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In online purchase for dietary supplements, due to the lack of professional advice from pharmacists, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has become an important source of information for consumers to make purchase decisions. How can firms use eWOM resources to increase sales? The purpose of this paper is to provide practical methods for firms by exploring the effects of eWOM on sales and developing a sales prediction model based on eWOM.

The data came from 120 dietary supplements on Tmall.com. The authors extracted the product sales as dependent variable and 11 eWOM factors as independent variables. The multicollinearity was tested by using variance inflation factor and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator. The multiple linear regression was used to investigate the effects of eWOM on sales. Drawing on white- and black-box approaches, six models were developed. Comparing the root mean square error, the authors selected the optimal one as their target sales prediction model.

Product ratings, total reviews and favorites are positively and strongly associated with sales. Questions and additional reviews have negative effects on sales. The random forest model has the best prediction performance.

The research focuses on eWOM of dietary supplement. First, the authors show that easily accessible eWOM from online platforms can be used to evaluate effects and predict sales. Second, the authors introduce white- and black-box models through machine learning to assess eWOM. Firms could use the described models to foster their marketing initiatives.

This paper examines whether there are differences in the nature of the price discovery process across established versus emerging stock markets using a twenty-country sample.

The authors analyse security returns for traces of predictability or non-randomness using variance ratio tests, Granger-Causality models and runs tests.

The findings pinpoint at predictabilities which seem inconsistent with market efficiency, and they suggest that the inherent cause of predictability differs across groups.

The authors present empirical evidence which may be used to attain a deeper understanding of the links between predictability and market efficiency, in view of the conflicting evidence in prior literature.

Whilst the pricing process in emerging markets may be hindered by delayed adjustments, in case of established markets it seems that there is a higher tendency for price reversals which could be due to prior over-reactions.

This study presents evidence of substantial differences in predictability across developed and emerging markets which was gleaned through the rigorous application of different empirical tests.

Express freight transportation is in rapid development currently. Owing to the higher speed of express freight train, the deformation of the bridge deck worsens the railway line condition under the action of wind and train moving load when the train runs over a long-span bridge. Besides, the blunt car body of vehicle has poor aerodynamic characteristics, bringing a greater challenge on the running stability in the crosswind.

In this study, the aerodynamic force coefficients of express freight vehicles on the bridge are measured by scale model wind tunnel test. The dynamic model of the train-long-span steel truss bridge coupling system is established, and the dynamic response as well as the running safety of vehicle are evaluated.

The results show that wind speed has a significant influence on running safety, which is mainly reflected in the over-limitation of wheel unloading rate. The wind speed limit decreases with train speed, and it reduces to 18.83 m/s when the train speed is 160 km/h.

This study deepens the theoretical understanding of the interaction between vehicles and bridges and proposes new methods for analyzing similar engineering problems. It also provides a new theoretical basis for the safety assessment of express freight trains.

Global climate change characterized by an increase in temperature has become the focus of attention all over the world. China is a sensitive and significant area of global climate change. This paper specifically aims to examine the association between agricultural productivity and the climate change by using China’s provincial agricultural input–output data from 2000 to 2019 and the climatic data of the ground meteorological stations.

The authors used the three-stage spatial Durbin model (SDM) model and entropy method for analysis of collected data; further, the authors also empirically tested the climate change marginal effect on agricultural productivity by using ordinary least square and SDM approaches.

The results revealed that climate change has a significant negative effect on agricultural productivity, which showed significance in robustness tests, including index replacement, quantile regression and tail reduction. The results of this study also indicated that by subdividing the climatic factors, annual precipitation had no significant impact on the growth of agricultural productivity; further, other climatic variables, including wind speed and temperature, had a substantial adverse effect on agricultural productivity. The heterogeneity test showed that climatic changes ominously hinder agricultural productivity growth only in the western region of China, and in the eastern and central regions, climate change had no effect.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of various social connections of farm households in designing policies to improve their responses to climate change and expand land productivity in different regions. The study also provides a hypothetical approach to prioritize developing regions that need proper attention to improve crop productivity.

The paper explores the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity by using the climatic data of China. Empirical evidence previously missing in the body of knowledge will support governments and researchers to establish a mechanism to improve climate change mitigation tools in China.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to critically evaluate the implementation of technologies from the perspective of guest services, innovation and visitor experiences. The paper focuses on the value of robots, service automation and artificial intelligence in hospitality and examines their influence on service quality

Design/methodology/approach: The chapter is a critical and conceptual overview of the emergence and implementation of robots, service automation and artificial intelligence in the hospitality with an emphasis on service, service quality and guest experience. A comprehensive overview of the academic literature of customer service and guest experience is combined with industry examples from various service operations in hospitality in order to examine the implementation of RAISA in the hospitality industry from a range of academic and practical viewpoints.

Findings: The chapter argues that despite the global acceptance of technologies in service industries in general and hospitality in particular, it remains difficult to find the right balance between digital and human interactions. In the context of service quality, the implementation of robots and service automation is increasingly important for gaining a competitive advantage, but the provision of more personalized guest experiences remains controversial.

Originality/value: The study provides a comprehensive and systematic review of RAISA in a hospitality context and examine their impacts on service quality. The chapter is a critical examination of the potential of RAISA to transform the service experience and raises some fundamental questions regarding the need for RAISA, its practical implications and impact over the understanding and measurement of service quality.

