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This research examines the impact of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP) on poverty reduction and income growth in rural China.

The study develops a theoretical framework, which considers the role of geographical, technological, institutional and cultural factors for the e-commerce poverty alleviation (e-CPA) model. Empirically, this study applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the event study approach to evaluate the effectiveness of NRECDP on the basis of large-scale county-level and household-level panel data spanning 2010 to 2020.

The study found that the NRECDP, as a government-led, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, market-based program, has led to a significant increase in per capita output of primary industry employees, as well as in the disposable income of rural residents, especially those in national-level poverty-stricken (NP) counties. The interventions of the NRECDP achieved these positive outcomes through transportation and Internet infrastructure improvement, ICT adoption and human capital accumulation in impoverished towns and villages in remote rural areas. These effects are larger in the eastern region of China, followed by the central region, whereas the weakest effects were found in the western region. However, we found little evidence of the NRECDP increasing household developmental expenditure.

The study findings have important practical and policy implications for rural e-commerce development and self-sustained poverty alleviation solutions. The research revealed the significance of government NRECDP interventions for increasing rural income, reducing living costs, and empowering the rural population in its multiple social roles, namely, as consumers, producers, employees and microentrepreneurs. The local cultural context may also play a role in ICT adoption and entrepreneurship cultivation with a downstream effect on the effectiveness of e-CPA practices. Policymakers would need to ensure a supportive entrepreneur-friendly environment for rural e-commerce development and continue implementing progressive policies for poverty alleviation.

This study explores poverty alleviation issues in China by developing for the first time a multi-faceted framework that is subsequently tested by both county-level and household-level large-scale observations. Also, it is the first study to provide nationwide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of e-CPA in narrowing down the spatial and digital divides in China. In addition to the impact of geography, technology and governmental support, this study also sheds light on the role of culture in the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies and as a source of local entrepreneurial opportunities.

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.

Although the targets of envy have received increasing attention in management research, how envied employees respond to envy remains ambiguous and merits further investigation. Drawing upon regulatory focus theory, this paper aims to reconcile these inconsistent findings by developing and testing a model that elucidates how different types of being envied (i.e. benignly or maliciously) can elicit either favorable or unfavorable motivational and behavioral reactions.

An experience sampling study was conducted on 131 employees across 10 consecutive workdays in China. Focusing on within-person effects, multilevel mediation models using multilevel structural equation modeling were applied.

Results indicated that on days when employees are benignly envied, they engage in more organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) due to increased daily promotion focus. On the contrary, on days when employees are maliciously envied, they participate in more counterproductive work behavior (CWB) due to decreased daily promotion focus.

Organizations and managers should take a more holistic view of workplace envy when considering that envied employees may use OCB to deal with benign envy. Conversely, considering that CWB may emerge from employees who are maliciously envied, it is crucial for managers to be vigilant in discouraging and addressing malicious envy in the workplace.

This paper takes an initial foray into incorporating the concepts of benign envy and malicious envy into the literature on being envied and provides a novel perspective to explain why being envied can lead to both functional and dysfunctional responses.

Drawing upon affective events theory and regulatory focus theory, the current study examines the relationship between customer gratitude and customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (customer-oriented OCB), and the mediating role of positive affect and the moderating role of trait promotion focus.

Three-wave time-lagged data from 674 nurses nested within 125 department supervisors was collected. Multilevel modeling and Monte Carlo simulation were performed using Mplus 7.1 software to test all hypotheses.

Customer gratitude was positively associated with nurses’ customer-oriented OCB, and the relationship was mediated by positive affect. Nurse trait promotion focus strengthened the positive relationship between patient gratitude and positive affect, such that the relationship was stronger for those with a higher level of trait promotion focus.

This paper extends research on the effects of customer gratitude by extending our understanding of customer gratitude as a positive workplace event that can potentially promote employees’ positive behaviors toward customers, especially those with a stronger promotion focus.

This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between customer gratitude and employee customer-oriented OCB and uncover potential mechanisms to understand how this relationship unfolds and to whom this relationship is stronger. These findings can inform practices for service organizations.

Rhetoric has long had a bad reputation, as synonymous with “false and empty speech”. In the last century, rhetoric has undergone an important reappraisal, which has seen it applied also to corporate communication, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and, most recently, sustainability communication. However, the bad reputation that rhetoric has accumulated over the years continues to weigh on the legacy of the discipline, creating theoretical and methodological bias. This research represents a work that aims to map and systematize the academic literature related to rhetorical analysis in the context of CSR and sustainability communication. After a systematic literature review, a state-of-art literature mapping was carried out in order to create typological clusters of current approaches within traditional rhetoric theory, holding firm the assumption that the rhetorical discipline should be considered as a set of reasoned and structured techniques useful for corporate discourse and its persuasive effectiveness. The analysis has enlightened wide academic research regarding the study of rhetoric in corporate communications studies clustered in six typologies of topic endorsed by a specific goal that rhetoric would have in the studies.

