Search results

This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis on the reasons of the observed trend in the GAAP ETR over 1960–2016.

The authors use a linear tax function which allows for time-varying coefficients to track the trend in GAAP ETR over 1960–2016. This approach can decompose the ETR trend into the trends of the statutory tax rate, the propensity to recognize taxes, the tax-related firm characteristics and their coefficients. Thus, the authors can quantify the contribution of each factor in the tax function to the ETR trend.

Before 1988, the declining trend in tax expense is mainly driven by changes in the statutory tax rate; in contrast, after 1988, the trend is completely explained by firms’ decreasing propensity to recognize tax expense. While prevalent across different groups of firms, the decreasing propensity to recognize tax expense in the recent 30 years is more pronounced among firms that have higher needs for tax savings or greater tax-saving advantages.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that uses a trend analysis to examine the reasons for the downward trend in tax expense over a long period (1960–2016). The results show that, although the trend appears for the full sample period, it is driven by different forces between the first and second half of the time window. A decreasing propensity to recognize tax expense is the main reason for only the trend in recent years, which calls for attention from academia and policymakers. The results also show which firms have had faster trends in their propensity to recognize tax expense, suggesting targets for tax enforcement and tax researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a clear understanding of the impact of uncommon use of knowledge (adaptation and augmentation) on the performance of information systems (IS) departments, and to explore the effects of human-resources management (HRM) practices on uncommon use of knowledge.

A questionnaire-based survey was used to measure the constructs of the research model. A survey package was delivered to project managers or team leads and 133 responses were returned.

The empirical results indicate that knowledge adaptation has a significant effect on departmental performance, whereas knowledge augmentation is more important to innovation than to routine departmental performance. The results also show that, while knowledge adaptation can be enhanced by communication and an uncertainty-avoidance culture, knowledge augmentation is an outcome of shared decision-making, the use of teams, and innovation-based policies.

Given the positive impact of uncommon use of knowledge on IS department performance, future research should explore other factors besides HRM practices to boost it.

The results can serve as guidance for managers looking to select HRM practices to promote uncommon use of knowledge.

This study introduces knowledge adaptation and knowledge augmentation as the component processes of uncommon use of knowledge to the IS discipline, and empirically validates the antecedents and consequences of uncommon use of knowledge using survey data.

Although various stakeholder groups frequently advocate and call for greater heterogeneity among directors and managers, it remains unknown whether team heterogeneity can be beneficial for audit committee to exercise the auditor selection functions. This study aims to address this question.

Drawing on a sample of domestically listed nonfinancial A-share firms in China from 2008 to 2022, the authors empirically examine whether and how firm’s audit committee heterogeneity associates with the selection of auditors.

Firms with higher levels of audit committee heterogeneity are more likely to be associated with lower-quality auditors. Further examination reveals the mediating role of risk-taking: higher levels of heterogeneity are associated with higher levels of risk-taking, influencing firms to employ lower-quality auditors. Moreover, the authors document that increased audit committee heterogeneity is associated with more audit committee meetings and lower audit efficiency, and that hiring lower-quality auditors can influence the market value of firms with high audit committee heterogeneity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine whether and how audit committee erogeneity associates with the selection of auditors. Moreover, because China is a high-power distance, collectivism-oriented, more relations-based (i.e. guanxi-based) than rules-based society, it is critical to examine the influence of team heterogeneity based on the unique cultural context and transitional nature of China’s business environment.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the relative impacts of trust and risk on individual’s transaction intention in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-marketplaces from both the buyers’ and the sellers’ perspectives.

Two surveys were used to collect data regarding buyers’ and sellers’ perceptions and transaction intentions at a typical C2C e-marketplace. Partial least squares was used to analyze the data. A complementary qualitative study was conducted to triangulate the results from the quantitative study.

Institution-based trust (IBT) exerts a stronger influence on transaction intentions for buyers than for sellers. Sellers perceive a stronger impact of trust in intermediary (TII) than buyers on transaction intentions. The impacts of perceived risk in transactions are not different between buyers and sellers. Furthermore, IBT mediates the impacts of TII and perceived risk on transaction intentions for buyers.

The results indicate that the impacts of trust and risk on transaction intention in e-marketplaces do differ between buyers and sellers. This suggests a need to further investigate the buyer–seller difference in online transactions.

Intermediaries need to focus on different types of trust-building mechanisms when attracting buyers and sellers to make transactions in the e-marketplace.

