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The purpose of this paper is to present evidence about cultural differences between Mexico and China, and analyze their significance when implementing an innovative financial model. Specifically, the authors analyzed the case of the Yunus model (or Grameen model), originally developed in Bangladesh and further implemented in China and Mexico.

This paper uses a comparative quantity study to test the cultural difference which affects the innovative financial model implementation. A materialism and credit overuse value scale (Ponchio and Aranha, 2008; Richins, 2011; Roberts and Jones, 2001) is applied to analyze cultural differences with a sample of 250 people in each country.

The results show that the survey responses are statistically significantly different in these two countries. The Mexican sample shows a greater affinity with luxury and bragging. The Chinese sample shows more responsibility toward credit. Recommendations for the implementation of the innovative financial model considering cultural differences are suggested.

Based on the survey results, gender equality, greater caution with young borrowers, financial education programs, and strict liability agreements to ensure credit repayment, especially for Mexico, are suggested, with the aim of enabling microfinance institutions to increase the successful implementation of the Yunus model in China and Mexico.

There are few existing cultural comparisons between China and Mexico. Therefore, one of the relevant contributions of this work is to shed light on the cultural differences of these two important emerging economies for future research. Additionally, the authors applied a materialism and credit overuse value scale developed to assess consumer behavior as a proxy for culture. The results are relevant for further usage of this scale as a tool to help adapt innovative financial models for application in other cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main research fields concerning food label designs and build a topic overview. To this end, the literature review method was chosen.

A sample of 121 papers was identified and analyzed using bibliometric analysis. Journals, articles, authors of the sample and the term co-occurrence map, which represents the recurring themes and organizes them in clusters, were defined. To recognize the main research fields, starting from analyzing the terms that compose each cluster, the results were discussed in a focus group composed of five experts.

Food labelling theories are distinctly related to eight research fields: consumer behaviour analysis, consumer willingness evaluation, consumer product evaluation, nutrition and health, daily foodstuff and meal effects, food industry and related products, impacts on market and society and child nutrition.

Several stakeholders could be interested in the results of this paper. Food companies could identify the best practices in food labelling theories to improve their products and labels. Governments could understand how social policies are acknowledged by consumers and how to create new policies. Researchers could identify new issues to investigate. The results could also facilitate bibliographical referencing for those who approach this topic for the first time.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, studies on food label theories explore the themes from the consumer’s perspective. The authors’ study, in contrast, focused on recognizing the research fields where food label designs are addressed.

Purpose: This chapter analyzes the policies of immigration control implemented in Mexico in 2014 to deter the migration of Central Americans to the United States, and their impact on Central American youth migrants.

Methods: This chapter draws from three pools of data: (1) participant observation and interviews conducted with minor migrants in Mexico from 2015 to 2019; (2) Mexican and US government data on detentions and deportations of Central American minor migrants; and (3) publicly available information on Mexican and Guatemalan government programs and media campaigns targeted at addressing the migration of Central American minor migrants.

Findings: This chapter posits that the policies of migrant detention and deportation implemented in Mexico in 2014 turned the entire country into a borderland for Central Americans. These policies expanded the areas of migrant surveillance, detention, and deportation beyond Mexico’s traditional border regions, which, in turn, made youth migrants’ journeys through Mexico more precarious and prone to violence.

Research implications: This chapter examines the impact of immigration and border control policies implemented in Mexico and anti-immigration propaganda on Central American youth, and it demonstrates how Mexico has been converted into an expanded US border territory in an attempt to prevent migrants from reaching the United States’ physical borderland.

Value: This chapter analyzes the impact of US-led detention and deportation policies aimed at Central American migrants throughout Mexico, rather than just in the traditional border regions. These relatively novel policies are at the forefront of immigration control and warrant special attention.

This paper aims to explore brain-based differences in national and own-label brands perceptions. Because price is a differentiating characteristic, able to discriminate between national and own-label brands, its influence is also studied.

The study uses the Save Holdings Or Purchase (SHOP) task with functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the differences in brain functioning for national versus own-label branded products.

For the same product, the higher priced national brands and the lower priced own-label brands lead to more buying decisions. It is also found that there are brain structures that are more active/deactive for national than for own-label brands, both marked with real market prices. Price is a powerful driver of buying decisions and has its neural correlates. Parietal regions activate when brand information is subtracted from brand-plus-price information. The most surprising finding is that visual and visual associative areas are involved in the contrasts between branded products marked with switched prices and marked with real market prices.

The activation/deactivation brain patterns suggest that accepted models of brain functioning are not suitable for explaining brand decisions. Also, to our knowledge, this is the first time that a study directly addresses the brain’s functioning when subjects are stimulated with national versus own-label brands. It paves the way for a new approach to understanding how such brand categories are perceived, revealing the neural origins of the associated psychological processes.

