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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in millions of lives lost. Beyond its devastating impact, did it also hurt consumer financial well-being? Consumer bankruptcy is often seen as a sign of experiencing extremely overextended debt burdens. This study aimed to identify factors associated with bankruptcy risks, specifically focusing on insolvency (when total debt exceeds total assets) and debt delinquency (being late in debt payments for 60 or more days).

Data were from the US 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. Two bankruptcy risk variables included insolvency and debt delinquency. Potential influencing factors included in the analyses were COVID-19-induced shocks, financial capability, ownership of various debts and demographics. Logistic regression models were used to detect potential factors associated with bankruptcy risks.

First, a COVID-19-induced shock variable, new work schedule, reduced the risk of insolvency and four shock variables (COVID infection with serious persistent symptoms, work disruption due to childcare responsibilities, work reduction and work increase) increased the risk of debt delinquency. Second, financial capability factors played a crucial role. Desirable financial behavior reduced both risks of insolvency and debt delinquency. Subjective financial knowledge only reduced the risk of debt delinquency. Third, the types of debts held mattered. Holding credit card debt, student loans and other debts increased the risks of both insolvency and debt delinquency. Interestingly, holding auto loans reduced the risk of insolvency.

The data are limited to cross-sectional so that findings are only correlational. The data are from one developed economy, and the results may not be generalized to other economies, especially developing economies. Also, due to the lack of direct measure of consumer bankruptcy, only bankruptcy risks are measured in the study, but the findings can still be informative for understanding consumer bankruptcy behavior.

The results of this study have practical implications for government, business and nonprofit organizations to help consumers reduce the bankruptcy risks. The results suggest that when facing external shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, any work-related adjustments may help workers maintain income levels and reduce consumer bankruptcy risks, especially debt delinquency risk. Also, consumers should be encouraged to engage in desirable financial behaviors, such as spending within their income, seeking information before making financial decisions, using financial professionals and planning ahead, to reduce both insolvency and debt delinquency risks.

This study is the first to examine COVID-19-induced factors on bankruptcy risks, enriching the literature of COVID-19 impacts on consumers. Bankruptcy risks are used as negative indicators of consumer well-being, expanding the literature of consumer well-being. The study also examines if financial capability has the potential to reduce bankruptcy risks, an advancement in the literature of financial capability.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between financial capability and informal bankruptcy, especially among families in which the respondent and/or spouse borrowed student loans to fund their own education and families that did not have such loans.

US nationally representative data were employed. Three family types were used, families with student loans borrowed to fund respondent and/or spouse's education and education was completed (type 1 holders) or not completed (type 2 holders), and families that did not borrow student loans for respondent and/or spouse's education (non-holders). Informal bankruptcy was measured by being insolvent and late in debt payment for 60 or more days. Financial capability was measured by both an index and its various components. Multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to examine associations between financial capability and informal bankruptcy.

Generally, financial capability was negatively associated with informal bankruptcy, and student loan holders were more likely to be informally bankrupt than non-holders. However, such negative associations were statistically significant for type 1 holders and non-holders but insignificant for type 2 holders. Two desirable financial behaviors (information search and online banking) reduced the chance of informal bankruptcy for type 2 holders.

First, cross-sectional data cannot establish a causal relationship. Second, findings using data from a single country may not be generalized to other countries.

Financial service professionals should help loan applicants evaluate the necessity of borrowing. Banking professionals can use the findings to develop products to meet different consumer needs. Financial educators should target different groups with different strategies in financial capability education. Policymakers should develop policies helping student loan holders complete education funded by student loans.

This study examines factors related to informal bankruptcy, providing insights to warning signs of bankruptcy. This study explores the potential effect of a new factor, financial capability, on informal bankruptcy, filling in a gap in the bankruptcy literature. This study recognizes differences in informal bankruptcy among various types of families and examines the different effects of financial capabilities on informal bankruptcy for different types of families.

In recent decades, research on consumer debt and well-being is emerging. However, research on the potential effect of debt portfolios on family financial well-being is limited. The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap by examining the potential effect of debt portfolios on family financial well-being, measured by three indicators of progressive financial burdens. These indicators include debt pressure (debt payment to income ratio >40%), debt delinquency (60+ days late for debt payments) and insolvency (total liability > total asset). Debt portfolios refer to various combinations of mortgage, credit card, vehicle, education and other loans.

