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Urban parks play a key role in recreational activities, public health, and ecosystem services in urban areas. Using GIS and Fragstats, this study investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban parks in Xi'an, China from 1949 to 2015 and the corresponding driving forces. The results show that the number and area of parks in Xi'an increased constantly during this period, especially from 2000 to 2015. Up to 2015, small green spaces, usually adjacent to streets, occupied the largest proportion among all types of parks. Archaeological parks were the largest in total area, but wetland parks were leading in average size of a single park. The density of parks was negatively correlated with their distance to the Clock Tower at the center of Xi'an. The dynamics of urban parks in highly urbanized areas were significantly different from that of their counterparts in suburban areas. Driving forces such as urban planning, urbanization and green space policies, and milestone events in the city's development jointly had a great effect on the distribution of parks in Xi'an. The research outcomes will support the upcoming Green Space Planning of Xi'an and benefit the pursuit of sustainability and human wellbeing.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors affecting the consumption intention of Chinese cuisines for the foreigners living in China. The study also explains the role of variety seeking behavior of consumers in the consumption intention of Chinese cuisines.

The quantitative data were obtained using a structured questionnaire that is based on Dalian, Liaoning province, of People’s Republic of China. A total of 305 responses were collected, and out of which, 282 were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that food novelty and utilitarian value are better predictors of consumption intention of Chinese cuisines. The food quality is also found to be significant with consumption of Chinese cuisines. The variety seeking behavior of consumers found to mediate the relationship of food quality, food novelty and utilitarian value with consumption intention toward Chinese cuisines.

The contribution made by the current study is twofold. First, the value of study lies in identifying the factors that are responsible for food consumption intention of foreigners in China, which is an overlooked area in the previous literature. Second, the study also establishes the role of variety seeking behavior of consumers in consumption intention. The authoritative construct of variety seeking behavior matches well with the context of the current study, as the Chinese cuisine is well renowned in the world for its wide variety. Further, the findings are valuable to the stakeholders of restaurant industry in guiding them on how best they can attract foreign consumers toward local Chinese cuisines.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board secretaries’ characteristics on annual report readability using an original method that evaluates the readability of Chinese characters.

The authors manually collect board secretaries’ characteristics from the China Securities Market and Accounting Research database and obtain annual reports from the China Information website. Ordinary least square regression is applied to evaluate the impact, and then robustness tests and additional regression analyses are conducted.

Board secretaries’ legal-professional expertise, international expertise and role duality improve annual report readability. However, their political connections are negatively associated with it. The effect of expertise (role duality) is more pronounced for firms with lower ex ante litigation risk (board secretaries with equity holdings). Furthermore, higher readability increases the compensation of board secretaries, whereas lower readability increases their turnover. Finally, annual report readability is positively related to firm performance.

The authors only investigate listed firms in China from 2007 to 2017 because of the difficulties of obtaining data and text mining.

The authors provide managerial insights for regulators aiming to establish an effective governance mechanism with Chinese characteristics. First, certain requirements for board secretaries’ expertise can improve annual report readability. Further, firms can consider appointing board members or senior executives as board secretaries to enhance disclosure quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to verify the effect of board secretaries’ characteristics on disclosure quality, especially annual report readability. Moreover, this study proposes a novel measure of annual report readability for Chinese texts.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the impact of culture (using individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance) on entrepreneurial risk taking behavior which leads to the opportunity exploitation decision. Moreover, it also uses risk taking behavior of entrepreneurial as the mediation variable between culture and opportunity exploitations decisions.

The study took place in Tanzania, which is allocated in East Africa and is one of under researched countries. In total, 140 entrepreneurs who own venture of 5-99 employees were able to be interviewed using a survey questionnaire. In this study, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the direct and indirect relationship of culture in entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decisions.

After hypothesis testing, the empirical results showed that Tanzania’s culture has an impact on entrepreneurial risk taking behavior, which influences entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decision. It also showed culture through individualism and uncertainty avoidance measurements affect entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decisions. The empirical results on power distance were insignificant.

