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Metaverse technology is of interest to researchers and practitioners in tourism and hospitality. The metaverse offers tourists the capacity to enjoy unprecedented tourism experiences. These opportunities may radically change the tourism and hospitality landscape. This study aims to examine how metaverse experiences affect tourists' cognitive processing, satisfaction and loyalty toward metaverse tourism using the stimulus-organism-response paradigm and cognitive experiential self-theory.

An online survey was undertaken to gather information from 329 respondents who were frequent users of different metaverse applications to meet the study's objectives. Data were evaluated through partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings revealed that metaverse experiences, such as immersion, escapism and enjoyment, had a significant positive impact on metaverse organismic experience. Additionally, metaverse cognitive processing positively influenced metaverse tourist responses, including satisfaction and loyalty, with tourist involvement acting as a moderator.

This study provides guidelines for metaverse developers and travel industry professionals to encourage visitor satisfaction and loyalty to metaverse tourism.

Metaverse 技术引起了旅游和酒店业的研究人员和从业人员的兴趣。 元宇宙为游客提供了享受前所未有的旅游体验的能力。 这些机会可能会从根本上改变旅游业和酒店业的格局。 本研究旨在使用刺激-有机体-反应 (S-O-R) 范式和认知体验自我理论 (CEST) 研究虚拟世界体验如何影响游客的认知处理、满意度和对虚拟世界旅游的忠诚度。

为了实现研究目标, 我们开展了一项在线调查, 从 329 名经常使用不同元宇宙应用程序的受访者那里收集信息。 通过偏最小二乘结构方程模型 (PLS-SEM) 评估数据。

研究结果表明, 虚拟世界体验, 如沉浸、逃避现实和享受, 对虚拟世界有机体体验有显着的积极影响。 此外, 虚拟世界的认知处理对虚拟世界游客的反应产生了积极影响, 包括满意度和忠诚度, 游客的参与起到了调节作用。

这项研究为元宇宙开发人员和旅游行业专业人士提供指导方针, 以鼓励游客对元宇宙旅游的满意度和忠诚度。

El Metaverso esta siendo de de interés para investigadores y profesionales en turismo y hotelería. Este avance tecnológico ofrece al turista la capacidad de disfrutar de experiencias turísticas inéditas, generando oportunidades que pueden cambiar radicalmente el panorama de la industria del turismo. Este estudio tiene la intención de examinar cómo las experiencias del metaverso afectan el procesamiento cognitivo, la satisfacción y la lealtad de los turistas hacia el turismo del metaverso utilizando el paradigma de estímulo-organismo-respuesta (S-O-R) y la auto-teoría cognitiva experiencial (CEST).

Se realizó una encuesta en línea para recopilar información de 329 encuestados que eran usuarios frecuentes de diferentes aplicaciones de metaverso para cumplir con los objetivos del estudio. Los datos se evaluaron a través de modelos de ecuaciones estructurales de mínimos cuadrados parciales (PLS-SEM).

Los hallazgos revelaron que las experiencias del metaverso, como la inmersión, el escapismo y el disfrute, tuvieron un impacto positivo significativo en la experiencia organísmica del metaverso. Además, el procesamiento cognitivo del metaverso influyó positivamente en las respuestas de los turistas del metaverso, incluidas la satisfacción y la lealtad, y la participación del turista actuó como moderador.

Este estudio proporciona pautas para los desarrolladores de metaversos y los profesionales de la industria de viajes para fomentar la satisfacción y la lealtad de los visitantes al turismo de metaversos.

This study develops a conceptual framework to examine (1) whether global retailers' CSR actions in the form of in-kind charitable contribution affect consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives, (2) whether consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives affects brand-self connection and (3) whether the cultural factors of self-transcendence and conservation moderate the relationship between consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives and brand-self connection.

Data are collected from two culturally diverse countries, the US and China, each of which managed the pandemic in different ways. Before hypothesis testing, the invariance of measures is established. To measure differences between the groups, a multi-group analysis is conducted.