With data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances in the USA, multivariate logistic regressions are used to identify specific debt types, consumer backgrounds and financial capability factors that are significantly associated with debt burden indicators. The findings are used to create a table demonstrating warning debt portfolios that may lead to undesirable financial outcomes.

Holdings of different types of debts are associated with different financial burdens. Specifically, holdings of three types of debts (mortgage, vehicle and other debts) tend to increase debt pressure; holdings of two types of debts (education and other debts) tend to increase debt delinquency; and holdings of four types of debts (mortgage, credit card, education and other debts) tend to increase insolvency. These results are used to construct warning debt portfolios that show greater chances of undesirable financial outcomes. Among them, the top warning portfolio for debt pressure is the combined holding of mortgage-vehicle-other debts; for debt delinquency is the holding of education-other debts; and for insolvency is the holding of mortgage-credit card-education-other debts.

This study is limited by using only cross-sectional survey data to examine associations between debt portfolios and financial burdens. To examine the causality of debt portfolios on financial burdens, appropriate panel data are necessary, which is a direction for future research. In addition, this study used data from only one developed country. In future research, data from more countries, including both developed and developing countries, should be analyzed to verify if similar relationships exist among families in other countries.

Results of this study have implications for practitioners in banking and other financial institutions. The study presents a comprehensive list of debt portfolios in the order from high risk to low risk in terms of financial burdens. Banking and other financial service professionals can use the information to help their clients make informed borrowing decisions, predict their debt burdens and offer early preventions based on their clients' debt portfolios. Marketing strategists can use the information for effective segmentation and promotion purposes.

This study utilizes a new concept, debt portfolios and examines its associations with family financial burdens. Financial burdens include three indicators that are seldom used together in previous research. These indicators conceptually indicate various severity levels of debt burdens. This study also presents a conceptual discussion on the association between debt portfolios and financial burdens and provides a better understanding of consumer debt behavior and its consequences. The warning debt portfolios constructed based on the findings have direct managerial implications for banking and other financial service professionals.

This paper aims to take Chinese university teachers as the research objects to examine their self-evaluation of online teaching and analyze the main factors influencing their evaluation during COVID-19.

According to the theory of educational ecology, the factors influencing teachers' self-evaluation of online teaching in this paper include university background, courses background and teachers' personal background from the macro- to micro-levels. Through exploratory factor analysis, independent sample T-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the self-evaluation of online teaching of 13,997 teachers from 334 universities and their relationship with teachers' background have been subject to data statistics and analysis.

Teachers' self-evaluation of online teaching mainly includes three dimensions: online teaching methods, online teacher–student interaction and online teaching techniques. There are significant differences in these three dimensions among teachers with different background characteristics, including regions, the types of universities, the nature of universities in macro background levels, the types and numbers of online courses in meso background levels, and the gender, years of teaching, professional titles and disciplines in micro background levels.

To improve teachers' self-evaluation of online teaching, it is suggested to build an online teaching self-evaluation system for teachers, strengthen university support and guarantee, strengthen online teaching training and improve the information accomplishments of teachers.

This large-scale empirical survey of online teaching evaluation of Chinese teachers can provide scholars with a deeper understanding of the implementation of online teaching in China and the self-evaluation of online teaching by teachers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between employment status and financial resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study employed US nationally representative data. A financial resilience index was created based on households' ability to pay for basic living expenses and the resources used to meet such needs. Employment status was categorized into seven groups based on whether the respondent worked for pay in the last seven days, experience of income shock since the start of the pandemic for workers' household and reasons for not working for non-workers' household. A generalized linear model (GLM) model was used to examine the relationship between respondent employment status and household financial resilience. An ordinary least square (OLS) logistic regression with no proportional odds assumption was employed to investigate the association between the respondent's employment status and household ability to pay for basic living expenses. A logistic regression was utilized to explore the relationship between respondent employment status and resources used by the household to pay for basic living expenses.

The top three least financially resilient households include those in which the respondent's work was affected by the pandemic, the respondent did not work due to being sick with COVID or caring for someone with COVID and the respondent did not work due to fear of COVID.

Future research should distinguish the reasons for not working when examining the association between unemployment and household financial resilience as well as their overall financial wellbeing. Cross-sectional data cannot establish a causal relationship. Findings using US data may not be generalized to other countries.

