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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.

The purpose of this study is to explore the critical factors that affect users’ acceptance and usage intention toward blockchain-based smart lockers.

The research is designed in two phases. In the first phase, the key stakeholders are interviewed. Participants include managers from technology providers and logistics companies. In the second phase, a questionnaire survey is used to validate the proposed model.

Based on the final results, this study makes the following three suggestions. First, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the critical factors. In other words, it is important to emphasize the function and convenience of a new service when introducing it to a potential user. Second, safety is not the major concern when using a blockchain-based smart locker. This means that users will trust the service provider for providing a secure service. Users do not worry about the security problem. Finally, the network externality of smart locker is also insignificant.

This study has three major contributions. First, this study identifies the critical factors that will affect user acceptance of blockchain-based smart lockers. Next, this study combines the opinions from service providers and users to understand the gap between different stakeholders. Finally, this study can enrich our understanding on the applications of blockchain from a managerial perspective and not only from a technical perspective, as in most previous studies.

Group buying (GB) is a shopping strategy through which customers obtain volume discounts on the products they purchase, whereas retailers obtain quick turnover. In the scenario of GB, the optimal discount strategy is a key issue because it affects the profit of sellers. Previous research has focused on exploring the price discount and order quantity with a fixed selling price of the product assuming that customer demand is uncertain (but follows a known distribution). This study aims to look at the same problem but goes further to examine the case where not only customer demand is certain but also the demand distribution is unknown.

In this study, optimal price discount and order quantity of a GB problem cast as a price-setting newsvendor problem were obtained assuming that the distribution of customer demand is unknown. The price–demand relationship is considered in addition form and product form, respectively. The bootstrap sampling technique is used to develop a solution procedure for the problem. To validate the usefulness of the proposed method, a simulated comparison of the proposed model and the existing one was conducted. The effects of sample size, demand form and parameters of the demand form on the performance of the proposed model are presented and discussed.

It is revealed from the numerical results that the proposed model is appropriate to the problem at hand, and it becomes more effective as sample size increases. Because the two forms of demand indicate restrictive assumptions about the effect of price on the variance of demand, it is found that the proposed model seems to be more suitable for addition form of demand.

This study contributes to the growing literature on GB models by developing a bootstrap-based newsvendor model to determine an optimal discount price and order quantity for a fixed-price GB website. This model can assist the sellers in making decisions on optimal discount price and order quantity without knowing the form of customer demand distribution.

This study aims to examine the effects of job crafting on the work engagement of tour leaders mediated by person-job fit and the meaningfulness of work.

Derived from a sample of 331 tour leaders in China, the data for this research were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The findings revealed that job crafting increased tour leaders’ person-job fit and meaningfulness of work, which stimulated their work engagement. Tour leaders’ person-job fit also increased their work engagement and perceptions of the meaningfulness of work. Enhancing the work meaningfulness of tour leaders can significantly increase their work engagement. Person-job fit and meaningfulness of work had a significant mediating effect between job crafting and tour leaders’ work engagement.

Managers need to provide external conditions for tour leaders’ job crafting by expanding structural and social job resources and by creating more stimulating job environments. Managers can enhance tour leaders’ work engagement by shaping their work meaning and person-job fit.

First, this study empirically tested the effects of job crafting on tour leaders’ work engagement, thus directly addressed the lack of academic attention paid to this topic. Second, this study examines the mediating role of person-job fit and meaningfulness of work, with regard to tour leaders’ job crafting and work engagement, based on an integrative concept model.

Legged robots are inevitably to interact with the environment while they are moving. This paper aims to properly handle these interactions. It works to actively control the joint torques of a hydraulic-actuated leg prototype and achieve compliant motion of the leg.

This work focuses on the modelling and controlling of a hydraulic-actuated robot leg prototype. First, the design and kinematics of the leg prototype is introduced. Then the linearlized model for the hydraulic actuator is built, and a model-based leg joint torque controller is presented. Furthermore, the virtual model controller is implemented on the prototype leg to achieve active compliance of the leg. Effectiveness of the controllers are validated through the experiments on the physical platform as well as the results from simulations.

The hydraulic joint torque controller presented in this paper shows good torque tracking performance. And the actively compliant leg successfully emulates the performance of virtual passive components under dynamic situations.

The main contribution of this paper is that it proposed a model-based active compliance controller for the hydraulic-actuated robot leg. It will be helpful for those robots that aim to achieve versatile and safe motions.

This research aimed to raise awareness about the need for safety measures and features of online food delivery applications (OFDAs) to build electronic trust (e-trust) with augmented purchase intention among customers. Moreover, this study explores the attributes of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and how e-trust influences the purchasing intention of consumers while ordering food through OFDAs including fear of contagious diseases. Determinants of e-commerce in the digital era profoundly impact the performance of enterprises.

