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In the shipping industry, both sales and purchases of second-hand ships and freight transport services are prevalently tailormade and traded with intense bilateral negotiations. Price bargaining is the key step of this negotiation process and plays a crucial role in determining mutually agreed prices. Despite its cruciality and applicability, the price bargaining has yet received due conceptual and/or theoretical attention in the shipping literature. This paper attempts to conceptually examine the role of bargaining in shipping transaction prices and subsequently puts forward directions for future research. In doing so, the paper focuses on two types of transactions taking place in shipping markets: asset market trading of second-hand vessels and service market trading shipping freights.

The paper begins with a systematic literature review of price bargaining in the field of economics and management disciplines from a game-theoretic perspective. This approach does logically lead to the establishment of a conceptual framework for price bargaining in shipping sub-markets as a step toward having taken into consideration a variety of heterogeneities commonly present in trading activities and market dynamics.

A set of research areas has been consequently identified where price bargaining and mechanisms for the shipping freight and asset markets could be further explored and analyzed in a way to make better pricing decisions under a more tangible framework.

One of the critical challenges when using bargaining mechanisms to make a decision on pricing shipping services and assets is how to operationalize the study for empirical investigation as some of the factors are internal information of the players and are not adequately revealed to externals: that is, an imperfect information sharing case. The current study aims, however, not to conduct an empirical analysis but to initiate a conversation among maritime economists by bringing their attention to this not-yet fully explored and potentially impactful field of research and by asking them to treat bargaining from a perspective for pricing shipping assets and services. It is claimed that, by doing so, one could better understand price differences between individual contracts.

This study would be considered the first of its kind to provide a detailed survey of the bargaining theory and models from a game theoretical perspective as a theoretical lens to understand its importance and relevance in pricing shipping assets and services. It also provides a simplified operational case on utilizing bargaining in practically pricing freight services.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the entry mode choice of the Spanish companies in China, the factors that influence it and the barriers that they found.

A qualitative approach is used by interviewing the partners of management consulting firms (MCFs) specialised in internationalisation processes in China.

The decision on the entry mode choice depends on whether the firm has incentives for investment with a partner rather than the size or the international experience of the board and the top managers. The barriers faced by Spanish companies in China are related to legal issues, bureaucracy, culture, language, trust and human resources.

Companies must have a differential factor to succeed in China and use a legal form that lets them to protect this advantage regardless of the entry form chosen. MCFs pointed out the need to collaborate with local people and to rely on a management team capable of overcoming the barriers.

One of the major contributions of this study is the methodology, as the view of the consultants in the internationalisation process of companies had not been studied before.

This paper aims to investigate how the contextual marketing strategy facilitated by mobile technology enhances consumers’ purchase intention and experiential quality in a hedonic service setting – museum. Specifically, this study explores the impacts of a context-triggered push notification promoting context-related souvenirs embedded in the museum mobile app on visitors’ souvenir purchase intention and visit experience.

This study adopted a scenario-based experimental design with video stimuli and a follow-up survey questionnaire. A total of 151 participants were randomly assigned to one of the two art museum visiting scenarios (i.e. with vs without the in-app push notification). A series of one-way ANOVA comparisons and serial mediation tests were conducted for hypotheses testing.

The results show that the mobile app promoting context-related souvenirs positively affects museum visitors’ souvenir purchase intention without undermining their experiential quality. The serial mediation effects through contextual perceived value and impulse buying tendency further explain how the in-app push notification influences visitors’ souvenir purchase intention.

This study extends the contextual marketing research to a unique service domain (i.e. museum) and contributes to the service technology literature. The findings present empirical evidence for the effectiveness of mobile contextual marketing and its potential to enhance consumers’ experiential quality in a hedonic service setting. The current research provides practical guidelines to both the museum management and mobile app developers.

This paper aims to establish the mathematical models for the water-lubricated thrust bearing with groove texture considering turbulence and cavitation and numerically analyze the influence of rotary speed, texture depth, groove number and groove width on the static performance of the bearing.

The turbulent Reynolds equation and the Jakobsson–Floberg–Olsson cavitation model are adopted for the analysis. The Payvar–Salant algorithm and Finite difference schemes are used to discretize the governing equations. To illustrate the influence of turbulence, the performance of the bearing predicted by the turbulent and laminar models are compared.

According to the results, the load capacity and the friction force calculated by the turbulent model are greater than those obtained by laminar model, and the deviation between them gradually increases with the increased rotary speed. So, the turbulent effect should be fully considered for high-speed water-lubricated bearing with surface texture. There exists a peak value for the load capacity of the water-lubricated thrust bearing in respect to the texture depth, the number of grooves and the groove width ratio, while the friction force varies slowly with those parameters. Well-designed groove texture can improve the performance of the water-lubricated thrust bearing.

