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The primary objective of this study is to explore the nuanced interplay of conspicuous consumption, ethical label purchasing and the ensuing dynamics of civic virtue and cynicism within the luxury foodservice context.

Grounded in a theoretical understanding of solidarity within the context of product consumption, this research employs a two-pronged approach involving secondary data analysis and scenario-based experimental studies. The initial phase involves analyzing firm-level data from the Euromonitor database in 2019 and 2021. The main study employs a between-subjects experimental design with a cohort of 316 participants sourced from an online panel.

The results reveal a consistent pattern in the consumption of luxury foodservice and underscore a distinct upward trajectory in consumer demand for ethically labeled food. Notably, these findings underscore the moderating role of ethical label purchasing in the relationship between conspicuous consumption and consumers civic virtue. Additionally, ethical label purchasing moderates the impact of conspicuous consumption on consumer cynicism, both directly and indirectly through emotional solidarity related to both communal and equitable principles.

This study holds significance for both luxury food service researchers and market design practitioners. It provides valuable insights into how ethical labeling interacts with consumers conspicuous consumption, all facilitated by emotional solidarity.

Drawing from the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi's insights on humanity, this study aims to address human nature's critical role in influencing and shaping consumers' shopping channel choices in the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) era and the implications for non-East Asian countries.

Based on the theory of planned behaviour and accessibility–diagnosticity theory, our approach created a holistic model conceptualising human nature, shopping orientations, channel choice intentions, subjective norms and perceived AI usefulness. A questionnaire survey method served to test the framework.

The results validated human nature's role in shaping and influencing consumers' channel choices through shopping orientation. Subjective norms weaken the positive relationship between human nature and shopping orientation, while the positive relationship between shopping orientation and online purchase intention is stronger when consumers perceived AI as highly useful.

This paper contributes to humanity hypotheses literature in management by introducing Xunzi's theory that views human nature as evil. Additionally, it enriches channel choice literature by introducing perceived AI usefulness.

Talent is a key resource for urban development, and building and disseminating urban brands have an important impact on attracting talent. This paper explores what kind of urban brand ecology (UBE) can effectively enhance urban talent attraction (UTA). We explore this question using a novel grey quantitative configuration analysis (GQCA) model.

To develop the GQCA model, grey clustering is combined with qualitative configuration analysis (QCA). We conducted comparative configuration analysis of UTA using fuzzy set QCA (fsQCA) and the proposed GQCA.

We find that the empirical results of fsQCA may contradict the facts, and that the proposed GQCA effectively solves this problem.

Based on the theory of UBE, we identify bottleneck factors for improving UTA at different stages. Seven configuration paths are described for cities to enhance UTA. Theoretically, this study expands the application boundaries of UBE.

The proposed GQCA effectively solves the problem of inconsistent analysis and facts caused by the use of a binary threshold by the fsQCA. In practical case studies, the GQCA significantly improves the reliability of configuration comparisons and the sensitivity of QCA to cases, demonstrating excellent research performance.

Drawing from cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) and attribution ambiguity theory (AAT), this paper aims to examine how employees interact with queer customers within the hospitality service and the ways that queer representations regulate emotions when discriminated against by normative gender roles.

This study used a mixed method. Study 1 used firm-level secondary data to analyze hospitality firms’ efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the effects on firms’ profit margins and customer satisfaction. In Study 2, an experimental design was used to understand how employees’ assailing behavior toward queer customers interacts with employee feelings of guilt and impacts their sabotage and organizational citizenship behavior via self-serving bias. Study 3 further explored how queer customer victimization interacts with stress to influence their perceptions of organization DEI authenticity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) through resilience.

Hospitality firms’ DEI efforts were associated with varying outcomes, including higher profit margins but lower customer satisfaction, while guilt weakened the impact of employees’ assailing behavior on their outcomes and customer stress amplified the effect of assailing behavior on queer customers’ perceptions of DEI authenticity and CSR through resilience.

