Search Results (2,407)

Museums are increasingly recognized as important cultural institutions for promoting sustainability by shaping visitors’ values, experiences, and consumption-related decisions. This study investigates how interactive marketing in museum settings is associated with Generation Z visitors’ sustainable consumption intention and examines the conditions under which these effects become stronger. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) framework, this study develops a moderated dual-mediation model in which interactive marketing represents the stimulus, experience value and green self-identity function as parallel organismic mechanisms, and sustainable consumption intention represents the behavioral response, with perceived authenticity serving as a boundary condition. Survey data were collected from 582 Generation Z visitors in China who had recently visited museums equipped with digital or interactive facilities. Using multi-item Likert scales adapted to the museum sustainability context, the proposed model was examined through structural equation modeling, bootstrapped mediation analysis, and latent interaction analysis. The results indicate that interactive marketing is positively associated with experience value, green self-identity, and sustainable consumption intention. Furthermore, experience value and green self-identity both mediate the relationship between interactive marketing and sustainable consumption intention, revealing two complementary mechanisms through which interactive museum experiences become behaviorally meaningful: an experiential pathway and an identity-relevant pathway. The findings further demonstrate that perceived authenticity strengthens the effects of experience value and green self-identity on sustainable consumption intention, suggesting that sustainability-oriented responses are more likely to emerge when museum sustainability practices are perceived as genuine and consistent with institutional values. This study contributes to sustainable consumption research by extending the S–O–R framework to museum-based cultural consumption and highlights the importance of integrating interactive experience design with authentic sustainability communication. Full article

Although social media influencers (SMIs) play a pivotal role in destination marketing, the underlying factors through which they shape tourists’ interest and travel intentions remain underexplored. Based on the modified attention interest desire action (AIDA) model, this study addresses this gap by investigating how the characteristics of SMIs influence travel intentions through destination perceived trust and destination perceived attractiveness. A total of 416 valid questionnaires were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and an artificial neural network (ANN). The results revealed that SMIs’ similarity, expertise, physical attractiveness, social attractiveness, sincerity, and visibility enhanced tourists’ destination perceived trust and destination perceived attractiveness, thereby influencing travel intentions. Additionally, the ANN analysis complements the PLS-SEM results by comparing predictive performance and identifying the relative importance of SMI characteristics. These findings provide several suggestions for destination management organizations to improve influencer marketing. Full article

Agricultural E-commerce alters farmers’ production and marketing decisions, thereby shaping land-use intensity and livelihood stability. In the context of rapid digital transformation, enhancing farmers’ livelihood resilience is critical to sustainable rural development and resilience to socio-economic and environmental shocks. Using survey data from 542 rural communities in China, this study examines the relationship between agricultural E-commerce participation and farmers’ livelihood resilience across its multidimensional components. The empirical results show that participation in agricultural E-commerce is positively associated with farmers’ overall livelihood resilience, with notable positive associations with buffering capacity, learning capacity, and self-organization capacity. Among these, learning capacity exhibits the strongest association, followed by buffering capacity and self-organization capacity. Farmers’ digital capability positively moderates the relationship between E-commerce participation and livelihood resilience by facilitating access to and effective use of digital information, thereby lowering information costs and contributing to returns from online market participation. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the positive association between agricultural E-commerce participation and livelihood resilience is stronger among cooperative members, households with adequate production capital, non-agricultural households, and families with sufficient labor resources. By identifying the role of agricultural E-commerce in building livelihood resilience, this study contributes to the empirical understanding of how digital engagement may support inclusive and sustainable rural development under similar institutional conditions. Full article

China’s 2026 land-use policy mandates that commercial and residential construction remain within existing urban footprints, making urban renewal the primary source of spatial capacity for future urban development. Understanding how diverse stakeholders make decisions regarding urban renewal and shape the resulting spatial configurations is therefore of critical importance. This study develops an integrated multi-agent system (MAS) and cellular automata (CA) model to simulate the spatial dynamics of urban renewal. The model explicitly incorporates the location preferences of three key agents—government, developers, and residents. Using Wuhan as a case study, we project land-use patterns for 2035 under three scenarios: a traditional development scenario, a multi-agent simulation (MAS) scenario, and an urban renewal scenario. The findings reveal that (1) urban renewal significantly improves land-use patterns by curbing urban expansion and reducing the loss of farmland and forest cover; (2) government agents exert the strongest driving force on construction land expansion (contribution coefficient: 0.1758), while residents demonstrate a discernible influence on the selection of renewal sites (0.1199), with developer preferences largely aligning with government priorities; (3) a marked preference divergence exists among agents—within central urban areas, resident selection probabilities are only 60–70% of those of government and developers, indicating a notable mismatch between market demand and planning objectives. Moreover, more than 74% of renewal areas are projected to generate economic returns below renewal costs, signaling a potential financial sustainability risk. These results suggest that while urban renewal can effectively slow urban sprawl and mitigate ecological land loss, it simultaneously necessitates multi-stakeholder governance frameworks and sustainable financing mechanisms to reconcile competing interests and reduce fiscal vulnerabilities. The proposed simulation framework offers quantitative support for spatial policy making in China’s future land stock-constrained urban development contexts. Full article

