Search Results (19)

E-waste, a form of solid waste, contains many recyclable metals, but improper disposal can make it very harmful. Therefore, the recycling of e-waste is very important, and the willingness of residents to participate is crucial in e-waste recycling. Taking Jiangsu Province, China as an example, we used the theory of reasoned action (TRA) to construct a research model to investigate the factors influencing residents’ willingness to participate in e-waste recycling. The paper introduces impression management motivation and further reveals the application of the Hawthorne effect in e-waste recycling. The paper also introduces the awareness of benefits, which encompasses personal economic benefits, physical health benefits, and environmental benefits, with physical health benefits being ignored by most of the previous literature. In addition, knowledge and convenience are also introduced in this paper. A total of 400 valid responses were used to test the hypotheses of the structural equation model. It was found that all factors positively influenced residents’ willingness to engage in e-waste recycling. Attitude has a mediating role in the effects of convenience, knowledge, and awareness of benefits on willingness, and subjective norms have a mediating role in the effects of impression management motivation on willingness. The model explains 82.9% of the variance in residents’ willingness to recycle e-waste, surpassing the original TRA model’s explanatory power and confirming the strength of the extended framework. The study provides valuable policy implications for the government to promote e-waste recycling. Full article

This study addresses the calls for research attention on corporate greenwashing and analyzes an environmental strategy in corporate impression management. We assume that negative media coverage triggers impression motivation and causes firms to adopt environmental strategies for impression construction based on the two-component model in impression management. Specifically, firms release credible signals, such as green investment, to cover concealed pollution emissions under the framework of a game with incomplete information. We posit that firms can select a window-dressing strategy under the pressures of negative media coverage by constructing two regression models, respectively. We also assess our underlying assumption of constraints from state ownership and institutional shareholdings by testing additional moderating relationships. Utilizing a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2000 to 2010, our empirical results suggest that negative media coverage increases corporate green investment, but pollutant emissions are reduced correspondingly, and state ownership aggravates corporate window dressing while institutional shareholdings curb it. Our findings reveal the corporate social irresponsibility in environmental protection and sustainable development, and they offer important implications for firm stakeholders. Full article

This research is focused on knowledge-based performance drivers, which are often intertwined with intellectual capital (IC); specifically, the value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) and its profound influence on labor productivity (LP), with the pivotal inputs of training and research and development (R&D) as moderating, in the realm of small- and medium-sized (engineering) enterprises (SMEs). The aim is to offer this as a sustainable model for practical implementation to empower engineering managers, donors, and policy researchers. The motivation catalyzes more informed decision-making investing in human or structural capital. It attempts to foster sustainable growth and societal stability through job creation within the knowledge-intensive engineering sector of developing countries. Methodologically, the research draws upon statistical analysis, employing Pearson’s correlation, multivariate regression, and model testing executed through specialized statistical software. The World Bank Enterprise Survey Instrument was used to collect data on 213 aviation-related firms. Primary data were collected for the years 2013–2022. Several hypotheses were developed between the variables expected to relate positively, because intellectual capital, training, and research and development should lead to better labor productivity. The findings revealed the critical issue of the misallocated investments in structural capital that this model brought forth. Furthermore, the notable contribution to national intellectual capital (NIC) studies is the significant VAIC value of 4.58 and an impressive labor productivity value of 6.78 within the knowledge-intensive ecosystem of SMEs. More insightful findings were the modest 17% positive variation attributable to the VAIC on LP, accompanied by an absence of significant influence exerted by training and R&D on this relationship. While underscoring the model’s overall validity, this intriguing discovery emphasizes the impact of intangibles on knowledge firms’ overall sustainability calculations, specifically structural capital, which accounts for a substantial 31% of labor productivity. The practical implication is that this model can be used to expose long-term financial performance hiccups through intellectual capital measures. The novelty is employing the labor productivity metric sourced from the engineering literature instead of the customary asset productivity (ATO) ratio from the IC literature. Full article

