Assessing the Empirical Linkage Among Access to Finance, Firm Quality, and Firm Performance: New Insight From Bangladeshi SMEs'.

Access to finance plays a central pillar on the sustainable firm growth of developing and developed nations. This study depicts the linkage between access to external finance, firm quality, and firms' performance as measured by labor productivity for sustainable small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs') development by employing the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and propensity score matching (PSM) techniques to alleviate the selection bias and endogeneity issue on Word bank enterprise survey (WBES) cross-sectional firm-level data of 3,196 Bangladeshi SMEs for 2007-2013 period. Empirical evidence linking access to external finance and labor productivity has been positive and significant. However, our finding explores a negative but significant relationship between exports and SME labor productivity. A further look into the results also exhibits no statistical significance in the interaction effect between firm quality and access to finance on labor productivity. Moreover, the study anticipates novel empirical support that, the disintegration effect of export sales between direct and indirect exports with labor productivity for credit-accessed firms, is also found statistically insignificant. Then, several policies are drawn from the results to gain international competitiveness, and to ensure more external finance channels for enhancing SMEs' performance and sustainable firm growth.

COVID-19 Vaccination Behavior Among Frontline Healthcare Workers in Pakistan: The Theory of Planned Behavior, Perceived Susceptibility, and Anticipated Regret.

Healthcare workers in Pakistan are still fighting at the frontline to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and have been identified as the earliest beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccination by the health authorities of the country. Besides, the high vaccination rates of frontline healthcare workers (FHWs) are essential to overcome the ongoing pandemic and reduce the vaccines hesitancy among the general population. The current research employed the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to investigate the COVID-19 vaccination behavior among FHWs in Pakistan as well as the predictors of such behavior. Following the epidemic control and prevention policies, a sample of 680 FHWs were accessed to fill in the questionnaire evaluating the components of the TPB. Moreover, the potential role of anticipated regret (AR) and perceived susceptibility (PS) on COVID-19 vaccination behavior was also assessed. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results revealed that the TPB components, as well as the AR, have positive associations with the COVID-19 vaccination behavior. The results further confirmed that PS positively affects the anticipated regret, attitude (ATT), and subjective norm (SN) to vaccinate against SARS-CoV-2. The perceived susceptibility also has a positive association with COVID-19 vaccination behavior through the mediation of anticipated regret, ATT, and SN. Our findings highlighted the importance of COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare workers, which can be applied to reduce vaccine hesitancy among the general public.

How Culture and Trustworthiness Interact in Different E-Commerce Contexts: A Comparative Analysis of Consumers' Intention to Purchase on Platforms of Different Origins.

The outgrowth of e-commerce has advanced the development of countries' economies. Today, online marketplaces are targeting not only their local customers but are also spreading their interests overseas, expanding cross-border e-commerce. The current study aims to analyze the interaction of customer's personal traits, such as national culture, disposition to trust, and perceived trustworthiness, and their effect on the purchase intention within different e-commerce contexts. The contexts are chosen based on the country-of-origin parameter and serve as the moderator in the research model. Both direct and indirect effects of cultural dimensions on trustworthiness and purchase intention are analyzed within the research framework. The data for the analysis are randomly collected among the Russian population and assessed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The analysis results prove the marketplace context moderates the interaction of customers' personal traits among each other and their effect on the purchase intention. The study shows that dimensions of national culture have a more substantial effect on perceived trustworthiness and purchase intention in the Chinese marketplace context. The current study contributes to the analysis of customer behavior patterns within context, expanding context-related research direction. It increases the specificity of the culture and trustworthiness research and deepens the understanding of country-of-origin moderating effect in e-commerce. Moreover, addressing a high-level uncertainty avoidance culture within the research framework, the study diversifies the existing set of analyzed cultures in the e-commerce environment. The current study is applicable both in domestic and in cross-border e-commerce practice, broadening the understanding of consumer behavior patterns. The research model is relevant for the analysis of trust-effected behavioral outcomes.

