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This paper aims to compare the differences between single- and multi-person interactions in virtual tourism, underpinned by the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework and media richness theory (MRT).

In this study, quantitative data gathered from questionnaires applied to 558 individuals was analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The moderating role of interaction type was tested through multigroup analysis (MGA).

The results showed that vividness positively influenced telepresence, perceived attractiveness and authentic experiences; telepresence positively affected authentic experiences and perceived attractiveness; and authentic experiences and perceived attractiveness positively impacted willingness to visit in both interaction groups. A difference was detected between the two groups in that perceptions of media vividness were more easily transformed into a willingness to visit through telepresence in the multi-person interaction group. Interaction type moderated the effect of vividness on telepresence. The vividness of the media had a more significant effect on telepresence among those who participated in virtual tourism together.

In this study, a model was developed to explain how media vividness affected willingness to visit by considering the relationships between telepresence, authentic experiences and perceived attractiveness in virtual reality, as well as the social interaction aspect.

本研究旨在比较虚拟旅游中单人和多人互动的差异, 基于刺激-有机体-反应（S-O-R）框架和媒介丰富度理论（MRT）。

本研究对 558 名受试者的问卷调查数据进行了定量分析, 采用 PLS-SEM 模型分析, 并通过多群组分分析（MGA）测试了互动类型的调节作用。

研究结果显示, 生动性对临场感、感知吸引力和真实体验有正向影响; 临场感对真实体验和感知吸引力有正向影响; 真实体验和感知吸引力对参观意愿有正向影响。两组之间的差异在于, 在多人互动组中, 媒介生动性更容易通过临场感转化为参观意愿。互动类型调节了生动性对临场感的影响, 参与虚拟旅游的多人群体中, 媒介的生动性对临场感的影响更为显著。

本研究构建了一个模型, 解释了在虚拟现实中, 媒介生动性如何通过临场感、真实体验和感知吸引力的关系影响参观意愿, 同时考虑了社会互动的因素。

This study aimed to examine consumers’ impulse purchases of luxury products in the metaverse, specifically by exploring how consumers’ motivational and emotional experiences affect virtual luxury product purchases in the metaverse.

An online survey was administered to a total of 230 users of various metaverse platforms in China. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) disjoint two-stage approach.

The findings indicated that motivational experience (goal importance and goal interest) and positive emotion (fantasy, feeling and fun) have positive effects on impulse buying of luxury products in the metaverse, but none for negative emotions (loneliness and isolation).

This study indicated that understanding and leveraging consumers’ motivational experiences and positive emotions can drive their impulse buying behaviour of luxury products in the metaverse, hence providing virtual and brand retailers with a testbed for their products before they launch in the physical market.

This study enriches our comprehension of consumers’ metaverse luxury purchases by delving into the impacts of motivational and emotional experiences on impulse buying behaviours.

With the global market for advanced technology-driven customer service set to soar, understanding the complicated relationship between advanced technology and customer purchase behaviour is paramount. While prior research has touched upon the impact of technology on purchase processes in some aspects, this study investigates the specific features of advanced technology that shape customer purchase intention in greater depth. By investigating when and under what conditions customers choose advanced technology-based purchases, this research sheds light on the evolving landscape of consumer decision-making and it seeks to quantify the transformative power of advanced technology in driving customer purchase intentions.

The metaverse, a virtual space where one can build and explore with others using avatars, is drawing global interest. Then questions arise: What drives consumers to customize their avatars and purchase virtual items in the metaverse? Who customizes and purchases virtual items more than others? To find the answers, this study tested a research model that explains why consumers customize their avatars and buy virtual items in the metaverse.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response model, this study posits that metaverse characteristics (i.e. escapism, visual attractiveness, social interaction and autonomy) arouse consumers’ curiosity toward the metaverse, which in turn evokes avatar customization behavior and virtual item purchase intention. Survey data from 501 metaverse-experienced consumers in both the US and Korea are analyzed.

The result revealed that all four metaverse characteristics were found to stimulate consumers’ curiosity. Consumers’ curiosity enhances avatar customization behavior and purchase intention of the virtual items. Further, avatar customization behavior increases the purchase intention of virtual items.

The findings provide valuable insights into how metaverse platforms can effectively engage consumers by stimulating curiosity, especially through social interaction, and offering extensive avatar customization options and virtual items.

This study highlights how the metaverse’s open-ended experiences, user-driven customization and social interactions – unlike traditional online games – spark consumer curiosity. It emphasizes the pivotal role of curiosity in driving metaverse engagement and highlights the need to consider it as a central construct in future research. Additionally, this study provides managerial implications for virtual item purchases in the metaverse.

Personalization is a key element of restaurant innovation. Few studies in the business literature have examined its influence on table-service consumer behavior, including the factors that strengthen or weaken domain relations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of personalization on brand identification and repurchase intention by providing a contingent view of several crucial factors.

