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The purpose of this paper is to provide an investigation on a new kind of photocatalytic material, namely, the porous ceramic foam loading titanium dioxide, which can make an effective photocatalytic degradation of the methyl orange (MO) solution in the wastewater.

The natural zeolite powder has been used as the primary raw material to produce a sort of lightweight porous ceramic foam by impregnating polymer foam in slurry and then sintering. With the sol-gel method, a kind of open-cell reticular porous ceramic foam loading TiO₂ film was obtained having a good photocatalytic action, and the resultant porous composite product presents the bulk density of 0.3~0.6 g/cm³ to be able to float on water.

The MO could tend to be completely degraded in the solution with a certain concentration by the TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam irradiated with ultraviolet light, and this composite foam was found to have high degradation efficiency for the MO solution in a wide range of pH.

This work presents a TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam that can effectively photo-catalyze to degrade the MO in water, and the degradation efficiency were examined under different conditions of the MO solution with various pH values.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether embedded employees proactively provide voice for future improvement, and how interactional justice moderates this relationship.

Survey data were collected from the administrative staff and their immediate supervisors of a major university located in Southern China. The data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

Job embeddedness was positively related to voice behavior toward organization (VBO) but not to voice behavior toward work unit. Interactional justice was positively related to both types of voice behavior. The relationship between job embeddedness and VBO was stronger among employees who perceived lower interactional justice.

To encourage voice behavior, organizations should attempt to enhance employees’ job embeddedness by adopting human resource strategies such as providing training that helps employees to meet their long-term career goals. This is particularly important when supervisors fail to treat their employees with fairness. When employees are treated with fairness by supervisors, they are also motivated to speak up. Thus, supervisors should pay attention to the ways in which they interact with employees.

This paper adds to the existing knowledge of the consequences of job embeddedness by examining its relationship with voice, a proactive behavior which can benefit the organization but is considered as risky by the employees. Additionally, studying the moderating effect of interactional justice enriches the understanding of the conditions under which the relationship between job embeddedness and voice may vary. It also reveals the uncertainty management process underlying the influences of job embeddedness and interactional justice on voice behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the marketing results of video blogging (vlogging). In particular, the authors are interested in understanding which video bloggers (vloggers) can better help marketers develop their brand image, which vlog viewers tend to evaluate vlogger-endorsed brands more positively, and how these effects occur.

A questionnaire survey was conducted with a convenience sample online. A total of 401 valid responses were collected. Regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.

The authors found that vloggers’ physical and social attractiveness and the audience’s viewing motives (entertainment motive and relationship-building motive) and behavior (time spent on the media) increased the audience’s evaluations of the brands endorsed by the vloggers (perceived brand quality, brand affect and brand preference). The authors also found that these relationships were mediated by the parasocial interaction (PSI) between the vloggers and the audience.

The findings of this study suggest that marketers can develop relationships with consumers and enhance their brand evaluations via vloggers. This strategy is more effective when brand managers use more attractive vloggers and target viewers who spend a lot of time on vlogs seeking entertainment or hoping to build relationships.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that vlogging can affect brand evaluations through the development of PSI between vloggers and viewers. The authors extended the focus of vlog marketing research from consumers’ watching and sharing behaviors and their perception of vloggers to brand evaluations, from vloggers’ characteristics to viewers’ characteristics and from the Western to the Eastern context.

This study mainly aims to examine whether entrepreneurs’ utilization of political connections is purely egoistic. Addressing this issue could shed light on traditional debate which concerns whether political connections still have strategic value at advanced stage of institutional transition today in China. Here, at the background of Chinese economic transformation, the utilization of political connections is studied, and a double-role model of the pro-self-mechanism and the pro-social mechanism between political connections and performance in China is put forward.

This study uses survey of questionnaires randomly from 363 entrepreneurs in Jiangsu, Anhui and Shandong Provinces of China and adopts the first stage and direct moderation model in examination.

The results show that there exists mediated mechanism of both pro-self and pro-social mechanism in the relationship between political connections and firm performance. The authors conclude that utilization of political connections is not only purely egoistic but also altruistic. So, both dark-side and bright-side mechanisms of political connections in China are of equal importance. In addition, the authors take into consideration of the contingency effects of institution, industry and firm-level factors of this moderation model. The pro-self and pro-social mechanisms have differences in terms of moderator-within and moderator-between comparisons of these three contingency effects. Among these comparisons, the pro-self-mediating mechanism is most sensitive to changes of institutional quality, whereas the pro-social mediating mechanism is most sensitive to the uncertainty of industry competition.

