Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable

Social media emerged as a primary source of information among young users, but its severe effect on mental state due to information overload, still an area of concern for the researchers. Generation Z users' addiction to the mobile phone/gadgets is increasing with a rise in social media and consequently their behavioral outcomes have transformed completely. Nowadays behavioral issues including stress, fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’ and ‘phubbing’, anxiety etc. rising each day but the relationship among these issues and information overload is less examined. The social media users are unable to filter the trustworthy information due to its enormous size and thus role of information support from government becomes essential. The current study extends the S-O-R theory exploring relationship between the stimulus of enormous information on the responses generated among the Generation Z such as social media fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety. The findings from a sample of 319 users belonging to Generation Z suggest that social media platforms need to understand user's compulsive usage that is resulting into fatigue and consequently anxiety. The role of government information support on reducing fatigue and anxiety is found to be positive. The relationship between ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety is found significant and shows presence of partial mediation. The study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. It is significant for the service providers and social media platforms to advance interfaces with minimum fatigue for the users and offers information support to the users to reduce stress caused by information load.     

Are social media bad for your employees? Effects of at-work break activities on recovery experiences

Since social media has become a fundamental part of the daily activities of people, the purpose of this study was to explore social media use by focusing on job demands that may explain why employees perceive social media are vital for them at work. Further, this study seeks to understand how employees use social media at work to experience recovery. Questionnaires were collected from current frontline hospitality non-managerial and managerial employees in the United States. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze data. Results of the study confirm that at-work break activities including social and non-media break activities can be a channel for employees to experience recovery and deal with job demands. Moreover, the results suggest that at-work break activities are an important mediator between job demands and recovery experiences. Social media break activities also moderated the mediation effect of non-social media break activities between job demands and recovery experiences.     

Automated topic modeling of tourist reviews: Does the Anna Karenina principle apply?

Automated content analysis of online travel reviews allows identification of topics of travelers' satisfaction, yet its domain is not well researched. We suggest that the Anna Karenina principle positing a greater variability of the factors leading to business failure as opposed to those leading to success can be applied to the domain of visitors’ reviews of historic and cultural attractions. The larger variability of issues in reviews of dissatisfied visitors is likely to result in limitations for automated topic modeling. We confirm our proposition using TripAdvisor reviews of the Terracotta Army museum in China, and validate the outcome with two additional sites. The study strongly suggests that application of unsupervised topic mining algorithms to negative reviews may be problematic and the results should be treated with caution. The main themes of dissatisfaction of visitors to all three sites are reported and practical implications for management of the attractions are discussed.     

The sway of influencer marketing: Evidence from a restaurant group

Influencer marketing has become a powerful channel for brand promotion and market expansion in the hospitality industry. However, those responsible for implementing influencer marketing campaigns are susceptible to the “myth of viewability” and rely on the Cost Per View (CPV) evaluation metric, rather than the more appropriate Cost Per Action (CPA). The current research explores the aforementioned myth from a hospitality management perspective by identifying the types of image (or photo) which attract more audience commentary or liking. A qualitative research approach is adopted involving two experiments with influencer pairs across the restaurant context in Taipei, Taiwan. We selected influencers Q and S as our manipulated group. In sharing images on their social media platform, it was found that they make greater use of personal than of food related images. The opposite was the case for the controlled group - influencers X and A – who shared more food than personal images. The researchers tracked viewer responses and then actions towards influencer postings to determine (a) which influencer approach draws more views and (b) the costs that are attributable to views and/or actions. They drew upon the findings to formulate an Owner-Influencer Matrix, a strategic planning tool and framework that helps owners and influencers to optimize influencer marketing. It is concluded that interactions between influencers and business owners should be beneficial to both parties. This empirical study may provide business owners and social media influencers with insights about communicating the respective brand values of their counterparts and designing sponsorship collaborations with a capacity to generate the desired consumer responses.     

