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Per capita consumption of plastic continues to increase and remains at high levels in high-income countries, despite obvious contributions to the global problem of plastics pollution. This paper attempts to provide an explanation for this phenomenon based on construal level theory, positing that plastic waste is a problem that is perceived as "out of sight and out of mind" for consumers in high plastic consumption (typically high income) countries and that this is influenced by the export of plastic waste to other (typically lower income and lower consumption) countries for disposal – shifting the burden of mismanaged plastic waste and perceptions of plastics pollution in the countries creating the majority of plastic waste. The apparent lack of plastics pollution in a local environment becomes a mediator, influenced by the export of plastic waste, which may then contribute to further plastics consumption. The theory is tested using structural equation modelling using rare, available matched data for mismanaged plastic waste, plastic waste exports, and plastics consumption at an aggregate country level. All study hypotheses are supported. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and practice, including potential changes to government policy aimed at reducing future plastics consumption and pollution.

This book provides practical case studies of the planning, implementation and use of mobile and wireless data solutions in modern business.

Sharing activities underpinned by the technologies of the Internet have become dominant in the activities of individuals, business and governments. Recently, such sharing activity has grown from information and media content to wider resources, including money, physical goods and services - coined collaborative consumption. Sustainability is often cited as a key driver, underpinned by economic, social and environmental benefits. If successful, the sharing of such resources is likely to have a potentially disruptive impact on incumbents in traditional supply chains. However, given the embryonic state of its development, it is perhaps not surprising that collaborative consumption is not well understood in research or practice. With this in mind, this study undertook a four-stage Delphi study with 25 experts in order to identify the key drivers, inhibitors and likely future developments in collaborative consumption over the next 10. years. A key finding was that environmental concern (sustainability) was considered of minor importance. The paper rounds-off with conclusions and implications for practice and further research.

In today's busy world, convenience is on the rise. On-demand services (e.g., food delivery services) promise swift solutions to our daily needs. However, limited research explores how service inconveniences (e.g., order cancelations and delays) impact consumer satisfaction, and which factors exacerbate such impact. This study addresses this gap by leveraging text analytics on a dataset of 222,371 user-generated reviews in food delivery platforms. Building on the Model of Service Convenience and Attribution Theory, we hypothesize that when consumers experience an inconvenience, it is not only what happened that matters to them, but also why they think it happened (causal attributions). Given that these two models have not been jointly tested, it is unclear how attributions moderate the effect of different service inconveniences on satisfaction. We present a scalable approach to measure service inconvenience attributions, allowing us to identify not only critical inconveniences but also a new construct: remote support inconvenience. Our results show that when stability or responsibility attributions are present, the effect of inconveniences on satisfaction can be over four or eleven times stronger (−426% and −1,140% from baseline, respectively). These insights contribute to the theoretical understanding of service inconveniences and offer actionable guidance for platforms to improve their services.

Scholars have heatedly debated the benefits and limitations of the double-blind peer review. Scholars recently suggest that maintaining anonymity (i.e., the major advantage of a double-blind reviewing system) has become unfeasible in the age of Google because reviewers can easily find authors' information through Internet searching and text citations. In this research, we examine the issue from another perspective: the extent to which authors initially post their working papers through social network platforms before or during the review process so that their names and institutions are visible to reviewers even if the submitted journals practice double-blind reviewing. The results from an empirical study using a large-size panel data set showed that authors at top-ranked universities prefer to disseminate their working papers before or during the double-blind review process, in which case their identities will be visible for reviewers.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the phenomenon of consumers' willingness to give permission to receive short message service (SMS) advertisements. The purpose of this research is threefold: to better understand the phenomenon of consumers' willingness to give permission to receive text message (SMS) advertisements, to provide empirical data that supports our understanding, and to develop and test a basic model of consumers' willingness to give permission to receive SMS advertisements.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilised a multi‐method research approach with both qualitative and quantitative data – via focus group and scenario‐based survey.FindingsThe results show that even if the relevance of the advertisement is high it does not on its own make consumers give permission; it needs to be combined with the control over opt‐in conditions to assure consumers and gain permission. Regarding brand familiarity, this appears to have little impact on consumers' willingness to give permission to receive SMS advertisements. The opt‐in conditions valued the most are: the possibility to withdraw at any time, personal data disclosure only with consent, and mobile phone operators as a primary advertising filter.Originality/valueThe principal contribution of the paper is in furthering our understanding of the concept of permission as related to the emerging topic of SMS advertising. The paper provides evidence and data triangulation in an area that so far has had little empirical investigation.

Major public health incidents such as COVID-19 typically have characteristics of being sudden, uncertain, and hazardous. If a government can effectively accumulate big data from various sources and use appropriate analytical methods, it may quickly respond to achieve optimal public health decisions, thereby ameliorating negative impacts from a public health incident and more quickly restoring normality. Although there are many reports and studies examining how to use big data for epidemic prevention, there is still a lack of an effective review and framework of the application of big data in the fight against major public health incidents such as COVID-19, which would be a helpful reference for governments. This paper provides clear information on the characteristics of COVID-19, as well as key big data resources, big data for the visualization of pandemic prevention and control, close contact screening, online public opinion monitoring, virus host analysis, and pandemic forecast evaluation. A framework is provided as a multidimensional reference for the effective use of big data analytics technology to prevent and control epidemics (or pandemics). The challenges and suggestions with respect to applying big data for fighting COVID-19 are also discussed.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how firm characteristics and local anti‐corruption effort moderate the influence of political connections on enterprises' private R&D investment using data from 2,587 Chinese A‐share listed enterprises. Our results show that the local anti‐corruption institutional environment significantly moderates the strong relationship between political connections and enterprises' private R&D investment. Firm characteristics (i.e., firm size and firm age) also show a moderating effect on the relationship between political connection and enterprises' private R&D investment; larger and older enterprises are more likely to have innovative resources and business cooperation partners, and thus are able to reduce their degree of reliance on political connections and government funding. The results of our study suggest the importance of having a transparent and fair institutional environment for enterprise innovation activities.

In this research, we aim to understand the influence of government subsidies on enterprises' research and development (R&D) investment behavior, particularly in China's renewable energy sector. We are also interested in examining how the attributes of enterprise ownership act as a moderating variable for the relationship between government subsidies and R&D investment behavior. Three classical panel data analysis models including the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model, the fixed effect model and the random effect model are employed. We find that government subsidies have a significant crowding out influence on enterprises' R&D investment behavior and that the influence is further moderated by the attributes of enterprise ownership. Moreover, a panel threshold regression model is used to demonstrate how the influence of government subsidies on enterprises' R&D investment behavior will change when government subsidies increase. Two thresholds, 0.6% and 10.1%, are identified. We recommend that relevant government departments should motivate enterprise R&D investment behavioral intention by increasing subsidies within a certain range. Different attributes of enterprise ownership should also be considered as part of policy reform and re-structuring relating to government subsidies.