As an important indicator to measure the adaptability and development potential of individuals in an organization, political skill is rarely considered as an antecedent variable in the field of safety voice. This study is based on impression management theory and social cognitive theory. From the perspective of employee self-service-oriented safety voice motivation, we took political skill as a predictor of safety voice behavior and introduced voice efficacy as an intermediary variable to construct a theoretical model of the relationship between political skill, voice efficacy, and safety voice behavior. We used the method of questionnaire to collect data from employees in high-risk industries. SPSS and AMOS software were used as analysis tools to examine the relationship between political skill, voice efficacy, and safety voice behavior. The study results show that: (1) political skill has a significant positive impact on safety voice behavior; and (2) voice efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between political skill and safety voice behavior. In this study, a new predictor of safety voice behavior and its mediation mechanism were obtained. Political skill can not only reflect the psychological cognitive ability of individuals in dangerous work environments, but it is also an important manifestation of the social exchanges between employees and organizations. In the special organizational context where China generally values “guanxi”, political skill has a stronger ability to predict and explain safety voice behavior. This research can help organizations obtain safety-related suggestions from employees in a timely manner and realize the sustainable development of safety management. Full article

Field evidence indicates that livestock producers are motivated by access to products that readily deliver pain management during husbandry interventions and, more recently, viral epidermal infectious diseases, including FMD. There has been impressive adoption in Australia of a farmer-applied spray-on topical anaesthetic wound formulation (TAF; Tri-Solfen^®, Medical Ethics, Australia), initially for managing pain of the breech modification ‘mulesing’ procedure that reduces susceptibility of sheep to flystrike. Over 120 million lambs have now received pain relief and cattle producers have commenced using the TAF for a range of husbandry procedures. This product has demonstrated efficacy for surgical castration and tail docking of lambs, surgical castration and dehorning of calves, surgical castration of piglets, debridement of lesions of the hoof for lame cattle and, importantly, treatment of clinical FMD lesions, including decubitus ulcerations occurring from prolonged recumbency. Multimodal use of an NSAID for improved pain management is advocated, particularly meloxicam, available by prescription from veterinarians for injection and as an oral formulation (Ilium Buccalgesic^®, Troy Laboratories, Australia), with current work assessing the potential for prolonged delivery in molasses blocks. Increased use of TAF with NSAIDs significantly reduces pain and suffering in livestock, with enhanced healing of FMD lesions, reduced viral loads from Orf infections in lambs and diminished necessity of ‘antibiotic cover’, assisting antimicrobial-resistance (AMR) stewardship. Full article

Drawing on both the organization identification and impression management theories, we propose that perceived external prestige of frontline employees influences their emotional labor through organizational identification and impression management motive. Further, the relative influence of either pathway depends upon perceived organizational support. Using survey data from 377 frontline employees in 104 hotels, the results indicate that perceived external prestige is positively related to deep acting, and negatively related to surface acting. Organizational identification partially mediates the relationship between perceived external prestige and deep acting. However, the relationship between perceived external prestige and surface acting is partially mediated both by organizational identification and impression management motive. In addition, perceived organizational support positively moderates the relationship between perceived external prestige and organizational identification, and negatively moderates the relationship between perceived external prestige and impression management motive, respectively. Full article

Long COVID is a public health problem that cannot be ignored, and it is critical to understand the long COVID patients’ living situations and support this group through their illness narratives. This study is based on grounded theory, and coded the self-produced texts of long COVID patients on the largest online Q&A community in China, Zhihu APP, in an attempt to explore the illness experiences of long COVID patients in China and to understand how they adapt to their illness and reconstruct their lives. The results show that patients face not only the threat of pain from the illness itself, but also social stigma and discrimination. Patients turn their illness experiences into motivation to move forward and reconstruct self and life by ‘pushing forward the biographical flows again’, ‘impression management’ and ‘self-compassion’. These findings can help policy-makers and medical institutions to provide timely and appropriate policy support and psychological assistance to patients with long COVID, to create a supportive and inclusive social environment, and to reduce discrimination and stigma against them. Full article

