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The purpose of this paper is to design a climbing robot connected by a connecting rod mechanism to achieve multi-functional tasks such as obstacles crossing and climbing of power transmission towers.

A connecting rod type gripper has been designed to achieve stable grasping of angle steel. Before grasping, use coordination between structures to achieve stable docking and grasping. By using the alternating movements of two claws and the middle climbing mechanism, the climbing and obstacle crossing of the angle steel were achieved.

Through a simple linkage mechanism, a climbing robot has been designed, greatly reducing the overall mass of the robot. It can also carry a load of 1 kg, and the climbing mechanism can perform stable climbing. The maximum step distance of the climbing robot is 543 mm, which can achieve the crossing of angle steel obstacles.

A transmission tower climbing mechanism was proposed by analyzing the working environment. Through the locking ability of the screw nut, stable clamping of the angle steel is achieved, and a pitch mechanism is designed to adjust the posture of the hand claw.

The purpose of this study was to understand consumers' continuance intention to purchase in social commerce from an integrated perspective of the expectation confirmation model (ECM) and information adoption model (IAM). Moreover, the cultural difference between the United States and China was explored in the integrated model.

A total of 1,589 responses were collected from American (n = 725) and Chinese consumers (n = 864). The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to perform measurement assessment, structural model and multiple group analysis.

Results showed that consumers' continuance intention to purchase in social commerce was significantly predicted by the integrated model. Within the ECM, confirmation of expectations positively affected information usefulness and satisfaction, and information usefulness positively influenced satisfaction, which further led to continuance intention. Moreover, within the IAM, both argument quality and source credibility positively affect information usefulness, which leads to information adoption and continuance intention to purchase in social commerce. In addition, the influences of information usefulness on information adoption and continuance intention to purchase in social commerce were stronger for American consumers.

The findings of this study gain a better understanding of consumers' decision-making process and cultural differences between American and Chinese consumers.

The authors investigated the factors influencing consumer evaluations of advertisements for ethical luxury products that incorporate animal rights and protection concerns. The authors empirically examined how ethical messages influence advertisement persuasiveness through ethical consumer guilt and positively impact consumer evaluations of ethical luxury products. Furthermore, the authors explored the moderating role of consumers’ independent versus interdependent self-construals.

The authors conducted four experimental studies on the interplay among ethicality, luxury brand positioning and self-construal. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that moral emotions were responsible for the effect of ethical luxury advertisements that address animal welfare on brand attitude.

Advertisement messages signaling a luxury brand’s ethical efforts increase empathy through ethical consumer guilt, thereby generating favorable attitudes toward luxury products. However, this effect is limited to consumers with independent self-construal in South Korea and the United States of America.

The authors offer novel insights into the roles of ethical consumer guilt and empathy in the positive effects of ethical messages from luxury brands. Furthermore, the authors identified brand type and self-construal as boundary conditions for the effects observed across different consumer groups and markets.

Using data from Vietnam to reveal which factors affected the impressive growth of Vietnam's e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, the study proposed a conceptual model in which the influence of COVID-19 information overload (IO) on online purchase intention (OPI) was discovered. The authors were also interested in examining the moderator roles of self-construal (SC), perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) in inducing the intention to make an online purchase.

Perceived threat (PT) and cyberchondria (C) played full mediation roles in the impact of IO on OPI. Moreover, PT was found to be a partial mediator of the relationship between IO and C. Furthermore, interdependent self-construal (IntSC) positively moderated the positive effect of IO on PT. Finally, PU and PEOU showed significant moderated moderation effects, in which PU moderated the effects of PT and C on OPI, whereas PU itself was moderated by PEOU.

Understanding the positive effects of IO, C and PT on OPI can be useful for marketers. In addition, managers should improve the ease-of-use and usefulness of online stores/platforms to attract more consumers to online channels.

Marketers and managers should learn more about how to take advantage of IO, PT and C. For instance, to sell medical supplements, marketer should push up related-health information such as obesity, diabetics, to make consumers perceive a threat to their health and search for ways to improve their health condition. This is the time when advertisements for medical supplements bring into play. This method can be applied in many different fields. The key is that marketers should find out what is the threat that their targeted customers can perceive and then spread out a huge amount of relevant information.

