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Sociability is considered to be important to the success of educational MMORPGs. The purpose of this study was to access the relative weights of these sociability factors which the authors garnered from the literature on educational MMORPGs.

The authors used fuzzy‐AHP approach to access the relative weights of these sociability factors they garnered from the literature on educational MMORPGs. To do this, a questionnaire using a pair‐wise comparison data input format was administered to 242 school teachers to gather assessments for the factors.

The authors found five most important factors affecting sociability – cooperation, team‐based reward, discussion of strategy, reputation, and social navigation.

Although prior studies have identified various factors that facilitate sociability in educational MMORPGs, the relative importance of these factors has not been determined. The results can not only be used to help educational MMORPG developers focus on the most important sociability factors and propose specific guidelines for designing educational MMORPGs, but can also identify the best design strategy for promoting sociability of educational MMORPGs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) how female blog users' perceived benefits (i.e. perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, community identification and perceived norm of reciprocity) influence their perceived social capital on fashion blogs, (2) the influence of structural social capital and cognitive social capital on users' relational social capital and (3) the influence of relational social capital on blog loyalty.

Structural equation modeling was performed using 530 useable data collected through an online survey.

The result indicated that perceived usefulness and the norm of reciprocity led to the development of cognitive social capital, while community identification and the norm of reciprocity led to the development of structural social capital. Cognitive and structural social capital both led to the development relational social capital, which in turn influenced blog loyalty.

This study provides insights for a fashion brand marketing strategy that uses fashion blogs to target relevant consumers. It helps firms to understand the factors that lead people to embed their resources in a blog and to learn how the different perceived benefits impact blog users' contributions to the community.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among cognitive-based trust, affect-based trust, sense of belonging, self-image congruity, perceived community-brand similarity, and information intention by applying the uses and gratification (U&G) theory and the dual mediating hypothesis in the context of Taiwanese social networking brand sites.

This study uses specific metrics to measure construct items. The respondents have used or currently use the Facebook Apple fan page for more than three months. This study conducts the online survey of mySurvey through the website and provides respondents with convenience store coupon rewards to increase the response rate. This study collects 500 samples with 381 valid samples and uses a structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses.

The effects of cognitive-based trust on psychological factors are higher than the effects of affect-based trust on psychological factors. In addition, cognitive-based trust has the largest effect on perceived community-brand similarity as well as on self-image congruity. Hence, cognitive-based trust is far a more important factor than affect-based trust for the effects on psychological factors. Self-image congruity has significant and positive effects on the intention to give, obtain, and pass information. Self-image congruity has the largest effect on the intention to pass information as well as on the intention to obtain information, but sense of belonging has the largest effect on the intention to give information. The effects of perceived community-brand similarity on the intention to give information and the intention to obtain information are significant yet mild.

SNS members are eager to participate in e-word-of-mouth (e-WOM) activities via affection and social interaction, care for each other, and a feeling of concern. SNS managers should focus on members’ interaction content and processes to foster long-term relationships and create value propositions. Managers should use innovative online platforms to maintain communication and interaction in order to: provide cognitive trust among members; acquire members’ trust; retain members; and enhance members’ connectivity. SNS managers must increase members’ psychological connection, utilize cognitive-/affect-based trust, and attract brand devotion for common interests.

In terms of the SNS members’ interaction and participation in interpersonal relationships, psychological perspectives can generate long-term reliance and sense of belonging. The willingness to exchange information and the involvement of continuous participation can affect the e-WOM behavior of giving and passing information. Brand fan page members are more willing to engage in e-WOM intentions when they have a higher self-image congruity and sense of belonging.

This study adopts the tricomponent attitude model to examine the relationship among cognition, affection, and behavioral intentions of community members between individuals and groups.

Understanding how to develop users’ word of mouth to promote a virtual community (VC) is an important issue in VC management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that lead to VC participation and promotion from a social influence perspective.

This research recruited 368 VC (i.e., Fashion Guide) members in Taiwan and used structural equation model to test research hypotheses.

The results showed that both shared vision and language positively influenced norm of reciprocity and social identity, respectively. Norm of reciprocity and social identity influenced VC participation intentions, and subsequently resulted in VC promotion intentions.

Prior studies neglect investigating the relationships between the three social influence processes (internalization, compliance and identification). This study contributes to the literature by proposing that internalization affects VC participation and promotion via compliance and identification.

The focus in this study is a model that predicts continuance intention of online multi-player games. In this integrated model, the social cognitive theory (SCT) lays out the foundation of two types of pre-use (pre-play) expectations, the flow theory captures the affective feeling with the game as a moderator for the effect from the two pre-use expectations, and subjective norm together with its associated antecedents cover a wide spectrum of social influences.

A questionnaire was designed and pre-tested before distributing to target respondents. The reliability and validity of the instrument both met the commonly accepted guidelines. The integrated model was assessed first by examining its measurement model and then the structural model.