C2C e-marketplaces cannot survive without participation from both buyers and sellers. Most prior research is conducted from the buyers’ perspective. This research sets a starting point for future research to further explore the differences between buyers’ and sellers’ behavior in C2C e-commerce environments.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of solder composition and roughness on early wetting behavior and interfacial reaction under atmospheric conditions.

High-speed photography is used to observe the early wetting and spreading process of the solder on the substrate in real time. The morphology of intermetallic compounds (IMCs) was observed by scanning electron microscopy, and the composition of IMCs micro bumps was determined by energy dispersive spectroscopy.

With a roughness range of 0.320–0.539 µm, the solder is distributed in an elliptical trilinear pattern along the grinding direction. With a roughness range of 0.029–0.031 µm, the solder spreads in the direction of grinding and perpendicular, forming a perfect circle (except in the case of Sn63Pb37 solder). The effect of three types of solder on early wettability is Sn63Pb37 > Sn96.5Ag3Cu0.5 > Sn. The wetting behavior is consistent with the Rn∼t model. The rapid spreading stage (Stage I) is controlled by the interfacial reaction with n1 values between 2.4 and 4. The slow spreading stage (stage II) is controlled by diffusion with n2 values between 4 and 6.7. The size of Cu6Sn5 formed on a rough substrate is greater than that produced on a smooth substrate.

Investigating the effect of solder composition and roughness on early wettability. This will provide a powerful guide in the field of soft brazing.

This chapter examines the ‘embodied turn’ in the study of traditional Chinese sports and identifies issues within this area of research. It introduces new interpretative perspectives and approaches within the framework of bodily sociology to elucidate the link between locally-informed sports practices and the formation of socialized individuals. The chapter categorises the current research into three main themes: self-giving, the creation of bodily value and the construction of national identity through sports. It then integrates these themes with the findings of embodied sociology. The chapter compiles and analyzes the existing literature on traditional Chinese sports culture from both Chinese and international scholars, offering insights into the status, rationale and challenges of bodily sociological research. By contextualising the concept of the embodied turn in traditional Chinese sports culture – through concepts such as self-givenness, self-techniques, the generation of value and the creation of collective memory – the chapter discusses the impact of bodily sociology on cultural research. The chapter advocates for further bodily sociological studies of Chinese sports culture, which could enhance the understanding of Chinese studies among Western scholars and contribute to a genuine embodied turn in this field of study. Providing one of the initial explorations of embodied studies in traditional Chinese sports, the chapter reveals a transition from broad cultural interpretations and symbolic, structuralist sociology to a phenomenological approach in sports cultural studies. It posits that the bodily sociology approach is beneficial for sports studies although current research has not yet fully realized the embodied turn.

With the rapid development of social media in the past few years, some dark aspects of usage have appeared, e.g., Weibo addiction. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address the question of how Weibo keeps users hooked.

The study utilizes the netnography method to explore the symptoms of Weibo addiction and how it is formed.

First, some Weibo users have typical symptoms of addictive behavior, such as withdrawal, loss of control and general living problems; second, narcissism plays an important role in the process of Weibo addiction and has a stronger effect on content generation than content consumption; third, some users use Weibo as a means to alleviate anxiety, but they can then become more anxious owing to addiction; and fourth, the effect of comments has two sides – on the one hand, comments are one kind of feedback to posts, satisfying posters’ social needs, while on the other hand, a storytelling system consists of one post and its comments, upon which some Weibo users become more dependent.

This research is only a preliminary, exploratory study. Therefore, care should be taken when interpreting these findings.

This study should help social media service providers and users to pay attention to the risk of social media addiction. Social media service providers should take social responsibility, design more user-oriented guidelines for marketing ethics and launch more responsible marketing activities. Users should enhance self-control and better balance social media use and offline real life.

Netnography has not been widely used as an addictive behavior research technique. This study is further bolstered because it has also noticed the difference of addiction mechanisms between addictive micro-bloggers and their followers.

The purpose of this paper is to present a probabilistic assessment and verify the effectiveness of seismic improvement schemes against earthquake, blast and progressive collapse. The probabilistic analysis is performed by taking into account the uncertainties in loading such as planar configuration and amplitude of the blast loading. A standard Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method is employed to generate various concepts of the uncertain parameters within the problem. For a given concept, various local dynamic analyses are performed within a certain range of distance, in order to quantify and locate the damage induced by impact wave on structural elements. In the next step, a limit state analysis is performed in order to investigate whether a progressive collapse mechanism forms under the acting loads or not.