Global retailers' in-kind charitable contribution is a significant drivers of consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives, and attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives has a positive effect on consumer brand-self connection. Both of the cultural values, self-transcendence and conservation, moderate the relationship between attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives and brand-self connection. Self-transcendence is a strong moderator in China, whereas conservation moderates strongly in the US. All of the relationships differ significantly between the groups (US versus China).

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate empirically the role of in-kind charitable contribution in creating an attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives that eventually leads to strong brand-self connection in the COVID-19 context. The study provides novel insights into how consumer behavior differs across two significantly different cultures with regard to COVID-19-related CSR. The findings help international marketers manage uncertainties and crisis and to design their CSR-based marketing programs and develop positioning strategies across cultures.

This study aims to offer a conceptual framework that elaborates on how tourists’ perception of contradictory features in reviews’ factuality and comprehension – within a single hotel review and across multiple hotel reviews – trigger attitude ambivalence and psychological discomfort, which determine their behaviors – choice deferral and hotel booking intentions. It also investigates the moderating role of anticipated conflicting reactions (ACRs) through contradictory features on consumers’ attitude ambivalence.

Using a Chinese setting, researchers collected data from 524 inbound tourists who were the consumers of hotels in Beijing. The study used IBM Amos 23.0 to test measurement and structural models for the proposed relationships. It also used PROCESS macro 3.4 for the moderation analysis.

The findings reveal a positive association between contradictory features in reviews and the resulting ambivalence that affects consumers’ discomfort and leads to the decision to defer the choice of hotel. Conversely, consumers’ discomfort has a positive impact on the hotel booking intentions. ACRs have positive moderating effects on the associations between contradictory features and consumers’ attitude ambivalence.

By investigating the contradictory features in hotel reviews, this study extends the body of research on dual information processing (i.e. the heuristic–systematic model) and the literature on service management, psychological behaviors, travel intermediaries and hotel firms. Future research directions are recommended for tourism and hospitality researchers.

The present study unveils the service encounter barriers – interactional and instructional – faced by foreign consumers at food and beverage restaurants in China. It builds a conceptual framework and examines (1) how service encounter barriers create situational abnormality, (2) how situational abnormality engenders foreign consumers' felt discomfort that influences their revisit intentions and (3) how expectations disconfirmation moderates situational abnormality.

Convenience sampling using the survey method was employed to collect data from 517 foreign consumers – who stay in Beijing (China) – at food and beverage restaurants. The study used IBM SPSS 25.0 and Amos Graphics 24.0 to analyze the data and interpret results.

Findings reveal that interactional and instructional barriers positively create situational abnormality, which ultimately leads to foreign consumers' felt discomfort and their negative revisit intentions. Expectations disconfirmation significantly aggravates situational abnormality as a moderator.

This study investigates foreign consumers' behavior at food and beverage restaurants in China and cautions its generalizability. It suggests corroborating the foreign consumers' behavioral intentions in the context of other countries to generalize the findings and unleash other factors additive to comprehend their behavior in the wake of restaurant industry.

The extant literature has not examined the service encounter barriers faced by foreign consumers at food and beverage restaurants in China. The present study, responding to the previous calls, incorporated the service encounter barriers and their downstream effects on foreign consumers' behavioral responses. By doing so, it adds value to the domestic food and beverage restaurants and service firms in China, in particular, and paves the way to understand the interactional and instructional barriers in the global context, in general, by engaging the foreign consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prospects of current storage technologies for long-term preservation of big data in digital libraries.

The study employs a systematic and critical review of the relevant literature to explore the prospects of current storage technologies for long-term preservation of big data in digital libraries. Online computer databases were searched to identify the relevant literature published between 2000 and 2016. A specific inclusion and exclusion criterion was formulated and applied in two distinct rounds to determine the most relevant papers.

