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This paper has analysed the impact of cultural dimensions, investor sentiment and uncertainty on bank stock returns. Also, the study examined the influences of the interaction between cultural dimensions and individual (private) sentiment (investor sentiment).

To meet the study's objectives, a two-step generalised method of moments estimator was applied to the study sample, which included 105 banks in the nine Middle East and North African region countries between 2010 and 2020.

The cultural dimensions of individualism and masculinity were found to have a positive and significant effect on banks' buy and hold stock return (BUH). At the same time, power distance and uncertainty avoidance were discovered to have negative effects. Besides, the findings revealed that the interactions of power distance, individual sentiment and uncertainty avoidance had positive and significant relationships with banks' BUH. However, individualism, individual sentiment and masculinity had inverse relationships with banks' BUH. Furthermore, the findings revealed that investor sentiment positively influenced banks' BUH. Finally, uncertainty influenced banks' BUH stock returns positively.

Important implications for participants in the financial sector and governments may be learnt from this study's conclusions. Due to cultural biases, this study's findings suggested that investors overreact in the stock market.

Additionally, this research comprises one of the few studies that have overviewed the link between classical and behavioural finance in MENA countries with distinctive cultural characteristics.

This study examines the impact of climate change vulnerability, fintech and investor sentiment on bank performance in the MENA region.

The two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator was employed to investigate 166 listed banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, covering the last decade.

The study revealed mixed findings about climate change vulnerability. The study identified that factors such as capacity, habitat, infrastructure, sensitivity and vulnerability had a beneficial impact on the banks' buy and hold stock returns in the MENA area. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that exposure, ecosystems, food, health, and vulnerability had an inverse impact on these returns. Remarkably, the fintech index negatively affects the long-term stock performance of banks in the MENA region.

Policymakers should focus on enhancing infrastructure and boosting banks’ capacity to manage and adapt to climate-related risks.

The novelty of this study is that it explored the impacts of climate change vulnerability, fintech and investor sentiment on banks’ buy-and-hold stock returns in the MENA region. Notably, this research employs a unique model that has not been previously examined.

This paper aims to examine the mediating role of environmental concern in the relationship of green purchase awareness and purchasing behavior of fast food consumers keeping in view the theory of planned behavior.

A quantitative, cross-sectional design is used by collecting primary responses through a validated questionnaire. In all, 1,008 male and female buyers of fast food were sampled. Structural equation modeling is applied.

The results revealed that green purchase awareness has a positive relationship with green purchase behavior, and environmental concern has no mediation in the relationship. Upon having awareness, the respondents adopted green or pro-environmental behavior, but at the same time, they were found having least concern for the protection of environment.

This is a cross-sectional study with questionnaire. Multiple sources of data collection results in weakening self-reporting bias.

Implications count toward individuals, enterprises and society at general.

The study highlights the issue of not having concern for the protection of the environment even after having green purchase awareness. This is the first time the environmental concern is examined as a mediator in the selected relationship. The contradictory results of having no environmental concern differentiate this study from others.

This paper aims to clarify the mechanism by which heuristics influences the investment decisions of individual investors, actively trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), and the perceived efficiency of the market. Most studies focus on well-developed financial markets and very little is known about investors’ behaviour in less developed financial markets or emerging markets. The present study contributes to filling this gap in the literature.

Investors’ heuristic biases have been measured using a questionnaire, containing numerous items, including indicators of speculators, investment decisions and perceived market efficiency variables. The sample consists of 143 investors trading on the PSX. A convenient, purposively sampling technique was used for data collection. To examine the relationship between heuristic biases, investment decisions and perceived market efficiency, hypotheses were tested by using correlation and regression analysis.

The paper provides empirical insights into the relationship of heuristic biases, investment decisions and perceived market efficiency. The results suggest that heuristic biases (overconfidence, representativeness, availability and anchoring) have a markedly negative impact on investment decisions made by individual investors actively trading on the PSX and on perceived market efficiency.

The primary limitation of the empirical review is the tiny size of the sample. A larger sample would have given more trustworthy results and could have empowered a more extensive scope of investigation.

The paper encourages investors to avoid relying on heuristics or their feelings when making investments. It provides awareness and understanding of heuristic biases in investment management, which could be very useful for decision makers and professionals in financial institutions, such as portfolio managers and traders in commercial banks, investment banks and mutual funds. This paper helps investors to select better investment tools and avoid repeating expensive errors, which occur due to heuristic biases. They can improve their performance by recognizing their biases and errors of judgment, to which we are all prone, resulting in a more efficient market. So, it is necessary to focus on a specific investment strategy to control “mental mistakes” by investors, due to heuristic biases.

The current study is the first of its kind, focusing on the link between heuristics, individual investment decisions and perceived market efficiency within the specific context of Pakistan.

