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BackgroundSocial distancing is an effective preventative policy for COVID-19 that is enforced by governments worldwide. However, significant variations are observed in adherence to social distancing across individuals and countries. Due to the lack of treatment, rapid spread, and prevalence of COVID-19, panic and fear associated with the disease causes great stress. Subsequent effects will be a variation around the coping and mitigation strategies for different individuals following different paths to manage the situation. ObjectiveThis study aims to explore how threat and coping appraisal processes work as mechanisms between information and citizens’ adherence to COVID-19–related recommendations (ie, how the information sources and social media influence threat and coping appraisal processes with COVID-19 and how the threat and coping appraisal processes influence adherence to policy guidelines). In addition, this study aims to explore how citizens in three different countries (the United States, Kuwait, and South Korea), randomly sampled, are effectively using the mechanisms. MethodsRandomly sampled online survey data collected by a global firm in May 2020 from 162 citizens of the United States, 185 of Kuwait, and 71 of South Korea were analyzed, resulting in a total sample size of 418. A seemingly unrelated regression model, controlling for several counterfactuals, was used for analysis. The study’s focal estimated effects were compared across the three countries using the weighted distance between the parameter estimates. ResultsThe seemingly unrelated regression model estimation results suggested that, overall, the intensity of information source use for the COVID-19 pandemic positively influenced the threat appraisal for the disease (P

BackgroundSocial distancing is an effective preventative policy for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that is enforced by governments worldwide. However, significant variations are observed in following the policy across individuals and countries. Arguably, differences in citizens’ adherence actions will be influenced by their perceptions about government’s plans and the information available to guide their behaviors—more so in the digital age in the realm of mass influence of social media on citizens. Insights into the underlying factors and dynamics involved with citizens’ adherence process will inform the policy makers to follow appropriate communication and messaging approaches to influence citizens’ willingness to adhere to the recommendations. ObjectiveThe aim of this study is a comparative evaluation of citizens’ adherence process to COVID-19–relevant recommendations by the government. The focus is on how three different countries’ (United States, Kuwait, and South Korea) citizens, randomly sampled, respond to governments’ pandemic guidance efforts. We draw insights into two categories of perceived government roles in managing the pandemic: (1) citizens’ perceptions of government’s role in responding to the pandemic and (2) citizens’ perceptions of government’s business reopening efforts. Undoubtedly, the internet and social media have burgeoned, with differing effects on shaping individuals’ views and assessments of the COVID-19 situation; we argue and test for the effects of information sources, social media use, and knowledge on the adherence actions. MethodsWe randomly sampled web-based survey data collected by a global firm in May 2020 from citizens of the United States, Kuwait, and South Korea. A nonlinear ordered probit regression, controlling for several counterfactuals, was used for analysis. The focal estimated effects of the study were compared across countries using the weighted distance between the parameter estimates. ResultsThe total sample size was 482 respondents, of which 207 (43%) lived in the United States, 181 (38%) lived in Kuwait, and 94 (20%) lived in South Korea. The ordered probit estimation results suggest that overall, perception of government response efforts positively influenced self-adherence (P

Mitigating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission problem is one efficient way to respond to climate change challenges. Firms must proactively manage GHG emissions, with increasing pressure from various stakeholders to be environmentally responsible. GHG Protocol Tools help in managing GHG emissions. However, besides responsibility, the factors that influence the adoption and implementation of GHG Protocol Tools is sparsely investigated in empirical research, although studies point to different benefits and pressures influencing adoption. This study examines the factors affecting GHG Protocol Tool usage in organizations in China and South Korea. We consider two contrasting perspectives, affordance-based perceived benefits and constraint-based perceived pressures through imitating others, for GHG Protocol Tool adoption. Survey data from samples of firms from both countries are used for analysis. Results of empirical analyses indicate that perceived benefits and pressures have a positive relationship with the usage intention of GHG Protocol Tools. In comparison, the perceived benefits play a more critical role than the perceived pressures. Comparative analysis is conducted to explore the differences between Chinese and Korean firms, and study implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital information is a new source of political information for citizens. News websites differ in the diversity of news content that they deliver, and such difference may have varied impacts on political behavior. This study explores the impact of news website characteristics on users' news browsing behaviors, and in turn on voting participation. Using datasets on Internet browsing and U.S. presidential elections, the study finds indications that both the popularity and apparent bias of websites have an impact on the browsing behaviors of users. Non-biased websites have more user visits and longer user visits than biased websites, which positively correlate with users' voting behaviors. Also, the longer users navigate news websites and the more users visit the news website, the higher the apparent political participation. The paper concludes with the implications of the research for political systems