In the modern era, deep learning techniques have emerged as powerful tools in image recognition. Convolutional Neural Networks, one of the deep learning tools, have attained an impressive outcome in this area. Applications such as identifying objects, faces, bones, handwritten digits, and traffic signs signify the importance of Convolutional Neural Networks in the real world. The effectiveness of Convolutional Neural Networks in image recognition motivates the researchers to extend its applications in the field of agriculture for recognition of plant species, yield management, weed detection, soil, and water management, fruit counting, diseases, and pest detection, evaluating the nutrient status of plants, and much more. The availability of voluminous research works in applying deep learning models in agriculture leads to difficulty in selecting a suitable model according to the type of dataset and experimental environment. In this manuscript, the authors present a survey of the existing literature in applying deep Convolutional Neural Networks to predict plant diseases from leaf images. This manuscript presents an exemplary comparison of the pre-processing techniques, Convolutional Neural Network models, frameworks, and optimization techniques applied to detect and classify plant diseases using leaf images as a data set. This manuscript also presents a survey of the datasets and performance metrics used to evaluate the efficacy of models. The manuscript highlights the advantages and disadvantages of different techniques and models proposed in the existing literature. This survey will ease the task of researchers working in the field of applying deep learning techniques for the identification and classification of plant leaf diseases. Full article

This article is motivated by the excessive success of Apple’s iPad, introduced in 2010, questioning the motives for acquiring the product at the time of launch. The purpose is to understand the decision to buy an expensive product that had a fairly undefined use. On the basis of in-depth interviews of ‘early-buyers’ (‘early adopters’) of the iPad, we examine, in this article, justifications for the acquisition of such an ‘open technology’ use. Using theories of consumer society (Veblen, Bauman, Debord), Protestant ethics (Weber), impression management (Goffman, Leary) and group identity (Maffesoli), we develop, in the analysis, the concept of shameful technological impertinence concerning the ambiguity between frugality as value and consumer-based identity related to the latest technology. A reflection on this concept contributes to an understanding of how excessive technology consumption, on the one hand is followed by an unashamed desire to show off new ‘gadgets’ and on the other hand, a more shameful self-presentation defending the purchase. Today, just over ten years after the launch of the iPad and our interviews, the iPad is taken for granted as a central platform for a number of applications, for everything from personal entertainment to work- and school-related use. In light of this, we conclude with a reflection on how shameful technological impertinence as a more generic concept will be relevant in some phases rather than others, as new innovations are brought into use. The project is limited to the first iPad and its users, and further research could investigate a larger array of consumer electronics and how attitudes towards buying could be increasingly influenced by a growing concern about the abuse of natural resources. Full article

This paper presents an analysis of the use of an interactive digital whiteboard (IDW) and a computer application called Action Manager (AM), with a sample of 158 sixth-grade students in primary education. Subsequently, a study was carried out with the main goal of testing the didactic functioning of AM and examining the validity of this application, in terms of motivation and the retention of both short and long-term memory when teaching foreign languages in primary education. In order to fulfil these objectives, we performed a positivist exploratory study based on a quantitative methodology combining qualitative aspects (qualitative evaluation) and quantitative aspects (questionnaires) as well as a descriptive method with a survey design. The data collection was performed using instruments, specifically the Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Orientation Scale, to ascertain the motivational impressions of the students and two memory tests, the Test of Memory and Learning (TOMAL) and the Children’s Memory Scale (CMS). Forty-five days later, the two memory tests were repeated to compare the results with the previous ones. After this experience, the results allowed us to conclude that the students demonstrated optimal memorization from a conceptual point of view, in addition to having improved their motivational impressions. Full article

Blockchain implications within the sustainability domain are rapidly arousing the interest of researchers and institutions. However, despite the avalanche of articles, papers, and recently published books, innovation in the blockchain domain is still heavily influenced by light literature, such as news, articles, opinion posts, and white papers. Lacking a homogeneous literature background, case studies often fall into storytelling, providing mere descriptions of the facts according to the writers’ impressions and opinions. We therefore investigate blockchain adoption for sustainable purposes through a case study while remaining firmly grounded in three main theoretical literature streams: knowledge management, knowledge infrastructure, and trust. Since blockchain interaction with the real world is managed by oracles, addressing the oracle problem is essential in order to evaluate the effectiveness of blockchain for sustainability issues. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other paper has efficiently addressed this subject or even mentioned it. Recognizing its scarce consideration in the literature, the oracle problem will be analyzed in both theoretical and practical terms, thereby providing a way to solve the issues related to non-fungible products in the supply chain. Choice over the selected case study was made in light of the divergence in motives for the adoption of blockchain (economic over social), which makes the results more inferable at a broader scale and offers an insight into how sustainable innovations can also be economically viable. Full article

