Hui-Chun Chang, Yung-Kai Lin, Chia-Hua Liang, Hsin-Wei Huang, Yung-Hao Lin, Yung-Hsiang Lin, Wei-Chun Hu and Chi Fu Chiang
Population aging was a global trend, and the most obvious thing after aging was the change in skin appearance. Therefore, the active ingredients that delay skin aging were…
Abstract
Purpose
Population aging was a global trend, and the most obvious thing after aging was the change in skin appearance. Therefore, the active ingredients that delay skin aging were particularly noticed. Past studies had pointed out that Chinese herbal extracts can improve skin elasticity, reduce wrinkles and melanin precipitation. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether combining hydrolyzed collagen with Chinese herbal extracts can improve skin conditions and achieve anti-inflammatory effects.
Design/methodology/approach
Fifty subjects were randomly divided into collagen or placebo groups, and one bottle of collagen or placebo drink was used every day for four weeks, after which skin and inflammatory factors were tested.
Findings
In comparison with the baseline results, the skin parameters were improving after four-week intervention. In addition, the IL-6, IL-8, TNF-a were significantly decreased and tissue inhibitor matrix metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP-1) was increased after four-week hydrolyzed collagen intervention.
Originality/value
This study showed that hydrolyzed collagen combined with Chinese herbal extracts can improve the condition of the skin, and can also reduce inflammatory associated factors, thereby achieving anti-aging effects.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model to investigate the determinants of continuance intention toward social networking sites (SNSs) by integrating the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model to investigate the determinants of continuance intention toward social networking sites (SNSs) by integrating the perspectives of the uses and gratifications theory, perceived interactivity and network externalities.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collected from 255 Facebook users in Taiwan were used to test the proposed model. The partial least squares method was used to test the measurement model and the structural model.
Findings
The findings reveal that emotional gratifications and social gratifications are the key predictors of users’ continuance intention toward SNSs. Further, the results indicate that perceived network size, perceived complementarity, machine interactivity and person interactivity influence information gratifications significantly, while perceived complementarity, machine interactivity and person interactivity exert positive effects on emotional gratifications. Finally, the results show that machine interactivity and person interactivity impact social gratifications positively, whereas perceived network size and perceived complementarity affect machine interactivity and person interactivity significantly.
Originality/value
This study is one of the earliest research inquiries to examine the effects of various types of gratifications on continuance intention. It is also one of the earliest studies to identify the antecedents of gratifications from social factors and technological attributes simultaneously.
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Chun-Ming Chang, Chiahui Yen, Szu-Yu Chou and Wen-Wan Lo
This study aims to investigate the factors driving viewers' purchase intention in live-streaming by incorporating stimuli–organism–response (S–O–R) framework and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the factors driving viewers' purchase intention in live-streaming by incorporating stimuli–organism–response (S–O–R) framework and extroversion–introversion personality perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collected from 228 users on live-streaming platforms in Taiwan were used to test the proposed model. The partial least squares method was used to test the measurement and the structural models.
Findings
Product attractiveness and trust in streamer significantly impacts purchase intention. The results also reveal that interactivity, breadth of information and uniqueness of information significantly impact product attractiveness, whereas social presence, breadth of information and uniqueness of information positively affect trust in streamer. Furthermore, streamer attractiveness has a greater effect on the purchase intention of extroverts.
Originality/value
This study investigates how the features of media, message and streamer impact purchase intention through their reactions to live-streaming. This research is also one of the earliest studies to examine the moderating role of extroversion–introversion personality on purchase intention and its antecedents in live-streaming commerce.
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This study examines the roles of the Internet and other types of media use in explaining the support for direct democracy and further investigates the mediation of political trust…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the roles of the Internet and other types of media use in explaining the support for direct democracy and further investigates the mediation of political trust in the relationship between media use and the attitude toward direct democracy.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data drawn from Taiwan Social Change Survey 2014 and the approach of structural equation model framework, this study identifies the indirect effects of the Internet and other types of media use on the attitude toward referendums.
Findings
The results of this study show that the frustration resulting from the process of representative politics dominated by political elites is associated with the support for direct democracy as an effective alternative to generate political influences in the formation of public policies.
Originality/value
The advances in the Internet and information technology have expanded the possible platforms of obtaining political information and enabled people to rapidly access political information at lower costs. It is expected that Internet use has altered the relationships among citizens, political parties and the government, potentially influencing citizens' political trust and their attitude toward direct democracy.
