Recognition versus disclosure of finance leases: Evidence from Japan

This study examines whether credit market participants—bond investors and credit rating agencies—treat recognized and disclosed finance leases differently when assessing firms’ credit risk in Japan. I use firms’ credit risk, measured by bond spreads and credit ratings, to investigate the relations between recognized versus disclosed finance lease obligations and firms’ credit risk following the adoption of Statement No. 13, Accounting Standard for Lease Transactions. For a sample of firms issuing new bonds, I find that, unlike recognized finance leases, disclosed finance leases are not associated with bond spreads. Moreover, the associations between recognized versus disclosed finance leases and bond spreads are substantially different. Conversely, recognized and disclosed finance leases are associated with credit ratings and are processed similarly when credit ratings are determined. Taken together, my results suggest that the sophistication of capital market participants influences their credit risk assessments of recognized versus disclosed finance leases.     

智慧居家养老服务协同供给的优化路径研究——以广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目的实践经验为例

智慧居家养老服务的协同供给可以形成社会联动效应，降低公共服务成本。运用公共服务协同供给分析框架，通过交叉分类方法从协同主体的利益与目标两个变量的耦合性出发分析广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目中养老服务主体间不同种类的协同关系，可以从加强政府领导、形成合作联盟、建立市场标准、创新扶持政策4个方面完善政府、企业、社会组织之间不同类型的协同供给，实现社会资源的高效利用以及向智慧居家养老服务的发展和转变。     

Consequences of a green image of drone food delivery services: The moderating role of gender and age

Drone food delivery services play a significant role in protecting the environment, because the services are operated by batteries that can be charged with electricity. Therefore, this study tried to examine a green image in the context of drone food delivery services. More specifically, this study proposed that a green image of drone food delivery services plays an important role in the formation of attitude toward using the services. In addition, it was hypothesized that the attitude has a positive influence on behavioral intentions including intentions to use, word‐of‐mouth intentions, and willingness to pay more. Lastly, the moderating role of gender and age was proposed during the theory‐building process. A theoretical model, which included 12 hypotheses, was developed and tested using a total of 427 samples collected in Korea. The data analysis results showed that a green image of drone food delivery services has a positive influence on attitude toward using the services, which in turn positively affects three subdimensions of behavioral intentions. Furthermore, gender and age played partly as a moderator. The current paper was the first to study the green image of drone food delivery services, so the findings of this study mean a lot to the theoretical aspect.     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

The ‘Blogosphere’ as a platform for interpretative phenomenological analysis: the case of TEFL tourism

The use of the Internet is becoming increasingly integral to the day-to-day operations of society, facilitating an interconnected and globalised world, where geographic barriers are no longer a defining criteria for communication. This opens the researcher up to a realm of research opportunities, which to-date have been under-exploited. This paper contributes to the wider body of literature addressing the concept of Online research, demonstrating in practice how it can be utilised in the context of interpretative phenomenological analysis. It is argued that netnography is akin to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in that it accounts for an individual’s personal perception or account of an event or state, as opposed to attempting to produce an objective record. This paper outlines how blog analysis can be utilised in the context of IPA, demonstrating how this worked in practice during the initial exploratory research phase of the teaching English as a foreign language tourism phenomenon.     

Understanding the trend to mobile-only internet connections:A decomposition analysis

A growing portion of internet users rely solely on mobile devices such as smartphones for their online access. The percentage of “mobile-only” households increased from 9% in 2011 to 20% in 2015, more than doubling in only four years. As this shift continues, it leads to the question of what factors are driving the rise in mobile-only adoption. Using nationally representative data, this study uses logistic regressions and a decomposition technique to understand the trend. The decomposition reveals that a significant portion (65%) of the growth was due to an increase in the download speeds of mobile networks. An increased acceptance of mobile-only access by households aged 55 and older was also partly responsible. Understanding (and developing a response to) the trend towards mobile-only adoption will be important as organizations and governments continue to work to close the digital divide.     

Best classification algorithms in peer-to-peer lending

A proper credit scoring technique is vital to the long-term success of all kinds of financial institutions, including peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms. The main contribution of our paper is the robust ranking of 10 different classification techniques based on a real-world P2P lending data set. Our data set comes from the Lending Club covering the 2009–2013 period, which contains 212,252 records and 23 different variables. Unlike other researchers, we use a data sample which contains the final loan resolution for all loans. We built our research using a 5-fold cross-validation method and 6 different classification performance measurements. Our results show that logistic regression, artificial neural networks, and linear discriminant analysis are the three best algorithms based on the Lending Club data. Conversely, we identify k-nearest neighbors and classification and regression tree as the two worst classification methods.     

Nicknames as identity badges: How self-reflective nicknames can facilitate users’ online social interactions

An Internet nickname is essential in facilitating online interpersonal interactions. It is a pivotal element of interaction that provides other users with an initial impression and affects the decisions and behaviors of users during their online interactions. Although the existing literature has found that nicknames are relevant to users’ psychology and behavior, direct research on the motivation for and the effect of choosing a particular Internet nickname has been very limited. Borrowing from relevant theories on avatars, this paper summarizes the motivations behind Internet nickname choices in terms of three aspects: virtual exploration, social navigation and contextual adaptation. Moreover, from the perspective of collective self-esteem (CSE) and group identification, this research explores the influence mechanism between the motivations underlying Internet nickname choices and users’ online social interactions. A total of 394 samples were obtained from online communities in China to test our research model. We found that virtual exploration, social navigation and contextual adaptation are three motivations for creating Internet nicknames, and they have direct effects on the online social interactions of users. CSE has a full mediating effect between virtual exploration and online social interaction and acts as a mediated variable between social navigation and online social interaction. Group identification fully mediates the relationship between social navigation and online social interaction as well as that between contextual adaptation and online social interaction. The conclusion of this paper provides not only a new perspective for the study of Internet nicknames but also a potentially feasible way to stimulate users’ online social interactions.     

Ownership discrimination and private firms financing in China

This study examines the financing/funding of private firms in China. Our results show that private firms are significantly less funded through formal financing channels such as bank loans than state-owned firms, and hence have to resort to alternative financing such as trade credit. Consistent with the theoretical expectation and literature, there is a substitution effect between trade credit and bank loans for private firms, but this effect is much weaker compared to that of state-owned firms. Moreover, while the univariate comparisons indicate that private firms obtain more notes payable than state-owned firms, the multivariate regression analyses show that the relation between bank loan and notes payable is positive and indifferent between private and state-owned firms.