This paper proposes a mathematical model considering turbulent and cavitation effect for water-lubricated thrust bearing with surface texture. This model can be complementary to conventional laminar model which is used to analyze the performance of textured bearing at low rotary speed.

As the cost of completing a transaction, the green merger and acquisition (M&A) premium paid on mergers can influence whether the acquisition creates value or not. However, studies linking M&A premiums to firm value have had mixed results, even fewer studies have examined the effect of green M&A premiums on bidders’ firm value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how green M&A premiums affect firm value in the context of China’s heavy polluters.

Using 323 deals between 2008 and 2019 among China’s heavy polluters, this paper estimates with correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Green M&A premiums are negatively associated with firm value. The results are more significant when firms adopt symbolic rather than substantive corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Robustness and endogeneity tests corroborate the findings. The negative relation is stronger when acquiring firms have low governmental subsidy and environmental regulation, when firms have overconfident management, when firms are state-owned and when green M&A occurs locally or among provinces in the same region. This study also analyzes agency cost as an intermediary in the relationship between green M&A premium and firm value, which lends support to the agency-view hypothesis.

This study provides systemic evidence that green M&A premiums damage firm value through agency cost channel and the choice of CSR strategies from the perspective of acquirers. These findings enrich the literature on both the economic consequences of green M&A premiums and the determinants of firm value and provide a plausible explanation for mixed findings on the relationship between green M&A premiums and firm value.

The purpose of this study is to reconcile the positive, non-significant and even negative effects of guanxi on firm performance from two aspects. First, it explores the linear and curvilinear relationships between guanxi and distinct performance dimensions. Second, it examines the moderating effects of both exchange-related behavioral risk (reflected by contract enforcement in this study) and market-related environmental risk (reflected by market turbulence in this study) on the above relationship.

Based on data for 206 samples collected from distributors of house furnishings, computers and their components, a moderated regression is used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical test generally supports the conceptual model and demonstrates three findings. First, guanxi has a linear, positive effect on financial performance and an inverted U-shaped effect on strategic performance. Second, contract enforcement decreases the effect of guanxi on financial performance and enhances its effect on strategic performance. Third, market turbulence enhances the effect of guanxi on financial performance and weakens its effect on strategic performance.

First, this study collects data only from China. Future studies should collect data from other emerging markets to allow for either model validation or cross-country comparisons. Second, the data come only from buyers, and suppliers’ viewpoints are not included. Third, in addition to contract enforcement and market turbulence, other important contingencies should be considered in the guanxi–performance link.

The results provide important implications for managers to manage guanxi in an emerging economy. Managers should be very clear about their primary goal (i.e. pursuing short-term financial revenue or long-term strategic targets); next, they should understand how to match guanxi with various levels of contract enforcement and market turbulence to achieve that goal.

First, prior research has documented guanxi’s role in channel relationships, but it has not achieved consistent conclusions. Second, although existing studies have analyzed the contingencies of guanxi at the firm level, market level and institutional level, another important contingency “the dyadic relationship condition” is rarely considered. Third, although the extant research has realized the value of guanxi contingent on various market conditions, conflicting views exist. This study contributes by addressing these issues.

This paper aims to study the effect of the establishment of bankruptcy courts on bond issuance market. This paper helps to predict that the introduction of bankruptcy courts in China can mitigate price distortions caused by the implicit government guarantees and promote the development of the high-risk bond market.

This paper exploits the staggered introduction of bankruptcy courts across cities to implement a differences-in-differences strategy on bond issuance data. Using bonds issued in China between 2018 and 2020, the impact of bankruptcy courts on the bond issuance market can be analyzed.

This paper reveals that bond issuance credit spreads increase and is more sensitive to firm size, profitability and downside risk of issuance entity after the introduction of bankruptcy courts. It also reveals a substantive increase in bond issuance quantity and a decrease in issuer credit ratings following the establishment of bankruptcy courts. In addition, the increase of credit spreads is more prominent for publicly traded bonds, those whose issuers located in provinces with lower judicial confidence, bonds issued by SOEs and bonds with stronger government guarantees. Finally, the role of bankruptcy courts is more pronounced in regions with higher marketization.

This paper relates to previous studies that investigate the impact of laws and institutions on external financing. It helps provide new evidence to this literature on how improvements of efficiency and quality in bankruptcy enforcements relate to the marketization of bond issuance. The results provide further evidence on legal institutions and bond financing.