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Chun-Tuan Chang, Dickson Tok, Xing-Yu (Marcos) Chu, Yu-Kang Lee and Shr-Chi Wang
This paper aims to examine how exposure to sexual images activates the urge to yield to temptation in a subsequent unrelated context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how exposure to sexual images activates the urge to yield to temptation in a subsequent unrelated context.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, this paper uses empirical data based on an automobile expo to examine the correlational relationship between sexual imagery and indulgence. In Studies 2 and 3, this study examines the moderating effects of self-construal and gender differences on indulgent consumption, with different dependent measures. Study 4 distinguishes the sexual images into gratuitous sex and romantic love and tests the mediating role of sensation seeking.
Findings
For men, an independent self-construal increases indulgent consumption. In contrast, an interdependent self-construal facilitates women’s indulgent consumption. Having an interdependent self-construal has the opposite impact on indulgent consumption for the two genders: sexual images of romantic love attenuate the effect on men but boost the effect on women. Perceived sensation-seeking serves as the underlying mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to the literature on sex, reward-processing, context effects in marketing and indulgent consumption.
Practical implications
Advertisers, retailers, food courts and restaurants may use sexual imagery to promote more indulgent consumption with gender and self-construal as segmentation variables. Public policymakers and other concerned parties should also raise consumers’ awareness of the priming effect found in this research.
Originality/value
This research advances the literature on sex by demonstrating the priming effects of sexual imagery and further considers the simultaneous impacts of gender and self-construal on consumers’ subsequent indulgent consumption.
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Chi-Hua Li and Chun-Ming Chang
From the commitment–trust theory angle, this study aims to understand why members of social network sites (SNSs) are willing to build a relationship commitment with hospitality…
Abstract
Purpose
From the commitment–trust theory angle, this study aims to understand why members of social network sites (SNSs) are willing to build a relationship commitment with hospitality SNSs, engage in online word-of-mouth (WOM) and show a willingness to repurchase. This paper proposes a model to express the relationship commitment and gender as a moderator in the relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The interviews of a formal survey were selected by a purposive sampling method, and an online questionnaire survey was conducted in Taiwan. This study used the partial least square method to conduct structural equation modeling analysis.
Findings
The findings suggest that trust and perceived playfulness of the hospitality community have positive influences on relationship commitment, and also that the relationship commitment has a positive influence on online WOM and willingness to repurchase. This analysis provides strong support for the view that gender exerts a significant moderating role on our model relationships.
Practical implications
SNSs aspiring to stand out in the highly competitive internet environment must cultivate consumers’ trust and relationship commitment, and develop strategies to retain community members, as well as strengthen the safeguard personal information and the playfulness of activities. SNSs that launch relationship marketing activities should encourage community members to spread positive WOM through various activities.
Originality/value
This study combined the commitment–trust theory and technology acceptance model. It aimed to develop a theory-based model of relationship commitment in the hospitality SNSs’ context. Both trust and perceived playfulness are positively related to commitment; they are essential and important elements of successful hospitality SNSs. The gender difference plays a vital role in determining individuals’ behavior intention in the hospitality SNSs, as females and males have different decision-making processes.
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Yi-Chun Chang, Kuan-Ting Lai, Seng-Cho T. Chou, Wei-Chuan Chiang and Yuan-Chen Lin
Telecommunication (telecom) fraud is one of the most common crimes and causes the greatest financial losses. To effectively eradicate fraud groups, the key fraudsters must be…
Abstract
Purpose
Telecommunication (telecom) fraud is one of the most common crimes and causes the greatest financial losses. To effectively eradicate fraud groups, the key fraudsters must be identified and captured. One strategy is to analyze the fraud interaction network using social network analysis. However, the underlying structures of fraud networks are different from those of common social networks, which makes traditional indicators such as centrality not directly applicable. Recently, a new line of research called deep random walk has emerged. These methods utilize random walks to explore local information and then apply deep learning algorithms to learn the representative feature vectors. Although effective for many types of networks, random walk is used for discovering local structural equivalence and does not consider the global properties of nodes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors proposed a new method to combine the merits of deep random walk and social network analysis, which is called centrality-guided deep random walk. By using the centrality of nodes as edge weights, the authors’ biased random walks implicitly consider the global importance of nodes and can thus find key fraudster roles more accurately. To evaluate the authors’ algorithm, a real telecom fraud data set with around 562 fraudsters was built, which is the largest telecom fraud network to date.
Findings
The authors’ proposed method achieved better results than traditional centrality indices and various deep random walk algorithms and successfully identified key roles in a fraud network.