and news content providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online health infomediaries are emerging as a critical element in the healthcare sector to support and influence individuals' health and wellness decisions. The business success and effectiveness of health infomediaries depend on the active and sustained engagement of patients. Although the growth in the number of participants in an infomediary is expected to add value by increasing the diversity of information that is potentially exchanged, the infomediary cannot survive without the sustained engagement of existing users. The challenge is to understand the underlying processes at the operational workflow level of an infomediary that can lead to sustained engagement of patients. For an infomediary to increase engagement, it needs to know not only what motivates participants to join an infomediary but also what keeps them engaged in various stages of participation or transitions. In this study, we employ a Markov Chain modeling approach, along with an analysis of the user activities data, to understand the underlying mechanism of patient engagement along with several transition states in an online health infomediary. We tracked 127,610 members, with more than 1 million activities involved in an online health infomediary that supports cosmetic and reconstructive surgery patients over one year. Patients' decisions for cosmetic and reconstructive surgery are health and well‐being choices that rely not only on patients' current situation but also on the knowledge and experience of others. This relevance of the health infomediary context is explored in this study. We sampled the activities of 32,505 active users' activities with data on more than 500,000 activities. We analyzed the dynamics of user behaviors by modeling longitudinal transition probabilities across different states of participation. Additional analyses and robustness checks, using text‐mined data from the users' activities, are introduced to gain nuanced insights into user engagement. Our study provides several practical implications for the design and management of an online health infomediary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The natural‐resource‐based view of the firm suggests that there are benefits associated with voluntary disclosure of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, in that this signals quality of management, as well as the quality of the firm's financial strategy, to its investors. With increased demand for transparency of firm activities, this assertion needs re‐examination. We examine the effects of governance, environmental and social responsibility performance on the firm, and find moderate support for CSR disclosure increasing firm value. However, only the disclosure of social responsibility scores was associated with higher levels of firm value, as measured by Tobin's q. This relationship was positively moderated by the extent to which a firm was consumer facing. These findings suggest that strategic engagement in social responsibility, rather than merely sponsoring environmental initiatives, contributes to increasing firm value through CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of competitive displacement is central to theories of media evolution, and the threat that the Internet has posed to printed newspapers provides an ongoing case study on the topic. In particular, this situation offers an opportunity to examine the strategic efforts of print newspapers to prevent competitive displacement, as well as the effectiveness of these strategies. This article addresses these issues through an analysis of a unique data set, constructed from 20 years of newspaper circulation data, as well as data on local market characteristics, newspaper staffing and content variety, and state-level Internet penetration. Specifically, this article examines whether, and to what extent, these competitive strategies impacted local print newspaper circulation trends over this 20-year time period. This analysis focuses on the following strategic responses: (a) newspapers’ launching of online versions (a diversification strategy within the language of media evolution literature); and (b) newspapers’ efforts to cover a greater variety of subject areas, as measured by the number of editors and special editorial sections produced. (The authors characterize these as a “mimicking” strategy from media evolution literature, as this strategy essentially represents an effort to simulate the much greater content variety that readers can find online). This article examines the relationships between these circulation, strategic, and Internet penetration variables over a 20-year time period, while also taking into account relevant characteristics of local newspaper markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contemporary media management, the sharing of news articles among readers’ family, friends, and social circle is vital to the media outlet’s reaching a wide audience and building engagement. As the use of social media is becoming more integrated into the core strategy of many businesses, the propensity to share news has become a key metric to measure and understand media impact. Although existing literature suggests that increasing the centrality of news sharing has become an important factor in audience engagement, empirical evidence of the influence of news sharing is sparse. The challenges in motivating news readers to share in the media environment call for research on the characteristics that predict the spreading of news. In this regard, we investigate how textual characteristics of news articles influence sharing activities. Using a publicly available secondary dataset of 39,797 records from Mashable, we build a decision tree and conducted regression analysis to identify the factors that are most influential in terms of sharing. We find that subjective writing style, polar sentiments expressed in the title of an article, and embedded content, such as external links and images, are positively associated with number of shares. In addition, we find that sharing of articles occurs more often through social media channels than through other special interest websites (e.g., entertainment, business) and more frequently on weekends. We provide managerial insights into the