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.     

Is online-to-offline customer care support essential for consumer service?

Customer satisfaction is the main pillar for convenient and profitable retailing. The retail sector continuously tried to develop new strategies to improve consumer satisfaction. It is impossible to provide each service directly to the consumer by the retailer. In this direction, the retailer establishes customer care to provide the best service to consumers. Consumer care can provide promotional or prevention services, increasing the consumer's satisfaction level. This study is developed to show the impact of retailers' customer care service for an offline-to-online retailing strategy. The demand is consumer support, advertisement, and selling price dependent. For maintaining consumer service, some free home delivery policies are offered, when consumers ordered more than a certain percentage of the amount. Finally, the total profit of this O2O retailing system is calculated by the classical optimization technique. Some special cases are discussed in the numerical section to prove the impact of customer care services. Numerical results prove that customer care support enhances the profit by 48.20%, whereas investment in the advertisement and home delivery strategy helps the retail industry to earn 44.80% and 16.74% more profit, respectively. Finally, from this study, it is clear that customer care activities are essential to increase the profit of the retailing sector.     

Workplace bullying and presenteeism in the cruise industry: Evaluating the effect of social support

A cruise ship constitutes a unique research laboratory for the study of workplace bullying and presenteeism because of its manifestation of the phenomena and situations that traditionally characterize total institutions. This study analyzes the role of workplace bullying as a potential risk factor for presenteeism in the workplace and the moderating role of social support. Results confirmed that work-related bullying is positively connected to the phenomenon of presenteeism, whereas person-related bullying is negatively related. The findings also confirmed the role of social support, specifically supervisor support, as a moderating agent of this relationship. The supporting details are further elaborated, and the main implications for the future of the cruise industry are presented. The findings can facilitate cruise line companies in designing prevention plans and implementing well-targeted anti-bullying policies according to the type of workplace bullying experienced by workers that can substantially improve their effectiveness.     

Depletion of psychological,financial, and social resources in the hospitality sector during the pandemic

This study details how psychological, financial, and social factors shape employee deviant interpersonal behaviors during a pandemic. Data were collected with a survey of 372 front-line employees of hotels and analyzed with PLS-SEM. The findings showed social disconnectedness and perceived risk of unemployment leads to perceived isolation, which further creates depression in employees. The findings also showed that depression is positively related to employee deviance. Financial strain is a major cause of perceived isolation, depression, and deviant behaviors among front-line employees. Results also proved that social support reduces fear of isolation, depression, and employee deviance. This study provides guidelines that hotels need to understand the psychological stance of employees and design policies to overcome employee perceived fears and psychological disorders.     

进口贸易视域下国际粮价对国内粮价的传导路径--来自玉米和大豆的证据

基于玉米和大豆等粮食国际、国内价格历史数据,运用协整及误差修正模型、脉冲响应函数等方法,揭示国际粮价对国内粮价的传导作用及影响路径。理论分析表明,国际粮价通过进口直接路径、进口产品成本路径和进口替代路径等三个子路径传导至国内粮价。实证检验发现,国际大豆价格进口直接路径和进口产品成本路径传导均比较充分,即国际大豆价格会影响大豆进口价格,进而影响国内大豆价格,最终影响国内豆油价格;国际玉米价格进口直接路径和进口产品成本路径传导则不充分,国际玉米价格会影响玉米进口价格,但是对国内玉米价格和国内玉米淀粉价格影响程度较低;而在进口替代路径中,玉米和大豆的国际价格传导均不充分。我国应继续推进以提质增效为目标的农业供给侧结构性改革,加大粮食生产科技投入力度,调动农民种粮积极性,集中力量提高粮食供给质量和效率;坚持粮食进口仅为调剂国内供求余缺的方针,把握粮食安全的主动权;建立健全粮食市场的价格调控体系及风险防控体系,规避国际粮食市场剧烈波动对国内粮食市场的影响。     