The government should control infodemic and guide people to obtain official information. This helps to restrain the PT and C, which seriously harm people's health and affect their behaviors, such as making unusual or panicked purchases. This study also suggests a considerable concern that residents of Asian cultures, where IntSC is dominant, may perceive threat more than residents of Western cultures.

Limited research addresses the relationship between PEOU and PU when they act as moderators. Current research not only explains the moderation effect of PU under the influence of PEOU but also suggests that PEOU may be more important than PU in emerging markets due to customers' inexperience in online markets or channels. It also explores the factors that influenced OPI in Vietnam during the COVID-19 outbreak and contributes to the scientific literature on Vietnam, especially in terms of discovering the tendency of SC, which has not been mentioned before in research about Vietnamese.

The rise of emerging economies in the innovation landscape has often been attributed to the positive spillovers of innovation capabilities from multinational corporations (MNCs). However, it is less certain that their innovative capabilities imported from the home country function effectively in the host country from the outset. This study examines the performance of the innovation capabilities of MNC subsidiaries in emerging economies over time by considering the gradual process of their learning about host countries.

We employed stochastic frontier analysis to measure innovation capabilities, our focal construct. For regression analysis, we applied the Mundlak estimator, a variant of the fixed-effects panel estimator, to a sample comprising subsidiaries of MNCs from technologically advanced nations operating in Korea between 2006 and 2016.

Our results indicate that the innovation capabilities of MNC subsidiaries initially underperform those of local firms but improve over time, eventually surpassing the capabilities of their local counterparts. Furthermore, our findings reveal that institutional distance amplifies the underperformance of the innovation capabilities of MNC subsidiaries.

This study contributes to the literature by extending both theoretical development and empirical measurement of innovation capabilities in cross-national settings. Additionally, it deepens our understanding of whether and how MNC subsidiaries adapt their innovation capabilities to the local market environment.

This study is based on a web-based advertising value model, adding emotional appeal, advertising credibility, advertising clicks, product evaluation and incentive to examine the impact on consumers' product evaluation and purchase intention.

In total, 313 valid online questionnaires were collected from those who had browsed the social media advertisement.

The results show that advertising credibility and emotional appeal have a higher impact on advertising attitude than informativeness and irritation in the original web-based advertising value model.

The findings strengthen the literature on the antecedents of advertising attitude in social media context, confirming advertising clicks as a predictor of product evaluation, and determining that advertising attitude, product evaluation and incentive play key roles as predictors of consumer purchase intention.

The findings are particularly relevant to advertising marketing managers. In the context of social media advertising, the advertising credibility of consumers is the key to increasing consumers' willingness to purchase. Advertisers must establish a good advertising reputation to consumers in the social media context.

This study combines the web-based advertising value model, advertising clicks, product evaluation and incentive to investigate the factors that influence customers' purchase decisions in the context of social media.

This study examines how the presence of labor unions affects a firm’s pay disparity between executives and employees and its financial statement comparability.

It uses firm-level labor union data in Korea and applies regression analyses to a sample of 1,776 firm-year observations from 2004 to 2008.

The authors find that unionized firms have a smaller pay disparity between executives and employees than non-unionized firms, suggesting that labor unions place pressure on the pay structure. Unionization also lowers financial statement comparability, which helps managers of unionized firms maintain information asymmetry. Further, this negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is stronger in non-chaebol firms, implying that they are more motivated than chaebol firms to reduce their financial statement comparability in response to the presence of labor unions. In addition, the negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is pronounced in profit-making firms, firms with less analyst following, firms with fewer foreign investors and firms in more competitive product markets.

The finding that firms adjust comparability in response to labor unions interests regulators and policymakers, who emphasize the role of comparability in providing usefulness to information users.

The findings add to the existing literature on the effect of labor unions on firms' pay structures and accounting choices.

This study aims to analyse the effect of related party transactions (RPTs) on earnings quality in a sample of Spanish listed firms, as well as the moderating role played by female directors in the relationship between RPTs and earnings quality.