Transformational Leadership and Project Success: Serial Mediation of Team-Building and Teamwork.

This research investigates the impact of transformational leadership (TL) style on project success (PS) in the indirect effect of serial mediation of team-building and teamwork quality (TWQ). A quantitative research approach was used for this study. Data were gathered from 374 professional information system development (ISD) project managers in Pakistan. The hypotheses were tested using regression analysis with bootstrapping. Both team-building and teamwork independently and serially mediate the relationship between the TL and PS of the project managers, respectively. The TL style of the project manager intensifies PS with team-building practices (TBP) and TWQ. The TL boosts TWQ in terms of communication, coordination, and cohesion to achieve a successful project. The findings suggest that TL is associated with PS through serial mediation of team-building and teamwork. No research to date has used this nascent methodology to explore the association between TL and PS.

Food Consumption Behavior of Pakistani Students Living in China: The Role of Food Safety and Health Consciousness in the Wake of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic.

The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has considerably changed global food production, processing, and consumption at different levels. Sojourners are among those who have experienced a higher level of food insecurity during the crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak. The current research aimed to investigate the immediate consumption behavioral intentions of the Pakistani international students in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. This study applied the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and background factors of food safety and health consciousness that influence the consumption behavioral intention of Pakistani students toward unfamiliar local food in China. A relational model was analyzed where food safety and health consciousness were hypothesized to serve as background variables associated with TPB components. Moreover, the indirect effects of food safety and health consciousness on behavioral intentions were assessed. The data were collected through convenience samples from 462 Pakistani international students and were analyzed through partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results confirmed that food safety and health consciousness were positively associated with attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC). However, food safety and health consciousness were indirectly associated with the behavioral intention only through ATT and SN. The results highlighted the role of food safety and health consciousness as important antecedents of classical TPB components that affect intentions and behaviors to avoid unfamiliar local food in a migrated context. The present study provides enlightenment to those who aim to investigate the consumption behavioral intentions of sojourners in the wake of the pandemic situation based on food safety and health consciousness. The findings of the current study are also applicable to general consumption patterns in the food sector.

Towards a green economic policy framework in China: role of green investment in fostering clean energy consumption and environmental sustainability.

Recently, China has relished rapid green investment, and its influence on clean energy consumption and environment is substantial. Therefore, this study scrutinizes the effects of green investment on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions in China by using autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) approach over time from 1998 to 2019. The results show that green investment tends to have a positive effect on clean energy consumption in China in the long run. The outcomes of study also show that green investment also tends to have a negative effect on CO2 emissions in China, but it has a small effect on carbon emissions in magnitude in the long run. Importantly, possible channels revealed green investment encouraging consumers and producers to consume clean energy, thereby positively affecting the environmental quality in China. Other control variables' findings show that environmental tax and financial development have increased the environmental quality by decreasing the CO2 emissions. Based on the findings, it recommends that green investment is considered necessary for encouraging clean energy consumption to reduce carbon emissions in high pollutant economies.

Green purchase behavior towards green housing: an investigation of Bangladeshi consumers.

Worldwide green products are getting popularity and acceptance due to energy crisis, climate change, and other environmental degradations which reveal the upcoming challenges of the twenty-first century. In construction industry, green housing (GH) is an emerging concept towards environmental sustainability. However, this study intends to consider the green purchase intention of Bangladeshi consumers towards GH through augmented theory of planned behavior (TPB) implantation. To investigate proposed hypotheses, the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach is applied on a sample set of 319 valid responses residing in Dhaka City and aging over 20 years. The empirical results infer that attitude and consumers' perceived behavioral control are significant features of green purchase intention and have a vital role in green purchase behavior. In contrast, environmental concern, environmental knowledge, and subjective norm have no direct effect on the green purchase intention of consumers towards GH in Bangladesh. Instead, environmental knowledge and environmental concern indirectly affect the green purchase intention. The findings of the present study can contribute to the existing literature to understand Bangladeshi consumers' green purchase intention and their green purchase behavior and promote GH which can play a robust role in environmental sustainability.