Employees can affect the sustainability of organizations, yet the different effects of employee organizational citizenship behavior motives on employee thriving at work, as elements of organization sustainability, are not clear. Based on self-determination theory and conservation of resource theory, this study examined whether organizational concern motives and impression management motives behind employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors are differently associated with their citizenship fatigue and their subsequent thriving at work, and whether task performance moderates these relationships. Results from a multi-wave and multisource study using a sample of 349 employees show that organizational concern motives had a positive indirect effect on thriving at work through reducing employees’ citizenship fatigue, while impression management motives will undermine thriving at work through inducing citizenship fatigue. This study further found that task performance strengthened the positive relationship between impression management motives and citizenship fatigue. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Full article

Venice is one of the most famous iconic destinations and one of the most emblematic cases of overtourism affecting a historic city. Here, social movements against tourism have emerged as a reaction to vastly unsustainable tourist flows that have had dramatic and transformational impacts on Venetians’ lives. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism transforms the social, cultural, and everyday geographies of the city. The effects of tourism on the historic city are conceived as a process of continuous transformation and repositioning. Taking into consideration the most tangible daily practices of tourists (eating, sleeping, and buying) and the finer dynamics of Venice’s tourism problem, we translate data on these practices into a temporal and spatial analysis to better understand how dynamic the texture of the city is in relation to the tourism subsystem. A comparison between 2008 and 2019 is conducted to evaluate the impact of tourism on residential uses of the city and measure the sustainability of growth of the tourism facilities. The investigation highlighted an impressive accommodation’s growth, from 8.249 in 2008 to 49.260 in 2019 of bed places (497% growth) in the entire historical city, a similar expansion is also evident in the total number of restaurants that has increased by 160% in all districts and a variations of 4% in shops instead of a population decline of −13% in the same period. In addition, a residents’ survey in spring 2019 was conducted to better understand the intensity of these impacts and the motives for depopulation and the anti-tourism movements. We focus on how tourism, if not managed and planned, radically changes the social and urban structures of the city and the lives of local residents. We conclude by presenting some local theoretical and practical insights into the touristic pressure, provided by citizens’ associations on one side and policymakers on the other. Full article

The importance of sustainable development has reached a consensus. Green consumption, as the final link of consumer behavior, can help green production activities make a real difference and achieve sustainable development. Based on the Agentic–Communal Model, this paper explores the relationship between power and green consumption through three experiments. The results showed that low-power (vs. high-power) consumers, who are more dependent on others, are likely to facilitate and encourage a communal orientation towards one’s environment. These consumers pay more attention to others and may have a preference for green consumption. Self-concern plays a mediating role in this mechanism. However, when individuals have a strong impression management motivation, the difference in their willingness toward green consumption will disappear. In other words, both lower-power and high-power consumers are more willing to purchase green products. This paper helps to deepen the understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying green consumption and also provides practical implications for firms’ green marketing strategies. Full article

Visitor management in protected areas requires knowledge of visitors—their numbers, time-space curves, motivation, behavior, and satisfaction as an important input. The systematic analysis, comparison, and synthesis of visitor monitoring methods, with the focus on methods for individual tracking, is conceptualized in the form of a mind map. The map serves as a basis for managed dialogues with experts from several protected areas in the Czech Republic. The theory and experts’ practical insight are processed by the means of systems analysis with the aim to formulate (1) a guideline for the integration of heterogeneous data about visitors and (2) the concept of an advanced intelligent software tour guide with an individual tracking function. The proposed concept aims to achieve comprehensive monitoring of visitors’ time-space behavior in the context of their socio-demographics, goals, preferences, feelings, and the resulting impressions. In addition, the visitor flows may be interactively influenced in a personalized way by the application, leading to better individual impressions and satisfaction, with full respect for the carrying capacity of the territory. Related challenges, such as the stimulation of visitors to use the application, are discussed. The ongoing experimental implementation of the concept as a part of a comprehensive destination application is mentioned at the end. Full article