Analysis of Bitcoin prices using market and sentiment variables

This paper proposes an empirical model for analysing the dynamics of Bitcoin prices. To do this, we consider a vector error correction model over two overlapping periods: 2010–17 and 2010–19. Price discovery is achieved through the Gonzalo–Granger permanent‐transitory decomposition. The pricing factors are endogenous linear combinations of the S&P 500 index, gold price, a Google search variable associated to Bitcoin and a fear index proxied by the FED Financial Stress Index. Our empirical analysis shows that during the first period, a linear combination of four pricing factors describes the efficient Bitcoin price. The S&P 500 index and Google searches have a positive effect whereas gold prices and the fear index have a negative effect. In contrast, during the second period, the efficient price behaves idiosyncratically and can be only rationalised by individuals' search for information on the cryptocurrency. These findings provide empirical evidence on the presence of a correction in Bitcoin prices during the period 2018–19 uncorrelated to market fundamentals. We also show that standard empirical asset pricing models perform poorly for explaining Bitcoin prices.     

股票网络平台中的噪音会影响股价同步性吗*

股价同步性是衡量资本市场信息效率的重要指标。股价同步性的影响机制一直以来都是金融研究的热点问题。本文使用文本分析的方法，通过机器学习度量了东方财富股吧中股民发帖评论中的非理性噪音，检验了股票网络平台中的噪音与股价同步性之间的关系。研究发现：第一，股票网络平台中的噪音会促使投资者做出非理性的投资决策，进而降低股价变动的同步性。噪音评论占全部评论的比例越高，上市公司的股价同步性越低，而且两者之间呈现倒U型的非线性关系。第二，公司个股新闻与公告数量的增加、分析师关注度的提高与外部审计质量的提升，均可以减弱股票网络平台中的噪音对股价同步性的影响。本文关注网络新媒体中的噪音对股价同步性的影响，研究结论对于监管部门加强网络信息监测以及上市公司进一步完善信息披露渠道具有现实意义。     

Data vs. information: Using clustering techniques to enhance stock returns forecasting

This paper explores the use of clustering models of stocks to improve both (a) the prediction of stock prices and (b) the returns of trading algorithms.We cluster stocks using k-means and several alternative distance metrics, using as features quarterly financial ratios, prices and daily returns. Then, for each cluster, we train ARIMA and LSTM forecasting models to predict the daily price of each stock in the cluster. Finally, we employ the clustering-empowered forecasting models to analyze the returns of different trading algorithms.We obtain three key results: (i) LSTM models outperform ARIMA and benchmark models, obtaining positive investment returns in several scenarios; (ii) forecasting is improved by using the additional information provided by the clustering methods, therefore selecting relevant data is an important preprocessing task in the forecasting process; (iii) using information from the whole sample of stocks deteriorates the forecasting ability of LSTM models.These results have been validated using data of 240 companies of the Russell 3000 index spanning 2017 to 2022, training and testing with different subperiods.     

Adoption des Politiques de Protection de l'Environnement et performance des Entreprises Camerounaises

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the environmental protection policies of by Cameroonian firms on their performance. It uses the endogenous switching regression technique and propensity scores applied to micro-data from 639 firms in Cameroon. The results show that only 17% of firms adopt these measures, while on average 85% of firms produce solid, gaseous or liquid waste. The results also indicate that the adoption of these environmental protection policies increases operating costs while significantly improving the turnover and the performance of the productive capacity of the company. These increases are 39.11%, 58.6%, and 38.63% for operating costs, turnover and return on productive capacity of the company, respectively. However, firms can also suffer significant losses resulting from the non-adoption of environmental policies. In fact, firms that do not adopt environmental protection policies have their performance reduced by an average of 1.625 percentage points.     

Evaluation of workplace lactation support among employers in two Pennsylvania cities

A majority of mothers with infants less than 1 year old participate in the labor force. Employers can modify the physical and social environments at work to accommodate breastfeeding employees and enable continued participation in the labor force. The purpose of our article is to (1) characterize breastfeeding policies and programs currently offered at workplaces in two Pennsylvania cities and (2) identify improvement areas to support breastfeeding employees in the workplace. We partnered with two business groups on health in Pennsylvania and electronically administered a survey to their employer members. Responses were aggregated into a workplace lactation support score based on physical space, time, policy, and resources. Higher scores indicate that employers offered a large number of workplace lactation supports. We conclude by offering specific improvement opportunities that include a written policy communicated to all employees and the formal communication of lactation services. Employers can utilize workplace lactation support scores to elect interventions that are feasible for implementation in their organizations.