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The purpose of this paper is to study the anodic dissolution processes of alloy 690 in NaCl + Na₂S₂O₃ solutions by using digital holography.

The digital holography technique was used to in situ observe the dynamic processes occurring at the electrode|electrolyte interface during the anodic dissolution of alloy 690 in NaCl + Na₂S₂O₃ solutions, both in the presence and absence of a magnetic field (MF).

In 3.5% NaCl + 0.01 M Na₂S₂O₃ solutions, MF inhibited intergranular corrosion (IGC) because it increased the defects in the oxide film and facilitated the uniform adsorption of low concentration of S on these defects due to its stirring effects, which resulted in a weakened adsorption of S at the grain boundaries. Conversely, in 3.5% NaCl + 0.1 M Na₂S₂O₃ solutions, MF promoted IGC by increasing the number of defects in the oxide film, with lots of S species preferentially adsorbing at the grain boundaries. The resultant salt films formed more readily, inhibiting the formation of the oxide film at the grain boundaries.

Through the use of digital holography, it was possible to in situ observe the initiation of IGC at a single grain boundary and its progression to adjacent grain boundaries, regardless of the presence or absence of MF.

Proenvironmental hotels and hotels with green initiatives are emerging as a method to address environmental issues and respond to tourists’ environmental concerns. To better understand what can encourage reservations in proenvironmental hotels, this study aims to investigate the connection between the performing arts watching experience and the preference for such a hotel.

Five scenario-based experiments were conducted. A total of 1,024 participants for the five studies were recruited with the help of Credamo, a commonly used Chinese data collection platform.

The results indicated that viewing performing arts could increase tourists’ preferences for proenvironmental hotels. This phenomenon occurred due to the fact that performing arts watching experience can induce a psychological state of self-transcendence in individuals, which, in turn, can raise their levels of altruism, and ultimately lead to proenvironmental hotel choices. This effect will not occur, however, when people watch performing arts with either an extrinsic motivation or in an analytical state.

The findings of this study provide hotel managers with a novel approach to market the proenvironmental attributes of their hotels and to promote tourists’ proenvironmental behaviors.

This study proposes performing arts viewing experiences as a novel way to encourage proenvironmental hotel choice. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of the performing arts watching experience on tourist behavior.

The international business (IB) literature emphasizes knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding as part of the knowledge transfer process. However, limited studies discuss the antecedents of the two practices in the same organization in international assignments. This study aims to explore the knowledge transfer practices of expatriates in emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) conducting international assignments in developing economies and identify the reasons why expatriates share knowledge and/or hide knowledge in interaction with the local environment.

In-depth, semistructured interviews with Chinese expatriates from a Chinese state-owned multinational enterprise (MNE) operating in three African countries were conducted to obtain their experience of knowledge transfer behaviors in international assignments. Thematic analysis was used to analyze interview data.

The results show that knowledge sharing is more common than knowledge hiding in the overseas operations of EMNEs in developing economies. Cooperation requirements, corporate incentives, company support and the host country environment facilitate knowledge sharing; conversely, competitiveness and company policies are related to expatriate knowledge-hiding behaviors in other emerging economies.

This paper provides the enlightenment of Chinese MNEs on knowledge management in overseas operations in developing economies and reflects the company’s system and practice in knowledge management from the level of expatriates, as well as the role of company practices in choosing knowledge sharing or hiding behaviors.

This paper examines the impact and mechanism of China's digital inclusive finance on rural consumption upgrade. First, the impact of the development of digital inclusive finance on the upgrading of rural household consumption structure is to be theoretically analyzed and empirically tested. Secondly, in terms of heterogeneity analysis, it pays attention to the age heterogeneity of users that digital inclusive finance influencing rural residents' developmental consumption upgrade, which is related to the issue of intergenerational “digital gap”. Thirdly, the mechanism of digital inclusive finance in promoting rural consumption upgrade is to be investigated. Finally, how to promote the role of digital inclusive finance in upgrading the structure of rural consumption to a developmental demand level will be showed.

From the perspective of the micro-household, this study is conducted by using the instrumental variable (IV) method, with 2SLS model and IV-Tobit model, based on the matched city-level data of Digital Inclusive Financial Index (DIFI) with the Chinese Household Financial Survey (CHFS). “The relief degree of land surface” is an ideal instrumental variable of digital inclusive finance, for including regional altitude difference and terrain factors of regional area, has theoretical influence on the development of digital inclusive finance, and is not affected by other economic variables.

The conclusions show that the digital inclusive finance plays a significant role in promoting the rural households' developmental consumption, but has no significant effect on the rural households' survival-type consumption and hedonistic consumption. Furthermore, this paper examines the impact and mechanism of China's digital inclusive finance on rural consumption upgrade. First, the impact of the development of digital inclusive finance on the upgrading of rural household consumption structure is to be theoretically analyzed and empirically tested. Secondly, it is discovered that digital inclusive finance is age heterogeneous in promoting the upgrade of consumption structure of rural household, and its effect on the elderly is weaker than that on the young for the intergenerational “digital gap”. Thirdly, these conclusions reveal that the digital inclusive finance does affect the consumption of rural residents through three mechanisms: increasing income and wealth, easing liquidity constraints and facilitating payment methods. Finally, how to promote the role of digital inclusive finance in upgrading the structure of rural consumption to a developmental demand level will be showed.