Our interactions with multiple selves are becoming increasingly complex through immersive technologies. We are not merely controlling our virtual representations through on-screen avatars but can now look through their eyes and walk in their shoes due to the embodiment illusion in virtual reality. This chapter examines who is looking back when we look into virtual mirrors and the consequent implications of such experiences. Current research in this domain lacks coherence and frameworks, often relying on reductionist grounds, focussing on personality traits, user types or demographic characteristics like age or gender. These approaches become insufficient given the significant impact of interacting with virtual avatars on shaping cognition and behaviour. The chapter argues for examining embodying avatars as a highly interactive and dynamic social dyad rather than a sum of the user and the avatar. This approach will involve rearticulating game studies' player–avatar relationship (PAR) and social psychology expansion theory, particularly the inclusion of others in the self. Parallel exploratory studies of rich VR communities' experiences and discussions would open new perspectives and phenomena, expanding our horizons and future research. Ultimately, the chapter aims to enable the development of meaningful and grounded literature on VR avatars, addressing the complexity of the phenomenon and the lack of interdisciplinary conversations, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of our interactions with embodied virtual representations.

Integrated reporting (IR) provides a joint overview of an organisation’s financial and sustainability performance and strategies. While the prior literature often critiques IR’s potential to entrench injustice, a systematic approach has not been followed. Therefore, this paper provides a systematic literature review, uncovering IR injustices, informing the development of an IR injustice assessment framework to identify injustices and a research agenda.

Combining Flyvbjerg’s phronetic social science and the phases of the IR idea journey to focus on injustice, this paper reviews published IR articles to inform a critique of IR. As a result, we identify specific injustice(s), the actors responsible for them, as well as the victims, as a basis for recommendations for praxis through the development of an IR injustice assessment framework and a research agenda.

We find that different approaches are needed in each phase of the IR idea journey. In the (re)generation phase, a pluralistic approach to IR is needed from the very beginning of the decision-making process. In the elaboration phase, the motivations and the features of IR are assessed. In the championing phase, IR champions support radical innovation, whereas IR opponents are obstructing its spread. In the production phase, the extent to which IR and integrated thinking are linked to the business model is assessed. Finally, we find that IR’s impact is often limited by the symbolic implementation of its tenets.

The findings suggest a need for companies to rethink the ways in which IR is implemented and used to analyse the ways in which IR is supported and disseminated within and outside the organisation, to focus on internal processes and to reflect on the expected impact of IR on the company’s stakeholders.

This study represents the first systematic approach to identifying IR-related injustices, involving how IR adoption might create injustices and marginalise certain stakeholder groups, and offering recommendations for praxis. Furthermore, the paper details the role of IR in either mitigating or amplifying these injustices and develops a research agenda.

This paper aims to examine the structure and content of religious tourism destination image through the reviews of visitors to Makkah and Medina, two of the world’s most popular Muslim pilgrimage sites.

This is an exploratory netnographic study of the 913 reviews posted on TripAdvisor from 2018 to 2022. The structure (dimensions and attributes) and content (variables) comprising the construct of religious tourism destination image emerge through manual thematic analysis and confirmed through content analysis.

Religious tourism destination image is a three-dimensional – cognitive, affective and conative – construct comprising both religion-specific, generally sacred and secular variables in a single, indivisible crystallization of experience.

Destination marketing organizations and marketers of tourism enterprises should regularly analyze visitor reviews posted on social media and carefully manage all variables of the religious tourism destination image, specifically stressing the religious aspect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic analysis of the structure and content of religious tourism destination image based on detailed consumer evaluations and unprompted storytelling.

The research’s purpose is to examine the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the context of sustainable tourism education, emphasizing its capacity to augment educational achievements and provide future practitioners with vital competencies.

Semi-structured interviews targeting academics in the tourism field were conducted.

The study results are indicative and suggest a compatible relationship between the benefits of integrating educational content on sustainable tourism and AI. Specifically, AI can equip students with a more analytical understanding of sustainability.

The study’s originality exists in the integration of AI as an innovative tool into the educational context of sustainable tourism, thereby providing students with valuable knowledge.