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This paper aims to explore blockchain integration strategies within a three-level livestock meat supply chain in which consumers have a preference for quality trust in livestock meat products. The paper investigates three questions: First, how does consumers’ preference for quality trust affect blockchain integration and transaction decisions among supply chain participants? Second, under what circumstances will retailers choose to participate in the blockchain? Finally, how can other factors such as blockchain costs and supplier–retailer partnership value affect integration decisions?

This paper formulates a supply chain network equilibrium model and employs the logarithmic-quadratic proximal prediction-correction method to obtain equilibrium decisions. Extensive numerical studies are conducted using a pork supply chain network to analyze the implications of blockchain integration for different supply chain participants.

The results reveal several key insights: First, suppliers’ increased blockchain integration, driven by higher quality trust preference, can negatively affect their profits, particularly, with excessive trust preferences and high blockchain costs. Second, an increase in consumers’ preference for quality trust expands the range of unit operating costs for retailers engaging in blockchain. Finally, the supplier–retailer partnership drives retailer blockchain participation, facilitating enhanced information sharing to benefit the entire supply chain.

This study provides original insights into blockchain integration strategies in an agricultural supply chain through the application of the supply chain network equilibrium model. The investigation of several key factors on equilibrium decisions provides important managerial implications for different supply chain participants to address consumers’ preference for quality trust and enhance overall supply chain performance.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the Quality–Loyalty Model and the Religiosity–Loyalty Model to assess loyalty formation toward Halal food.

Data from 320 respondents were collected in Bandung Indonesia through a survey. A partial least-square modeling was employed to evaluate the association between food quality, religiosity, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty.

This study discloses that the two integrated loyalty models are fit, indicating that incorporating these loyalty models provides a better comprehension of loyalty toward Halal food. Further, this study confirms the importance of both food quality and religiosity in determining loyalty.

This research offers an important finding for Halal food managers to develop customer loyalty through food quality and religiosity. This research recommends that Halal food managers, besides obtaining Halal certification, need to constantly innovate and adopt world food-quality standards to deal with customers’ constantly changing demands.

This research is the first that integrates the Quality–Loyalty Model and the Religiosity–Loyalty Model to get a better understanding of loyalty formation toward Halal food.

This study aims to comparatively measure the impact factors of financial inclusion and their spillover effects for Belt and Road countries using panel data from 57 countries in 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2021 and relevant indicators from three dimensions: availability, usage and quality to construct a digital empowerment index of financial inclusion.

A spatial Durbin panel model is constructed to empirically test the impact mechanism of financial inclusion under digital empowerment.

Results reveal that improving a country’s quality of regulation, technology and residents’ financial literacy significantly contributes to the development of its financial inclusion, while improving its neighboring countries’ financial literacy also boosts its financial inclusion development. This study provides theoretical support for evaluating the development level of inclusive finance in “Belt and Road” countries, promoting the development of inclusive finance and alleviating the problem of financial exclusion.

This study is original as it creates a research paradigm for “Belt and Road” countries, enabling systematic testing and comparative analysis of inclusive finance development. It incorporates traditional and digital services, evaluating them based on sharing, fairness, convenience and specific group benefits. An inclusive financial index is constructed using the coefficient of variation and arithmetic weighted average methods. Additionally, it introduces a more rational analysis approach for the influence mechanism and spatial effect, using an economic geography nested matrix and spatial Durbin model to explore spatial effects in inclusive finance.

It is argued that the evolution of trade between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the European Union (EU) falls into three phases: limited contact; both sides seeking rapid growth and becoming mutually dependent; and high mutual trade levels with political considerations re‐emerging, China being kept at arm’s length by GATT/WTO and the EU restraining trade through increasing quotas, tariffs and anti‐dumping actions. Nevertheless, high levels of Intra Industry Trade (IIT) demonstrate mutual dependence. Cultural and political differences, as well as incompatible statistical records, prevent trade reaching its full potential at present.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why the university library should become the incubation center of research innovation literacy (RIL) competency. It states how the library develops RIL instruction and how the library impels university students to improve their independent knowledge innovation competence.

This paper reviews some of the research papers on information literacy (IL) instruction. Based on background analysis, it enumerates and states the methods of the effective practice of the library in RIL competency instruction.

The university library possesses the information resources and advanced web technology, owns the experience in IL instruction, and has an advantage in terms of information instruction and research environment. The university library has the ability and responsibility to practice RIL instruction.

This paper provides a point of view that the university library can develop the RIL instruction based on IL. The university library can play not only an important role in general courses of the university, but can also sufficiently expand the function of librarians.

This paper aims to study the present situation of Tianjin industrial energy consumption carbon emissions and put forward constructive suggestions for future energy-saving emission reduction work.

Using the energy consumption data form the Tianjin’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Guide (TJBS, 2009-2013) and Tianjin’s Statistical Yearbook (NBS, 2006-2012), some models were able to predict the future with a high degree of accuracy.