Research limitations/implications
The study used co-offending and flight record to construct a criminal network, more interpersonal relationships of fraudsters, such as friendships and relatives, can be included in the future.
Originality/value
This paper proposed a novel algorithm, centrality-guided deep random walk, and applied it to a new telecom fraud data set. Experimental results show that the authors’ method can successfully identify the key roles in a fraud group and outperform other baseline methods. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the largest analysis of telecom fraud network to date.
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Su-Jane Hsieh, Yuli Su and Chun-Chia Amy Chang
Managers of defined-benefit (DB) firms have considerable discretion in deriving pension costs and flexibility in cash contributions to pension plans. Pension accruals occur when…
Abstract
Purpose
Managers of defined-benefit (DB) firms have considerable discretion in deriving pension costs and flexibility in cash contributions to pension plans. Pension accruals occur when cash contributions differ from pension costs. The manipulable nature of pension costs and cash contributions allows managers of DB firms to manipulate pension accruals to achieve their desired earnings. We study whether DB firms with earnings management attributes (referred to as suspect DB firms) used more discretionary pension accruals (DPA) than non-suspect DB firms, especially after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop an aggregate measure of DPA to capture overall earnings management in pension accounting. They then employ a multivariate regression model to study whether the suspect DB firms engage in more DPA than non-suspect firms and to assess the impact of SOX on DPA for all DB firms and for suspect DB firms.
Findings
The authors find evidence that suspect firms inflate DPA to achieve their earnings goals and also that all DB firms and the suspect firms use more DPA in the post-SOX era compared to the pre-SOX period. In contrast, they observe no significant difference in real activities earnings management (REM) between suspect and non-suspect firms. In addition, neither the entire sample of DB firms nor the suspect firms display a significant change in REM after SOX.
Research limitations/implications
The samples in the study are limited to firms with defined pension plans; thus, the findings cannot be generalized to all firms. In addition, as in other empirical studies relying on models to estimate earnings management proxies, this study inherits estimation errors from Jones and Roychowdhury's models. Consequently, the impact of these estimation errors cannot be ruled out.
Practical implications
The empirical findings of the study appear that instead of deterring DB firms from engaging in pension accruals earnings management, enacting the stringent anti-fraud SOX prompts these firms to rely more on accrual-based discretionary pension rather than switch to real activities manipulation to manage earnings.
Originality/value
While many prior studies focus on the impact of managing individual pension assumptions on earnings, the authors study overall earnings management in pension accounting by developing a model to derive an aggregate measure of pension earnings management.
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Xuanli Xie, Jeffrey J. Reuer and Elko Klijn
Despite the growing interest in IJVs and their governance, systematic research is limited on the board of directors and their roles in international joint ventures in emerging…
Abstract
Despite the growing interest in IJVs and their governance, systematic research is limited on the board of directors and their roles in international joint ventures in emerging markets. In this study, we draw from corporate governance research that suggests that the levels of control and collaboration by boards are influenced by organizational complexity. While joint ventures possess several similarities compared to unitary firms, they also have unique sources of complexity given the fact that two or more international partners collaborate within JVs under an incomplete contract. Based on a sample of 114 IJVs, we argue and show four separate conditions that influence the functions that boards undertake as well as how control and collaboration as two separate functions are interrelated. Our findings address calls for research to open the black box of what boards actually do as well as to bring corporate governance theory to new organizational forms such as joint ventures.
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Bao‐jun Lin, Ge Yu, Shen‐hua Yang, Shu‐qing Kou and Jiu‐he Wang
Aiming at the positioning accuracy control problem in the running of the assembly machine for assembled camshaft, a kind of position controller based on the feedforward‐feedback…
Abstract
Purpose
Aiming at the positioning accuracy control problem in the running of the assembly machine for assembled camshaft, a kind of position controller based on the feedforward‐feedback control of speed and acceleration is designed.
Design/methodology/approach
It combines feedforward‐feedback control with the quartic displacement curve acceleration/deceleration algorithm.
Findings
The axial dimension and the phase angle of the cam obtained after being assembled is checked. The result shows that for each type of camshaft, the error of the axial dimension of the cam is less than ±0.2mm and the error of the phase angle of the cam is less than ±30′. In addition, production efficiency is greatly improved (the assembling time is 90‐120S/piece).
Originality/value
The paper combines feedforward‐feedback control with the quartic displacement curve acceleration/deceleration algorithm for the first time.