economics of the contemporary news business and guidelines to measure, monetize, and analyze audience engagement based on the sharing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, firms are increasingly disclosing sustainability indicators on online platforms to attract stakeholders' interests. It is vital to understand what indicators reflect more on a firm's performance and valuations. This study focuses on deriving value-oriented business intelligence from the voluntary disclosure of sustainability reports. The analysis in this study involves a three-stage approach: (1) Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) based topic modeling algorithm to identify and summarize typical contents expressed in various documents, (2) firm's sustainability maturity modeled as a function of its strategic intent using a latent Markov model (LMM) to estimate the statistical significance and the extent of their relationships, and (3) empirical analysis using random effect linear and non-linear probit models to explore the impact of antecedents and firm performance consequences of three strategic intents. This study highlights using an advanced business analytics approach, specifically with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, to codify intangible knowledge embedded in annual sustainability reports to infer a firm's strategic intent behind voluntary disclosure. In addition, this study aims to analyze the influence of the firm's sustainability strategic intent on its financial performance. A secondary panel dataset consisting of information on 680 firms in 3 years was constructed by matching the text mined data with information from other sources. Results indicate that, on the one hand, while external stakeholder engagement is the primary motivation behind voluntary disclosure of sustainability reporting, firms are starting to engage internal stakeholders through workforce practices. On the other hand, internal employee-oriented intent has more influence on firm performance than external customer-oriented intent. This study demonstrates a toolset to index firms' sustainability indicators and evaluates firms' sustainability practice as an intangible asset and its impact on firms' financial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination is the next major step in fighting the pandemic. However, significant variations are observed in the willingness to take the vaccination by citizens across different countries. Arguably, differences in vaccination intentions will be influenced by beliefs around vaccines to influence health. Often perceptions of what others are doing and the information available guide individuals' behaviors for vaccination. This is more so in the digital age with the influence of the internet and media. This study aims to determine the factors that impact willingness to vaccinate for COVID-19. We examined factors associated with acceptance of vaccine based on (1) constructs of the Health Belief Model (HBM), (2) sources of information, (3) social media usage, (4) knowledge of COVID-19 treatment, and (5) perception of government's efforts for mitigation. Randomly sampled online survey data was collected by a global firm between December 2020 and January 2021 from 372 citizens (with a response rate of 96.6%) from multiple regions, including North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Ordered probit regression suggests that the health belief model constructs hold. Perceived severity of COVID-19 ( P < 0.001) and action cues of others taking the vaccine positively influences a subject's vaccine intent ( P < 0.001), perceived benefits and perceived efficacy of the vaccine positively influences a subject's vaccine intent ( P < 0.001). Perceived barriers negatively influence vaccine intent ( P < 0.001). Interestingly as for media usage, mainstream media (e.g., TV, newspaper) ( P = 0.006) and social media ( P = 0.013) both negatively influence a subject's vaccine intent. Social media platforms that are more entertainment and social-based, such as Whatsapp, Instagram, and YouTube, have a negative and significant influence on vaccine intent ( P = 0.061), compared to other more information-based social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn). Knowledge of COVID-19 treatment positively influences vaccine intent ( P = 0.023). Lastly, governmental efforts' perceived reliability in mitigation strategy ( P = 0.028) and response efforts ( P = 0.004) negatively influence vaccine intent. The study highlights the "wait-and-see" action cue from others and leaders in the community. It also informs the importance of shaping media information for vaccination through informative media and social media outlets to counteract any misinformation., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Al-Hasan, Khuntia and Yim.)

Health infomediary systems are emerging as important knowledge sharing platforms that help patients manage their own health outside of traditional health care delivery models. Patients participate in health infomediaries to learn from other patients' experiences and knowledge. Knowledge sharing is an important aspect of the success of a health infomediary. Factors related to self-concept have been widely studied in the domains of psychiatry and psychology, in settings such as mental health and behavioural well-being, but remain unexplored in the digital health context. In particular, it is not known how self-concept influences knowledge sharing behaviours in health infomediaries. This study posits that self-efficacy, social identity, and self-stigma drive knowledge sharing in an infomediary through emotional empowerment and appearance-contingent self-esteem. We use the health belief model as a foundation to propose a two-stage model and testable hypotheses. We used secondary archival data of 222 patients participating in a health infomediary specialising in reconstructive surgery. Analyses using structural equation modelling and econometric methods support the hypotheses. Findings broadly suggest that there are distinct paths through emotional empowerment and appearance-contingent self-esteem that can motivate users to contribute knowledge in health infomediaries. We explain the managerial insights and contributions of our study., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.