This study is about the determinants of cash holding and impact of cash holding on mutual funds’ performance. In addition, the study analyzes the impact of performance-related determinants of cash holding on funds' performance.

Panel data of ten years of 190 open-end mutual funds are analyzed through fixed effect regression technique. The risk-adjusted funds' performance of cash based portfolios is computed through capital asset pricing model (CAPM) (1964), Fama and French (1993) and Carhart (1997) models.

The results indicate that small size funds, high charging front-end load funds, high turnover ratio funds, high 12-month fund returns run up, high dividend paying funds and high redemption level funds hold more cash for precautionary purpose to avoid costs of cash short-falls. Further, monthly average raw returns and risk-adjusted performance of funds with the lowest raw and residual cash holding are found higher than the funds with the highest cash holding. An increase in cash is found to dilute performance.

This is a pioneer study in a corporate environment with shallow capital market, reliance of businesses on bank credit, firms exposed to agency issues, wealth expropriations and existence of business groups with political linkages but with opportunities of investments due to expected favorable geo-socio-political situation. The study generates outcomes relevant for other similar economies.

This paper aims to develop efficient decision support tools for a firm’s environment protection by using greening effort while yet improving profitability by utilizing pricing and inventory decisions with discount consideration.

This study proposed a mathematical model for price- and greening effort-dependent demand rate with discount considerations. Later, the mathematical model is extended to the situation in which the demand rate is also dependent on the stock level, in addition to the price and greening effort. Efficient solution methodologies are developed for finding the optimal solution to the proposed models.

Simple yet elegant models are proposed to mimic real-life applications. Structural properties of the models are explored to outline efficient algorithms with quantity discounts.

The paper considers monopoly and assumes deterministic demand. Only a more commonly observed all-units discount scheme is studied.

The models provide decision support tools for firms in pursuit of joint profit maximization and environment consciousness goals.

The study develops environment-friendly approaches for inventory management and improving the profitability alike.

This study is among the first to consider environmental protection with an investment in greening effort along with inventory management and pricing decision. The study also explored the effect of all-unit quantity discounts.

The purpose of this paper is to access the present situation of the Pakistani population that suffers from vitamin D deficiency.

A review-based study was conducted based on publications from Pakistan between the years 2008 and 2018. The publications were archived from Pub Med and Google Scholar databases. A total of 18 publications were shortlisted, based on the cutoff values of vitamin D sufficiency, insufficiency and deficiency.

As per the data, 38.5 per cent of the participants were males, 48.7 per cent were females and 12.8 per cent of the studies have not mentioned the genders of the participants. The cumulative results show that 58.17 per cent (95 per cent CI: 52.17, 64.16) of the population is vitamin D-deficient and 26.65 per cent (95 per cent CI: 21.63, 31.66) is insufficient in vitamin D. The highest level of vitamin D deficiency was reported from Sindh (62.15 per cent), followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (60.57 per cent), Punjab (51.75 per cent) and the Federal Capital (49.25 per cent). Moreover, Cochran’s Q test indicated considerable heterogeneity (p = >0.001) with regard to Vitamin D deficiency (VDD) prevalence found among samples from the selected studies.

The present analysis suggests that more than half of the Pakistani population suffers from VDD, which, thus, should be considered as an epidemic and treated likewise.

This study aims to investigate the determinants of Islamic stock returns listed on Jakarta Islamic Index (Indonesia) between 2008 and 2018.

This study uses a quantile bounded autoregressive distributed lag (QBARDL) model to uncover relevant relationships.

This study finds that the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index, gold returns, world oil prices and exchange rates are the determinants of the Indonesia’s Islamic stock returns. However, the relationship is time varying developing intra-/inter-quantile bounded.

Integration of the Islamic stock returns with the real economic indicators changes over time. The findings have important implications for the policymakers, the fund managers and the investors to anticipate consequences when considering the macroeconomic conditions before participating in the Indonesian Islamic stock market.

Using a QBARDL, this study finds that the Islamic stock returns have on net and “time-varying intra-/inter-quantile developing” relationship with its determinants as data quantiles progressed from 25% to 75%.

This book is essential for anyone in artificial intelligence (AI) and destination management in the tourism industry or government. The book includes both theoretical and practical writings for stakeholders. In all chapters, we provide titles including AI, regenerative and green destinations, sustainable tourism, tourist motivations and expectations, good examples of smart destinations and regions, the regeneration of the tourism industry via AI, rethinking tourism activities and products, current issues in robots, self-service technology, effect of pandemic on smart destinations, sustainable gastronomy and regenerative tourism and tourism issues are discussed in the management plans of the centralisation. This book provides cases and empirical studies that deal in depth with the current situation, challenges, solutions and future strategies after technological development of tourism and increasing interest on smart destinations from a responsible perspective, for readers with an equitable interest or involvement with the organizations in inquiry.

Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.