( | ) and ( | ) are blast fragility and seismic fragility, respectively; ( ) and ( ) are annual occurrence rate of earthquake and blast, respectively. The purpose of the current study is to calculate for the primary structure as well as the retrofitted structure. Annual occurrence rate of earthquake can be calculated by using probability seismic hazard analysis for the site of interest, where the structure is located. In this paper, blast fragility and seismic fragility are defined rather differently; in other words, seismic fragility is defined as the probability of structural collapse given a specified level of seismic intensity whereas blast fragility is defined as the probability of collapse given that a significant blast event takes place. Both blast and earthquake loading conditions involve the activation of energy dissipation mechanism and, as a consequence, both can be resisted employing ductility enhancing techniques, such as column wrapping or jacketing and steel bracing.

The current paper aims to present a probabilistic assessment of progressive collapse under blast and earthquake loads. Non-dependent and incompatible events are considered to obtain a general rate of collapse. Finally, probabilistic collapse rate was obtained for a moment frame before and after modifying with convergent steel brace (CBF). The purpose of doing so is to investigate whether seismic improvement schemes can reduce collapse risk of different critical events or not.

Objective of the present work is to present a methodology for calculating the annual risk of collapse for a civil structure subjected to both seismic and blast loads, using a bi-hazard approach. Given that a blast event takes place, the probability of progressive collapse is calculated using a MC simulation procedure. The simulation procedure implements an efficient non-linear limit state analysis, formulated and solved as a linear programming problem. The probability of collapse caused by an earthquake event can be calculated by integrating the seismic fragility of the structure and the seismic hazard for the site.

Rosewood, as the most internationally traded endangered species, is subject to a series of restrictive trade policies globally. China has historically been the largest importer of rosewood in the world. The fluctuation of China’s rosewood import prices will have a profound impact on the global rosewood trade pattern. This study, therefore, assessed the impact of restrictive trade policies on China’s rosewood import prices to explore the fluctuation rule of rosewood trade prices under restrictive policies.

The study built a partial equilibrium framework about the formation mechanism of rosewood import price bubbles under supply constraints. On this basis, with China’s daily import prices of major rosewood species, the generalized supremum augmented Dickey–Fuller (GSADF) and backward supremum augmented Dickey–Fuller (BSADF) tests were applied to explore the effect of restrictive trade policies on China’s rosewood import prices.

The empirical analysis revealed that there were multiple price bubbles for five of the seven rosewood species. The largest bubbles were always created before and after the deployment of supply constraints. The empirical results for the counterfactual examples implied that price bubbles would not have occurred if restrictive rosewood trade policies had not been implemented. The above findings indicated that these measures tended to trigger significant price bubbles in China’s rosewood imports.

The effect of restrictive rosewood trade policies on rosewood trade prices had not yet been explored in previous research studies. This study empirically analyzed the effect of restrictive trade policies on China’s rosewood import prices using econometric models.

The health and survival of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are of paramount concern to stakeholders. It is essential to understand the usage behaviors of exploitative and exploratory strategies. By combining the typical user experience with psychological mechanisms in MMOGs, this study is devoted to clarifying how technology affordance and digital perfectionistic intention influence reinforcement and variety-seeking orientations of MMOGs use.

This study adopted a sequential triangulation mixed-methods design to explore how diverse usage behaviors of reinforced and varied use in MMOGs are formed. After proposing the theoretical framework from MMOGs affordance, perfectionistic intentions, and diverse use, empirical evidence was initially collected from representative samples through a survey. Qualitative interviews from players in MMOGs and game industry practitioners are conducted to confirm the results, supplement understanding, and gather insights from diverse backgrounds. The quantitative and qualitative inferences are discussed to validate the research focus.

Findings from various perspectives suggest that perfectionistic intentions are critical antecedents of different usage behaviors influenced by affordances provided in MMOGs. Goal-driven affordance with reward and competition, interaction affordance, and identity affordance are key MMOGs affordances and could affect perfectionistic intentions differently. People with different perfectionistic intentions, which are the psychological outcome of MMOGs affordances, possess diverse usage behaviors.

This study is the first to consider diverse usage behaviors in virtual worlds such as MMOGs by combining lenses of perfectionistic intentions and technology affordance. Findings from mixed-methods analysis significantly enrich the research on online game usage behavior, offering valuable theoretical and practical implications for studying usage behaviors within the virtual world.