This chapter reviews the methods available to hospitality and tourism researchers to perform moderation analysis with continuous variables in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), with the objective of enhancing understanding and encouraging the use of these techniques in future papers. The product term method is presented first, followed by an empirical example/application in the context of hospitality and tourism. Two extensions, namely the two-stage approach that can help cope with formative and higher-order constructs, and the orthogonalizing approach that can help generate more accurate results and overcome multicollinearity among tourism variables in the presence of a continuous moderator variable, are then presented and discussed. The chapter concludes by presenting guidelines and recommendations for improving the use of interaction effects in analyses of tourism variables, as well as highlighting ongoing developments in both the product term method and PLS-SEM software.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the nexus between environmental taxes and other environmental management systems (EMSs) and to propose an alternative framework for implementing environmental protection tax (EPT) in China.

The study uses a multimethod approach encompassing document analysis and comparative analysis. The archival data covers laws, reports, regulations, guidelines and standards related to the EPT and EMS sub-systems in China.

The study identifies several institutional features of environmental taxes that have not been fully explored in past tax research. In addition, the study reveals that information-sharing mechanisms are key to addressing the risks and uncertainties associated with the implementation of an environmental tax and that the mechanisms are grounded in the nexus among EPT and two EMS sub-systems.

The findings of this study have implications for the understanding of China’s environmental tax system, the Environmental Impact Assessment system and the pollutants discharge permit (PDP) system. The construction of an alternative framework provides insights for approaches to environmental taxation. A limitation of this study is that the application of the framework might be undermined by the inaccurate manual sampling, as some pollutants may be non-replicable.

The findings of this study are relevant to policymakers who are designing, improving or abandoning environmental taxes for alternate solutions to environmental issues.

The insights gained from this study may be of assistance to lower the risks and uncertainties associated with the implementation of an environmental tax.

The study contributes to approaches to environmental taxes by constructing an alternative framework that connects an environmental tax system with two EMSs. The framework lays the groundwork for some promising research opportunities. Additionally, the study extends the tax accounting literature (Hanlon and Heitzman, 2010) by connecting accounting and environmental knowledge and developing a transdisciplinary approach. The study also contributes to the emerging body of literature that addresses the challenges in implementing environmental taxes in China.

Islamic banks, despite being Shariah-compliant, have long been criticized for mimicking conventional banks in terms of their products and processes (Khan, 2010; Kuran, 1996). However, several Islamic banks do engage in philanthropy (zakat and charity) and risk-sharing financing (mudarabah and musharakah) instruments that better meet their raison d'etre, the fulfillment of Maqasid al-Shariah (Jatmiko et al., 2023). These contracts, however, are more susceptible to moral hazard and adverse selection problems than traditional debt-based finance (Azmat et al., 2015) and may impair Islamic bank stability. This paper explores the relationship between social finance and the stability of Islamic banks, and whether institutional quality moderates this relationship.

Using hand-collected annual data on social finance from 12 Islamic banks in four countries: Bangladesh, Bahrain, Indonesia and Malaysia, between 2006 and 2019, the authors employ the feasible generalized least squares and the panel-corrected standard errors methods for the analysis. The Stata version 16 software was used to analyze the data for the study.

The results indicate that mudarabah and musharakah financing raises the stability of Islamic banks. The authors also found that mudarabah and musharakah expose Islamic banks to more risk-taking behavior amidst the conditioning effect of institutional quality. On the other hand, charity induces the stability of Islamic banks, while zakat increases the risk-taking behavior of the banks. Further, when the quality of institutions was used as a moderator, both zakat and charity induced the stability of Islamic banks. The results were robust when liquidity risk was used and partially robust when portfolio risks were employed as measures of stability.

One concern regarding the application of Islamic social finance is that it might be a risky strategy for Islamic banks. In terms of research implications, the available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments is not detrimental to the stability of Islamic banks. Hence, regulators and policymakers should not penalize Islamic banks for using Islamic social finance instruments that help provide financial solutions to the underserved and unserved. In terms of research limitations, the study could not include other relevant Islamic social finance instruments such as waqf and qard al-hassan. Furthermore, data availability restricts the analysis to only 12 Islamic banks in fourcountries. As more Islamic banks in different countries venture into Islamic social finance, and the quantity and quality of information improve, future studies could explore the issue further.

The available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments does not worsen the stability of Islamic banks. Given the dominance of sale- and lease-based contracts in Islamic financing (Aggarwal and Yousef, 2000; Šeho et al., 2020), these findings should encourage other Islamic banks to provide financial solutions using other Shariah-compliant contracts including those based on risk-sharing and philanthropy. This would be a better reflection of the Islamic banks’ value proposition as it helps boost social activities that have a high impact on the activities of small businesses, contributing to the real economy and promoting well-being in society.

Previous studies mainly relied on mudarabah, mushakarah and zakat separately as they relate to the performance of Islamic banks. This study explores the impact of social finance which includes charity and zakat to examine their impact on Islamic banks’ stability. Further, the authors use institutional quality as a moderating variable in the relationship between Islamic social finance instruments and the stability of Islamic banks.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2022-0441