The current research on the relationship between digital inclusive finance and rural consumption only stays at the level of total rural consumption and has not stressed the structural problems of rural consumption. Can digital inclusive finance promote the upgrade of rural consumption structure? To what level can digital inclusive finance promote the upgrading of rural consumption structure? Therefore, it is of great theoretical value to study the upgrading of rural consumption structure from the micro level. Can the current digital inclusive finance benefit the elderly and help break the vulnerability of the elderly to enjoy finance? In this regard, evidence of heterogeneity remains to be provided.

Using China’s key audit matters (KAMs) data, this study aims to examine whether negative press coverage alleviates boilerplate KAMs.

This study uses Levenshtein edit distance (LVD) to calculate the horizontal boilerplate of KAMs and investigates how boilerplate changes under different levels of the perceived legal risk.

The findings indicate that auditors of firms exposed to substantial negative press coverage will reduce the boilerplate of KAMs. This association is more significant for auditing firms with lower market share and client firms with higher financial distress. Additionally, the authors find that negative press coverage is more likely to alleviate the boilerplate disclosure of KAMs related to managers’ subjective estimation and material transactions and events. Furthermore, the association between negative press coverage and boilerplate KAMs varies with the source of negative news.

The findings suggest that upon exposure to negative press coverage, reducing the boilerplate of KAMs has a disclaimer effect for auditors.

Drawing on the literature on technological acquisition and the knowledge-based view , this study examines how technological overlap between acquiring and target firms influences acquisition premiums. We further explore how the resulting synergies are contingent on the dynamic characteristics of the target firm, specifically its technology clockspeed and industry munificence. Technology clockspeed indicates the pace of technological evolution, reflecting internal dynamic resources, while industry munificence represents the abundance of external resources. These boundary conditions illustrate the dynamics of synergies, explaining their moderation effects on acquisition premiums.

We analyze a sample of 369 technological acquisitions by publicly traded U.S. firms between 1990 and 2011. To test our hypotheses, we used the ordinary least squares regression model with robust standard errors clustered by acquiring firms. In the robustness checks, we applied the generalized estimating equations to account for non-independent observations in our sample and verified that the results were robust to an alternative two-way clustering approach.

We suggest that a low level of technological overlap between an acquiring firm and its target firm leads the acquiring firm to offer a high acquisition premium because of the expected synergistic potential that evolves from combining two distant technological bases. We further find that this effect is contingent on the target firm's technology clockspeed and industry munificence. Specifically, the negative effect is amplified when target firms exhibit a rapid pace of technological evolution, whereas it is weakened when target firms operate in highly munificent industries characterized by robust growth and abundant resource flows.

This study has several limitations, but it offers opportunities for future research. First, our sample is limited to domestic acquisitions between U.S. publicly traded firms, which may restrict generalizability. Cross-border acquisitions could reveal different dynamics, as technology leakage and national security concerns might make technological overlap a more sensitive factor. Additionally, private firms were not included, and their distinct strategic considerations could provide further insights. Future research could explore post-acquisition data to validate these synergies and expand the scope to include international contexts and private firms for a comprehensive analysis.

Our findings highlight important implications for managers in technology sector acquisitions. This study underscores the need for a thorough evaluation of target firms to avoid misjudging synergies. Low technological overlap can heighten expectations for value creation, making it crucial for executives to accurately assess potential synergies to prevent overestimation. Managers should consider both internal resources and external industry conditions when evaluating synergies. Ultimately, these insights help managers offer informed prices that reflect true strategic synergies, adopting effective valuation practices to mitigate risks of financial overpayments and poor post-merger performance.

The social implications of our findings emphasize the broader impact of acquisition decisions on innovation and competition within the technology sector. By ensuring accurate valuation and avoiding overpayment, companies can allocate resources more efficiently, fostering sustainable growth and innovation. This diligent approach can reduce the risk of corporate failures.

This study makes two key theoretical contributions. First, it identifies technological overlap as a critical determinant of acquisition premiums in technological acquisitions, addressing gaps in the literature that focused on CEO characteristics and managerial attention. Second, it expands the theoretical framework by highlighting the dynamic nature of synergies, influenced by the target firm's technology clockspeed and industry munificence. By integrating both acquiring and target firm characteristics, this study provides a relational perspective on value creation, explaining why firms pay high premiums and offering a more comprehensive understanding of the strategic motivations in technological acquisitions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information spillover of sovereign rating changes on the market valuation of bank stocks in Africa.

