Purpose: This paper aims to explore the causal relationship of user-generated content (UGC) on trust in UGC (TUGC), destination image (DI) and tourist visit intention (VI) guided by the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory. This work further examined the mediating effect of TUGC and DI between UGC and VI.Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected through online and personal-administered surveys and randomized sampling. This work employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model empirically.Findings: In line with the SOR Theory, this work found UGCs that induce positive emotions and connection to the users motivate VI rather than UGCs that are predominantly factual. Furthermore, UGCs are considered reliable, authentic and less biased than brand-generated content. The findings of this work contribute to the theoretical understanding of UGC to VI in a destination.Practical implications: This work proposes that destination marketers prioritize UGC that evokes positive emotions and connections with users, as it is more effective in encouraging VI. Strategies such as incentivizing content creators, improving online presence and engaging influencers can maximize UGC. Enhancing online traffic quality, visibility and interaction and implementing content policies are crucial for UGC's effectiveness. Marketers should align destination products with tourists' interests and collaborate with influencers for affiliate marketing to increase tourist-generated UGC. Furthermore, improved connectivity encourages UGCs about the destination.Originality/value: In tourism marketing, UGC has become a valuable information source for tourists in making informed travel decisions. UGC is a tourist-generated content that offers factual information and authentic experiences through images, videos or text posted through social media platforms. UGC is considered more reputable than travel firms and the mainstream media as an information source. Due to the limited works on UGC in the literature, the influence of UGC on tourists' VIs has remained unexplored at the time of writing. This work bridges this gap by empirically examining the impact of UGC on Gen Z tourists' VI guided by the SOR theory.

Current literature merely identifies the driving factors of research productivity in higher education institutions without directly examining their interrelationships that would offer some fundamental insights into the nature of these factors. Thus, this work intends to identify those driving factors and establish their structural relationships to determine those factors with crucial roles in advancing research productivity. Due to the subjectivity of the identified driving factors and the notion that the evaluation of their relationships reflects an expert judgment, an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach and the Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis were adopted. Results show that institutional support, reward system, research funding, mentoring, and electronic information resources are the most crucial factors influencing research productivity. When addressed, these driving factors would motivate other driving factors, contributing to higher research productivity. In particular, these findings encourage higher education institutions to (1) efficiently allocate research funds and design mentoring programs, (2) offer efficient research incentive schemes, (3) develop initiatives that would support promising research proposals beneficial to the institution, and (4) collaborate with external organizations to grant funding for research proposals. These results contribute significantly to the literature as it provides meaningful insights that aid decision-makers in higher education institutions in resource allocation decisions, policy-making, and the design of efficient initiatives for augmenting their innovation potential.

This work proposes a structural model highlighting the research skills of undergraduate students. Due to the stages in their research project implementation, mentoring students becomes a crucial initiative in higher education institutions. Despite substantial progress in the literature linking mentoring and skills development, there is a lack of greater emphasis on research skills, especially for undergraduate students facing research work for the first time. Consequently, the direct relation between mentoring and research skills may not be straightforward. Thus, driven by social learning theory, the proposed model highlights the mediating effects of information literacy constructs and competency development on the relationship between mentoring and research skills. An empirical study of 539 participants via Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modeling supports six of the seven hypothesized paths. Three major theoretical contributions arise from the findings. Firstly, mentoring improves information-seeking skills and information-sharing behaviors and facilitates students’ competency development due to the technical knowledge transfer from the faculty mentor to student mentees. Secondly, information literacy constructs and competency development promote research skills, emphasizing that students with those behaviors and capacities will achieve enhanced research skills. Finally, our findings suggest that mentoring does not directly translate to improved research skills; instead, information-seeking and sharing behaviors and competency development fully mediate such a link. Thus, mentors must shape these behaviors for mentoring to develop students’ research skills. Theoretical and practical insights are outlined from these findings for university leadership to inform the design of mentoring initiatives for undergraduate students.

Globally, sports tourism is considered a vital type of tourism that combines sports and tourism to attract tourists, contribute to the economy, and promote local culture. Despite its straightforward relevance, the current literature finds some drawbacks of the social exchange theory (SET) in modeling local support in tourism development, particularly when dealing with emotional interactions among tourists and locals. Thus, this study integrates the emotional solidarity construct (i.e., welcoming nature, sympathetic understanding, and emotional closeness), residents’ attitudes, and the extension of SET (i.e., support for sports tourism, community contribution, and future support for sports tourism development) to model the residents’ support for future sports tourism development, with personality traits as a moderating variable between emotional solidarity and attitude. This study uses random sampling to obtain the response from 1004 residents in Danao City (Philippines)—an emerging destination for sporting events. Furthermore, partial least squares—structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is utilized to examine the direct relationships among the exogenous and endogenous constructs and the moderating effect of personality traits (i.e., Big Five personality traits). The results revealed that all direct relationships were supported, indicating that those emotional interactions among tourists and residents would affect the latter’s view on their support for sports tourism which would consequently translate to support for future development agenda. However, the moderating effect of the personality traits was not supported. Furthermore, a multigroup analysis was conducted to gain more profound implications on the varying attitudes of the residents towards sports tourism. Based on the study’s findings, insights were drawn for governments to design specific measures for developing sports tourism in view of local support.

During pandemics and outbreaks, the prevalence of fear among tourists reduces travel interests. To gradually reopen the tourism industry, subscribing to domestic tourism is a crucial mitigation strategy. Although an important agenda, evaluating the perceived degree of exposure of tourists to COVID-19 in tourist sites functioning under the domestic tourism initiatives has not been explored in the emerging literature. Thus, this work addresses this problem domain by proposing the use of TOPSIS-Sort – a recently introduced multiple criteria sorting method. To demonstrate such an application, 20 tourist sites in a central Philippine province are evaluated under six attributes that define exposure to COVID-19. With 208 survey participants, results show that 12 sites are assigned to the ‘moderate exposure’ class, and eight under the ‘high exposure’ class, with no tourist site assigned to the ‘low exposure’ class. The proposed approach offers primary stakeholders (i.e. government, tourist operators, and tourists) a decision support tool in view of tourism recovery.

This paper aims to identify the antecedents of buying behavior for secondhand clothing among millennials, as well as to determine their underlying causal relationships. Upon a comprehensive literature search, a total of 18 antecedents were found, and these are categorized into three motives, namely, economic, hedonic and recreational, and critical. As a case study in the Philippines, a focus group discussion among experts who are active millennial secondhand clothing users and buyers were tasked to identify the antecedents they have experienced and further confirm those extracted from the literature. To establish the causal relationships of these antecedents, categorize them into net causes or net effects, and address the vagueness associated with the decision-making process, a fuzzy DEMATEL method is used. Results reveal that avoidance of conventional channels proves to be the antecedent providing the highest impact among all other antecedents. Uniqueness, high quality, and fashion trend found to be the antecedents with the highest impacts received, making them the major net effects. Findings from this work hope to provide a framework among practitioners that would lead to a better understanding of millennials’ buying behavior for secondhand clothing.