Medical device innovation depends not only on technological development but also on institutional review processes that determine when new or modified devices can enter the market. This study examines the role of review route choices and accumulated regulatory experience in shaping the duration of FDA 510(k) reviews. Using 97,623 submissions from 22,838 firms over 1995–2025, this study models FDA 510(k) review duration across review channels and pathways while accounting for the nonrandom use of third-party review. The results show that third-party review is strongly associated with shorter review durations, both after selection adjustments and within Traditional 510(k) submissions. Special 510(k)s also clear faster, while Abbreviated submissions show limited timing advantages unless paired with third-party review. Prior FDA and product-space experience are also associated with faster clearance, suggesting that regulatory capability influences the institutional timing through which medical device innovation moves from development to market availability. The findings highlight the importance of regulatory execution within the broader innovation process in approval-mediated industries. Full article

Selecting appropriate plant material is essential for successful vegetable production, as it directly affects product quality, market value, and consumer satisfaction. While major vegetable species already have stable markets, there is growing demand for innovative, healthy, and sustainable products, driving continuous development in the sector. This study provides an overview of novel vegetable products, ranging from native resources to recent innovations in widely consumed crops. Special emphasis is placed on neglected species, particularly edible halophytes, which offer high nutritional value and strong potential under climate change conditions. The study also examines unconventional plants not traditionally used as vegetables, which can contribute to diversifying diets and supporting local economies. At the same time, the vegetable industry continues to innovate by developing new products from common species, taking advantage of their variability in size, shape, color, and taste, including the rising trend of miniaturized vegetables. In addition, the concepts of “superfoods” and functional foods are critically analyzed to clarify their respective significance and distinguishing characteristics. The role of branding is also highlighted due to its increasing influence on consumer preferences. Overall, the study integrates contributions from farmers, industry, and researchers to expand vegetable diversity, promote innovation, and enhance product quality and consumer satisfaction. Full article

This paper examines the influence of the CEO–chairperson dialect connection on corporate carbon emissions. The results suggest that such a connection significantly increases corporate carbon emissions, and this effect is more pronounced among firms operating in highly competitive industries, non-state-owned enterprises and firms in non-heavily polluting industries. Further results show that this effect is stronger for firms with lower media coverage and for dialects that are more difficult for outsiders to understand. These findings indicate that the dialect connection increases corporate carbon emissions by weakening the monitoring effectiveness of chairpersons and by reinforcing cognitive preferences between CEOs and chairpersons. This study contributes to understanding how cultural factors shape corporate carbon emissions and suggests that informal linguistic ties can undermine corporate environmental accountability, revealing the dark side of informal connections among corporate leaders in capital markets. Full article

Cities in the Majority World face a widening climate investment gap that is often attributed to the absence of suitable financing instruments. Green bonds promise to mobilise private capital for low-carbon urban infrastructure, yet they have diffused unevenly, leaving the economies with the greatest needs at the market’s margins. This study asks whether macroeconomic constraints—the cost of finance, monetary instability, and public indebtedness—systematically shape green bond issuance across emerging and developing economies. We assemble an original panel of 24 such economies over 2015–2024 (240 country-year observations) and estimate pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), random-effects, two-way fixed-effects, Tobit, and probit models with robust standard errors. The public debt-to-GDP ratio is positively associated with issuance in most specifications, though the strength of this relationship varies across estimators and it is not statistically significant in the preferred two-way fixed-effects model; the renewable energy share is consistently positive, while consumer price inflation shows no significant suppressive effect. A probit model of the extensive margin shows that public debt, the renewable energy share, and income per capita raise the probability of issuing among the economies for which the data permit estimation. The four lower-income Sub-Saharan economies in the sample fall outside this estimation owing to missing data, yet record no issuance whatsoever over the decade—a descriptive pattern consistent with the structural barriers the model identifies. The findings challenge the assumption that monetary stabilisation is a precondition for climate finance, pointing instead to capital-market depth and subnational fiscal capacity as the more binding constraints. Full article