Online surveys were distributed to restaurant customers who received personalized menus, services and promotions. The authors collected data using purposive sampling and tested this study’s hypotheses using regression analysis.

The results indicate that personalization influences brand identification and loyalty behaviors. Not all aspects of employee friendliness, notably conversational skills, strengthen the links between personalization and consumer behavior. In fact, informal frontline employee attitudes negatively moderated customer brand identification. The results, however, suggest that humorous and approachable behaviors of frontline employees are essential in enhancing the effects of personalization on brand identification and revisiting intentions.

Drawing on self-categorization theory, this study introduces personalization as a key factor in improving brand identification and repeat purchase intentions in full-service restaurant settings. This study incorporated social exchange theory and motivational theory to construct a contingency view of frontline employee friendliness and customer motivation to better understand how customers’ dining experiences impact their post-consumption behaviors. By investigating the potential interactions between the three theoretical perspectives, this study demonstrates the relevance of personalization, cultural sensitivity and intrinsic motivation as vital components for Asian restaurants.

This chapter explores how perceived product innovation influences brand loyalty among UK Apple users, extending the technology acceptance model. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected from 101 respondents via an online survey and analysed using SPSS. Objectives included examining the mediating role of perceived product usefulness and ease of use, exploring the relationship between product/brand attitudes and brand loyalty and assessing gender's impact on loyalty perceptions. Findings reveal a significant positive relationship among variables, with perceived product usefulness and ease of use jointly mediating the link between product innovation and attitude, affecting brand loyalty. Gender was found to have no moderating effect. The research contributes by highlighting these mediating effects and deepening understanding of product innovation's impact on loyalty. Managerially, prioritising innovation, usefulness and ease of use can enhance satisfaction and loyalty. Future research could explore additional variables to enrich understanding further.

In smart cities striving for innovation, development, and prosperity, hydrogen offers a promising path for decarbonization. However, its effective integration into the evolving energy landscape requires understanding regional intricacies and identifying areas for improvement. This chapter examines hydrogen transport from production to utilization, evaluating technologies’ pros, cons, and process equations and using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) tool to assess these technologies based on multiple criteria. It also explores barriers and opportunities in hydrogen transport within the 21st-century energy transition, providing insights for overcoming challenges. Evaluation criteria for hydrogen transport technologies were ranked by relative importance, with energy efficiency topping the list, followed by energy density, infrastructure requirements, cost, range, and flexibility. Safety, technological maturity, scalability, and compatibility with existing infrastructure received lower weights. Hydrogen transport technologies were categorized into three performance levels: low, medium, and high. Hydrogen tube trailers ranked lowest, while chemical hydrides, hydrail, liquid organic hydrogen carriers, hydrogen pipelines, and hydrogen blending exhibited moderate performance. Compressed hydrogen gas, liquid hydrogen, ammonia carriers, and hydrogen fueling stations demonstrated the highest performance. The proposed framework is crucial for next-gen smart cities, cutting emissions, boosting growth, and speeding up development with a strong hydrogen infrastructure. This makes the region a sustainable tech leader, improving air quality and well-being. Aligned with Gulf Region goals, it is key for smart cities. Policymakers, industries, and researchers can use these insights to overcome barriers and seize hydrogen transport tech opportunities.

In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

Agriculture is an activity that plays an important role in human life. Similarly, the agricultural sector plays an important role in the national economy. One of the biggest problems of the agricultural sector is the carbon gas it produces during production. Fertilizing activities and tools used in plowing the fields cause this gas to be produced. The release of the said gas into nature causes serious damage to the environment. Therefore, carbon emissions in the agricultural sector are of vital importance. In line with this purpose, it is aimed to determine the most appropriate strategy for carbon emission in this study. As a result of the DEMATEL analysis, it was seen that the most appropriate strategy was effective regulations and auditing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) carries the risk of widening gender inequalities due to the digital divide, while simultaneously promising to equalise the situation for women through the gender digital dividend. The conflicting findings from previous studies justify the need to investigate the gendered aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) diffusion. Specifically, the aim of this chapter is to understand the relationship between female entrepreneurship and the adoption of AI technologies within business contexts at the macroeconomic level. To achieve this, cluster analyses are conducted for the European Union (EU) countries. The results indicate an inverted U-shaped pattern in the relationship between the level of female entrepreneurship and the diffusion of AI technology in business. In the EU countries belonging to clusters with the highest level of AI diffusion, female entrepreneurship is at a moderate level, while in the EU countries with the lowest level of intelligent transformation, both extremes are observed: the highest and the lowest levels of female entrepreneurship. The variety of patterns in female entrepreneurship and AI technology spread in the EU countries implies the complex and multidimensional nature of the interrelationship, and, thus, it indicates the need for diverse, country-specific policies and practices to reach the intelligent transformation with respect to more equal society.