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Rural tourism has emerged as one of the potential economic contributors to the country’s economic growth. To this extent, tourism stakeholders are aware of the rural tourism destination competitiveness where the development should be aligned with the objectives to achieve destination competitive advantage. Given the importance of studying factors that contribute to the development of rural tourism competitive advantage, the present study aimed to propose a research framework by identifying six predictors from the local community based on their experiential knowledge.

Data were gathered through a structured questionnaire survey where 144 respondents comprising local communities from Kampung Semadang – Borneo Heights, Sarawak, Malaysia – were involved. To assess the developed model, SmartPLS 2.0 (M3) was applied based on path modelling (measurement model assessment) followed by bootstrapping analysis (structural model assessment).

Interestingly, the findings revealed that the communities believed economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts significantly contributes to the development of rural tourism competitive advantage. Additionally, communities from Kampung Semadang viewed that both community knowledge and support for tourism greatly affect the development of rural tourism destination competitive advantage. Surprisingly, there was no significant relationship between stakeholder involvement and rural tourism competitive advantage.

From a practical point of view, the findings of the study provide valuable information to tourism stakeholders and policy planners about the importance of tri-dimensional tourism impacts, as well as community knowledge and support in the development of rural tourism destination competitive advantage. In line with policy development or planning for rural tourism development, the tourism stakeholders should pay more concern on the tri-dimensional impacts, the importance of community knowledge about tourism and gaining the community support for tourism development to achieve the goal of competitiveness.

There is lack of study in investigating the development of rural tourism competitive advantage with a holistic framework. This paper studies the intended or unintended economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts triggered by the tourism activities. This study has also investigated the local communities’ knowledge and supports toward tourism as the community efforts determine the success of a destination management, especially in the rural area. Stakeholder involvement was also examined as the collaboration among relevant parties to create competitive advantage is essential to achieve sustainable rural tourism.

With an emphasis on the moderating impact of trust, this study examines determinants influencing the purchase intentions of young consumers in augmented reality (AR) shopping platforms. This research study aims to pinpoint essential elements, including the enjoyment dimensions (i.e. entertainment, visual appeal and hedonic component) and practicality dimensions [i.e. informativeness, navigation and perceived usefulness (PU)], that are imperative in influencing young consumers’ purchase intentions in AR-based shopping platforms.

The present study used a quantitative approach grounded in the stimulus-organism-response model and the extended technology acceptance model, which analysed purchase intention among the youth using AR shopping platforms. One hundred seventy-two samples were gathered through self-administered questionnaires and underwent partial least squares structural equation modelling analysis to predict the relationships between the proposed variables.

The results of the current study suggested the independent variables (e.g. entertainment, visual appeal, informativeness and navigation) had a significant impact on hedonic components and PU. Furthermore, both hedonic components and PU had a significant and positive influence on purchase intention. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that hedonic components and PU in relation to purchase intention were not moderated by trust.

The developed research framework is significant for understanding the perceptions of shopping behaviour among young consumers in the Borneo region of Malaysia. This is one of the few studies that explored the interplay between enjoyment and practicality’s dimensions on purchase intention via AR shopping platforms in the less explored region of Malaysia. Hence, this study plays a pivotal role in contributing to the existing marketing and technology management literature. Moreover, it holds practical importance for business operators and marketers as it aids in decision-making and strategic planning for the future direction of businesses in the young consumer market.

Green consumption behaviour (GCB) has been advocated to mitigate the environmental consequences of traditional consumption patterns. Besides the current circumstances, Generation Z college students are a sizable consumer group who are likely to be concerned about the future. Thus, this study aims to examine the factors affecting the college students’ GCB and the moderating effect of government support to provide new evidence from college students in China.

In addition to environmental knowledge and social media influence as the variables, government support was used as a moderator to develop the extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model. Purposive sampling was used to obtain 328 valid responses from Chinese college students. The collected data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings indicated that subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, environmental knowledge and social media influence substantially affect students’ GCB. Notably, the moderation analysis suggested that government support greatly strengthens the relationship between subjective norms and social media influence on the GCB of Chinese college students.