The integration of cognitive, affective and social influence in this model explains a larger amount of variance compared to the competing models and existing studies.

Unlike a popular trend that studies predictors of online games from either cognitive or affect angle, the work looks at both together to study how their joint effect is related to continuance intention. This marks an important improvement as cognitive expectations derived from SCT captures the pre-use experience that may be influenced or swayed by sources including those that are inflated or incorrect. By studying flow as a moderator in conjunction with other sources of influence, the authors are able to further the understanding of how the pre-use expectations may be shaped by one's own experience.

Industries start focusing on the green concept in supply chain management (SCM) to reduce waste and emission, preserve the quality of natural resources and decrease the consumption of hazardous/harmful materials for better product life cycle, which not only improve environmental performance but also economic performance. But, for industries, it is still very difficult to understand and analyze the effect of individual activities and their corresponding contribution. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze selected issues in green supply chain management for the implementation of the green concept in industries.

To fulfill the objectives of this paper, analytical network process-multi-objective optimization using rational analysis (ANP-MOORA) techniques are used. In the proposed methodologies, different issues, sub-issues, and alternatives are identified for the selection of the best supply chain using ANP which is being followed by the MOORA method.

Findings of this paper are highly valuable for the Indian manufacturing industries for the management of green supply chain (GSC) issues.

In this research, only selected issues are identified and analyzed for the management of GSCs. Further, it is believed that an ANP-based framework helps to take up the explicit account of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches in decision making and for improving and selecting the best supply chain. Other issues in GSC can be analyzed and further extended by other MCDM approaches.

This paper identified different type of supply chains and their issues. The systematic way of analyzing the green concept in supply chain helps the researchers and managers to implement green management practices for improving economic and environmental performance.

The purpose of this paper is to apply social network analysis (SNA) to study faculty research productivity, to identify key leaders, to study publication keywords and research areas and to visualize international collaboration patterns and analyze collaboration research fields from all Management Information System (MIS) departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015.

The authors first retrieved results encompassing about 1,766 MIS professors and their publication records between 1982 and 2015 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST) website. Next, the authors merged these publication records with the records obtained from the Web of Science, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Airiti Library and Springer Link databases. The authors further applied six network centrality equations, leadership index, exponential weighted moving average (EWMA), contribution value and k-means clustering algorithms to analyze the collaboration patterns, research productivity and publication patterns. Finally, the authors applied D3.js to visualize the faculty members' international collaborations from all MIS departments in Taiwan.

The authors have first identified important scholars or leaders in the network. The authors also see that most MIS scholars in Taiwan tend to publish their papers in the journals such as Decision Support Systems and Information and Management. The authors have further figured out the significant scholars who have actively collaborated with academics in other countries. Furthermore, the authors have recognized the universities that have frequent collaboration with other international universities. The United States, China, Canada and the United Kingdom are the countries that have the highest numbers of collaborations with Taiwanese academics. Lastly, the keywords model, system and algorithm were the most common terms used in recent years.

This study applied SNA to visualize international research collaboration patterns and has revealed some salient characteristics of international cooperation trends and patterns, leadership networks and influences and research productivity for faculty in Information Management departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015. In addition, the authors have discovered the most common keywords used in recent years.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has become popular in the information systems (IS) field for modeling structural relationships between latent variables as measured by manifest variables. However, while researchers using PLS-SEM routinely stress the causal-predictive nature of their analyses, the model evaluation assessment relies exclusively on criteria designed to assess the path model's explanatory power. To take full advantage of the purpose of causal prediction in PLS-SEM, it is imperative for researchers to comprehend the efficacy of various quality criteria, such as traditional PLS-SEM criteria, model fit, PLSpredict, cross-validated predictive ability test (CVPAT) and model selection criteria.

A systematic review was conducted to understand empirical studies employing the use of the causal prediction criteria available for PLS-SEM in the database of Industrial Management and Data Systems (IMDS) and Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ). Furthermore, this study discusses the details of each of the procedures for the causal prediction criteria available for PLS-SEM, as well as how these criteria should be interpreted. While the focus of the paper is on demystifying the role of causal prediction modeling in PLS-SEM, the overarching aim is to compare the performance of different quality criteria and to select the appropriate causal-predictive model from a cohort of competing models in the IS field.

The study found that the traditional PLS-SEM criteria (goodness of fit (GoF) by Tenenhaus, R2 and Q2) and model fit have difficulty determining the appropriate causal-predictive model. In contrast, PLSpredict, CVPAT and model selection criteria (i.e. Bayesian information criterion (BIC), BIC weight, Geweke–Meese criterion (GM), GM weight, HQ and HQC) were found to outperform the traditional criteria in determining the appropriate causal-predictive model, because these criteria provided both in-sample and out-of-sample predictions in PLS-SEM.