This study is a wake-up call to policy makers and formal institutions such as government authorities, education institutions and religion institutions. Thus, culture has an ability to influence the behavior of entrepreneurs and so the performance of ventures if it is consistent and well structured. Therefore it should be not taken for granted. Data for our study are based on only two cities and therefore the results should not be generalized as the whole country’s inference. Generalizability is questioned because the data are from only two cities in Tanzania and therefore future research should include more cities to be able to validate the generalizability.

This study is a wake-up call to policymakers and formal institutions such as government authorities, education institutions and religion institutions. Thus culture has an ability to influence the behavior of entrepreneurs and so the performance of ventures if it is consistent and well structured. Therefore it should be not taken for granted. Data for our study are based on only two cities and therefore the results should not be generalized as the whole country’s inference.

In the country which has well-structured culture, influence the behavior of entrepreneurs to exploit opportunities.

This is the first empirical study to use SEM for exploring the culture of individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance impact on entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation in Tanzania.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of online service failure on online customer satisfaction and offline customer loyalty, and the moderating role of brand strength is also examined. While extant research on brick and click service mode recognizes the positive spillover effect from offline stores to online stores, this study analyzes the negative spillover effect from online stores to offline stores.

This paper tests the hypotheses by two studies. Study 1 is based on a 2 (failure severity: mild vs severe) × 2 (brand strength: strong vs weak) between-subjects experimental design using scenarios in a brick and click retailer context, while study 2 is based on data collected from a scenario-based questionnaire survey and analyzed through the structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that participants exposed to severe online service failure show lower online satisfaction as compared to their counterparts exposed to mild online service failure, but they show the similar level of offline loyalty in both degrees of online service failure. Nevertheless, these results are not moderated by brand strength significantly.

An experimental design and a scenario-based questionnaire survey are used to test the framework. However, the generalizability of the research findings is still limited to a specific study setting. Future research in a different setting is needed to further validate the presented findings.

The findings suggest that physical service providers should adopt aggressive online expansion strategy to seize the market and pay more attention to online service quality rather than online marketing only.

This is one of few studies to explore the risk of brick and click service mode, and provide a clear understanding of the likely occurrence of online service failure and its impact on online customer satisfaction and offline customer loyalty. It extends prior research by exploring non-existence of negative perceptual effect from online service failure to offline customer loyalty in the short run and weakening brand effect, which contributes to cross-channel spillover effect in the integrated multi-channel context and brand building in the internet era.

As Chinese imported cross-border e-commerce has entered a stage of rapid development, the problem of consumer shopping risk is increasingly prominent and the crisis of consumer trust is intensified. The theory of establishing consumer trust in traditional online shopping can no longer meet the need of cross-border context.

The researchers used the methods of network logs and grounded theory. The data collection and analysis are conducted on consumer comments from Tmall Global, NetEase Koala and JD Worldwide in the product comment area. This article explored and extracted the moderating variables of consumer perceived risk and cross-border characteristics in cross-border e-commerce. Based on the theory of “perceived risk – consumer trust – consumer purchase decision – making,” this article deduced mechanism of consumer dynamic trust based on the whole process of cross-border e-commerce transaction.

In the prepurchase, purchase and postpurchase stages of cross-border e-commerce transactions, consumers' perceived cognitive risk, transaction risk and utility risk are moderated by the cultural distance, geographical distance and institutional distance caused by the cross-border transaction subjects. On this basis, the preinfluence factors of trust in each transaction stage are synthesized to respectively influence the establishment of cognitive trust, emotional trust and behavioral trust, so as to affect consumers to make the order payment, confirm receipt and praise repurchase decisions. At the same time, with the advance of prepurchase, purchase and postpurchase transactions in cross-border online shopping, consumer trust presents a dynamic evolutionary path of “cognitive trust – emotional trust – behavioral trust.”

This article expands the application context of the theory of consumer rational behavior from traditional online shopping to the context of cross-border online shopping and expands the scope of interpretation of the theory of consumer rational behavior. This article also supplements the theoretical gaps in the dynamic evolution of consumer trust in cross-border online shopping, enriches the decision-making process model of consumers in the context of cross-border online shopping and provides new ideas for follow-up research.

Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is particularly relevant to the hospitality and tourism industry due to its labor-intensive and service-focused nature. However, the hospitality literature regarding the impact of LMX on its various outcomes have inconsistent results. A holistic review of LMX studies is nonexistent in the current literature. Thus, the purpose of this study is to use a meta approach to quantitatively summarize and examine the relationship between LMX and its outcomes in the hospitality and tourism literature.

A total of 89 individual observations from 36 studies conducted between 1997 and 2018 were identified. A Bayesian random effect model was introduced into the hospitality and tourism literature for the first time to implement the meta-analysis.

The results suggest significant differences in the impact of LMX on various groups of outcomes. LMX has the strongest impact on firms’ practice-related outcomes, such as organizational justice and employee empowerment. Few moderators are identified on the impact of LMX, such as LMX measure, culture, industry sector and statistical method.

Findings yielded several recommendations for both hospitality researchers and organizations in developing LMX related studies, as well as managing employees.

This study is the first Bayesian meta-analysis in the hospitality and tourism literature; it complements LMX theory by linking it to cognitive appraisal theory. Specific characteristics of LMX in the hospitality and tourism industry, such as the measurement of LMX and the effect of industry sector, are also identified.

The study aims to construct a model that illustrates the relationship between receiving and sharing negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM), consumer resistance to innovation (CRI), and customer loyalty.

Utilizing questionnaire surveys and regression model analysis, this study examines the case of smartphones to explore the impact of customer loyalty and CRI on the spread of negative e-WOM.

The results show that when consumers receive negative e-WOM, it increases their resistance to innovation, consequently raising the probability of them sharing this negative feedback. However, strong customer loyalty mitigates this interaction. Interestingly, customer loyalty increases the likelihood of consumers sharing negative e-WOM upon receiving it. This suggests that loyal consumers tend to be more inclined to share information, regardless of its positivity or negativity.

The paper contributes by examining the mechanisms linking the receipt and dissemination of e-WOM, CRI, and customer loyalty, along with the moderating impact of customer loyalty.

This paper aims to explore the determinants of intention to use Islamic banking and compare the consumer behavior of users and non-users of Islamic banking. This study incorporates the theory of planned behavior in Islamic banking perspective with an additional construct from technology acceptance model.

The research is quantitative in nature, and survey questionnaire was used to get data from four cities of Pakistan. The study manages to get 300 questionnaires from which only 264 were usable for analysis. The structural equation modeling was used for testing the hypotheses.

The result shows that perceived behavior control and perceived usefulness are the most significant predictors of intention to use of Islamic banking among users and non-users. Attitude turns out to be a non-significant factor for non-users of Islamic banking. Subjective norm is also found to be non-significant with intention to use Islamic banking in both groups.

This study has theoretical as well as practical significance in the subject of consumer behavior in Islamic banking. Theoretically, it attempts to fill the gap caused by the scarcity of research in exploring the consumer behavior towards Islamic banking in Pakistan. This study provides insights into the consumer behavior of users and non-users of Islamic banking and thus presents a comparison. Practically, this study provides guidelines for Islamic banks in introduction, propagation and promotion of Islamic banking products and services to establish Islamic banking as a social norm.

As the focal point of both academic studies and business practices, the theme strategy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) arouses wide attention. However, extant studies concentrate more on the selection of the theme of CSR activities, such as the fitness between CSR activities and the core business, thus largely neglecting the consistency of the theme. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the enterprise should adopt a consistent theme strategy or should participate in different social programs, and how do customers response to the lack of studies in different theme-consistent strategies.

In this paper, two progressive experiments are performed. The purpose of study 1 is to examine the influence of theme consistency on consumers’ CSR association and how consumers’ attribution to corporation motivation mediates such impacts. The purpose for study 2 is to examine whether information dissemination channels and cooperation with public organization could affect the influence of theme consistency strategy.

The significant influences of theme consistency on consumer CSR association was demonstrated, and consumer’s perceived motivation of CSR was found to play the mediation role. Moreover, the moderation effect of the communication channel of CSR information was found to be important to strengthen the influence of the theme-consistent strategy.

This paper not only demonstrates the influence of theme consistency, but also explains how theme consistency influences consumers’ attitude and behavior. It enriches the study on the antecedent variables of consumers’ attribution to corporate motivation.