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This paper aims to examine the effect of consumer inertia – a tendency to adhere to prior purchase decisions despite the existence of preferable alternatives – on the relationships between switching costs and customer retention, and explain the controversy within them in the context of budget hotels.

An empirical test was conducted via structural equation modelling based on 337 self-administered questionnaires from customers at six of Chinese popular budget hotels.

Consumer inertia was a significant mediator between switching costs and customer retention. Specifically, consumer inertia completely mediated the effects of financial switching costs on customer retention, but partially did between procedural switching costs and customer retention. By introducing consumer inertia, the explanatory power of customer retention improved significantly by 19%.

This paper clarifies the effects of multiple dimensions of switching costs on customer retention via the mediating role of consumer inertia and partly addresses the inconsistency in the prior studies from an inertia perspective.

The “tourism living systems” (Tourism Living System – TLS) concept is underdeveloped, with limited relevant theoretical analysis to understand how it can support the transformations of tourism systems towards healthy communities and places. This paper aims to conceptualise TLSs and key stakeholder roles for enacting regenerative tourism using a living systems perspective.

Knowledge synthesis and co-production were used to identify the conceptual framework and its applications. Knowledge synthesis was undertaken through a scoping review of the regenerative tourism literature and supplemented by a consultation exercise with leading regenerative tourism practitioners. Co-production of knowledge involved case study research to assess the conceptual framework's practical applications and revise it with regenerative tourism practitioners.

The study revealed that regenerative tourism is informed by living systems' thinking. The authors identify five diverse, interdependent and interconnected stakeholder roles from the case studies and scoping review. All stakeholder roles are vital for constituting tourism systems that contribute to the healthy evolution of social-ecological systems.

Real-world case study applications of the TLS framework will guide tourism stakeholders who seek to adopt regenerative tourism approaches.

The study contributes to developing new frontiers in tourism stakeholder roles and paradigms with implications for regenerative tourism futures. The TLS framework challenges industrial conceptions of tourism by proposing a shift in stakeholder roles from extraction to generating new life to survive, thrive and evolve.

This paper aims to analyse both traditional and regenerative fields across four layers, litany, systems, worldviews and myth/metaphor. It aims to provide in-depth insight into the beliefs, values epistemologies and assumptions that scaffold thinking and practice. As a result of this analysis, future implications for regenerative urban practice are also considered.

Prevailing sustainability approaches seek to mitigate further harm in urban centres by increasing efficiency and minimising resource consumption and impact. They are primarily underpinned by a reductionist worldview that separates human objectives from those of the natural world. In contrast, regenerative approaches to urban sustainability have emerged out of an ecological worldview and aim to achieve net positive outcomes as a result of co-evolutionary relationships between social and ecological systems. This paper explores both approaches in urban communities through futures thinking tool, causal layered analysis.

As a result of the causal layered analysis undertaken, this paper provides insights into regenerative thinking and practice in urban settings. These insights cover four main thematic categories: purpose, place, practice and progress. Moving to the deeper layers of worldview and myth metaphor analysis, in particular, has significant implications for ongoing practice, including facilitating processes by which communities can reflect upon, unpack and reconstruct their concepts of future “success”.

Anthropogenic climate change continues to deliver worsening ecological, social and economic impacts globally. Urban centres are particularly central to this crisis given their massive resource consumption and rapid population growth. This paper provides an alternative, deep analysis to consider thinking and practice required for urban regeneration. It reveals the need for a shift in purpose and a deeper understanding of place, illustrating the roles that futures tools may place in this transition.

Transfer relations represent analytical solutions of the linear theory of circular arches, relating each one of the kinematic and static variables at an arbitrary cross-section to the kinematic and static variables at the initial cross-section. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of the transfer relations for structural analysis by means of three examples taken from civil engineering.

The first example refers to an arch bridge, the second one to the vault of a metro station and the third one to a real-scale test of a segmental tunnel ring.

The main conclusions drawn from these three examples are as follows: increasing the number of hangers/columns of the investigated arch bridge entails a reduction of the maximum bending moment of the arch, allowing it to approach, as much as possible, the desired thrust-line behavior; compared to the conventional in situ cast method, a combined precast and in situ cast method results in a decrease of the maximum bending moment of an element of the vault of the studied underground station by 46%; and the local behavior of the joints governs both the structural convergences and the bearing capacity of the tested segmental tunnel ring.

The three examples underline that the transfer relations significantly facilitate computer-aided engineering of circular arch structures, including arch bridges, vaults of metro stations and segmental tunnel rings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of customer satisfaction (CS) in the electronic-customer relationship management (e-CRM) and customer’s loyalty (CL) relationship, using data from the customers of one of the largest retail banks in Kenya.

Using survey mode, the study was administered to 90 samples (of which 78 were returned and usable), with data analysed using exploratory factor analysis to determine scale validity, and path analysis and multiple regression modelling to test hypotheses.

This study revealed that the interaction between e-CRM transaction features and CS was statistically significant and predicted CL, however, the interaction did not significantly account for more variance than just e-CRM features and CS. The path analysis revealed a lack of potential significant mediation effects of CS on the relationship between e-CRM and CL.