The study provides several significant practical implications as the findings could be referred by stakeholders, such as government and businesses entities, in formulating policies and strategies to encourage the consumers’ GCB in mitigating ecological consequences.

The extended TPB model that integrated environmental knowledge and social media influence with the government support as the moderator contributes to the extant literature with the evidence derived from Generation Z in China.

Rural homestays have emerged as an interesting option for tourists. This study aims to assess the role of destination attractiveness factors and travel motivations in homestay choice. The moderating role of need for uniqueness towards enhancing these relationships is also examined.

A survey of 201 Indian tourists who had visited rural homestays in the Uttarakhand state of India was conducted. Data were analyzed using SPSS and WarpPLS, based on structural equation modelling approach.

Results indicate that two destination attractiveness factors – (a) cultural and rural attractions and (b) destination location and transportation – have a significant association with rural homestay choice. Further, need for uniqueness enhances the relationship between natural attractions and choosing rural homestays.

Although there are several studies on rural homestays, there is scant research on the factors influencing the choice of rural homestays from a tourists’ perspective. Besides, studies on rural homestay tourism have not assessed the role of need for uniqueness in influencing such choices. The implications of the study for destination marketers, homestay operators and owners are discussed which would hopefully aid in attracting discerning tourists to the rural homestays to such regions.

Following COVID-19, the emphasis on tourism development has shifted to rural tourism and eco-destinations for preventive practice of the three Cs – confined spaces, close contact and crowded spaces. Given the potential growth of rural tourism destinations, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is conceivably the first to provide empirical evidence for rural tourism development post-COVID-19, and this study aims to examine the relationship between the potential development of rural tourism destination competitiveness alongside the inherited, created and supporting resources as perceived by domestic tourists.

This study sampled 172 respondents who were all domestic tourists in Malaysia. A partial least square (PLS)-structural equation modeling approach was used to evaluate the developed model, with PLS estimation and hypothesis testing performed using WarpPLS software.

Interestingly, the findings indicate that rural tourism destinations in Sarawak derive competitive advantage from factors that are closely associated with urban destinations (i.e. created and supporting resources), whereas rural-related factors (i.e. inherited resources) are not perceived as a contributor to their competitive advantage.

The findings will assist tourism planners in constructing a deployable rural tourism destination competency index to develop policies and programmes that address specific tourism or rural development objectives in Malaysia and beyond.

The value of present study lies in its examination of the tourists’ perspectives on the factors that provides addition to rural competitive advantage, with an emphasis on a relatively new and contentious post-COVID-19 topic, namely, rural tourism destinations.

This study aims to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart home devices affect young consumers' requirements for convenience, support, security and monitoring, as well as their ability to advance environmental sustainability. This study also examines the variables that impact users' motivation to use AI-powered smart home devices, such as perceived value, ease of use, social presence, identity, technology security and the moderating impact of trust.

The responses from residents of Sarawak, Malaysia, were collected through online questionnaires. This study aimed to examine the perceptions of millennials and zillennials towards their trust and adoption of AI-powered devices. This study used a quantitative approach, and the relationships among the study constructs were analysed using partial least squares - structural equation modelling.

The present study found that perceived usefulness, ease of use and social presence were the main motivators among actual and potential users of smart home devices, especially in determining their intentions to use and actual usage. Additionally, there was a moderating effect of trust on the relationship between perceived ease of use, social presence, social identity and intention to use AI-powered devices in smart homes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the factors influencing smart technology adoption. This study provided meaningful insights on the development of strategies for the key stakeholders to enhance the adoption and usage of AI-powered smart home devices in Sarawak, one of the promising Borneo states. Additionally, this study contributed to the growing body of knowledge on the associations between technology acceptance model dimensions, intention and actual usage of smart technology, with the moderating impact of trust.

This study aims to address existing gaps in the literature and theories by investigating the influence of responsible leadership traits on employees’ sustainable performance (E-SuPer) in the Malaysian service sector. Specifically, the authors focus on three key responsible leadership traits: relationship building, relational governance and sharing orientation. Additionally, the authors explore how these traits interact with leader-member exchange (LMX) and whether gender plays a role in this relationship.