By adopting a cultural lens, this study aims to conceptualize destination-community hospitality to capture societal hospitality at the destination as an intangible asset. Destination-community hospitality comprises a set of attitudes and traits that are organically conveyed by community members and directly experienced by tourists. The paper contributes to efforts aimed at freeing hospitality from the confines of commercial lodging and food and beverage establishments.

This study proposes an affection–attention–awareness (AAA) framework by drawing on the pertinent literature and leveraging the affective–behavioral–cognitive model of attitudinal change. It focuses on the effects of cognition in conceptualizing destination-community hospitality as the core of the framework. Methodologically, the framework is illustrated with qualitative data including observational fieldwork and interviews conducted in Iran.

Illustration of the AAA framework in the context of Iran highlights how welcoming attitudes are leveraged at a destination as an ingrained community mindset even in the absence of formal initiatives or professional training. It underscores the hospitality advocacy role of local-community members irrespective of public-sector policy and capacity deficiencies.

Destinations that strive to attract tourists should tap into the significant wealth of intuitive hospitality within communities as an intangible resource. The ingenuity should be preserved to sustainably enhance the overall tourist experiences. The framework can serve as a guide to strategically facilitate destination-community hospitality.

Research on community-wide hospitality at destinations, as a major cultural asset in the context of strategic hospitality management, remains underdeveloped. With illustrative evidence, the findings elevate the critical role of community members as innate advocates of hospitality in developing destinations. The proposed framework of destination-community hospitality provides a new perspective and impetus for investigating hospitality beyond commercial domains.

Public–private partnership (PPP) projects are increasingly significant in many countries. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of critical success factors (CSFs) on PPP projects and comprehensively consider the interrelations and interaction among dimensions and factors to achieve a better understanding of PPP project management.

An evaluation index system for PPP projects such as the presented case study is proposed based on a literature review and a survey. Then, interpretative structural modeling is used to transform the CSFs dimension into a multi-level hierarchical model to reflect the driven-dependency relation of each dimension; the fuzzy analytic network process model optimized by moment estimation theory is used to investigate the impact of CSFs by considering their internal impact.

Regarding the project used as the case study, the driving force and dependence for driving layer and dependent layer are determined. Moreover, in driving layer, efficient and well-structured payment mechanism is the most important CSF if considering the internship and interaction among CSFs, and efficient and well-structured payment mechanism and good governance provide most positive interaction; in dependent layer, population of beneficiaries is the most important CSF if considering the internship and interaction among CSFs, and public client’s satisfaction provides most positive interaction.

This paper developed an evaluation model to explore the interrelationships of dimensions and factors and then determine the impact of CSFs. The model propose in this paper relaxes the independence assumptions of traditional methods and is more in line with reality; besides, weighting method is optimized to obtain more objective and reasonable evaluation results. Through an empirical study, the validity of the model has been verified; therefore, the study can help project stakeholders better understand the CSFs and further improve project performance.

Given the regional heterogeneity of economic development, electricity consumption in various regions exhibits a discrepant growth pattern. The purpose of this study is to construct a grey system forecasting model with intelligent parameters for predicting provincial electricity consumption in China.

First, parameter optimization and structural expansion are simultaneously integrated into a unified grey system prediction framework, enhancing its adaptive capabilities. Second, by setting the minimum simulation percentage error as the optimization goal, the authors apply the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to search for the optimal grey generation order and background value coefficient. Third, to assess the performance across diverse power consumption systems, the authors use two electricity consumption cases and select eight other benchmark models to analyze the simulation and prediction errors. Further, the authors conduct simulations and trend predictions using data from all 31 provinces in China, analyzing and predicting the development trends in electricity consumption for each province from 2021 to 2026.

The study identifies significant heterogeneity in the development trends of electricity consumption systems among diverse provinces in China. The grey prediction model, optimized with multiple intelligent parameters, demonstrates superior adaptability and dynamic adjustment capabilities compared to traditional fixed-parameter models. Outperforming benchmark models across various evaluation indicators such as root mean square error (RMSE), average percentage error and Theil’s index, the new model establishes its robustness in predicting electricity system behavior.

Acknowledging the limitations of traditional grey prediction models in capturing diverse growth patterns under fixed-generation orders, single structures and unadjustable background values, this study proposes a fractional grey intelligent prediction model with multiple parameter optimization. By incorporating multiple parameter optimizations and structure expansion, it substantiates the model’s superiority in forecasting provincial electricity consumption.