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This study investigates how online sellers can leverage platform-based technologies to mitigate product returns through the lens of affordance actualization theory. We conceptualize four categories of platform-based technologies and theorize how their affordances influence consumer perceptions and behaviors, leading to reduced return rates.

We develop a research model grounded in affordance actualization theory and test our hypotheses using a unique longitudinal dataset from a leading e-commerce platform. We employ panel data analysis with seller fixed effects and conduct various robustness checks to ensure the reliability of our findings. We also examine the synergistic effects among different platform-based technologies and explore their varying impacts across product types and seller characteristics.

The strategic actualization of pricing, marketing, product presentation and customer service technology affordances significantly reduces product return rates. The return-mitigating effects are stronger for low-reputation sellers and high-price, high-complexity products, highlighting the contingent value of technology affordances in managing returns. Besides, we find evidence of synergistic effects among different platform-based technologies, particularly for complex products and less reputable sellers.

This study extends affordance actualization theory to the e-commerce context and uncovers the mechanisms and boundary conditions for platform-based technologies to mitigate product returns. We contribute to the literature by offering a novel theoretical perspective and granular insights into the role of technology in shaping a critical operational outcome in online retailing.

Despite India achieving many milestones under MGNREGA, the external and internal shocks result in below potential outcomes in employment demand and generation. This study examines how these shocks matter and how the migration-prone regions perform.

This study, employing district-level data from 2018 to 2021, investigates how climate change and COVID-19 have affected the employment demand and supply. We applied RE-GLS and IV-2SLS regressions to examine the effects of shocks on employment demand and generation, respectively. The difference in difference panel model is employed to test the spatial effects of the pandemic. Further, we used RE-GLS and extended regression model to examine how external shocks interacting with migration affect unemployment rates.

It was found that the pandemic increased employment demand and generation. This reflects the adverse effects of the pandemic and the swift action by the government. However, the responses were possibly different during climate shocks. The wage differential increased employment demand. However, demand decreased due to poor support from the support staff. The employment generation was higher in migration-prone districts, indicating that seasonal migration, being a lean-season phenomenon, continues to occur despite employment generation.

This study contributes to the literature in several ways. It captures spatial variations while examining the impact of climate change and COVID-19. It investigates the performance of MGNREGA in migration-prone areas. In effect, the findings provide policymakers with greater insight into the issues.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2024-0132.

This study aims to assess the recreational value of the National Chambal Sanctuary highlighting the potential benefits of conservation and the need for sustainable practices.

This study uses the Individual Travel Cost Method to evaluate the expenses of individuals visiting the National Chambal Sanctuary.

The study reveals that the National Chambal Sanctuary has a significant recreational value, with an average visitor value of INR 35,335.69 or USD 434 and an annual value of INR 132,473,501.81 or approximately USD 1.62m, indicating substantial economic contribution.

The study's limitations may stem from data collection constraints, visitor reporting biases or other factors affecting estimates' accuracy. Future research could explore socio-economic factors or factors affecting low tourist inflow in India's protected areas (PAs).

This study suggests raising entrance fees for the National Chambal Sanctuary to ensure financial sustainability, based on its high recreational value and average consumer surplus. This has practical implications for policymakers, conservationists and the tourism industry.

The study underscores the significance of protecting PAs like the National Chambal Sanctuary, suggesting that public attitudes towards biodiversity conservation can be influenced by highlighting its economic and recreational value and promoting awareness of its significance.

The study evaluates the recreational value of a wildlife sanctuary in India, offering insights into conservation's economic benefits and sustainable practices and promoting further research.

We attempt to analyze the impact of retailer’s rebate strategy on consumer reviews and retailer’s profits.

