Search results

Livelihood recovery is a top priority to sustain resettled communities. The purpose of this paper is to assess livelihood vulnerability of those displaced and resettled in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, China, based on a newly constructed locational adjustable framework.

The study takes two resettlement villages in Sichuan Province as case study areas. Face-to-face surveys using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to collect primary data in 2012-2013.

The findings show that distant resettlement of people post the Wenchuan earthquake has resulted in an increased livelihood vulnerability within resettlers and that they face more hazards post-resettlement when compared to host residents in the resettlement areas.

The indicators considered for the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) are only a subset that represents typical factors applicable in the context of rural settings of China. The LVI may vary if more indicators are incorporated or coefficients obtained using different methods.

Highlights should be placed on livelihood assets and hazards to livelihood of the displaced people. During the transition period there is a pressing need for greater efforts to enhance migrants’ employment skills and assist them to restore viable livelihood activities.

This paper constructs a locational adjustable framework for analyzing and assessing livelihood vulnerability of disaster-induced resettlers from three aspects: livelihood hazards, livelihood assets and coping strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of the capital market on economic growth by considering the role of ṣukūk (Islamic investment certificates) and other capital market sub-components in Malaysia between 1998 and 2018.

The empirical investigation is based on the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration bounds test.

The results reveal the prevalence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between capital market variables and economic growth. As expected, bond market components (ṣukūk and conventional bonds) have a positive, albeit insignificant influence on economic growth. In contrast, in the long-term, stock market development – regardless of the indicator used on economic growth – is shown to have a significant and positive effect. The study suggests that stock market sub-components affect Malaysia’s economic growth the most.

The primary limitation of this study is that only corporate ṣukūk were considered, while government ṣukūk were excluded from the estimation due to a lack of requisite information, resources and data.

A strategic framework should be established, especially in pricing efficiencies. Furthermore, there is a need to create more awareness on the benefits of ṣukūk investment among conventional bond investors, including retail investors. Thus, there will be more players in the ṣukūk market, and this will help to improve market liquidity.

Apart from conventional capital market sub-components, this study takes into account ṣukūk as a sub-component in the capital market on economic growth using the ARDL framework. Also, this study particularly concentrates on the world’s largest ṣukūk issuer, Malaysia, rather than focusing on other ṣukūk-issuing countries.

Online health communities (OHCs) are platforms that help health consumers to communicate with each other and obtain social support for better healthcare outcomes. However, it is usually difficult for community members to efficiently find appropriate peers for social support exchange due to the tremendous volume of users and their generated content. Most of the existing user recommendation systems fail to effectively utilize the rich social information in social media, which can lead to unsatisfactory recommendation performance. The purpose of this study is to propose a novel user recommendation method for OHCs to fill this research gap.

This study proposed a user recommendation method that utilized the adapted matrix factorization (MF) model. The implicit user behavior networks and the user influence relationship (UIR) network were constructed using the various social information found in OHCs, including user-generated content (UGC), user profiles and user interaction records. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach based on a dataset collected from a famous online health community.

The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method outperformed all baseline models in user recommendation using the collected dataset. The incorporation of social information from OHCs can significantly improve the performance of the proposed recommender system.

This study can help users build valuable social connections efficiently, enhance communication among community members, and potentially contribute to the sustainable prosperity of OHCs.

This study introduces the construction of the UIR network in OHCs by integrating various social information. The conventional MF model is adapted by integrating the constructed UIR network for user recommendation.

This study aims to investigate the key determinants predicting users’ behavioural intention (BI) in adopting mobile payment (m-payment) in the new normal era.

The mobile technology acceptance model (MTAM) was extended through attitudes, perceived trust, perceived risk and personal innovativeness (PI) with government support (GS) functioning as a moderator. A total of 245 valid responses were gathered from Malaysian m-payment users with purposive sampling and subsequently evaluated through partial least square-structural equation modelling.

Mobile usefulness and PI significantly predicted user BI to use m-payment. Based on the moderation analysis, GS strengthened attitude-based impacts on BI towards m-payment adoption.

The empirical outcomes provide stakeholders with pivotal implications to develop holistic policies and strategies that potentially catalyse m-payment usage in the new normal era.

This research expands the current body of knowledge by assessing the factors impacting m-payment usage intention in the new normal era. The four aforementioned MTAM elements and GS (moderator) were recommended to boost model workability and offer novel evidence from a distinct viewpoint.

El objetivo de este estudio es investigar los determinantes clave que predicen la intención de comportamiento de los usuarios a la hora de adoptar el pago por móvil (m-payment) en la nueva era normal.