A total of 235 usable responses were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Multi-group analysis (MGA) was employed to examine the moderating impact of gender.

The results showed that both relationship building and relational governance significantly affect E-SuPer among organisations in the service industry. LMX was found to be a significant moderating condition influencing the association between responsible leaders’ sharing orientation and E-SuPer. Interestingly, the MGA results suggest that the effect on male employees was greater than on female employees across the relationships examined. The findings suggest that responsible leadership traits are essential for sustainable employee performance, but there is room for improvement in how these traits are perceived by female employees.

The present study contributes to gender equality agenda, supports the sustainable development goals, adds to the growing body of knowledge on the relationship between responsible leadership traits and E-SuPer within one of the most important economic sectors in Malaysia and sheds lights on the moderating effect of LMX.

This study investigates how responsible leadership traits affect E-SuPer in the service industry, particularly among male and female employees. Moreover, this study is one of the early investigations into the significance of responsible leadership within Malaysian service sector and offers valuable information for industry actors to improve their management approaches.

This study aims to propose a research framework grounded in the technology acceptance model (TAM) to assess the new service experiences in the medical industry through examining the intention to use online-to-offline (O2O) medical platforms. It focuses on the connections between immediacy of connection, context-based affordability, reliability and perceived convenience and perceived usefulness. This study also looks at how these determinants affect users’ intentions to use O2O medical platforms, with a particular emphasis on the moderating effect of customer online reviews.

This study was a quantitative research endeavour grounded in the TAM model that analysed usage intention of O2O medical platforms. Conducted in Sarawak, within the Borneo region, a total of 251 rows of data were collected by questionnaire and underwent initial analysis using SPSS, followed by a more in-depth two-stage partial least squares structural equation model analysis conducted with SmartPLS4.

According to this study’s findings, perceived usefulness and perceived convenience are significantly impacted by the proposed predictors – immediacy of connection, context-based affordability and reliability. Furthermore, intention to use O2O medical platforms was discovered to have a positive and significant impact from perceived usefulness and perceived convenience. It is noteworthy that the association among perceived convenience and perceived usefulness – which leads to usage intention of O2O medical platforms – did not show the moderating effect of customer online reviews.

The findings suggested that context-based affordability, immediacy of connection and reliability need to be focused on by the information and communication technology developers, policymakers and medical professionals, as these variables can influence perceived convenience and usefulness, which will further impact the intention to use O2O medical platforms.

The formulated research framework holds significance in comprehending the usage intention of O2O medical platforms among consumers in Sarawak. O2O medical platforms have experienced global growth; however, limited studies were found in the Malaysian context. Hence, the objective of this study is to examine the intention to use O2O medical platforms in a relatively understudied area, specifically in Sarawak, an island located in Borneo, Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hard and soft measures of service quality and visitors' satisfaction, which ultimately contribute to visitor loyalty to the destination, specifically in the context of the Borneo Cultural Festival (BCF) in Sibu, Sarawak (Malaysia).

The study uses a quantitative research approach with 427 valid responses from domestic and international tourists of BCF and employs the cognitive-affective-conative theory to examine how the festival impacts visitor loyalty.

The findings indicate that both hard and soft measures significantly contribute to the service quality and visitor satisfaction at the BCF. Additionally, service quality and visitor satisfaction were found to positively influence destination loyalty, while the relationship between legibility and visitor satisfaction was not significant.

The findings encourage the ministry and event organisers to adopt a destination event strategy that positions Sibu as an attractive event destination capable of attracting domestic and international tourists.

The findings of this study contribute to the existing body of knowledge on event tourism and destination loyalty by applying the cognitive-affective-conative theory. This study marks the first of its kind, analysing both the tangible (hard) and intangible (soft) measures of service quality and their impact on visitor satisfaction, ultimately influencing visitor loyalty to the destination, particularly in the context of the BCF in Sibu, Sarawak.