The COVID-19 outbreak has profoundly plagued the world, and current health efforts are focused on providing prevention and ensuring access to intensive services for people with the most severe symptomatology. Many reports have already described substantial psychological distress in the general population. Nevertheless, disasters tend to affect vulnerable subjects disproportionately, and individuals with intellectual disabilities/autism spectrum disorder with high and very high support needs (PwID/ASD-HSN) seem to be counted among the hardest hit populations. The present paper aims to provide a comprehensive discussion and evaluation of COVID-19 related issues specific to PwID/ASD-HSN.

Commentary on available literature and analysis of new preliminary data on PwID/ASD-HSN’s physical and psychic vulnerability factors. This knowledge is fundamental to provide families and caregivers special advice to counteract the risks associated with the current pandemic.

PwID/ASD-HSN represent one of the most vulnerable population to the COVID-19 outbreak and the associated factors of mental distress for several reasons, including multimorbidity, low levels of health literacy, difficulties to understand and communicate, reliance on other people for care, low compliance with complex hygiene rules, the strong need of routine/sameness and low adaptive skills.

In the present work, the authors analyze the specific factors of physical and mental vulnerability in PwID/ASD-HSN, corroborating the dissertation with a discussion on the first data published worldwide and with preliminary data collected on the Italian territory for what concerns prevalence rates of COVID-19 and complications in persons with PwID/ASD-HSN and signs and symptoms of psychic distress during the mass quarantine period.

Tech start-ups (TSs) functioning in different domains have a responsibility of ensuring that domestic knowledge and capabilities are leveraged to minimize dependence on foreign organizations. Despite the growth of the ecosystem, while numerous TSs emerge, very few of them are able to survive, and of those that survive, very few scale up. The aim of this study is to identify the factors influencing the competitiveness of technological start-ups and to study the interrelationship and interdependence of these factors.

Modified total interpretative structural modeling (m-TISM) was employed for the current research. The analysis of what factors have an effect on competitiveness, how they affect it and why they affect it should be explored. The study begins by developing the list of factors through literature search, and further it is validated by expert opinion. A hierarchical model has been developed using m-TISM and MICMAC analysis to analyze the driving and dependency power of factors at each level.

Results show that the competitiveness of TSs is affected by organizational agility and internationalization. Factors present at the bottom level, namely entrepreneurial intensity, act as a strong driver for TSs. Team member commitment, transformational leadership, strategic alliances, knowledge sharing and organizational ambidexterity are middle-level factors.

This study is among the few articles that have explored competitiveness of TSs in the Indian context.

This paper aims to assess whether governance processes that are taking place in the Chinchiná River basin, a coffee culture region in the Andean region of Colombia, are adaptive to climate variability and climate extremes.

A mixed research method was used by reviewing secondary research sources surrounding the institutional governance system of water governance and disaster response and semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with producers and members of organizations within the institutional governance system.

This study found that there is a low response to extreme events. Hopefully, the growing national awareness and activity in relation to climate change and disaster will improve response and be downscaled into these communities in the future. Although, some learning has occurred at the national government level and by agricultural producers who are adapting practices, to date no government institution has facilitated social learning taking into account conflict, power and tactics of domination.

This paper improves the understanding of the vulnerability of rural agricultural communities to shifts in climate variability. It also points out the importance of governance institutions in enhancing agricultural producer adaptive capacity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most progressive commodity among current information system applications. In-house development and sales of beneficial products are difficult for many software development and service companies (SDSCs). SDSCs have some implicit concerns about implementing AI software development due to the complexity of AI technology; they require an evaluation framework to avoid development failure. To fill the void, this study identified the factors influencing SDSCs when developing AI software development.

Based on complex adaptive systems theory, three aspects were developed as the main factors of hierarchy, namely, employees' capabilities, environmental resources and team capabilities. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was used to assess the SDSCs' attitude. Based on SDSCs, attitudes toward implementing AI software projects were collected to calculate the hierarchy of factors.

The outcome of FAHP is used as understanding the key factors of SDSCs for selecting an AI software project, toward the improvement of overall project planning. Employees' stress resistance was considered as a priority for the project, although professional AI skills and resources were also important.

This study suggested three variables developed using complex adaptive systems. This study contributes to a better understanding of the critical aspects of developing AI software projects in SDSCs. The study's findings have practical and academic implications for SDSCs and subsequent academic development, broadening the scope of AI software development research.

Most studies on Sentiment Analysis are performed in English. However, as the third most spoken language on the Internet, Sentiment Analysis for Spanish presents its challenges from a semantic and syntactic point of view. This review presents a scope of the recent advances in this area.

A systematic literature review on Sentiment Analysis for the Spanish language was conducted on recognized databases by the research community.

Results show classification systems through three different approaches: Lexicon based, Machine Learning based and hybrid approaches. Additionally, different linguistic resources as Lexicon or corpus explicitly developed for the Spanish language were found.

This study provides academics and professionals, a review of advances in Sentiment Analysis for the Spanish language. Most reviews on Sentiment Analysis are for English, and other languages such as Chinese or Arabic, but no updated reviews were found for Spanish.