Retailers' rebates have a chance to affect sales and their profits by encouraging customers to submit product reviews. To investigate the impact of retailer’s rebate strategy on consumer reviews and retailer’s profits, we describe the consumer’s utility function and the number of consumer-written reviews by introducing the concepts of product demand mismatch and consumer review effort, then develop a two-stage model of the retailer’s rebate strategy and examine how the retailer’s rebate affects online reviews, the consumer’s perceived utility and the retailer’s profit. Finally, a number case verifies the validity and rationality of the proposed model.

The results show that the rebate strategy can effectively reduce consumer dissatisfaction caused by excessive product demand mismatch, improve the consumer utility, prompt more positive comments, and thus increase product sales.

In this paper, we focus on the impact of retailers' rebate strategy on consumer purchase decisions. The research can accurately reflect the influence of online reviews on consumers and retailers, assisting merchants in making the best selections. The analysis indicates that the retailer’s rebate strategy can have a direct impact on consumers' evaluation choices and product sales.

This paper aims to analyze the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of regional total factor productivity (TFP) growth and explores how haze pollution and different levels of new-type urbanization affect China’s economic growth.

This paper constructs an index for evaluating the TFP growth of China’s 31 provinces by integrating slack-based measures and the Global Malmquist (GM) productivity index. Meanwhile, the panel threshold estimation method is used to examine the complex relationships among haze pollution, new-type urbanization and TFP growth.

The results reflect conspicuous spatiotemporal heterogeneity in TFP growth in China. Interestingly, the influence of haze pollution on TFP growth is limited by the “critical mass” of new-type urbanization in China. When new-type urbanization does not cross the first threshold, haze pollution has a negative but non-significant effect on TFP growth. When new-type urbanization crosses the first threshold but not the second, haze pollution has a significant positive impact on TFP growth. When new-type urbanization crosses the second threshold, haze pollution significantly and positively affects TFP growth with the strongest positive effect.

This study innovates by combining haze pollution and TFP growth and proposing an integrated framework from the perspective of new-type urbanization, providing insight into how different degrees of new-type urbanization impact the mechanism between haze pollution and TFP growth. Using panel data in China and emphasizing green development, a sustainable economy and new-type urbanization, this study contributes to the current studies on haze pollution and economic development based on developed countries.

Over the last decades, tourism has become a fundamental engine of both developed and developing economies. A wide set of negative social, economic and environmental implications of tourism have been recognised along with the recognised positive effects. In this vein, sustainable tourism principles have been developed and widely accepted as a means to guarantee the long-term sustained and sustainable growth of local economies relying on tourism. The incorporation of these principles into the policymaking process requires the simultaneous consideration of a broad set of interests and goals, often conflicting among them. Thus, promoting sustainable tourism requires governments to adopt a strategic approach to planning, through goal-oriented, participatory and comprehensive governance mechanisms. Based on these, the following chapter is aimed at presenting a novel decision support system for policymakers, in which sustainable tourism principles and measures are accounted for, together with other purely economic and strategic issues. This strategic approach is operationalised through a multi-objective optimisation model. The main results show that the inclusion of sustainable tourism principles into the planning phase of public investments allows to boost the potentially positive effects of tourism on local economies, while not hampering the achievement of other policy goals, such as expenditure efficiency and consistency of investments.

The reviews submitted by users are the foundation of user-generated content (UGC) platforms. However, the rapid growth of users brings the problems of information overload and spotty content, which makes it necessary for UGC platforms to screen out reviews that are really helpful to users. The authors put forward in this paper the factors influencing review helpfulness voting from the perspective of review characteristics and reviewer characteristics.

This study uses 8,953 reviews from 20 movies listed on Douban.com with variables focusing on review characteristics and reviewer characteristics that affect review helpfulness. To verify the six hypotheses proposed in the study, Stata 14 was used to perform tobit regression.

Findings show that review helpfulness is significantly influenced by the length, valence, timeliness and deviation rating of the reviews. The results also underlie that a review submitted by a reviewer who has more followers and experience is more affected by review characteristics.