This study examines whether higher education development (HED) in China remains geographically locked in a core–periphery structure over 2002–2021 despite long-standing policies promoting balanced development. Using a composite assessment of HED and multiple spatial-inequality diagnostics, we identify strong persistence in the national spatial hierarchy and limited restructuring over time. Results indicate: (1) a stable top tier concentrated in a small set of leading cities, with the top-ranked cities exhibiting a stability index above 0.90, alongside a persistent lagging group; (2) an education-quality “center of gravity” anchored along the North China–East China axis, with a reduced migration distance from 76.58 km to 16.63 km, indicating only modest cross-regional movement; (3) pronounced clustering in major eastern coastal urban agglomerations, contrasted with a broader and weaker distribution in the west; and (4) regionally differentiated constraints—HED in eastern China is jointly driven by economic scale, market demand, and innovation investment, while the central region exhibits no stable dominant driver, the western region remains primarily constrained by economic scale and consumption conditions, and the northeastern region is increasingly shaped by demographic structure and consumption dynamics. These findings indicate that the spatial differentiation of HED is jointly shaped by economic, demographic, industrial, and innovation-related factors. For sustainability-oriented governance, the findings suggest that narrowing gaps requires moving beyond scale expansion toward targeted capability building, cross-regional collaboration, and institutional reforms that improve peripheral regions’ capacity to convert inputs into sustained quality and outcomes. Data granularity remains a limitation; future research should integrate micro-level data and comparative evidence. Full article

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) is reshaping digital retail, yet how algorithmic transparency, explainable AI, and AR-based immersion jointly shape consumer responses remains theoretically underdeveloped. Drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S–O–R) model, this study examines the influence of cognitive stimuli (algorithmic transparency and explainable AI) and experiential cues (AR immersion) on trust, perceived usefulness, immersion, purchase decisions, and continued usage intention. Using survey data from 420 online shoppers in the West Bank, Palestine, and analyzed via structural equation modeling, the findings indicate that cognitive evaluations—particularly perceived usefulness and trust—exert stronger effects on purchase decisions than immersion. Specifically, algorithmic transparency enhances trust, while explainable AI strengthens perceived usefulness; AR immersion contributes to engagement, but its behavioral effects remain comparatively weaker. The results suggest that experiential engagement serves as a complementary enhancer, operating most effectively when supported by transparent and useful AI systems. The study extends AI–AR commerce literature by proposing a multi-stage S–O–R framework and demonstrating the conditional role of immersion in emerging digital markets. Full article

This study examines the effectiveness of government support mechanisms in fostering venture capital (VC) ecosystems in emerging economies, with a particular focus on Kazakhstan. While venture capital is widely recognized as a key driver of innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic diversification, many developing countries face persistent structural barriers, including underdeveloped financial markets, limited private investment, and regulatory inefficiencies. To address these challenges, this research adopts a multi-source qualitative design, combining a systematic literature review with semi-structured interviews conducted with venture capital experts and practitioners. The analysis evaluates key policy instruments—such as co-investment schemes, tax incentives, startup accelerators, and regulatory reforms—and assesses their role in shaping VC activity. The findings indicate that although Kazakhstan has made significant progress in establishing institutional support for venture capital, critical constraints remain, including bureaucratic complexity, investor risk aversion, and limited exit opportunities. The study contributes to the literature by integrating global best practices with context-specific evidence, offering policy-relevant insights into how governments can more effectively design and implement interventions to strengthen venture capital ecosystems in developing economies. Full article

Carbon fibers, whose origins are closely intertwined with precursor chemistry and processing conditions, have become indispensable structural lightweight materials due to their exceptional combination of low density, high tensile strength, and high stiffness. This review aims to provide a combined overview of the mechanical properties of carbon fibers by tracing their development from the historically dominant polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and mesophase pitch systems to emerging polyethylene (PE)-based alternatives. Based on decades of fundamental and applied research, this review outlines how precursor molecular structure, stabilization pathways, and carbonization conditions direct microstructural growth and thereby mechanical performance. Established structure/property relationships in PAN and mesophase pitch fibers are discussed alongside recent insights into the sulfonation, crosslinking, and carbonization behavior of PE-based precursor systems. Additionally, this review presents current knowledge on production costs, market dynamics, and the environmental impact of carbon fiber manufacturing, highlighting how energy-intensive processing remains a key barrier to broader industrial adoption. Combined, the findings presented in this review provide an integrated basis describing how precursor selection, processing strategy, and resulting morphology shape mechanical behavior and clarify the position of PE-based carbon fibers within the broader landscape of cost, performance, and sustainability. Full article

