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Digital transformation (DT) has great potential to improve operations and stimulate business growth. It has attracted widespread attention from businesses around the world. However, firm performance in DT implementation (DTI) cannot be neglected. This study examines the benefits and costs of DT and its effects on operations and financial performance of DT.

Based on the financial report data from S&P 500 firms, we measure the financial performance, productivity and market value of DTI with a baseline in 2020. In addition, we collect secondary data to construct linear regression models for three dummy variables, including DT adopters, first movers and better performers.

Empirical results demonstrate that digitally transformed firms are positively correlated with business performance, while the performance among first movers has a partially positive impact. DT has also had a significant impact on long-term performance as shown by our long-term observations. Empirical findings indicate that DT has varying impacts on organizational performance in different dimensions and provides DT target-setting guidance to enterprises.

There are no studies so far that could proffer certain evidence to reveal the influence of DTI on firm performance. Such evidence is necessary for managers to convince their investors and stakeholders to believe that DTI can create new revenue for enterprises.

This study aims to examine the effects of financial development and banking regulation on technology gaps and cost efficiency in banks, controlling for bank- and country-specific factors.

A stochastic frontier analysis is used to empirically investigate the cost efficiency of 277 banks in 11 Asia-Pacific countries from 2011 to 2019. To compare their banking sectors, 11 countries are categorized as high- or low-income.

The results show that the level of financial development is key to the technology type adopted by banks in low-income countries, but the regulatory environment is more important to technology gaps and cost efficiency in high-income countries.

A limitation of this study relates to data availability: some firms were excluded through the application of limiting criteria. The research has implications for bank regulators in high-income countries and demonstrates the need for further investigation of the financial development of banks in low-income countries.

This study applies the most recent meta-frontier technique to a sample of banks in the Asia-Pacific region to identify determinants of bank cost efficiency and technology gaps.

Online games are widely adopted electronic applications that facilitate flow experiences, which is a highly enjoyable experience for players, thus motivating further engagement in online gameplay. During gameplay, players set gaming goals, and they must make cognitive efforts to achieve these goals. However, we do not know how goal-setting and cognitive gaming elements (game complexity and game familiarity) create flow, indicating a research gap. To fill this gap, we use the cognitive gaming elements in the literature and the theoretical elements of goal-setting theory to build a model.

Conducting a large-scale online survey, we collect 3,491 responses from online game players and use structural equation modeling for data analysis.

We find that challenging goals, game complexity, game familiarity and telepresence are positively linked to player-perceived flow, explaining 45% of the variance. The new finding is that challenging goals can strengthen the link between game complexity and flow. We also find that telepresence can strengthen the link between game familiarity and flow.

Our study provides the novel insight that gaming goals and cognitive gaming elements can generate player-perceived flow. This insight can help game makers design gaming elements to accommodate players' cognitive efforts to achieve in-game goals, thus creating flow and effectively increasing players' game engagement.

This research aims to explore the impact of augmented reality (AR), the digital technology that superimposes virtual elements in a real environment, on consumers in the context of experiential marketing. Specifically, this study proposes a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response model, which considers AR media characteristics as external stimuli, consumers’ value perceptions as the organisms, and purchase intentions as the responses. The research model was tested with 248 consumers using structural equation modelling. The results show that informativeness, ease of use, and telepresence have positive effects on consumers’ utilitarian value perception and that telepresence and interactivity have positive effects on hedonic value perception. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on AR and provides actionable insights for managers implementing digital transformation strategies and AR applications in marketing practices.

Advances in technology have led to continuous innovations in teaching and learning methods. Ubiquitous-learning (u-learning) practices are still in the development stages. The current lack of effective learning strategy tools means that students often experience difficulty focusing on the learning objectives. Little research has been done on the educational benefits of integrating augmented reality (AR) technology running on tablet PCs (TPCs), either in the classroom or in a u-learning environment. Still, classroom instruction using TPCs has been shown to be attractive to students and able to effectively increase their motivation to learn. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses a TPC game (an app called SkyView) to help young students understand the theory and practically implement the astronomy concepts of prograde and retrograde motion. The study design is based on the use of AR technology, and the authors divide students into “tablet PC application” (experimental group) and “astrolabe” (control group) games. The authors investigate whether the experimental group surpasses the control group in terms of learning motivation, flow experience (FE), self-efficacy regarding technology, self-efficacy regarding science, positive feelings about the learning experience, and satisfaction with the learning approach (SL).