Previous literature has discussed the factors that affect the helpfulness of reviews; however, the authors have established a new model that explores more comprehensive review characteristics and the moderating effect reviewer characteristics have on helpfulness. In this empirical research, the authors selected a UGC community in China as the research object. The UGC community may encourage users to write more helpful reviews by highlighting the characteristics of users. Users in return can use this to establish his/her image in the community. Future research can explore more variables related to users.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0186.

This research aims to examine the factors that influence customers' product return intentions and proposes that YouTube product reviews can mitigate customers' desire to return a product.

The proposed theoretical research model and hypothesized relationship were investigated using a quantitative process. This study used 302 data from Indonesian young adult respondents to examine the structural model, which was analyzed using the SmartPLS 3.2 software package.

The results show that YouTube product reviews, product fit uncertainty and customer satisfaction are the key determinants of customers' product return intention. Furthermore, the results show that the credibility of YouTube product reviews has a major impact on customers' familiarity with a product, satisfaction and the likelihood of returning goods to sellers.

In the e-commerce industry, increasing the use of YouTube product reviews will help businesses eliminate unnecessary product returns. Sellers are also encouraged to collaborate with YouTube producers to review specific products, which can benefit companies by raising brand awareness and gaining customer feedback. Furthermore, YouTube online product reviews can help consumers avoid having an unpleasant shopping experience that causes emotional reactions and lowers satisfaction.

Most research has not considered antecedents in observing the product return phenomenon; this study observes a prerequisite of consumer product returns (i.e. information asymmetry and product familiarity) and investigates the relationships between YouTube product reviews, customer satisfaction and product return intention.

This research paper reports a novel genetic algorithm (GA)‐based approach for reconfiguration of radial distribution networks for real loss minimization and power quality improvement.

A fuzzy controlled GA has been used for efficient reconfiguration of radial distribution systems for loss minimization and power quality improvement. The special features of the proposed algorithm are: an improved chromosome coding/decoding for network representation so as to preserve the radial property without islanding any load after reconfiguration and an efficient convergence characteristics attributed to fuzzy controlled mutation.

The proposed network reconfiguration algorithm is very much effective in arriving at the global optimal solution (minimum loss network structure) because of efficient search of the solution space. Also, no invalid chromosomes are generated in the genetic evolution because of appropriate coding/decoding. The algorithm is found to be very much suitable for real time implementations.

This research paper provides the power distribution engineers with a computationally efficient approach for optimal operation of distribution systems.

The algorithm proposed in this paper is computationally much faster compared to most of the present day mathematical programming approaches for distribution system operation. This makes it very much attractive for online implementations in any radial distribution network.

This paper has proposed a novel chromosome coding/decoding technique for radial distribution system and a fuzzy logic‐based mutation probability controller for efficient search of global solution space to be used in GA‐based optimal operation of radial distribution systems.

This study aims to investigate the influence of systemic banking crises, currency crises and global financial crisis on the relationship between export and economic growth in China by using the annual time series data from the period of 1972 to 2014.

The Johansen and Jeuuselius’ cointegration, auto regressive distributed lag bound testing cointegration, Gregory and Hansen’s cointegration and pooled ordinary least square techniques with error correction model have been used.

Results indicate the positive and significant effect of export of goods and services on economic growth in both long and short run, whereas the negative influence of systemic banking crises and currency crises over economic growth is observed. It is also concluded that the impact of export of goods and service on economic growth becomes insignificant in the presence of systemic banking crises and currency crises. The currency crises effect the influence of export on economic growth to a higher extent compared to systemic banking crises. Surprisingly, the export in the period of global financial crises has a positive and significant influence over economic growth in China, which conclude that the global financial crises did not drastically affect the export-growth nexus.

This paper makes a unique contribution to the literature with reference to China, being a pioneering attempt to investigate the effects of systemic banking crises and currency crises on the relationship of export and economic growth by using long-time series data and applying more rigorous econometric techniques.