The study concludes that the current storage technologies are not viable for long-term preservation of big data in digital libraries. They can neither fulfil all the storage demands nor alleviate the financial expenditures of digital libraries. The study also points out that migrating to emerging storage technologies in digital libraries is a long-term viable solution.

The study suggests that continuous innovation and research efforts in current storage technologies are required to lessen the impact of storage shortage on digital libraries, and to allow emerging storage technologies to advance further and take over. At the same time, more aggressive research and development efforts are required by academics and industry to further advance the emerging storage technologies for their timely and swift adoption by digital libraries.

The study reveals that digital libraries, besides incurring significant financial expenditures, will suffer from potential loss of information due to storage shortage for long-term preservation of big data, if current storage technologies are employed by them. Therefore, policy makers and practitioners should meticulously choose storage technologies for long-term preservation of big data in digital libraries.

This type of holistic study that investigates the prospects of magnetic drive technology, solid-state drive technology, and data-reduction techniques for long-term preservation of big data in digital libraries has not been conducted in the field previously, and so provides a novel contribution. The study arms academics, practitioners, policy makers, and industry with the deep understanding of the problem, technical details to choose storage technologies meticulously, greater insight to frame sustainable policies, and opportunities to address various research problems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the private-data pertaining to the interaction of users with social media applications that can be recovered from second-hand Android devices.

This study uses a black-box testing-principles based methodology to develop use-cases that simulate real-world case-scenarios of the activities performed by the users on the social media application. The authors executed these use-cases in a controlled experiment and examined the Android smartphone to recover the private-data pertaining to these use-cases.

The results suggest that the social media data recovered from Android devices can reveal a complete timeline of activities performed by the user, identify all the videos watched, uploaded, shared and deleted by the user, disclose the username and user-id of the user, unveil the email addresses used by the user to download the application and share the videos with other users and expose the social network of the user on the platform. Forensic investigators may find this data helpful in investigating crimes such as cyber bullying, racism, blasphemy, vehicle thefts, road accidents and so on. However, this data-breach in Android devices is a threat to user's privacy, identity and profiling in second-hand market.

Perceived notion of data sanitisation as a result of application removal and factory-reset can have serious implications. Though being helpful to forensic investigators, it leaves the user vulnerable to privacy breach, identity theft, profiling and social network revealing in second-hand market. At the same time, users' sensitivity towards data-breach might compel users to refrain from selling their Android devices in second-hand market and hamper device recycling.

This study attempts to bridge the literature gap in social media data-breach in second-hand Android devices by experimentally determining the extent of the breach. The findings of this study can help digital forensic investigators in solving crimes such as vehicle theft, road accidents, cybercrimes and so on. It can assist smartphone users to decide whether to sell their smartphones in a second-hand market, and at the same time encourage developers and researchers to design methods of social media data sanitisation.

The purpose of this research is to study and analyze the literature that integrates Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach with blockchain technology in different sectors for improved quality management.

This study presents a scoping review on the application of integrated LSS and blockchain technology in the manufacturing and healthcare sector. Further, the authors examined existing blockchain-based solutions on a variety of dimensions, including application area, technical approach, methodology, application scenario, various blockchain platforms, purpose, and monitoring parameters. The authors study LSS approaches in detail, as well as the key benefits that blockchain technology can enable. Finally, the authors discuss significant research problems to be addressed in order to develop a highly efficient, resilient, and secure quality management framework using blockchain technology.

It has been observed that the adoption of blockchain technology for quality management and assurance is influenced by several factors such as transaction execution speed, throughput, latency. Also, prior blockchain-based solutions have neglected to leverage the benefits of LSS methodologies for effective quality management.

This is the first study to explores the influence of blockchain technology on quality management and assurance in manufacturing and healthcare industry. Furthermore, prior research has not examined how integrating the LSS methodology with blockchain technology can aid in the control of product quality management.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the linkage of tourism and crime for Pakistan along with exchange rates, terrorism and domestic prices in the presence of structural breaks over the period 1984–2017.