This evidence furthermore verifies that the process of institutional transition is nonlinear and political connections still have strategic value in advanced stage of institutional transition today.

This study combines the dual perspectives of “give” and “take.” The former implies the pro-social motivation, while the latter implies the pro-self-motivation. Based on the framework of “resource-conduct-performance,” this study explores how these two mechanisms mediate the relationship between political ties and firm performance. In addition, the authors adopt the framework of “Strategy Tripod,” which was proposed by Peng et al. (2009) and examine the difference between pro-self and pro-social motivation at different level of institution environment improvement, industry dynamics and firm absorptive capacity.

This study aims to investigate the perception of smart tourism technologies (STTs) in creating museum tourism experiences and assess visitors’ intentions to test the impact, the extent and role that STTs play in museum service.

The investigation was conducted through an online and on-site survey; data were collected in four different museums with 365 museum tourists in four countries. SmartPLS (version 3.3.3) was used to access the measurement and structural model based on path modelling and bootstrapping.

STTs have a positive impact on creating a memorable tourism experience for museum visitors and are beneficial to revisit intention and positive recommendations. The impact is stronger than traditional services such as museum setting and staff service. STTs can be considered an independent new service to museums rather than complementing existing services. STTs negatively affect tourism’s experience at the communication stage.

Previous studies have noted the growing attention to the museum visitor experience, but the combined impact of new elements, such as STTs, remains an unexplored area. This study addressed the research gap through an empirical investigation and offers guidelines to test museum visitors’ acceptance and fitness for the services provided by STTs. In addition, this study presents a new point of view on the roles that STTs take in museum service, which can be useful for further investigations.

本研究旨在调查智慧旅游技术 (STT) 在创造博物馆旅游体验和评估游客意图方面的感知。测试智能旅游技术在博物馆服务中的影响、程度和作用。

研究调查是通过在线和现场问卷调查进行的; 数据是在四个国家的四个不同博物馆中收集的, 共收集了 365 名博物馆游客的数据。 SmartPLS（版本 3.3.3）用于访问基于路径建模和引导的测量模型和结构模型。

智慧旅游技术对为博物馆参观者创造难忘的旅游体验具有积极影响, 并有利于重访意向和积极推荐。这种影响比博物馆的环境设置和员工服务等传统服务更强。智慧旅游技术可以被视为对博物馆的一项独立的新服务, 而不是对现有服务的补充。智慧旅游技术对博物馆游客在传播阶段的体验产生负面影响。

以前的研究已经注意到学界对博物馆参观体验的关注日益增加, 但 STT 等新元素的综合影响仍然是一个未探索的领域。 本研究通过实证调查补充了研究缺口, 并提供了测试博物馆参观者对 STT 提供的服务的接受度和适应性的指南。此外, 本研究提出了 STT 在博物馆服务中的作用的新观点, 这对进一步的研究很有帮助。

Resumen

El objetivo de este estudio es investigar la percepción de las Tecnologías Turísticas Inteligentes (TTIs) en la creación de experiencias turísticas en los museos y evaluar las intenciones de los visitantes para probar el impacto, el alcance y el papel que desempeñan las TTIs en el servicio de los museos.

La investigación se llevó a cabo a través de una encuesta online y presencial; los datos se recogieron de 365 turistas en cuatro museos diferentes de cuatro países. Se utilizó SmartPLS (versión 3.3.3) para evaluar el modelo de medida y el modelo estructural basado en la modelización de trayectorias y el bootstrapping.

Las TTIs tienen un impacto positivo en la creación de una experiencia turística memorable para los visitantes de los museos y son beneficiosas para la intención de volver a visitarlos y las recomendaciones positivas. El impacto es mayor que el de los servicios tradicionales, como la ambientación del museo y el servicio del personal. Las TTIs pueden considerarse un nuevo servicio independiente para los museos, más que un complemento de los servicios existentes. Las TTIs afectan negativamente a la experiencia del turismo en la fase de comunicación.

En estudios previos se ha observado la creciente atención que se presta a la experiencia de los visitantes de los museos, pero el impacto combinado de nuevos elementos, como las TTIs, sigue siendo un área inexplorada. Este estudio aborda esta laguna de la investigación mediante una investigación empírica y ofrece directrices para comprobar la aceptación y la adecuación de los visitantes de los museos a los servicios prestados por las TTIs. Además, este estudio presenta un nuevo punto de vista sobre las funciones que asumen las TTIs en el servicio de los museos, que puede ser útil para futuras investigaciones.