El modelo de aceptación de la tecnología móvil (MTAM) se amplió a través de las actitudes, la confianza percibida, el riesgo percibido y la capacidad de innovación personal, con el apoyo gubernamental como moderador. Se recogió un total de 245 respuestas válidas de usuarios malasios de pago por móvil mediante muestreo intencionado y se evaluó posteriormente mediante modelización de ecuaciones estructurales por mínimos cuadrados parciales (PLS-SEM).

La utilidad del móvil y la capacidad de innovación personal predijeron significativamente la intención de los usuarios de utilizar el pago por móvil. Según el análisis de moderación, el apoyo gubernamental reforzó los efectos basados en la actitud sobre la intención conductual de adoptar el pago por móvil.

Los resultados empíricos proporcionan a las partes interesadas implicaciones fundamentales para desarrollar políticas y estrategias holísticas que catalicen potencialmente el uso del pago móvil en la nueva era de la normalidad.

Esta investigación amplía el corpus actual de conocimientos al evaluar los factores que influyen en la intención de uso del pago por móvil en la nueva era normal. Se recomiendan los cuatro elementos MTAM mencionados y el apoyo gubernamental (moderador) para impulsar la viabilidad del modelo y ofrecer pruebas novedosas desde un punto de vista distinto.

本研究旨在探讨新常态时代用户使用移动支付（m-payment）行为意向的主要决定因素。

通过态度、感知信任、感知风险和个人创新能力, 并以政府支持作为调节因素, 对移动技术接受模型（MTAM）进行了扩展。通过有目的的抽样, 从马来西亚移动支付用户中收集了 245 份有效回复, 随后通过偏最小二乘法结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）进行了评估。

移动实用性和个人创新性可显著预测用户使用移动支付的行为意向。根据调节分析, 政府支持加强了态度对采用移动支付的行为意向的影响。

实证研究的结果为利益相关者提供了重要的启示, 有助于他们制定全面的政策和战略, 在新常态时代促进移动支付的使用。

本研究通过评估新常态时代影响移动支付使用意向的因素, 拓展了现有的知识体系。研究推荐了上述四个 MTAM 要素和政府支持（调节器）, 以提高模型的可操作性, 并从一个独特的视角提供了新的证据。

This study aims to explore whether seeking recommendations for doctors from offline word-of-mouth or online reviews influences patient satisfaction after treatment, and how the source of recommendation affects this effect.

Using a unique dataset of more than three million reviews from a popular Chinese online health community, this study used the coarsened exact matching method and built fixed-effect models to conduct empirical analysis.

The results suggest that selecting doctors according to recommendations can improve patient satisfaction and mitigate their dissatisfaction when encountering service failures. However, online recommendations were found to be less effective than offline sources in improving patient satisfaction.

This study provides important insights into patient satisfaction and doctor-patient relationships by revealing the antecedents of satisfaction and the potential for improving this relationship. It also contributes to the understanding of how recommendations in the healthcare context can improve patient satisfaction and alleviate the negative impact of service failures.

This paper assesses the lending risks associated with the level of total household indebtedness at the local authority level across the UK.

Using GIS-based Exploratory Data Analysis and mapping, the paper identifies local concentrations of household borrowing, both secured and unsecured, which is referenced against regional Gross Added Value.

Significant local differences are revealed which are tracked over the period 2013–2019. Total debt relative to the size of economy is larger in London and local authorities around London. A positive correlation was revealed between areas of multiple deprivation in England and those local authorities with proportionally high unsecured lending, confirming that the less well-off require access to debt facilities and in the absence of availability of secured loans, resort to unsecured borrowing.

Understanding where the additional lending risks are located across the UK is relevant when evaluating the robustness of the economy to recession, with its uneven effects on different sectors and households and the impact of monetary policy changes, particularly sharp rises in interest rates. The mapping of these risks is illuminating and aids understanding.

Despite extensive study into various aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the effect on consumer behaviour is less explored. A growing amount of research is concerned with the phenomenon that CSR has a minor effect on actual purchases although CSR practices enhance consumers’ purchase intentions. This is documented as the CSR-consumption paradox and is yet to be resolved. The purpose of this paper is to further understand this paradox.

Questionnaires were administered face-to-face to consumers in Birmingham. These questionnaires concern consumer behaviour in relation to CSR practices of 21 popular apparel companies in the UK.

Results suggest that consumers’ pro-social priority is significantly related to pro-social consumption and that consumers’ awareness of CSR practices is insignificantly associated with their purchase behaviour. The pro-social consumption does not differ significantly among different demographic groups.

To explore the external motivational factors in consumers’ decision making will be a potential research direction in future.

The empirical results provide implications for UK apparel marketers and policy makers to engage and motivate socially responsible consumers so as to reap strategic rewards for their CSR efforts.