The role of financial journalists in the expectations channel of the monetary transmission mechanism

Monetary policy relies on managing the inflation expectations of the public in order to influence prices (inflation). Relying on the South African experience, we argue that most of the general public are exposed to the communication of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) only via the media. This state of affairs is fairly typical around the globe. We explored the role and biases of the journalists in transmitting the SARB’s communications to the rationally inattentive general public. Our aim was to obtain insights about the factors that influence media articles that deal with monetary policy issues. Using interviews and qualitative content analysis, we explored the extent of the journalists’ knowledge about inflation and monetary policy, their views concerning the credibility of the SARB, the sources of information they use, and the constraints and incentives they face in writing their articles.     

Social media and sustainable purchasing attitude: Role of trust in social media and environmental effectiveness

The role of social media in promoting sustainable attitudes is currently understudied. Underpinned by social learning theory, this study unveils the effect of social media usage and browsing on sustainable purchasing attitude, the underlying mechanism, and the boundary condition. Drawing on a sample of 693 experienced respondents analyzed using structural equation modeling, this study reveals that social media usage and browsing have a significant positive association. Both constructs significantly impact sustainable purchasing attitudes with complementary partial mediation of the drive for environmental responsibility. Further, trust in social media and perceived environmental effectiveness significantly moderate the relationships belongs to the browsing and drive for environmental responsibility. Contrary to the theorization, moderating constructs cannot substantially impact the proposed associations of social media usage. In this manner, the present research is innovative and provides valued knowledge to comprehend social media's role in encouraging sustainable attitudes.     

Forecasting corporate financial distress in the Southeast Asian countries: A market-based approach

This study is conducted to investigate the prediction of corporate financial distress based on the Merton (1974) market-based Distance to Default (DD) model over the period from 1997 to 2016 which covers a range of economic financial circumstances, including the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The study focusses on the six largest countries in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), comprising of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Unlike previous studies which focus mainly on bankruptcy, this paper focusses on early warning distress indicators that signal distress well before bankruptcy. This is when firms experience difficulty in servicing debt as measured by interest coverage ratio (ICR) at a firm level and non-performing loans (NPLs) at a country level. Key empirical findings from this paper indicate that the market-based distance-to-default (DD) model is generally a good early warning indicator of financial distress in the following year, particularly for ICR, but that prediction accuracy varies between individual countries in the Southeast Asian region.     

Value co-creation and social media: Investigating antecedents and influencing factors in the U.S. retail banking industry

This study seeks to examine and unearth antecedents to co-creation behaviours within a U.S. retail banking context. A critical aspect for marketing managers and academics alike, co-creation has a strong influence on tangible factors such as profit and intangible factors such as referrals, satisfaction and feedback. Antecedents were identified as trust, customer engagement and participation attitude whilst social media usage was a consumer characteristic identified as influencing co-creation. Data was collected from 489 U.S. retail banking customers via an online survey. The data was analysed via structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that customer engagement influences trust, co-creation and participation attitude. Participation attitude was found to influence trust and co-creation but trust had no direct effect on co-creation. The study further found that social media usage intensity influenced co-creation behaviours. The findings contribute in three ways. First, this is one of the first studies to scrutinise participation attitude in an attempt to explain co-creation behaviours for U.S. banks over social media. Second, identification of precursors to value co-creation has been ascertained in a U.S. retail banking social media context. Third, the study additionally contributes to the findings that social media usage has a moderating effect in value co-creation and offers a potential segmentation strategy.     

External pressure or internal culture? An innovation diffusion theory account of small retail businesses’ social media use

COVID-19 put unprecedented external pressure on small businesses to adopt or increase use of social media while not all small businesses are internally ready for this rapid change. This study investigated the roles of external pressures and organizational culture of openness and learning in driving small retail business owners'/managers' social media use decisions by impacting their perceived usefulness and barriers, based on the innovation-decision process model from the diffusion of innovations theory and the theory of reasoned action. An online survey with structured measurements was administered to 411 U.S. small retail business owners/managers. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that external pressures positively influenced small business owners'/managers’ perceived usefulness and barriers and social media use intention. In addition, the culture of openness and learning positively influenced the perceived usefulness while mitigating the perceived barriers, thereby directly and indirectly influencing the social media use intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.