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1 – 10 of over 1000Zheshi Bao and Yun Zhu
Online reviews derived from peer communications have been increasingly viewed as an important approach for consumers to gather pre-purchase information. This study aims to examine…
Abstract
Purpose
Online reviews derived from peer communications have been increasingly viewed as an important approach for consumers to gather pre-purchase information. This study aims to examine factors affecting online reviews adoption in social network communities and then indicates the underlying mechanism of this process based on an extended information adoption model (IAM).
Design/methodology/approach
Using the data collected from 242 users of a social network community via an online survey, the proposed model is empirically assessed by partial least squares-based structural equation model (PLS-SEM).
Findings
The results show that both perceived diagnosticity and perceived serendipity are drivers of online reviews adoption in social network communities. Meanwhile, community identification is not only an antecedent of diagnosticity and serendipity perceived by community members, but also motivates source credibility which, in turn, positively influences argument quality. Finally, the importance of argument quality and source credibility in reviews adoption process is also presented.
Originality/value
This study extends the IAM and enriches the literature regarding online reviews adoption. It deepens the understanding of serendipitous experiences and community identification in social networking context by addressing their important roles in the authors' extended IAM.
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Zheshi Bao and Yun Zhu
Food delivery apps (FDA) have been widely adopted by customers in online-to-offline (O2O) catering businesses. This study aims to explore the mechanism regarding the stickiness of…
Abstract
Purpose
Food delivery apps (FDA) have been widely adopted by customers in online-to-offline (O2O) catering businesses. This study aims to explore the mechanism regarding the stickiness of FDA and indicates why customers have the intention to reuse them.
Design/methodology/approach
A research model was developed based on the e-commerce system successful model (ECSS model) and social influence theory. Using the data collected from 312 customers who have FDA usage experience via an online survey, the established model was empirically assessed by partial least squares based structural equation model.
Findings
The results show that factors including information quality, ease of use, convenience and various choices perceived by FDA users are significant antecedents of customer satisfaction and perceived value, which in turn positively influence customers' intention to reuse. Besides, informational social influence and normative social influence play important roles in directly or indirectly affecting customers' intention to reuse.
Originality/value
This study extends the e-commerce system success model and enriches the literature regarding stickiness of FDA. Besides, the understanding of social influence in FDA usage has been deepened by addressing its role in the ECSS model based on the features and contexts of such apps.
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Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan and Yun Zhu
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not the chief executive officers’ (CEO) compensation is affected by the compensation of the outside directors sitting on their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not the chief executive officers’ (CEO) compensation is affected by the compensation of the outside directors sitting on their board, who are also CEOs of other firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collect CEOs’ and CEO-directors’ compensation data from Execucomp. The authors then match the CEO-directors’ compensation with appointing firms’ CEO compensation and financial statements, from Execucomp and Compustat, respectively. The sample contains 7,561 firm-year observations from 1996 to 2010, with 1,213 distinct S&P 1500 firms and 1,563 distinct CEO-directors. The authors use ordinary least squared method with firm and year fixed effect in most of the analysis.
Findings
With both annual and excess compensation, the authors find strong evidence that CEO-directors’ compensation is related to the compensation of the CEO. Causally, when CEO-director overturns his/her excess compensation from negative to positive, the CEO is more likely to have similar upward change in the following year, while more interestingly, the opposite does not hold. These findings are persistent over time and remain robust to various additional tests.
Research limitations/implications
Due to the data availability, this paper investigates the S&P 1500 public firms.
Originality/value
It is the first work that investigates the link between board members’ external compensation and the CEO’s compensation. This sheds new light on the process of the CEO’s compensation design, in regard to both the information being utilized in the design procedure and the CEO’s influence on his/her own compensation. Second, this paper adds additional evidence to the choice of peer groups in compensation construction. Third, the authors enhance the understanding of the role of CEO-directors. The authors show that CEO-directors may be the ally of CEO, and help in justifying CEO’s compensation, especially when underpaid.
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Yun Zhu and Zheshi Bao
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether negative network externalities would contribute to social networking site (SNS) fatigue and how this mechanism works.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether negative network externalities would contribute to social networking site (SNS) fatigue and how this mechanism works.
Design/methodology/approach
A research model was proposed integrating two dimensions of negative network externalities and three dimensions of mediators (impression management concern, privacy concern, and social overload) to indicate how negative network externalities affect users’ SNS fatigue. Online questionnaires were adopted to collect data, and 307 valid samples were analyzed by structural equation modeling approach.