This paper contributes to the knowledge of socially responsible consumption and how it is affected by CSR.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life (WL) experiences of live-in women migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who represent a significant proportion of migrant workers globally. MDWs play a key role in enabling the work-life balance (WLB) of others, namely the middle-class households that employ them. Yet, their experiences have largely been invisible in mainstream WL literature. The authors draw on an intersectional approach to frame the WL experiences of this marginalized group of women at the intersection of being secondary labour segment workers, with significant legal and employment restrictions as migrant workers, who work and live in the same place as their employers.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 women MDWs from Indonesia and the Philippines working in Malaysia. The women talked about the meaning of work as MDWs, how they maintain familial connections whilst working abroad, and how they negotiate their WLB as live-in workers. Thematic analysis of the interviews focused on the intersection of the women’s multiple dimensions of disadvantage, including gender, class and temporary migrant-foreigner status, in shaping their accounts of the WL interface.

Three thematic narratives highlight that any semblance of WLB in the MDWs’ lived experience has given way to the needs of their employers and to the imperative to earn an income for their families back home. The themes are: working as MDWs enables the women and their families back home to have a life; the co-existence of WL boundary segmentation and integration in relation to “real” and “temporary” families; and the notion of WLB being centred around the women’s ability to fulfil their multiple duties as MDWs and absent mothers/sisters/daughters.

The study is based on a small sample of live-in women MDWs in Malaysia, intended to promote typically excluded voices and not to provide generalizable findings. Accessing potential participants was a considerable challenge, given the vulnerable positions of women MDWs and the invisible nature of their work.

Future research should adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to studying the WL experiences of women MDWs. In particular, links with non-governmental organizations who work directly with women MDWs should be established as a way of improving future participant access.

The study underscores the existence of policies and regulations that tolerate and uphold social inequalities that benefit primary labour segment workers to the detriment of secondary labour segment workers, including women MDWs.

Extant WL literature is dominated by the experiences of “the ideal work-life balancers”, who tend to be white middle-class women, engaged in professional work. This study offers original contribution by giving voice to a taken-for-granted group of women migrant workers who make other people’s WLB possible. Moreover, the study challenges WL research by underscoring the power inequities that shape the participants’ marginal and disadvantaged lived experience of work, life, family and WLB.

This study aims to explore the evolution of the Islamic capital market (ICM) from the perspective of research publications.

A bibliometric analysis was applied based on selected publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database from 2000 to 2021. The study adopted VOSviewer software which was developed by Leiden University.

This study has some implications that need urgent action. Firstly, there are some areas that have received little attention among researchers, although they are relevant to the industry, for instance, in fintech and blockchain in ICM. Secondly, the inconsistent frequency of publications in some niche areas may suggest that there are unprecedented events that hinder further research; probably, the researcher may anticipate more information and progress in the industry. Thirdly, the need to strengthen the collaboration between industry and academia to advance research.

This study considered only the WoSCC database. The provider of WoSCC is Clarivate (formerly known as Thomson Reuters), where access to publications is limited to institutional subscribers. The implications of this study are to identify and propose future research trends in the field of ICM.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is among the pioneer studies in analysing bibliometric focusing on ICM. Previous research has focused on Islamic finance and banking, and not specifically on ICM. Accordingly, this study sheds light on research gaps in ICM.

The stringency policy and economic support policy in response to and to address the coronavirus disease 2019 have become a significant concern since the end of 2019. The motivation that led to this study is that, the selection of the stringency policy and the economic support policy appear to have brought about the opposite effects of the environmental costs of carbon dioxide emissions. The study's objective is to examine the contradictory impacts of these stringency and economic support policies on carbon dioxide emissions.

This study applies panel data for the top four countries responsible for carbon dioxide emission, namely China, the United States of America, India and Russia. A fully modified ordinary least squares estimator and dynamic ordinary least squares estimator are employed to determine the long-run parameters.

The results indicate that the effect of reduced carbon dioxide emissions due to a one-unit increase in the stringency policy is greater than the effect of increased carbon dioxide emissions caused by a one-unit increase in the economic support policy. Hence, if the two policies are implemented simultaneously, a positive net effect on environmental costs will be gained.

The study investigates in a general scope, the impact these response policies have on the environment. Future researchers may enhance the research on environmental impact in different sectors due to the implementation of both policies to enrich the analytical perspective.

The results have provided implications for policymakers to emphasize more on stringency-oriented policies while giving economic support to the low-income or unemployed households in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Despite the foreseen effects of the stringency policy and economic support policy, there has hardly been any studies that have explored empirically the nexus between both policies with carbon dioxide emissions in one empirical model. Furthermore, the paper uses the high-frequency data in determining the contradictory impacts of stringency policy and economic support policy on CO₂ emissions.