First, the authors apply event study methodology to evaluate the stock market reaction of African bank stocks on the announcement of sovereign rating changes. Second, the cross sections of the abnormal returns are examined by multivariate regression analyses. Third, the findings are proved for robustness.

The authors investigate how 37 African banks react to 203 African sovereign rating announcements from the three leading credit rating agencies over the period 2010-2016 and find that negative announcements trigger the significant positive stock reactions of African banks, especially contributed by banks in the non-reviewed African countries. These unusual reactions can be explained by the low integration and the severe information asymmetry of African capital markets. The authors further locate the influencing factors of banks’ reactions and show that rating downgrades magnify the abnormal effects while the membership of the African Free Trade Zone mildens the stock market reactions.

Limitations are given by the limited sample size. There are only limited numbers of publicly listed African banks with sufficient trading data.

The paper argues for a critical dependency of African bank equity valuation in the case of sovereign debt rating changes in neighbor countries. This observation is important for the risk assessment of African banking assets.

The paper is the first to examine stock market reactions on sovereign rating announcements for the evaluation of capital market integration in Africa. It thereby underlines the usefulness of this simply to apply approach as an instrument for ongoing examining the progress in capital market development in emerging countries.

The set-union knapsack problem is one of the most significant generalizations of the Non-deterministic Polynomial (NP)-hard 0-1 knapsack problem in combinatorial optimization, which has rich application scenarios. Although some researchers performed effective algorithms on normal-sized instances, the authors found these methods deteriorated rapidly as the scale became larger. Therefore, the authors design an efficient yet effective algorithm to solve this large-scale optimization problem, making it applicable to real-world cases under the era of big data.

The authors develop three targeted strategies and adjust them into the adaptive tabu search framework. Specifically, the dynamic item scoring tries to select proper items into the knapsack dynamically to enhance the intensification, while the age-guided perturbation places more emphasis on the diversification of the algorithm. The lightweight neighborhood updating simplifies the neighborhood operators to reduce the algorithm complexity distinctly as well as maintains potential solutions. The authors conduct comparative experiments against currently best solvers to show the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Statistical experiments show that the proposed algorithm can find 18 out of 24 better solutions than other algorithms. For the remaining six instances on which the competitor also achieves the same solutions, ours performs more stably due to its narrow gap between best and mean value. Besides, the convergence time is also verified efficiency against other algorithms.

The authors present the first implementation of heuristic algorithm for solving large-scale set-union knapsack problem and achieve the best results. Also, the authors provide the benchmarks on the website for the first time.

The extant literature highlights the significant role of brand perceptions in buying behavior and brand equity. Despite the importance of brand perceptions and the proliferation of online brands, research in an online context is still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the effect of positive and negative comparative affective states (online vs offline) on online brand perceptions. Consistent with existing evidence, highlighting the role of culture on brand perceptions and affective states, this research is conducted in a cross-national setting to identify the stability of the hypothesized relationships among countries.

The study uses consumer survey data from five countries (UK, USA, Australia, Canada and China). After imposing metric and factor variance invariance, we used multi-group CFA to test the hypotheses regarding the impact of positive and negative comparative affective states on online brand perceptions across the five countries in the sample.

The results show that positive comparative affective states have a significant and positive impact on online brand perceptions across the countries studied, although the impact size varies by country. The findings also show that negative comparative affective states, which are context-specific and not induced by any particular brand, have no effect on online brand perceptions across the country samples.

Managers can use the findings reported in this research to inform their branding strategies. For instance, managers may focus on triggering feelings of comfort online as these lead to more favorable online brand perceptions rather than on supressing feelings of caution, as the latter do not directly impact online brand perceptions.

The study builds on and extends the recent work of Christodoulides et al. (2013) by focussing on online brand perceptions and looking into the role of affective states in a cross-national setting.

The purpose of this study is to examine how robotic anthropomorphism and personalized design may affect consumers' reactions to brands after service failure.

This study conducted two studies based on cognitive appraisal theory and artificial intelligence device acceptance theory. Study 1 explored the mechanisms by which the type of anthropomorphic design of the service robot (humanoid robot/nonhumanoid robot) influenced revisit intention after service failure through a one-factor between-subjects design based on a restaurant dining scenario. Study 2 was based on a hotel check-in scenario and explored the moderating effect of robot personalization design on the above mechanisms through a 2 (anthropomorphic design: humanoid robot/nonhumanoid robot) × 2 (personalized design: self-name/no name) between-subjects design.

Study 1 shows that consumers have higher performance expectations for nonhumanoid robots, leading to a higher tolerance for service failure, which in turn generates higher revisit intentions. Study 2 shows that consumers' performance expectations are significantly enhanced after custom naming of humanoid robots, so the serial mediation mechanism for the effect of robot anthropomorphic design on revisit intention does not hold.

This study extends the research of artificial intelligence device acceptance theory in the field of service failure and exploratively proposes an intervention mechanism for the negative effects of the anthropomorphic design of service robots.