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Given the growing use of virtual reality (VR) technology in marketing, our research focuses on the development trajectory of research in the marketing field from 2012 to 2022 to identify essential phases and sub-trends within this topic.

This study employs a main path analysis (MPA) methodology to analyze academic articles related to VR in marketing from the Web of Science database.

The research on VR in marketing has experienced significant growth over the past 10 years and is projected to continue thriving in the future. During the past decade, research in this field has transitioned from exploring VR affordances in marketing to realizing the potential of VR in marketing. From the information systems perspective, the three primary research trends that have garnered the most attention from researchers are VR technology as an artifact, marketers’ motivational approach and consumers’ motivational approach. With the continual advancement of VR technology, the research trend of Metaverse marketing will gradually displace VR in marketing.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research using MPA to explore the development trajectory of VR in marketing and provide a comprehensive picture of it under the Affordance-Actualization theory.

Prior studies have consistently treated participative leadership as a given leadership style. Conversely, this study aims to prove that participative leadership can be predicted by leaders and teams collectively, depending on leaders' work characteristics (i.e. workload).

A two-source survey was designed to collect data from a sample of 89 leader-team dyads in a trading company in a southeastern Chinese city. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were used to test the hypotheses.

The leader showed more participative leadership when leader-team future orientation was congruent rather than incongruent; in the congruent situation, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership; in the incongruent situation, when the team's future orientation gradually exceeded the leader's, participative leadership first increased and then decreased; and leader workload positively moderated the relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership.

These findings theoretically respond to the call for investigating the influence of leader-team future orientation congruence on leaders’ behaviors, and in practice enlighten managers on how to encourage supervisors to involve employees in decision-making processes.

This work proposes a research model that explains investment intention in online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending based on the persuasion theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM). In the proposed model, investment intention indirectly relates to source credibility and argument quality through the mediation of trust. At the same time, the study hypothetically moderates the relationships between source credibility and trust and between argument quality and trust by financial self-efficacy and risk preference.

This research presents an experiment to empirically validate its theoretical rationales. The hypotheses herein were tested using data from working professionals at a large science park in Taiwan. A total of 500 participants took part in the experiment in which the scenario of a pseudo-online P2P lending intermediary was first presented for their perusal, and then questionnaires based on the scenario were provided for the participants to fill out.

Trust cannot be improved over night without making great efforts on source credibility and argument quality in the long run. Online marketers should study market segmentations to decide what appropriate elements and promises should be provided in advertisements in order to improve their source credibility. Moreover, how online intermediaries formulate convincing messages and Polish their delivery communication skills should be improved so as to increase argument quality.

First, the theoretical conceptualization of source credibility and argument quality built upon the ELM not only broadens the boundary of virtual communities beyond the literature that considers source credibility and argument quality as important determinants, but also shows the practical status quo of trust as a critical mediator. Second, this research incorporates financial self-efficacy (based on social cognitive theory) and risk preference (based on economic theory) as important moderators in the development of trust. For that reason, customer education initiatives that influence financial self-efficacy and risk preference are discussed in greater detail.

This paper examines the evolution of massive open online courses (MOOCs) literature over the past 15 years and identifies its significant developments.

Utilizing main path analysis (MPA) on a dataset of 1,613 articles from the Web of Science (WoS) databases, the authors construct the main pathway in MOOC literature through a citation analysis. Pajek software is used to visualize the 34 influential articles identified in the field.

Three phases emerge in MOOC research: connectivism as a learning theory, facilitating education reform and breaking barriers to MOOCs adoption. Multiple-Global MPA highlights sub-themes including self-regulated learning (SRL), motivation, engagement, dropouts, student performance and the impact of COVID-19.

First, data limitations from the WoS core collection might not cover all research, but using reputable sources enhances data validity. Second, despite careful algorithm selection to enhance accuracy, there remains a limitation inherent in the nature of citations. Such biased citations may result in findings that do not fully align with scholars' perspectives.

The authors' findings contribute to the understanding of MOOCs literature development, enabling educators and researchers to grasp key trends and focus areas in the field. It can inform the design and implementation of MOOCs for more effective educational outcomes.

This study presents novel methodologies and important findings for advancing research and practice in MOOCs.

Commercial space features essential characteristics of attracting clients and creating profits; thus, the exterior and interior designs of conventional commercial space were often made to look grandiose and overdecorated. Over time, according to commercial attributes, operator preferences, and style of the designer, commercial spaces have constantly undergone renovation into varied styles. However, the physical renovation processhas caused multiple and composite types of environmental pollution, such as waste and noise pollution caused by breaking of walls or partitions, anddecorative paint pollution, as well as the use of high-energy-consuming lighting equipment, air-conditioning systems, and decorative materials. Global pollution has caused climate change, endangering living organismsand human life. Furthermore, no effective method exists to control the problem of high greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, this study used energy-saving design concerns of a garden-type commercial space to propose an energy-saving evaluation model. The study combined three methodologies, the Delphi method, analytic hierarchy process, and fuzzy logic theory, to construct a multi-criteria decision support system for designing green commercial spaces, and used the green spatial design of a garden café as an example to illustrate the high objectivity and adaptability of the proposed model in practical application. The study also used an international award-winning case to validate that the proposed model had practical value as a reference to support key design decisions.

