literature review on corporate performance

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, corporate sustainability performance and firm performance research: literature review and future research agenda.

Management Decision

ISSN : 0025-1747

Article publication date: 1 March 2013

The aim of this paper is to present a taxonomy of available literature on the relation of sustainability performance and firm performance, and to provide a path for future research for this field of study.

Design/methodology/approach

Research papers were collected on sustainability performance assessment from various journals available at different online databases. The unit of evaluation was a full paper published in one of the relevant journals. Papers were classified in different categories and tabulated under various classes. A total of 101 research paper sources were studied and assessed in terms of nature of research, level of analysis, and application.

The review reveals that most of the research in the field of sustainability performance and firm performance association, analyzed this relationship in developed countries. The result differs in various cultural and economic contexts and there is no universally accepted direction of this relationship. Contribution of research has also revealed a pattern of growth in recent years. Financial performance is used in most of the research as a proxy to firm performance. As discussed, the different research gaps may be exploited for further research. It also argues that further empirical research in relation of corporate sustainability performance and firm performance is required in developing countries.

Research limitations/implications

The findings of this paper can be generalized only to the specific population of online databases selected for this research for a given period of time and not for the entire universe of the sustainability performance literature. There may be various unexploited areas for future research in terms of different variables.

Originality/value

This paper fulfils the need of a comprehensive review of corporate sustainability performance assessment literature. It provides a literature review and bibliography for the period between January 1992 and March 2011 for the use of both academicians and practitioners.

• Sustainability performance
• Firm performance
• Performance management
• Sustainable development

Goyal, P. , Rahman, Z. and Kazmi, A.A. (2013), "Corporate sustainability performance and firm performance research: Literature review and future research agenda", Management Decision , Vol. 51 No. 2, pp. 361-379. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741311301867

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles

All feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support

• DOI: 10.5430/IJBA.V3N2P28
• Corpus ID: 167641912

A Literature Review on Organization Culture and Corporate Performance

• Xiaohui Cui , Jun-chen Hu
• Published 15 March 2012
• International Journal of Business Administration

71 Citations

Perceptions of organizational culture and board effectiveness on malaysian cooperative board of directors, the effect of organizational culture on organizational economic performance, examining the effects of strategies, competition intelligence, and risk culture on business performance in international enterprises, impact of corporate culture on the commitment to the organization of employees working in enterprises in the mekong delta, vietnam, executive compensation, organizational culture and the glass ceiling, university organizational culture mapping using organizational culture assessment instrument, the influence of organizational culture on employee performance in the banking sector: evidence from gcb bank, ghana, a review on western and chinese organization culture: similarities and differences, job satisfaction of women employees in different organizational work culture, organizational culture and job satisfaction of greek banking institutions, 38 references, corporate culture and economic performance: a french study, does culture affect behavior and performance of firms the case of joint ventures in china, predicting corporate performance from organizational culture, leadership style, organizational culture and performance: empirical evidence from uk companies, organizational culture and performance – evidence from the fast food restaurant industry, effects of quality culture and corporate ethical values on employee work attitudes and job performance in turkey: an integrative approach, the strength of corporate culture and the reliability of firm performance, the impact of organizational culture on time-based manufacturing and performance, the impact of industrial relations climate, organizationalcommitment, and union loyalty on organizational performance: a longitudinal study., economic dependency on work: a moderator of the relationship between organizational commitment and performance., related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

•    Home

With the development and continuous improvement of China’s capital market, the operating performance of listed companies is getting more and more attention from its different stakeholders. Through collating the research literature related to corporate performance at home and abroad from 2015 to 2018, this paper finds that the research focuses on domestic and foreign literature are mostly different, and foreign research focuses on corporate performance evaluation and goal setting, while domestic research focuses more on policy , background, corporate strategy, and characteristics of the business itself. But both domestically and abroad, the relationship between human resources and corporate performance has been discussed. This article reviews the literature at home and abroad, and points out several issues that need attention in this field in the future.

Enterprise Performance , Performance Management , Performance Evaluation

Share and Cite:

1. Introduction

Enterprise performance is a very important issue involving many aspects. From a micro perspective, the quality of an enterprise’s operations involves not only the interests of its owners, but also the interests of stakeholders such as creditors and employees. From a macro perspective, the overall operating performance of a country’s enterprises is a key factor in determining a country’s international economic status. In recent years, scholars have carried out a lot of research around corporate performance in order to find more effective ways to improve corporate performance. Over time, scholars’ research on corporate performance has become increasingly divergent, and fewer and fewer people have paid attention. However, the practical world’s focus on corporate performance has not diminished, and how to improve corporate performance is still one of the problems that managers need to solve urgently. This article reviews the literature on corporate performance in recent years with a view to providing useful clues for further research in this area.

2. Corporate Performance Overview

This chapter mainly introduces concepts related to corporate performance, such as the definition and development of corporate performance, the origin of corporate performance management, and how to evaluate corporate performance.

2.1. Enterprise Performance

In the book “Financial Management” published by Zhou Guangguo and others in 2001, firm performance (Firm Performance) refers to the operating efficiency and performance of the company during a certain period of operation. The level of enterprise operating efficiency is mainly reflected in profitability, asset operation level, debt repayment ability and subsequent development ability. The performance of the operator is mainly reflected by the results and contributions made by the operator to the operation, growth and development of the enterprise in the process of managing the enterprise. Bates and Holton point out: “Performance is a multidimensional construct, and the results are different depending on the measured factors” (Michael Armstrong, Angela Barony, 1998). Schneider (1986) believes that the performance management system should be a complete cycle, including measurement and standardization, contract formation, planning, supervision, and assistance. To sum up, performance management is based on the premise of a complete system and is interconnected with many factors. Therefore, performance is a collective term of performance and efficiency, including the two meanings of the efficiency of the activity process and the result of the activity. At present, the general understanding of enterprise performance is that enterprise performance refers to the amount of output of a company under certain input conditions, or the net output of unit input.