Findings
The findings indicate that negative network externalities have significant indirect effects on SNS fatigue through impression management concern, privacy concern, and social overload, and among the three dimensions, privacy concern plays a more important role.
Research limitations/implications
This study offers a solidly grounded and well-demonstrated conceptual model that not only indicates the effects of negative network externalities in the context of SNS but also facilitates the understanding of SNS fatigue. Some theoretical and practical implications are also provided.
Originality/value
This study is novel in exploring users’ SNS fatigue a perspective of negative network externalities. Besides, the mediating roles of impression management concern, privacy concern, and social overload have been employed to indicate the formation of SNS fatigue.
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Jianrong Wang, Haizhi Wang, Desheng Yin and Yun Zhu
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social capital in the issuances of Rule 144A debt. Using a sample of 1,378 debt offerings from 1997 to 2015 in the US, this…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social capital in the issuances of Rule 144A debt. Using a sample of 1,378 debt offerings from 1997 to 2015 in the US, this paper provides empirical evidence on whether and to what extent social capital affects the cost of Rule 144A debt.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs a county-level measure of social capital and links social capital to the yield spreads of Rule 144A debt. A Heckman selection model is sued to address the sample selection bias, and an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching methodology are implemented to deal with the potential endogeneity issue. The authors check for robustness using an alternative measure of social capital.
Findings
The results of the analysis provide evidence that issuers headquartered in the counties with higher levels of social capital experience lower yield spreads in their Rule 144A debt offerings. The findings are robust to a Heckman selection model, an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching. Furthermore, the analysis reveals the marginal effect of social capital that the effect of social capital is more pronounced for the issuing firms with higher agency cost of debt and lower institutional ownership. The effect of social capital is more prominent after financial crisis.
Originality/value
This paper provides novel evidence of the effect of social capital on the cost of privately placed debt. The issuances of Rule 144A debt are subject to significant information asymmetry and are targeted at sophisticated institutional investors. This paper sheds further light on how institutional investors incorporate the regional social capital in their pricing scheme of private placement of Rule 144A debt.
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Tao Zhang, Yi Zhu and Jingyan Song
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the local minima issue encountered in motion planning by the artificial potential field (APF) method, investigate the currently existing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the local minima issue encountered in motion planning by the artificial potential field (APF) method, investigate the currently existing approaches and analyze four types of previous methods. Based on the conclusions of analysis, this paper presents an improved wall‐following approach for real‐time application in mobile robots.
Design/methodology/approach
In the proposed method, new switching conditions among various behaviors are reasonably designed in order to guarantee the reliability and the generality of the method. In addition, path memory is incorporated in this method to enhance the robot's cognition capability to the environment. Therefore, the new method greatly weakens the blindness of decision making of robot and it is very helpful to select appropriate behaviors facing to the changeable situation. Comparing with the previous methods which are normally considering specific obstacles, the effectiveness of this proposed method for the environment with convex polygon‐shaped obstacles has been theoretically proved. The simulation and experimental results further demonstrate that the proposed method is adaptable for the environment with convex polygon‐shaped obstacles or non‐convex polygon‐shaped obstacles. It has more widely generality and adaptiveness than other existed methods in complicated unknown environment.
Findings
The proposed method can effectively realize real time motion planning with high reliability and generality. The cognition capability of mobile robot to the environment can be improved in order to adapt to the changeable situation. The proposed method can be suitable to more complex unknown environment. It is more applicable for actual environment comparing with other traditional APF methods.
Originality/value
This paper has widely investigated the currently existed approaches and analyzes deeply on four types of traditional APF methods adopted for real time motion planning in unknown environment with simulation works. Based on the conclusions of analysis, this paper presents an improved wall‐following approach. The proposed method can realize real time motion planning considering more complex environment with high reliability and generality. The simulation and experimental results further demonstrate that the proposed method is adaptable for the environment with convex polygon‐shaped obstacles or non‐convex polygon‐shaped obstacles. It has more widely generality and adaptiveness than other existed methods in complicated unknown environment.