With an average error of 3.06 per cent for the logistic regression model and an average error of 2.03 per cent for the gray model, the R2 for the energy elasticity model is 0.99158. It also indicated that between 2008 and 2012, the energy consumption per unit of industrial added value decreased by approximately 33.61 per cent. These results show that energy-saving efforts and the optimization of the industrial structure have increased the energy efficiency of Tianjin.

The authors think that their contribution refers to a combination between methodology of forecasting and industrial energy consumption.

Humanitarian relief organisations such as charities count on donations to provide assistance to people in need when disasters occur. In the UK, about 11,200 charity shops collect second-hand goods from donors to raise funds for their parent charity to support target beneficiaries. As their numbers increase, charity shops are finding it difficult to secure good quality stock. Furthermore, they may need to plan ahead to secure sufficient stock when the economy experiences a downturn. This paper identifies the charity shop's role and its donation flow in the multi-tier supply chain and empirically assesses the barriers that influence intention to donate with a mixed-methods approach.

In order to explore the charity shop's role within the multi-tier supply chain, this study begins with a literature review and then develops a conceptual model. In order to empirically evaluate the barriers that influence intention to donate, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 charity shop managers and collected 222 usable questionnaires from donors. The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach was applied to examine the interrelationship among barriers and rank their priority.

This paper identifies ten significant barriers that influence intention to donate: lack of good quality items for donation; lack of information on how charity shops make use of donations; lack of familiarity with the donation process; lack of information of what items can be accepted by charity shops; lack of awareness of the impact that donations make; the difficulty of being available at the scheduled times for charity shops' free pick-up services; the difficulty of donating during shops' opening hours; the difficulty of finding parking to access charity shops; and living too far away from charity shops. In particular, the questionnaires' results indicate that lack of good quality items is the most significant barrier. This is also reflected in the ISM model, and thus needs more attention.

The results are very useful for charity shops themselves to understand current barriers to securing good quality stock and to develop potential stock-securing interventions based on these barriers' priority.

Although charity shops have been investigated by several researchers, their supply chain remains insufficiently explored. This paper fills this gap by identifying the charity shop's role and its donation flow in the supply chain and by empirically assessing the supply-side barriers with a mixed-methods approach.

Intangible cultural heritage products (ICHP) in this paper refer to the products made with handicrafts listed as intangible cultural heritage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of consumer cultural identity and consumer knowledge on purchase intentions of ICHP, as well as the role of the perceived scarcity for such effects.

Three between-participants experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of cultural identity on purchase intention of ICHP and the underlying mechanism of the effect.

The results show that cultural identity has a positive influence on ICHP purchase intention, and this effect is stronger for consumers with higher level of consumer knowledge. Furthermore, perceived scarcity underlies such effect, but the scarcity account holds only for handmade ICHP, not for machine-manufactured products.

The current research suggests that ICHP should remain handmade to preserve their scarcity as a distinctive feature. Additionally, business practitioners handling ICHP should target consumers of high cultural identity, and/or provide iconic cues to activate their cultural identity situationally. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of consumer education programs about ICHP-related knowledge in enhancing the cultural identity effect.

This paper explores systematically the conditions and process of consumers' responses toward ICHP for the first time. Besides, it builds on accessibility-diagnosticity framework and provides novel knowledge about the functioning of consumer cultural identity. It also enriches our understanding of perceived scarcity from the supply side.

Social media have escalated the frequency and intensity of brands’ online controversial events (OCEs), which differs conceptually from negative events. Despite this, there remains a scarcity of research exploring the nature of OCEs. This paper aims to investigate the impact of positive buzz on consumer engagement during OCEs.

Using 47,468 posts from two popular Chinese social media (i.e. Weibo and Zhihu), we employ a zero-inflated negative binomial regression and content analysis to test our hypotheses.

The results indicate that positive buzz informativeness and sentiment positively affect consumer engagement in online brand communities, moderated by community type and time-related factors. Expert communities (vs social communities) weaken main effects, while date distance strengthens them.

This study is the first to propose the nature of brand’s OCEs and explores how positive buzz affects consumer engagement, highlighting the moderating roles of community type and date distance. This paper contributes to literature on user-generated content (UGC), OCEs and dual process theory, offering valuable insights for brands, consumers and community owners.

The aim of this research is to examine the application of the stereotype content model (SCM) in the field of marketing from macro (the country of origin), meso- (corporate image) and micro (service providers, brands, advertising and promotions) levels.

This paper collects, reviews and summarizes the relevant literature, and prospects future research directions from three levels on this research topic.

First, the authors contend that competence primacy popularizes in the early work but warmth becomes more influential recently. Second, they identify and discuss two doubts of the SCM in marketing, namely the moral dimension and the link between brands as intentional agents framework (BIAF) and the brand personality theory. Finally, they suggest several research avenues for the use of SCM in marketing research, including research on nation branding, emerging global brands and Confucianist cultures at macro level, artificial intelligence and warmth-as-competence strategy at meso-level, and brand personality and the brand animal logo at micro level.

As an established framework in social psychology, the SCM has been increasingly applied in marketing research and a literature review in this light appears timely. This paper conducts for the first time a comprehensive review of the SCM in the marketing field on three levels, projects promising research directions, and thus contributes to the academia of marketing.