The findings show that students in the experimental group performed better in regards to learning achievement. In general, the improved FE helped students enjoy the learning activity to the point that they did not notice the passage of time. In regards to SL, the findings show that the students in the experimental group had an increased willingness to use the TPC to learn.

There is a lack of research investigating the effects of the FE with tangible and AR technology in learning environments. The results of this study show the responses and performance of elementary students who participated in such a learning experience, in terms of their feelings regarding the method and tools, and in terms of their motivation, willingness to learn, and actual learning achievement.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain a constitutive model of cement-based material in the rheological stage, which owns the different water-cement ratio (w/c) and temperature and have a significant impact on the workability of concrete materials.

It is introduced a modified Arrhenius equation into the Herschel–Bulkley model, which is widely applied in rheological analysis and constructed an ordinary differential equation (ODE) of w/c from the Navier–Stokes equation. By solving the ODE, an approximate constitutive relation of cement-based materials included w/c and temperature is derived. Compared with the experimental results, the present model is validated.

The shear stress and shear rate curves with different w/c and temperature are simulated by the present method, and the present model can be applied to analyze the changes of apparent viscosity in cement-based material slurry as the w/c and temperature varying.

This work gives a mathematical model, which can effectively approximate the shear stress–shear rate relation with different w/c and temperature in the rheological stage of cement-based material.

Online gamers form communities and offer game makers various revenue sources. Gamers' continual revenue contributions should depend on their commitment to gaming communities (CGC), where they rely heavily on communication media that carry rich information or provide enhanced media richness. However, no study has yet examined how to use the four elements of media richness to fuel gamers' CGC, revealing a research gap. Seeking to fill this gap, this study constructs a research framework and formulates hypotheses based on media richness theory (MRT).

This study obtained responses from 1,971 online gamers and applied structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that the four media richness elements have selective impacts on network convergence and interdependence that result in CGC. Moreover, compared with interdependence, network convergence has a stronger impact on CGC.

The findings offer online game makers insights that will enable them to design the communication functions in games to support the formation of strongly connected gamer communities. Moreover, the findings advance MRT by showing its ability to explain the formation of online gaming communities.

Throughout human history and around the world, co-sleeping was the context for human evolutionary development. Currently, most of the world’s peoples continue to practice co-sleeping with infants, but there is increasing pressure on families in the West not to co-sleep. Research from anthropology, family studies, medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and public health is reviewed through the lens of a developmental theory to place co-sleeping within a developmental, theoretical context for understanding it. Viewing co-sleeping as a family choice and a normative, human developmental context changes how experts may provide advice and support to families choosing co-sleeping, especially in families making the transition to parenthood. During this transition, many decisions are made by parents “intuitively” (Ball, Hooker, & Kelly, 1999), making understanding the developmental consequences of some of those choices even more important. In Western culture, families are making “intuitive” decisions that research has shown to be beneficial, but families are not receiving complete messages about benefits and risks of co-sleeping. Co-sleeping can be an important choice for families as they make the life-changing transition to parenthood, if individualized messages about safe infant sleep practices (directed toward their individual family circumstances) are shared with them.

The traditional Chinese culture has always emphasized the authority of leaders and their “top-down” influence over subordinates tangled with “bottom-up” management. Paternalistic leadership can both nurture and restrict growth in mega-construction projects, due to the unique consequences (i.e. positive vs negative implications) for project teams. Hence, the present study aimed to explore the impact of paternalistic leadership (PL), team members’ voice (TMV) and team resilience (TR) on the mega-construction project success (MPS) in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A surveyed-based sample of project professionals (N = 563) directly linked with the BRI was employed for statistical estimations with partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM).

Paternalistic leadership styles, including authoritarian leadership (AL), moral leadership (ML) and benevolent leadership (BL), significantly influence the mega-construction project success in BRI. The findings empirically validated that both BL and ML increase the likelihood of mega-construction project success. However, AL could impose a threat through its underlying negative influence. In addition, leaders with benevolence and morality have a positive influence on TMV and TR, while leaders with authoritarianism signal a negative impact. Furthermore, both TMV and TR significantly and positively mediate the relationships between AL-MPS (Model-1), BL-MPS (Model-2) and ML-MPS (Model-3), respectively.

The present study is a groundbreaking endeavor that fills a crucial research gap by investigating mega-construction project success in the BRI through paternalistic leadership, project team members' voice and team resilience in a multi-mediation model. These novel findings offer valuable strategic insights for managing mega-construction projects in countries with paternalistic solid cultural foundations, enabling project managers to navigate cultural nuances and optimize megaproject outcomes.