There is growing empirical evidence that firm heterogeneity is technologically non-neutral. This chapter extends the Gandhi, Navarro, and Rivers (2020) proxy variable framework for structurally identifying production functions to a more general case when latent firm productivity is multi-dimensional, with both factor-neutral and (biased) factor-augmenting components. Unlike alternative methodologies, the proposed model can be identified under weaker data requirements, notably, without relying on the typically unavailable cross-sectional variation in input prices for instrumentation. When markets are perfectly competitive, point identification is achieved by leveraging the information contained in static optimality conditions, effectively adopting a system-of-equations approach. It is also shown how one can partially identify the non-neutral production technology in the traditional proxy variable framework when firms have market power.

In accordance with the commitment–trust theory, employee attitudes and behaviours mediate the impact of empowerment on service recovery performance. The purpose of this paper is to extend the self-regulating process model and develop a structural framework that combines empowerment, self-regulation mechanisms (service recovery awareness, job engagement and emotional exhaustion) and post-recovery satisfaction. This framework explores how empowerment can lead to action of frontline employees (FLEs) in service recovery.

The authors test the hypotheses by investigating 290 pairs of FLEs and customers, who have service failure experience in the express mail industry, using structure equation modelling.

The findings show that empowerment enhances both service recovery awareness and job engagement. On the one hand, service recovery awareness has a positive impact on emotional exhaustion, which has a negative impact on post-recovery satisfaction. On the other hand, job engagement has a positive impact on performance. These results provide the whole picture of the double-edged effects of empowerment on FLEs in service recovery.

This paper indicates that managers should re-consider approaches to empowerment based on self-regulation process to enhance performance following service failure.

This study explores the dark side of empowerment in service recovery from a self-regulation perspective.

The number of studies on the use of choice cues in the purchase decision of a smartphone does not appear to be extensive, given the size and rate of growth of the market. Surprisingly, it appears that no study of this type in the Chinese context has been undertaken. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to fill the existing gap in the marketing literature in this area.

Best–Worst (BW) scaling method was used in the study. It is suggested that the method overcomes some of the biases commonly found in surveys where Likert-type scales are used, and it has superior discriminating power, because respondents are asked to rank the most and the least important factor from a group, and are thereby forced to make tradeoffs between factors.

Among the 13 choice cues, connectivity, price and memory capacity are found to be the most important, whereas recommendation from others, ease of handling and availability of apps are found to be the least important. Findings due to gender, income and age difference were also analyzed and discussed for orderly decision-making purposes.

The ranking of factors showing what choice cues consumers consider most or least important in a particular market helps practitioners to develop appropriate adaptation strategies for the market. The comparison of findings for gender, income and age difference can further help practitioners to devise various alternative marketing strategies for different market segments and identify underserved segments, if any.

The BW scaling method, however, appropriate in ranking order of importance, had never been used in ranking choice cues of smartphone purchase. Moreover, there seems to be a dearth of studies about ranking of choice cues on smartphone purchases in the Chinese context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the policy and trends in rural education in China over the past 40 years; and also discuss a number of challenges that are faced by China’s rural school system.

The authors use secondary data on policies and trends over the past 40 years for preschool, primary/junior high school, and high school.

The trends over the past 40 years in all areas of rural schooling have been continually upward and strong. While only a low share of rural children attended preschool in the 1980s, by 2014 more than 90 percent of rural children were attending. The biggest achievement in compulsory education is that the rise in the number of primary students that finish grade 6 and matriculate to junior high school. There also was a steep rise of those going to and completing high school. While the successes in upscaling rural education are absolutely unprecedented, there are still challenges.

This is descriptive analysis and there is not causal link established between policies and rural schooling outcomes.

The authors illustrate one of the most rapid rises of rural education in history and match the achievements up with the policy efforts of the government. The authors also explore policy priorities that will be needed in the coming years to raise the quality of schooling.

This is the first paper that documents both the policies and the empirical trends of the success that China has created in building rural education from preschool to high school during the first 40 years of reform (1978-2018). The paper also documents – drawing on the literature and the own research – the achievements and challenges that China still face in the coming years, including issues of gender, urbanization, early childhood education and health and nutrition of students.

Parking choice involves an individual selecting a parking place based upon various inter-related factors. This chapter examines the factors that influence parking choice decisions.

A review of the literature on parking choice has been undertaken. The influence of various factors on parking choice and recommendations for future parking policy will be outlined.

Most often it is a combination of several factors which influence individuals’ choice of parking place.

Increased knowledge of the factors which influence parking-search behaviour will inform urban parking policy applications with associated environmental and economic benefits.