Global migration and labour market pressures have increased transnational mobility in social work, as practitioners move across borders to meet workforce demand. This paper examines how professional regulation interacts with workforce shortages and transnational mobility, using Ireland as a case study. A regulatory dilemma arises from the absence of standardised international reference points for comparing social work education, training, roles, and regulation. Where applicants’ qualifications and practice experience do not align with national standards, additional requirements may be imposed, delaying entry into practice. Focusing on applicants from the U.K., U.S., Zimbabwe, and India, identified as principal countries of origin among internationally qualified social workers in Ireland, analysis shows how differences in regulatory structure, education, and role definition shape the assessment of equivalence and extend pathways to registration. The paper determines that this dilemma cannot be resolved by regulators and must be addressed at the level of the profession. It proposes identifying shared core content within existing social work education, using patterns in recognition decisions to inform targeted curriculum development, and creating standardised country profiles describing social work roles to support more consistent interpretation of international experience. Full article

The relationship between capital structure and firm market valuation remains a central yet unresolved question in corporate finance, with outcomes shaped critically by industry-specific asset structures and financing environments. This study investigates how capital structure influences market valuations across two structurally divergent sectors in India, the asset-light information technology (IT) industry and the asset-intensive automobile industry, using balanced panel data for 14 firms in each sector over 2005–2024. Fixed effect and random effect panel regression models are employed to isolate the direct effect of leverage on earnings per share (EPS), with model selection determined by the Hausman specification test. Complementing these estimations, the Graphical Lasso is applied to recover a sparse conditional dependence network among key financial variables, an approach particularly suited to this research question, as capital structure, profitability, tangibility, and growth are jointly determined, rendering pairwise correlations insufficient for identifying genuine financial linkages. The findings establish that debt exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on market valuations in both sectors, but through distinct economic channels: moderate leverage amplifies profitable growth signals in IT firms, while tax shield benefits drive valuation in automobile firms, constrained by asset tangibility and debt-servicing thresholds. These results support trade-off theory in the automobile sector and pecking order logic in the IT sector, underscoring that sector-specific financing strategies yield superior valuation outcomes compared to universally applied capital structure prescriptions. Full article

This article examines how institutional arrangements shape exploitative labour conditions among highly skilled international professionals, challenging prevailing assumptions that labour exploitation primarily affects low-skilled or irregular workers. Focusing on international professionals living and working in Vienna, the study addresses a central paradox of contemporary migration governance: while states and cities actively compete for global talent, they simultaneously reproduce exploitative conditions: legal, organisational, and identity-based constraints that limit labour mobility, weaken bargaining power, and suppress rights mobilisation. The analysis draws on Social Identity Theory, the Skill Paradox, and the concept of Legal consciousness to examine how highly skilled migrants experience labour market entry, wage-setting, and workplace inequality under conditions of legal dependency and institutional regulation. Empirically, the study is based on 42 semi-structured interviews with highly skilled international professionals and 17 expert interviews with representatives of Austrian labour market institutions and non-governmental organisations, complemented by secondary institutional data. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the study identifies three interrelated mechanisms sustaining exploitative conditions: (1) conditional labour market entry through the systematic downgrading of foreign qualifications; (2) legal and institutional dependency that discourages rights awareness and rights mobilisation; and (3) intersectional wage penalties disproportionately affecting women and non-national professionals. The findings demonstrate labour market conditions that exhibit several characteristics associated with labour exploitation. Labour conditions among highly skilled international professionals are not primarily the result of overt coercion or illegality but are structurally produced through migration regimes, credential recognition practices, and uneven access to legal protection. These mechanisms position skilled migrants along a continuum of labour exploitation characterised by restricted mobility, economic compulsion, and suppressed labour market conflict. By conceptualizing what can be reasonably interpreted as exploitative labour arrangements as an institutional outcome rather than an individual failure, the article contributes to debates on skilled migration, labour market inequality, and migration governance, highlighting the need for policy reforms that better align talent attraction strategies with labour rights, legal empowerment, and social justice. Full article