Hospitality organizations should take proactive measures to address self-serving bias among employees. Moreover, fostering an inclusive culture is crucial, with managers playing a pivotal role in facilitating discussions and creating an environment that values diversity, inclusivity and respect for all employees.

The study makes a remarkable contribution to hospitality literature by focusing on CDT and AAT in providing valuable implications for DEI advocators to be aware of the tensions between heteronormativity and queer representations in service encounters.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensifies the high turnover rate in the restaurant industry. Applying the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the factors influencing US restaurant frontline employees’ organizational and occupational turnover intention with an emphasis on the three-way interactions between job stress, fear of COVID-19 (FC) and resilience.

A sample of 243 US restaurant frontline employees participated in this study. PROCESS macro was used for hypothesis testing.

Organizational turnover intention fully mediated the relationship between job stress and restaurant employees’ occupational turnover intention. FC intensified the positive relationship between job stress and organizational turnover intentions. Job stress, FC and resilience interacted to affect restaurant frontline employees’ organizational turnover intention such that when resilience is high, FC strengthened the positive relationship between job stress and organizational turnover intention, and the indirect effect of job stress on occupational turnover intention via organizational turnover intention.

Restaurants should take measures to reduce frontline employees’ fear and continue implementing practices to alleviate job stress during a crisis to reduce employees’ turnover intentions. Training on building employee resilience could also be provided by restaurant operators.

This study added to the limited knowledge of factors that are associated with restaurant employees’ organizational and occupational turnover intentions in the context of a global crisis and expanded the current knowledge of how fear and resilience may impact restaurant employees’ behavioral intentions.

Applying the value creation of corporate social responsibility (CSR), this study aims to investigate the direct effect of preventive measures in the postpandemic world on Airbnb consumers’ attitudes toward the host, which may further impact their behavioral intentions. It also examined the mediating role of perceived risk and perceived motives, as well as the moderating role of message strategies and risk tolerance in this process.

A 2 (preventive measures: basic versus enhanced) × 2 (message strategies: promotional social cause message [PSC] versus partake-in-our-cause message [PIOC]) between-subjects factorial design was conducted with a sample of 476 US Airbnb consumers through an online survey. PROCESS macro was used for hypothesis testing.

Results demonstrated that enhanced preventive measures had more positive impact on Airbnb consumers’ attitudes toward the host, which was positively related to positive word of mouth and booking intention. Perceived risk and perceived motives mediated the relationship between preventive measures and attitude toward Airbnb hosts. Positive relationships between attitude toward the host and behavioral intentions were strengthened when PIOC was used than PSC. The negative relationship between preventive measures and perceived risk was enhanced when PIOC was used than PSC. Risk tolerance did not interact with messages strategy to impact the relationship between preventive measures and perceived risk.

The study uncovered the mechanisms by which consumers form their responses toward different safety information of Airbnb accommodations postpandemic and the role of message strategies in the process. It provided implications for the Airbnb platform and hosts in the postpandemic period.

Considering strategic information sharing (SIS), this paper aims to develop a better understanding of how relation-specific investments (RSIs) influence cooperative innovation performance (CIP) in downstream channel relationships. Also examined was the moderating effect of relational trust in that the indigenous practice of guanxi is especially critical in China.

Data were collected through a questionnaire in Chinese high-tech industries, with a valid response from 310 companies. A hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the conceptual model and hypotheses, combining mediation and moderation analysis.

Results show that the influences of specific investments vary according to the specificity dimensions examined. Specifically, human RSI influences CIP and SIS most significantly, and the impact of procedural RSI is, relatively, the weakest. Relational trust’s moderating role is confirmed, and SIS plays a partially mediating role in enhancing vertical cooperative innovation.