Data from 493 food consumers collected from Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Pakistan, who were regular users of OFDAs. To scrutinize the dataset, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to assess the construct validity in this research study. Structural equation modeling (SEM), which is facilitated by Smart-PLS, was employed to examine the direct, moderation and mediation effects of the proposed model.

Results revealed the positive and significant impact of the e-trust on the purchase intention. Additionally, e-trust acted as a mediating factor in the connection between electronic security (e-security), electronic privacy (e-privacy), usability, electronic payment (e-payment), electronic innovativeness (e-innovativeness) and the buyer's purchase intention. Furthermore, the fear of contagious viruses negatively moderated the e-trust and purchase intention that weakened buying behavior.

This research is primarily centered on enhancing the comprehension regarding safety orientation within the context of an evolving restaurant industry. The findings of this study hold substantial contributions for academics, web developers, application designers, OFDAs, restaurants and other businesses since they indicate the attractiveness of OFDAs in generating feelings of pleasure and boosting users' intentions to keep using the application.

Relational cohesion theory posits that relational cohesion helps build relationships among communication partners, implying that users would expect a growth in relations or making more friends in the future. However, little is known about expectancy of a better future state of relations, i.e. expectancy of relational growth, and its impact on users' continued engagement in online communication. Our study extends relational cohesion theory to explain how expectancy of relational growth impacts online gamer loyalty.

We test the framework using structural equation modeling to analyze a large sample of 1,429 responses from online gamers.

We find that expectancy of relational growth is positively related to norm compliance and relational cohesion, which are further related to network convergence and interdependence, fostering online gamer loyalty.

The findings contribute to relational cohesion theory by identifying novel sources of relational cohesion, i.e. expectancy of relational growth and norm compliance. Hence, game providers should create gamers' expectancy of growth in online relationships. Such expectancy could motivate continued gaming communication, even when gamers are not satisfied with the current state of online relationships. Moreover, we propose the new concept of expectancy of relational growth, which should have a strong impact on online communication in various areas.

Gender swapping – when gamers choose avatars of the opposite gender to their own – is a common feature of online gaming behavior, and recent studies have explored the reasons for it. However, no study has yet examined the role gender swapping plays in determining gamers’ continual engagement with communication via online games, i.e., online gamer loyalty. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine this issue and develop hypotheses based on interdependence theory in the online gaming context.

Responses from a survey of 255 online gamers were used for the analysis.

Analytical results using structural equation modeling indicate that gender-swapping behavior is negatively related to social intelligence, which in turn is negatively related to network convergence (the extent of sharing a common social circle), thus contributing to relational switching costs and online gamer loyalty.

This study is the first to examine how gender swapping affects online gamer loyalty.

As technology-created gamers’ representations, avatars are influential in communication among online gamers. However, there is scant research on how avatars’ characteristics impact gamers’ friendly behaviour via avatars, i.e., avatar friendliness, and how avatar friendliness is related to online gamer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model grounded in the theory of embodied cognition to examine the impacts of perceived avatar appearance agreeableness, attractiveness and height on avatar friendliness and online gamer loyalty.

The authors collect 1,384 responses from online gamers and use structural equation modelling for hypothesis testing.

The authors find that perceived avatar appearance agreeableness and attractiveness are positively related to avatar friendliness, while perceived avatar height is negatively related to avatar friendliness. Avatar friendliness, in turn, is positively related to online gamer loyalty.

This study assessed gamers’ perceptions using a cross-sectional design. Future works could use a big data approach to collect behavioural and longitudinal data. Moreover, future works could measure avatar height using pixels.

The authors contribute to the e-commerce literature by inventing the new constructs of perceived avatar appearance agreeableness and avatar friendliness, and conducting the first study of using avatar friendliness to explain the impacts of the three avatar characteristics on online gamer loyalty. The findings also provide novel insights for e-commerce managers to effectively build a loyal gamer base.

Online games are popular electronic commerce platforms in which gamers use avatars to interact with others. Avatar identification (the extent to which gamers regard avatars as an extension of themselves) is known to be related to online gamer loyalty. However, few studies have examined how avatars could be designed to enhance avatar identification and online gamer loyalty, indicating a gap. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to contextualize self-affirmation theory into online gaming contexts, identified key theoretical elements and examined how they are related to avatar identification and online gamer loyalty.

This study surveyed 1,348 massively multi-player online role-playing game players, and their responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The analytical results indicate that irreplaceability within a team and avatar customization are positively related to unique avatar image, while avatar customization is positively related to positive avatar image. Moreover, avatar physical attractiveness and avatar ability to achieve are positively related to positive avatar image. Both unique and positive images of an avatar (as perceived by the user) are positively related to avatar identification, and further to online gamer loyalty.

This study proposes new constructs: irreplaceability within a team, avatar ability to achieve, unique avatar image and positive avatar image. Such new constructs provide insights to aid electronic commerce managers in avatar design, thus instilling gamer identification with avatars, and thus loyalty.