The purpose of this research study is to explore the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) on organizational embeddedness and organizational identification in the simulated home environment. Another objective of this study is to provide an effective cross-cultural adjustment model adopted by many Chinese enterprises operating overseas. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of organizational embeddedness and organizational identification on POS and expatriate adjustment.

The data of this quantitative research study was acquired from a questionnaire survey completed by 326 expatriates from Chinese enterprises in a power station in Bangladesh, and regression analyses were conducted using SPSS software.

The study found that POS of expatriates is positively correlated with their organizational embeddedness and organizational identification, and it positively impacts expatriate adjustment. Moreover, the study also evaluated that organizational embeddedness and organizational identification positively influence expatriate adjustment. Finally, it was demonstrated that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship among living POS, emotional POS and expatriate adjustment. Organizational identification mediates the relationships among work POS, emotional POS and work adjustment. Organizational identification mediates the relationships between work POS and interaction adjustment.

The research results demonstrate that the living, work and emotional support to the expatriates from the projects department of Chinese enterprises is of particular importance for their better adjustment in overseas engineering projects. Furthermore, these results are particularly conducive to the successful management of employees accommodated in fully-closed and semi-closed simulated homes.

In the setting of a simulated home in the overseas engineering projects, this research study has demonstrated for the first time that the living, work and emotional support provided by an organization can effectively help its expatriate workers acclimatize during their overseas placement.

The purpose of this study is to explore the adjustment model of expatriates in overseas projects by studying two overseas projects of a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Based on the grounded theory, qualitative analysis was performed based on data compiled from 116 pieces of project briefings, 105 questionnaires answered by expatriate workers and 21 interviews conducted to those workers based on briefings and questionnaires.

The study found that the simulated home is a standard cross-cultural adjustment model for expatriates in Chinese engineering projects, which are project-oriented and often inattentive to employees' individual rights. The simulated home creates a unique work-place and social environment similar to that of expatriates' home country in the cultural setting of the host country, but it also establishes a cultural barrier, limiting the communication between expatriates and the local people, which is not conducive to the cultural exchange between the two sides, causing cultural clashes and consequently hindering the progress of projects.

This research puts forward the model of “simulated home.” And this study bears significance to the cross-cultural adjustment of expatriate workers in Chinese overseas projects.

The basic concept of transaction cost theory is that firms like to conduct transactions in a channel with lower transaction costs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to use the transaction cost perspective to identify which conditions cause companies to choose between outbound open innovation (hierarchy governance) and inbound open innovation (market governance).

Accordingly, transaction cost economics was used to relate the choice and implementation of open innovation using a sample of 250 electronics and information start-ups in China. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate measurement model, while logistic regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

As expected, the dedicated asset specificity, human asset specificity, behavioral uncertainty, transaction frequency, and small number exchange were positively associated with outbound open innovation.

The contribution of this paper lies in explaining the role played by transaction cost economics in the process of open innovation for start-ups through empirical analysis.

Most existing methods for concrete crack detection are based on deep learning techniques such as convolutional neural networks. However, these models, due to their large memory footprint, high power consumption and insufficient feature extraction capabilities, face challenges in mobile applications. To address these issues, this paper proposes a lightweight spiking neural network detection model.

This model achieves fast and accurate crack detection. Firstly, the Gabor-Spiking (GS) module preprocesses input images, extracting texture features and edge features of crack images through Gabor filter convolution modules and spiking convolution modules, respectively. Next, the multiscale residual (MR) module is designed, composed of convolutional layers and residual modules of various scales, to process the fused features and perform crack detection.

Experimental results demonstrate that the model’s size can be reduced to 4.6 MB, achieving accuracy improvements to 87.3 and 96.4% on the SDNET and OCD datasets, respectively.

This paper proposes a lightweight spiking neural network detection model based on the GS module for edge texture feature fusion and the MR module for crack detection.

This paper aims to overcome the limitations of low efficiency, low power density and strong electromagnetic interference (EMI) of the existing pulsed melt inert gas (MIG) welding power supply. So a novel and simplified implementation of digital high-power pulsed MIG welding power supply with LLC resonant converter is proposed in this work.

A simple parallel full-bridge LLC resonant converter structure is used to design the digital power supply with high welding current, low arc voltage, high open-circuit voltage and a wide range of arc loads, by effectively exploiting the variable load and high-power applications of LLC resonant converter.

The efficiency of each converter can reach up to 92.3%, under the rated operating condition. Notably, with proposed scheme, a short-circuit current mutation of 300 A can stabilize at 60 A within 8 ms. Furthermore, the pulsed MIG welding test shows that a stable welding process with 280 A peak current can be realized and a well-formed weld bead can be obtained, thereby verifying the feasibility of LLC resonant converter for pulsed MIG welding power supply.

The high efficiency, high power density and weak EMI of LLC resonant converter are conducive to the further optimization of pulsed MIG welding power supply. Consequently, a high performance welding power supply is implemented by taking adequate advantages of LLC resonant converter, which can provide equipment support for exploring better pulsed MIG welding processes.