The sample includes non-financial Spanish listed firms from 2005 to 2019. The authors use panel data analysis based on the firm fixed-effect estimator. Additionally, the authors use the two-step system generalized method of moments estimator to test the robustness of the results.

The results show a negative effect of RPTs on earnings quality. Further analysis reveals that the negative effect is mainly driven by transactions between the firm and its directors and major shareholders, as well as by RPTs that are more likely to reflect insiders’ self-interest. Moreover, the authors show that the presence of female directors reduces the negative impact of RPTs on earnings quality.

The study provides practical implications for investors, auditors and policymakers, who should be aware that RPTs might harm earnings quality and adversely affect the flow of financial capital to promising investment opportunities. Additionally, the study evidences the key governance role played by female directors regarding financial reporting policies as RPTs increase.

The findings promote the need for a higher representation of women in leadership positions since the authors reveal the key governance role played by female directors regarding financial reporting policies as RPTs increase.

The results to emerge from the study complement available evidence concerning the effect of RPTs on earnings quality in a continental European country. The authors also provide novel evidence vis-à-vis the role of female directors in the relationship between RPTs and earnings quality.

Customer referral programs (CRPs) are popular; however, they often generate low referral rates. The authors propose that certain CRP referral tasks may hinder consumers’ referral likelihood. This study aims to explore the effects of referral tasks (communication content and approach) on customers’ referral likelihood on social platforms and the role of self-construal.

This study establishes a theoretical model based on online social platforms and conducts three scenario-based experiments. The authors obtain data from consumers on Sojump platform and test the hypotheses using analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis and mediation analysis in SPSS. The valid sample sizes for these three experiments are 288, 203 and 214, respectively.

Three experimental studies indicate that communication content and approach have a significant effect on referral likelihood. Furthermore, the effect of communication content on referral likelihood depends on the communication approach. Self-construal plays a moderating role in the effect of communication content and approach on perceived social costs.

CRPs typically involve tasks and rewards; consumers are asked to complete a referral task and then receive a reward. Both tasks and rewards can affect an individual’s willingness to participate; however, existing studies on CRP focus primarily on the reward component. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate the role of referral tasks (communication content and approach) in CRPs. The authors extend the related research by examining the impact of referral tasks on consumers’ willingness to recommend. In addition, this study introduces self-construal into CRPs research.

This study aims to determine museum experiences by analyzing the TripAdvisor reviews of the museum visitors in Gaziantep and offer suggestions for improving the visitors' experiences by taking museum curators' opinions.

The case study method was used as one of the qualitative approaches in the study. The research comprises two stages. TripAdvisor reviews about five museums in Gaziantep were analyzed in the first stage, and museum curators' opinions on the visitor complaint reasons and solution suggestions were discussed in the second stage.

The study showed that satisfying or non-satisfying experience factors might differ according to visitors, museum curators and both visitors and museum curators. Therefore, each museum curator should effectively manage every component of visitor experience factors by its target audience.

Although this study has some valuable findings and contributes to the literature, it also has limitations. The study's sample consists of five museums in Gaziantep. Further studies can be carried out on a larger population and sample. The data for determining visitor experiences, the first stage of the research, were obtained only from an online platform (TripAdvisor).

The proposed model provides a holistic perspective on evaluating and managing visitor experience. There may be structural problems (small size of the museum area, lack of parking spaces and elevators, etc.) with the museum beyond the manager's control. Also, the lack of information and communication (limited concept, lack of artifacts, etc.) causes criticisms of the museum.

This paper contributes to the museum management literature with a model for enriching the quality of the museum experience and increasing the museum's attractiveness. The study showed that museums contribute to the visitor's experience in all dimensions. While visitors thought museums primarily contribute to object experience, museum curators thought museums contribute more to visitors' cognitive experience and other experience elements.

The present study analyzed the visitor comments and the opinions of museum curators from a holistic perspective, considering the internal and external factors that are effective in the visitor experience, and revealed the reasons for the visitors' negative experience and the solution suggestions toward the improvement of the visitor experience.