The order of integration is tested through ADF and PP unit root tests. The robustness of unit root test is testified via structural break unit root test. Furthermore, the authors use Bayer and Hanck (2013) combined cointegration test to confirm the existence of a long-term theoretical relationship among the variables. For the robustness of cointegration analysis, the authors also employ ARDL bound testing in the presence of structural break years. Moving forward, the authors apply VECM Granger causality to find out the direction of causality. Subsequently, variance decomposition approach and impulse response function are used to distinguish leader from the followers.

The unit root test shows that the order of integration is one, I(1). The cointegration analysis confirms the long-run relationship between underlying variables. The authors find inverse and significant impact of crime and exchange rate on tourism in the long run. On contrary, domestic prices play a positive and significant role to determine tourism in short and long run. Also, terrorism is found to be insignificant with negative impact. Further, the bidirectional causality between crime and tourism is observed in the long run. Similarly, unidirectional causality from terrorism to exchange and exchange rate to domestic price is observed in the short run.

The contemporary studies on crime-tourism nexus offer limited evidence, as they frequently suffer from omitted variable bias and ignore possible endogeneity issues. This study uses vector autoregressive models to overcome these biases. Similarly, the authors accommodate the role of structural break years through their analysis. Hence, the results offer more credible evidence. Moreover, the authors contribute to the existing tourism demand literature by adding crime as a potential determinate in case of Pakistan.

To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined credit cycle synchronizations in the context of emerging economies. Studying the credit cycles synchronization across BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries is crucial given the magnitude of trade and financial integration among member counties. The enormity of the trade and financial linkages among BRICS countries and growth spillovers from emerging economies to advanced and low-income countries provide the rationale and motivation to study the synchronization of credit cycles across BRICS.

The study investigates the credit cycles coherence across BRICS economies from 1996Q2 to 2020Q4. The synchronization analysis is done using the noval wavelet approach. The analysis examines not only the coherence but also the extent of credit cycle synchronization that varies across frequencies and over time among different pairs of nations.

The authors find heterogeneity in the credit cycles' synchronization among the member nations. China and India are very much in sync with the other BRICS countries. China's high-frequency credit cycle mostly leads the other countries' credit cycles before the global financial crisis and shows a mix of lead/lag relationships post-financial crisis. Interestingly, most of the time, India's low-frequency credit cycles lead the member countries' credit cycles, and Brazil's low frequency credit cycle lag behind the other BRICS countries' credit cycles, except for Russia. The results are crucial from the macroprudential policymaker's perspective.

The empirical design is applicable to a similar set of countries and may not directly fit each emerging economy.

The findings will help understand the marked deepening of trade, technology, investment and financial interdependence across the world. BRICS acronym requires no introduction, but such analysis may help understand the interaction at the monetary policy level.

This is the first study that highlights the need to understand the credit variable interactions for BRICS nations.

Banks in the South Asian region are the fulcrum of economic growth and development as they provide means to development credit and working capital, trade and infrastructure finance and are seen as custodians of the trust in the financial system. This paper aims to study the nature of banking sector linkages for the region.

The dependence structure between deposits and lending rates individually for the banks of the South Asian countries are studied using time invariant and time varying family of copula functions. The degree of connectedness is further studied by Diebold and Yilmaz methodology.

Results indicate poor levels of banking integration in the region as the dependence parameter for both deposits and lending rates was around 0 for the sample countries, thereby confirming poor banking sector integration in the region.

Policymakers of the region are interested in the co-movements of the interest rates to understand the cross-sector risk management and any systemic risk pressures for the regional economies. Corporates in these countries are scouting out for competitive borrowing rates to lower their cost of capital.

Rationale for examining the banking sector linkages is that the South Asian countries are at different stages of economic growth and development and this region in particular is the fastest growing region in the world and has largely increased its trade integration with the world albeit having lowest levels of intra-regional trade integration.

This is a first of a kind of studies to examine the banking sector linkages in South Asia.