Managers should know clearly different roles of RSIs in inter-firm cooperative innovation and prioritize human RSI and brand RSI when investing into channels. More importantly, the findings reveal that strategy-level information sharing should be valued more. It is also recommended that relational ties are vital, especially in Chinese business context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first few to investigate how the effects of disaggregated RSIs in inter-firm cooperative innovation vary and the importance of SIS in vertical relationships. The results provide insightful guidance for researchers and managers in how to better manage RSIs to improve CIP.

Chatbots are increasingly used in online retail settings and are becoming a powerful tool for brands to engage customers. However, consumers’ satisfaction with these chatbots is mixed. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how using a social- versus task-oriented anthropomorphic communication style can improve customer satisfaction.

The authors explore the link between the anthropomorphic communication style use and customer perceptions/customer satisfaction in online customer service interactions. Two experiment scenarios were developed to test these links.

Overall, using a social-oriented communication style boosts customer satisfaction. Warmth perception of the chatbot mediates this effect, while chatbot’s anthropomorphised role (servant versus partner) moderates this effect.

This paper enriches the bilateral communication literature by extending the investigation on communication style effects to chatbot service interactions and revealing the psychological process driving the impacts. It also adds to the existing literature on chatbots as a customer service and contributes to the prominent topic examining how consumers react to artificial intelligence that is used to establish and maintain a relationship with them. Additionally, the authors also make contribution to the warmth and competence literature by demonstrating that customers can interpret social cues in chatbot service interactions mainly based on the warmth dimension. Thus, the authors further add to the growing chatbot humanness perception literature and respond to the calls for investigating more anthropomorphic design cues to enhance chatbot humanness. Finally, the authors also provide a way to help reconcile seemingly conflicting prior findings.

Taoist thought is not easily penetrable for Westerners, though it has growing importance with the globalisation of Chinese commerce. The purpose of this paper is to explore some aspects of Chinese and Taoist thought, and how they can be expressed in cybernetic terms, using a knowledge cybernetics (KC) schema.

KC operates through metaphor the role of which is considered with respect to its application to the specific area of urban landscaping.

A new methodological approach is indicated that is capable of linking Western landscape theory with Taoist feng shui. The traditional approach to critical planning has been in principle enhanced through the idea of landscape canonical harmony that comes from Taoist feng shui. It is also shown that the activity phases in urban landscape design are ontologically different, and use distinct types of energy measures.

The research uses KC as a vehicle for the development of a landscaping methodology that draws on both traditional Western and Chinese Taoist approaches. It requires application to real situations to draw out its practical capacities.

This is apparently the first time that a synergy between Western and Chinese approaches to landscape design and development has been attempted that results in the proposal of a complete methodology.

The successful use of this methodology could demonstrate that Western and Chinese approaches to landscape design are relatable.

The research linking organizational change-oriented activities with employee voice behavior is still in its initial stages. This study aims to contribute to this line of research by proposing felt obligation for constructive change, an underlying mechanism through which supervisory delegation enhances teachers’ voice behavior.

This study tested the interactive effect of felt obligation for constructive change and voice climate on teachers’ voice behavior. The proposed model is supported by proactive motivation theory which states that environmental factors lead to motivational states which further result in employee proactive behaviors. In this study, 415 teachers with their 74 supervisors (head of departments) from educational institutes completed the surveys. Structural equation modeling was used to find the results.

The results supported the mediation and moderation hypotheses, which proved that felt obligation for constructive change mediates the relationship between supervisory delegation and teachers’ voice behavior, and voice climate moderates the relationship between felt obligation for constructive change and teacher voice behavior.

This paper will provide an insight to the practitioners about the role of supervisory delegation for engagement in employee voice. This paper will also help managers understand that the workplace effectiveness can be enhanced by creating opportunities for employees to voice their concern.

This study recommends that head of departments at the workplace should cultivate an environment that is conducive for their faculty for engaging in voice behavior for improved functioning of educational institutes. Findings provide an insightful approach on organizational strategies in the form of supervisory delegation to trigger voice behavior among employees to meet the uncertainty of the ever-changing business environment.