Relationships between Community Festival Participation, Social Capital, and Subjective Well-Being in a Cross-Cultural Context.

This study explores the relationships among social capital, community festival participation, and subjective well-being (SWB). It examines the mediating role of festival participation between social capital and SWB. The dataset Social Well-being Survey in Asia from the Philippines and Thailand was collected using nationwide surveys in 2016. The total number of respondents was 1057 in the Philippines and 982 in Thailand. The results affirm several determinants related to SWB, which is composed of happiness and overall life satisfaction. The models show significant relationships among festival participation, social capital, and SWB. The results indicate strong associations among social capital with family and relatives, festival participation, and SWB. The interaction effects between the two countries are included. Structural and cognitive social capital with kinship groups were important determinants in facilitating festival participation, and positively associated with SWB. Moreover, the results identify the mediating effect of festival participation between social capital with family and relatives and SWB. The results can provide similarities and differences in the relationships among social capital and kinship groups, community festival participation, and SWB between the Philippines and Thailand. This study offers important empirical evidence of a cross-cultural study in the context of the Philippines and Thailand.

The effect of corporate social responsibility on trustful relationship, supportive communication intention, and brand loyalty of ethnic halal restaurants.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among CSR activities, brand trust, supportive communication intention, and brand loyalty in a halal restaurant franchise. This study attempts to understand the brand loyalty formation among foreigners visiting a halal ethnic restaurant franchise in South Korea. This study can contribute to the body of empirical evidence showing that CSR activities for different stakeholders can increase brand loyalty mediated by trust. Data were collected from an online survey platform, and visitors were recruited in one of the largest halal franchise restaurants in Korea. This study used a convenience sampling technique, and 225 questionnaires were used for final analysis. Structural equation modeling was likewise used in this research. The results reveal that CSR activities include four constructs: for communities, employees, the environment, and customers. These four dimensions reflect voluntary activities for core stakeholders and are positively associated with enhancement of trustful relationships between customers and restaurants. Among four CSR dimensions, CSR activities to employee are the most influential dimension, followed by CSR to community and to environment. However, the insignificant effect of CSR activities to customers on trust is found. Furthermore, trust positively influences supportive communication intention and brand loyalty. The proposed model of this present study can shed light on how to enhance brand loyalty and sustain trustful and emotional value of an ethnic restaurant franchise. The results can provide important implications for planning CSR engagement from a practical and managerial perspective in the restaurant industry.

The Role of COVID-19 Vaccine Perception, Hope, and Fear on the Travel Bubble Program.

The travel bubble program presented an appealing strategy for reopening international travel safely. However, a full vaccination regime is the foremost prerequisite of the program. Therefore, vaccination and the travel bubble are inextricably linked. This study investigated the roles of perceived vaccine efficacy, attitude towards the COVID-19 vaccine, and attitude toward the travel bubble on travel bubble intention. More importantly, the study also examined the mediating role of hope and fear among unvaccinated Korean adults between 20 and 29 years old. A total of 535 samples were collected to test the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling. In general, the results supported the proposed hypotheses. Notably, the intention to travel to a bubble destination was explained by 57% of the variance. Furthermore, hope mediated the relationship between vaccine attitude and travel bubble intention. Whereas fear mediated the relationship between perceived vaccine efficacy and intention. Hence, the findings suggest doubts around the vaccine efficacy and that a positive attitude towards the vaccine also install hope among the research samples.

The Moderating Roles of Sensation Seeking and Worry among Nature-Based Adventure Tourists.

The adventure tourism subsector continues to be popular today. Both industry and academia define adventure tourism's scope from either the physical (e.g., outdoor activity and physical activity) or psychological aspects (e.g., thrill seeking and challenges). Recent studies have pointed out that adventure tourism can be interpreted differently across cultures and markets. Still, risk has always been universally accepted as an essential characteristic of adventure tourism. Thus, most empirical research has studied the role of risk as one of the motivations. However, attempts to investigate related elements that are either a response to or a coping mechanism for the presence of risk are scarce. This present study adopted one of the most prominent frameworks in explaining behavioral intentions, the theory of planned behavior, and included involvement and knowledge variables to extend it. Furthermore, the sensation-seeking and worry constructs were tested for their moderating impact on intentions to participate in adventure tours. The results of structural equation modeling and multigroup invariance tests revealed that subjective norms were not a significant predictor of intentions, while both sensation seeking and worry significantly moderated the relationships between the study variables.