Workers with health and employment risks and financial professionals working with these clients should consider these risks when building household financial safety net. Policymakers should develop measures to allow normal business operations while effectively contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

This study created a financial resilience index that considers various household situations, allows both internal and external resources to be utilized to cover basic living expenses and reflects the diverse nature of financial resilience. This study is the first to look into voluntary and involuntary labor force separation for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 related reasons.

The purpose of this study was to examine family structure differences in debt types and burdens of American families.

Data was from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. Eight types of family structures, five specific debts, and two debt burden indicators are examined with multivariate logistic regressions.

After controlling for several socioeconomic variables, multivariate logistic regression results show that married with children families are more likely than five other family types to have any debt. In terms of specific debt, married with children families are more likely than six other types of families to have mortgages, four other types to have credit card loans, five other types to have to vehicle loans, three other types to have education loans, and one other type to have purchase loans. Married with children families are more likely than three other types of families (childless married couples, single males, and single females) to be late in debt payment for 60 or more days.

The data is limited to one-year cross-sectional data. To gain more insights on this topic, panel data could be used.

The findings can be used for financial service professionals to identify loan demand and risk associated with various family structures and develop effective marketing strategies to serve these clients.

The findings are informative for public policymakers to develop family friendly economic policies and for consumer educators who help consumers make effective financial decisions when borrowing various types of loans.

First, this study uses an innovative definition of family structure that counts several nontraditional family structures. Second, this study examines family structure differences in holdings of five specific debts together.

With the rapid development of social media, many organizations have begun to attach importance to social media platforms. This research studies the management and the use of social media in academic music libraries, taking the Center for Chinese Music Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CCMS) as a case study.

We conducted a sentiment analysis of posts on Facebook’s public page to analyze the reaction to the posts with some exploratory analysis, including the communication trend and relevant factors that affect user interaction.

Our results show that the Facebook channel for the library has a good publicity effect and active interaction, but the number of posts and interactions has a downward trend. Therefore, the library needs to pay more attention to the management of the Facebook channel and take adequate measures to improve the quality of posts to increase interaction.

Few studies have analyzed existing data directly collected from social media by programming based on sentiment analysis and natural language processing technology to explore potential methods to promote music libraries, especially in East Asia, and about traditional music.

Drawing on Herzberg's motivation-hygiene perspective, this study examines the factors affecting expatriate adjustment and the relationship between expatriate adjustment and subsidiary performance of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs).

Using structural equation modeling, this study tests a proposed conceptual model based on a matched dataset collected from 38 EMNEs.

The findings reveal that perceived organizational support (POS) and family adjustment are positively associated with expatriate adjustment, while remuneration and job burnout have no significant relationships with expatriate adjustment. In addition, expatriate adjustment is positively associated with the foreign subsidiary performance of EMNEs.

This study contributes to expatriate adjustment research in the EMNE context by distinguishing motivators and hygiene factors in affecting the expatriates' attitudes toward international assignments. Empirical evidence of expatriate adjustment-subsidiary performance relationship also enriches the authors’ knowledge of EMNEs' expatriation practices.

The purpose of this paper is to document debt delinquency patterns by family lifecycle categories using multiple data sets that are nationally representative of American families.

Based on previous research, 15 lifecycle categories appropriate for American families are defined by household head's age, marital status, presence of children, and age of children. Data used are from Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCF) in the USA in 1992-2010. Multiple logistic regressions are conducted to identify probabilities of debt delinquencies of families in various lifecycle categories by controlling for income, financial assets, holdings of several types of debt, and several other demographic and socioeconomic variables.

The results show that among the 15 household lifecycle categories, the top three most likely to be delinquent are young couples with children aged seven or older, middle-aged singles with children aged 15 or older, and middle-aged singles with children under 15. Younger households are more financially distressed than their older counterparts. Presence of children increases the probability of debt delinquency.

In this study, multiple national data sets representing American families are used to document debt delinquency patterns by family lifecycle categories. Results shed light on this important topic and offer helpful information for both banking industry practitioners and consumer financial educators.

The information produced by this study can help bank managers better identify their potential clients and understand their current customers. Different marketing strategies based on the research findings can be developed to attract and retain customers with different delinquency risks.

This is the first study to examine debt delinquencies by family lifecycle categories with multiple SCF data sets in the USA. The 15 family lifecycle categories used are based on recent research that is specially designed for American families. The research findings provide straightforward implications for both bank managers and consumer educators.