All that glitters is not gold: An investigation into the undesired effects of gamification and how to mitigate them through gamification design

Although gamification has received considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners, its influence on consumers remains ambiguous. This paper proposes that a negative process through decreased attention and a positive process through increased enjoyment explain the effects of gamification on different outcome variables. Study 1 examines these two processes and gamification’s downstream consequences on purchase intention and product information recognition. For purchase intention, the two processes operate in parallel and produce a null effect of gamification. For product information recognition, only the negative process emerges, resulting in a negative effect of gamification. Studies 2 and 3 focus on the negative effect of gamification on product information recognition and show that the negative effect disappears in gamification designs that link the game elements with meaningful information about the product (Study 2) or make consumers aware of the distraction potential of game elements (Study 3). The studies’ findings provide managerial insights into why not all gamification endeavors yield the desired results; they also specify two boundary conditions (i.e., meaningfulness and disclosure) that may help managers avoid potentially detrimental effects of gamification.     

State ownership and the structuring of lease arrangements

The existing literature provides extensive evidence that firms intentionally structured lease arrangements to achieve off-balance-sheet accounting treatment prior to ASU 842 (FASB, 2016) and IFRS 16 (IASB, 2016). However, this study finds the opposite for Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs): compared to non-SOEs, SOEs in China have a higher tendency to use finance leases rather than operating leases. This result remains significant after we control for the possibility that Chinese capital providers are discriminatively extending credit to SOEs in the form of finance leases. We explain SOEs' preference for finance leases by their executives' empire building incentives. Such incentives are created by the executives' hunger for compensation, promotion and subsidies, which are determined by the government. Consistently, we find that SOEs' engagement in finance leases increases with their incentives to expand the firms' size. And indeed, SOE executives obtain more compensation and subsidies by growing their firms with finance leases. Finally, we find that SOEs with higher borrowing costs structure more finance lease arrangements. Such structuring further increases SOEs' financial leverage and, to some extent, decreases their corporate value. Taken together, these results suggest that the benefit of the ASU 842 (or IFRS 16), which aims to bring leased assets onto the balance sheet, may be impaired in situations where executives have strong incentives to build empires.     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

基于组态视角的众创空间创客集聚机制研究

以江苏省383家众创空间为样本，应用组态思维和QCA方法整合资源与服务两个层面的6个条件，探讨形成众创空间创客集聚差异的多重并发和复杂机理。结果发现：①众创空间高创客集聚存在服务主导型、场地-创客教育主导型、全要素型3个组态，其中，服务主导型、场地-创客教育主导型能深层次、强有力地影响众创空间高创客集聚；②众创空间非高创客集聚存在单纯地产式、单纯线下投资促进、单纯线上投资促进3种组态，且对众创空间非高创客集聚的影响基本相当；③资金资源不充足、场地资源不充足与人员服务不充足在解释非高创客集聚时具有替代作用。     

Capital market integration in ASEAN: A non-stationary panel data analysis

Motivated by the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, we examine saving-investment relationship in various subgroups of ASEAN to assess their capital market integration. The results from second generation panel unit-root and cointegration tests that account for cross-sectional dependence as well as estimates of long-run saving-retention rate provide some evidence of market integration in ASEAN. The analysis of short-run dynamics suggests that capital mobility in ASEAN during 1980–2014 appears similar to that in OECD countries during 1970–1999. More importantly, across different panel estimators and subgroups of membership, there is considerable heterogeneity among the member countries. The saving-investment association is very weak, thereby implying very high capital mobility, in more developed members such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei; the association is very strong, implying very low capital mobility, for much less developed members such as Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The results call for renewed effort to develop capital markets in less developed nations and integrate them with the rest of the membership in ASEAN. In this paper, we also address several major shortcomings of the original Feldstein-Horioka framework.     

以“合”为贵？合作文化与企业创新

本文以2006-2015年沪深A股非金融上市公司为样本,基于上市公司网站对于企业文化的叙述和年报董事会报告两份本文,采用文本分析方法,构建两个度量企业合作文化强弱的指标,并研究企业合作文化对企业创新产出和创新效率的影响。研究发现,企业文化越强调合作,企业的创新产出越多,创新效率越高。这一结论在采用增加控制变量、利用水稻播种面积作为工具变量以及以董事长的非正常离职事件为冲击进行PSM-DID等多种方法后仍然稳健。渠道检验的结果显示,合作文化是通过提高企业内部员工的凝聚力和促进企业的“产学研”合作这两种渠道来促进企业创新。进一步的研究表明,合作文化的促进作用在竞争性行业以及地区信任程度和产业集群程度较高的地区中尤为显著。本文不仅从微观层面揭示企业文化对公司财务行为的影响机理,丰富和补充了当前方兴未艾的“文化与金融”研究,而且为国家制定建设社会主义文化强国的方针战略提供理论基础和实证支持。     

控股股东“掏空”与“支持”:企业所得税的影响

源于企业所得税的征收,国家某种意义上是公司最大的“小股东”。本文将“国家股东”纳入控股股东与小股东间博弈行为的分析框架,检验企业所得税征收对控股股东“掏空”与“支持”的影响。结果表明,在“掏空”与“支持”的选择上,企业所得税会产生两方面效应:税率提高会增强控股股东“掏空”的倾向;而税收征管则能够抑制其“掏空”的倾向。区分“掏空”与“支持”两类情形,当控股股东试图“掏空”时,税率越高,税收征管强度越低,“掏空”程度越高;当控股股东试图“支持”时,税率越高,税收征管强度越高,“支持”程度越高。本文不仅提供了“掏空”与“支持”影响因素方面新的经验证据,且丰富了税与代理问题相关的学术文献。     

Local opinions on trophy hunting in Kyrgyzstan

As traditional international trophy hunting destinations are becoming less accessible due to hunting restrictions and regulations, new destinations are entering the scene, such as the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, located in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan has grown to be one of the top destinations for international trophy hunting of argali Ovis ammon and ibex Capra sibirica, both of which are in danger of extinction. Empirically, the article draws on a case study from the largest region in Kyrgyzstan, At-Bashy, and 395 questionnaires with local inhabitants from 5 villages, and 1 interview with an international trophy hunting tour operator. In this article, the impacts of trophy hunting as a tourism practice in a rural context is discussed in terms of its sustainability and through the opinions of the local inhabitants. In sum, the negative impacts of trophy hunting in At-Bashy seem to overrule the positive ones, and in its current form it is not sustainable. The local inhabitants report about a decrease in argali and ibex during the last years; they receive basically no economic benefits from hunting tourism; and not surprisingly, 70% of the population rejects the further development of the industry in its current shape.     

Product line transformation,foreign sales,and firm value: Evidence from COVID-19 pandemic governance in urban China

Using a sample of Chinese firms, we examine stock market reaction to firms that announce a change in their product lines to those related to COVID-19 management (medical masks and ventilators, among others). We find the market reacts positively to the announcements. In addition, when a firm ordinarily has a large share of export sales, the stock market reaction is more salient, indicating that export sales provide a certification effect that positively signals investors. Additional analysis on moderating effects suggest that, conditional on foreign sales, prior experience with medical product lines or less uncertainty about supply availability enhances the cumulative announcement returns (CARs), while the adverse impact of firm size on CAR magnifies.