly examine the status of overall financial inclusion.

Data were collected from selected consumers of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) using a random sampling procedure. The selected consumers of eight remote branchless locations of the Islamic bank were interviewed face-to-face. Data were processed using PLS-SEM.

The results of the study show that all hypotheses were supported, indicating consumers’ experience, expectations and performance significantly influence their branchless Islamic banking satisfaction. This indicates that branchless Islamic banking can enhance consumer satisfaction and ensure the wider financial inclusion of remotely located rural people in banking activities.

From a theoretical perspective, the study findings show the robustness of the expectancy disconfirmation theory (EDT) for aiding to predict customer satisfaction in branchless Islamic banking activities. Other studies have also fruitfully used EDT as a theoretical framework from which to explain citizenship satisfaction in local governments of the public domain (Van Ryzen, 2004, 2006, 2013) or to explain customer satisfaction in variety of programs (Oliver, 1980, 1997, 2014). From the same perspective, the model implies that the important role of perceived consumer expectation significantly determines consumer satisfaction in the branchless Islamic banking initiative.

From a practical perspective, it is implied that digitally operated branchless Islamic banking is the most convenient banking process. On the one hand, it entails extensive financial inclusion of rural and remote areas of the country and minimizes operating costs of banking operations; on the other hand, it is opening the door to profit maximization for the banking industry. The findings from this research will practically imply the way for new horizons in the application of branchless banking within the Islamic banking and finance sector. In this regard, policy planners ought to be more careful in formulating banking and financial outlays by which digital or branchless banking facilities may be extensively spread to reach the unbanked populace across the nation within a short-possible time frame.

The findings from this research will pave the way for new horizons in the application FinTech within the Islamic banking and finance sector. Such studies should also take into account the emerging phenomenon of combining Shari’ah and FinTech, referred to as Shari’ah FinTech, to fully explore its potential and implications for the industry. Thus, the banking industry as a whole ought to be attentive to extending this type of digital transformation in the banking industry to provide win-win situations for both the client and agent in the financial and banking operations in the country.

This research is based on primary data and provides significant results in terms of digital customer satisfaction.