This research substantiates the use of the PLSpredict, CVPAT and the model selection criteria (i.e. BIC, BIC weight, GM, GM weight, HQ and HQC). It provides IS researchers and practitioners with the knowledge they need to properly assess, report on and interpret PLS-SEM results when the goal is only causal prediction, thereby contributing to safeguarding the goal of using PLS-SEM in IS studies.

Using the stimulus-organism-response model as the theoretical basis, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a social media-based destination brand community (SMDBC) on tourists’ emotions, and the subsequent effect on the intention to co-create value and visit.

The theoretical framework was tested using survey data from 551 Chinese social media users who were followers of Japanese social media pages. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was adopted to perform the latent variable analysis.

The findings reveal that SMDBC plays a considerable role in shaping tourists’ emotions, including joy, love and positive surprise, which, in turn, have a significant impact on consumers’ intention to co-create value and visit. Contrary to previous studies, the effect of joy on tourists’ intention to co-create and visit is found to be insignificant.

The present study elucidates the importance and relevance of SMDBC in evoking tourists’ positive emotions, and subsequently their intention to co-create value and visit. Future research is recommended to compare and contrast SMDBC with other marketing and branding activities to provide greater insights into the phenomenon in a dynamic environment.

This study enables academics and business practitioners to better comprehend the effectiveness of SMDBC in driving tourists’ favourable assessment and behavioural intentions to improve resource allocation. In particular, destination marketers are recommended to optimise SMDBC and encourage discussion on SMDBC among users.

As literature in relation to the importance of SMDBC in evoking tourists’ emotions incorporating its link with tourists’ intention to co-create value and visit is relatively scarce, this study contributes to the branding and destination tourism research by empirically articulating the relevance of SMDBC in stimulating tourists’ emotions and subsequently value co-creation and visit intention.

This study aims to examine the relationships between brand-specific transformational leadership (TFL), employer branding and employee-based brand equity (EBBE) in the business-to-business (B2B) context. Additionally, the study investigates the mediating role of employer branding in the relationship between brand-specific TFL and EBBE, shedding light on the mechanisms through which brand-specific leaders impact EBBE via employer branding initiatives.

The study takes a quantitative approach. Data collection was conducted using a questionnaire in B2B service sectors. The PLS method was applied in Smart PLS (V. 3.0) to test the established relationships between constructs.

The findings reveal significant positive associations between brand-specific TFL and employer branding, as well as between employer branding and EBBE. The relationship between brand-specific TFL and EBBE is partial mediated by employer branding.

This study contributes to theoretical understanding by advancing knowledge on the mechanisms driving EBBE within B2B firms. It offers practical insights for managers and researchers by highlighting the importance of leadership and employer branding strategies in enhancing EBBE in the B2B context.

Este estudo examina as relações entre a liderança transformacional específica de marca (TFL), employer branding e employee-based brand equity (EBBE) no contexto business-to-business (B2B). Além disso, o estudo investiga o papel mediador do employer branding na relação entre TFL específica de marca e EBBE, elucidando os mecanismos pelos quais os líderes impactam o EBBE por meio de iniciativas de employer branding.

O estudo adota uma abordagem quantitativa. A coleta de dados foi realizada utilizando um questionário no setor de serviços B2B. O método PLS foi aplicado no Smart PLS (V. 3.0) para testar as relações estabelecidas entre os construtos.

Os resultados revelam associações positivas significativas entre TFL específica de marca e employer branding, bem como entre employer branding e EBBE. A relação entre TFL específica de marca e EBBE é parcialmente mediada por employer branding.

Este estudo contribui para a compreensão teórica ao avançar o conhecimento sobre os mecanismos que impulsionam o EBBE dentro das empresas B2B. Oferece insights práticos para gestores e académicos ao destacar a importância das estratégias de liderança e employer branding na melhoria do EBBE no contexto B2B.

Este estudio examina las relaciones entre el liderazgo transformacional específico de marca (TFL), employer branding y employee-based brand equity (EBBE) en el contexto business-to-business (B2B). Además, el estudio investiga el papel mediador del employer branding en la relación entre TFL específico de marca y EBBE, elucidando los mecanismos mediante los cuales los líderes impactan el EBBE a través de iniciativas de employer branding.

El estudio adopta un enfoque cuantitativo. La recolección de datos se realizó utilizando un cuestionario en los sectores de servicios B2B. Se aplicó el método PLS en Smart PLS (V. 3.0) para probar las relaciones establecidas entre los constructos.

Los resultados revelan asociaciones positivas significativas entre TFL específico de marca y employer branding, así como entre employer branding y EBBE. La relación entre TFL específico de marca y EBBE es parcialmente mediada por employer branding.

Este estudio contribuye a la comprensión teórica al avanzar en el conocimiento sobre los mecanismos que impulsan el EBBE dentro de las empresas B2B. Ofrece perspectivas prácticas para gestores y académicos al destacar la importancia de las estrategias de liderazgo y employer branding en la mejora del EBBE en el contexto B2B.