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Aiping Jiang, Zhenni Huang, Jiahui Xu and Xuemin Xu
The purpose of this paper is to propose a condition-based opportunistic maintenance policy considering economic dependence for a series–parallel hybrid system with a K-out-of-N…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a condition-based opportunistic maintenance policy considering economic dependence for a series–parallel hybrid system with a K-out-of-N redundant structure, where a single component in series is denoted as subsystem1, and K-out-of-N redundant structure is denoted as subsystem2.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the theory of Residual Useful Life (RUL), inspection points are determined, and then different maintenance actions are adopted in the purpose of minimizing the cost rate. Both perfect and imperfect maintenance actions are carried out for subsystem1. More significantly, regarding economic dependence, condition-based opportunistic maintenance is designed for the series–parallel hybrid system: preemptive maintenance for subsystem1, and both preemptive and postponed maintenance for subsystem2.
Findings
The sensitivity analysis indicates that the proposed policy outperforms two classical maintenance policies, incurring the lowest total cost rate under the context of both heterogeneous and quasi-homogeneous K-out-of-N subsystems.
Practical implications
This model can be applied in series–parallel systems with redundant structures that are widely used in power transmission systems in electric power plants, manufacturing systems in textile factories and sewerage systems. Considering inconvenience and high cost incurred in the inspection of hybrid systems, this model helps production managers better maintain these systems.
Originality/value
In maintenance literature, much attention has been received in repairing strategies on hybrid systems with economic dependence considering preemptive maintenance. Limited work has considered postponed maintenance. However, this paper uses both condition-based preemptive and postponed maintenance on the issue of economic dependence bringing opportunities for grouping maintenance activities for a series–parallel hybrid system.
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Yong Li, Yingchun Zhang, Gongnan Xie and Bengt Ake Sunden
This paper aims to comprehensively clarify the research status of thermal transport of supercritical aviation kerosene, with particular interests in the effect of cracking on heat…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to comprehensively clarify the research status of thermal transport of supercritical aviation kerosene, with particular interests in the effect of cracking on heat transfer.
Design/methodology/approach
A brief review of current research on supercritical aviation kerosene is presented in views of the surrogate model of hydrocarbon fuels, chemical cracking mechanism of hydrocarbon fuels, thermo-physical properties of hydrocarbon fuels, turbulence models, flow characteristics and thermal performances, which indicates that more efforts need to be directed into these topics. Therefore, supercritical thermal transport of n-decane is then computationally investigated in the condition of thermal pyrolysis, while the ASPEN HYSYS gives the properties of n-decane and pyrolysis products. In addition, the one-step chemical cracking mechanism and SST k-ω turbulence model are applied with relatively high precision.
Findings
The existing surrogate models of aviation kerosene are limited to a specific scope of application and their thermo-physical properties deviate from the experimental data. The turbulence models used to implement numerical simulation should be studied to further improve the prediction accuracy. The thermal-induced acceleration is driven by the drastic density change, which is caused by the production of small molecules. The wall temperature of the combustion chamber can be effectively reduced by this behavior, i.e. the phenomenon of heat transfer deterioration can be attenuated or suppressed by thermal pyrolysis.
Originality/value
The issues in numerical studies of supercritical aviation kerosene are clearly revealed, and the conjugation mechanism between thermal pyrolysis and convective heat transfer is initially presented.
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Yong Li, Gongnan Xie and Bengt Ake Sunden
The purpose of this paper is to numerically study the influence of wall conduction on the heat transfer of supercritical n-decane in the active regenerative cooling channels.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to numerically study the influence of wall conduction on the heat transfer of supercritical n-decane in the active regenerative cooling channels.
Design/methodology/approach
A horizontally placed rectangular pipe with a solid zone and another one without a solid zone were used. A drastic variation of thermo-physical properties was emphatically addressed. After the verification of mesh and turbulence models comparing with the experimental results, a mesh number of 4.5 M and the low Reynolds number SST k-ω turbulence model were chosen. The solution of the governing equations and the acquisition of the numerical results were executed by the commercial software FLUENT 2020 R1.
Findings
The numerical results indicate that there is a heat transfer deterioration (HTD) potential for the upper wall, lower wall and sidewall with the decrease of mass flux. Due to wall conduction, the distribution of the fluid temperature at spanwise-normal planes becomes uniform and this feature also takes advantage of the relatively uniform transverse velocity. For the streamwise-normal planes, the low fluid temperature appears close to the upper wall at the region near the sidewall and vice versa for the region near the centre. Undoubtedly, the secondary flow at the cross-section plays a crucial role in this process and the relatively cool mainstream is affected by the vortices.
Originality/value
This study warns that the wall conduction must be considered in the practical design and thermal optimization due to the sensibility of thermo-physical properties to the heat flux. The secondary flow caused by the buoyancy force (gravity) plays a significant role in the supercritical heat transfer and mixed convection heat transfer should be further studied.
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