Although this research may have sampling limitations and also that the model fit is confined in a single bank/service industry, the estimated model was reasonable enough and has the potential of being repeated in future studies.

The principle contribution of the present research is it supplies unique learning to bank managers and scholars alike through conceptualising and subsequently empirically verifying the path e-CRM and e-loyalty via CS, and that CS does not mediate the relationship between the aforementioned constructs. By investigating the e-CRM practices of an existing case study, it provides insights of the issue and compare to literature, therefore supplying a thorough and detailed analysis to understand the phenomenon under investigation valuable for banking sector.

Service quality has been widely recognized as the core value of any higher education institution (HEIs), especially in the context of higher education reform in Vietnam. The paper aims to assess the student’s perceived service quality using SERVPERF scale and to find the relations between perceived service quality, satisfaction and loyalty in one public university in Vietnam.

The self-structured questionnaire using SERVPERF scale was administered to 350 students currently attending full-time courses at the university. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to certify the elementary factors. The regression models were applied to determine the relationship between service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty.

The findings revealed the significant relationships between student perceived service quality with satisfaction and loyalty. However, this relationship is mediated by student satisfaction.

The study is limited to public university education service and examined the perspective of student as “primary customer”; therefore, generalizing the results to other service industries and other role of student as stakeholder or citizen should be used with caution.

The SERVPERF scale could be delivered regularly to get the student’s perception on the HEIs performance. The results should be taken for purpose of continuing quality improvement to enhance the satisfaction and loyalty, particularly in the context of highly competitive environment and university autonomous in Vietnam.

This is believed to be the first study in Vietnam with sufficient evidence to support the concept that service quality positively related to students’ satisfaction and loyalty and satisfaction as mediating factor.

In this paper, three research topics are presented referring to different aspects of multifield problems in civil engineering. The first example deals with long term behaviour of wood under multiaxial states of stress and the effect of moisture changes on the deformation behaviour of wood. The second example refers to the application of a three‐phase model for soils to the numerical simulation of dewatering of soils by means of compressed air. The soil is modelled as a three phase‐material, consisting of the deformable soil skeleton and the fluid phases – water and compressed air. The third example is concerned with computational durability mechanics of concrete structures. As a particular example of chemically corrosive mechanisms, the material degradation due to the dissolution of calcium and external loading is addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency in the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries, by assessing the moderation of directors' education towards the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency. The extant literature on board busyness demonstrates to a lack of clarification of the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency.

The sample for this paper comprises a panel data of 800 firms in a cross-country context of the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries during the recent period of 2009–2015. This paper performs a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis to measure firm efficiency and panel regression analysis to examine the moderation of directors' education.

This paper provides support for the busyness hypothesis by documenting that the busy boards are likely to reduce firm efficiency. Moreover, this paper renders support to the upper-echelons theory by demonstrating that the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency is likely to turn positive in the presence of directors' education.

This paper highlights practical implication for managers especially in the Asia–Pacific region who seek to enhance firm efficiency, which is essential for firms in attaining the primary goal of profit maximization.

This paper builds on the extant literature by providing a contemporary research path regarding the moderation of directors' education to explain the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency, based on a recent and significant sample of Asia–Pacific countries.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive framework incorporating service roles (customer vs employee) and outcomes (failure vs success) as moderators in the process by which perceived cultural distance (PCD) affects customers and employees in intercultural service encounters (ICSEs).

The authors used a 2×2×3 between-subjects experimental design with Chinese undergraduate students, manipulating service role (customer and employee), outcome (failure and success) and PCD (low, medium and high).

Compared to service employees, customers perceive higher cultural distance and lower interaction comfort (IC), service quality and satisfaction; and stronger negative moderating effect of PCD in ICSEs. Compared to service success, failure results in lower IC; perceived service quality and satisfaction, and these effects are stronger for customers (vs employees).

The authors used shorter versions of all the scales to minimize participant fatigue and to increase their involvement along with an experimental design with imaginary service scenario, both of which may restrict the generalizability of the findings.

Service managers should focus on customer education and employee training to reduce the negative impact of PCD and prevent service failure rather than try to improve service quality and satisfaction beyond customers’ expectations.

The authors extend prior research by exploring the moderating effects of service role (customer vs employee) and outcome (success vs failure) on the direct and indirect effects of PCD on IC, service quality and satisfaction.

This study aims to explore university students' push and pull motivational factors towards their study tour destination choices and to investigate the differences between experienced and non-experienced students concerning their push and pull motivational factors.

The study collected surveys from Hong Kong university students. In total, 248 usable responses were gathered. Among the 248 respondents, 148 university students from various universities did not have experience on a study tour in their university lives while 100 students did. The study also conducted interviews and collected qualitative data to supplement the survey findings.

Top push and pull motivational factors were highlighted in the study tour context. This study also indicated that non-experienced students relatively have more concerns about geographic location, political stability and financial budget as pull factors and education as the push factor than experienced students. Education, as a high-level human need and push motivational factor, becomes less important for experienced students.

A large number of Asian university students participated in study tour programmes each year. Nevertheless, there are few research papers relevant to exploring university students’ motivation to choose study tour destinations. This study provides useful insight for the universities to design and implement appropriate study tours according to students’ motivation.