2.2. Enterprise Performance Management

Enterprise performance is the input-output situation of a company during a certain period of operation. The enterprise must hope to obtain the maximum output with the minimum input, and thus derive performance management. According to Longman’s dictionary, performance management is “the act of performing or the state of being performed”, that is, the act or progress of execution. Therefore, performance management is a process-a continuous cycle of performance planning, performance counseling and communication, performance evaluation and evaluation, application of performance results, and improvement of performance targets for managers and employees at all levels to achieve organizational goals. The purpose of performance management is to continuously improve the performance of individuals, departments and organizations. The object is people, but people have thoughts and emotions, and they will cause fluctuations in performance. Therefore, performance management is the most difficult of all human resource management and enterprise management. Yes, in the 2006 World Economic Association assessment, performance management was ranked as the most difficult management problem.

2.3. Enterprise Performance Evaluation

At the same time, corporate performance, as a result of a certain period of time, is indispensable for evaluation. And different types of enterprises are usually not completely comparable, and the results obtained by different types of enterprises need to be evaluated with different standards. Therefore, the performance evaluation of enterprises (Performance Valuation) mainly refers to the evaluation subject according to a specific evaluation purpose. An act of objectively evaluating the performance and development of a company over a period of time by using certain indicators, standards, and methods. In the evaluation of enterprise performance, the evaluation subject and evaluation purpose are the starting point, the indicators, standards and methods are the means, and the performance and operation of the enterprise constitute the object of evaluation.

The development of evaluation indicators such as the Economic Value Added (Balanced Scorecard) and Balanced Scorecard is groundbreaking for the performance evaluation system. In order to better adapt to the rapidly developing modern economic system, a large number of scholars have proposed many new enterprise performance evaluation systems based on the original indicators. Gong Qiaoli advocates the establishment of an enterprise evaluation index system based on performance budget management, including economic benefit indicators and social benefit indicators. Based on the stakeholder theory, Li Pingli studied the interest protection mechanisms of different stakeholders and established a stakeholder model for evaluating performance of operators. Feng Lixia took EVA as the core indicator of the performance evaluation index system, and used the principle of balanced scorecard to interconnect a series of major procedures closely related to the creation of EVA to establish a pyramid-shaped performance evaluation system. Yang Zongchang and Xu Bo constructed a performance evaluation system starting from interest, income tax, depreciation, and amortization before profit. Zhu Zhilong and others borrowed from the basic structure of the balanced scorecard and the “Detailed Operational Performance Evaluation Rules” to construct a performance evaluation index system for listed companies that consists of a basic index system, a revised index system, and an evaluation index system.

3. Summary of Foreign Enterprise Performance Research

Foreign academic circles have more divergent concerns about corporate performance, including human resources and corporate performance, investor behavior, market price efficiency and corporate performance, goal setting and corporate performance, management control systems and corporate performance, accounting records and corporate performance, companies Persistence of performance, etc.

3.1. Abbreviations and Acronyms

Since the 1990s, human resources have gradually become an important source of corporate competitive advantage. As an important part of human resources, managers, especially senior managers, play an indispensable core leadership role in modern organizational decision-making.

Hsu, Novoselov, and Wang (2017) believe that overly confident CEOs are more willing to initiate investment projects that require experimentation, but often delay the response to bad news when the project is not implemented as planned. Accounting robustness accelerates the perception of bad news and spreads it to gatekeepers, making it more likely that CEOs will recognize problems earlier and start looking for solutions. Therefore, companies with overconfidence in CEO traits and accounting robustness should perform better. Their empirical tests confirm this prediction: Companies that adopt conservatives and run by overconfident CEOs often show better cash flow. Its findings apply to a variety of situations, including market response to acquisitions, downside cash flow risks, and analyst following. In addition, the joint positive effect of CEO self-confidence and accounting conservatism on corporate performance is stronger in highly uncertain environments and in companies facing less stringent financing constraints, which is consistent with theoretical predictions.

In addition to studying the personality characteristics of executives, there are also a large number of empirical studies examining the role of executive compensation in easing the agency conflict between executives and shareholders, but ignoring the importance of inter-relationships and synergies within the management team. In this regard, more and more executive compensation studies have adopted a multi-agent perspective, treating senior management as a team rather than isolated individuals. However, most of the empirical research on team-based contract design has focused on the impact of the distribution of executive compensation levels. And Robert et al. (2016) provided new insights into design based on team incentives, which is reflected in the distribution of cross-management compensation performance sensitivity (PPS). They investigated the relationship between managers and company performance and controlled the distribution of pay levels. Their research found that there is a critical level of PPS dispersion. When PPS dispersion is lower or higher than this critical level, company performance will deteriorate. This indicates that corporate performance is maximized with the internal optimal PPS dispersion. The results also show that the PPS dispersion contains permanent and temporary components. They speculate that the temporary component reflects the best discrete deviation from the regulatory cost, which inhibits the board from immediately rebuilding the optimal level. Consistent with the board’s limited process of adjusting the bias only to the optimal level, they documented any close to 70% of the company’s actual PPS dispersion over the next year. Finally, cross-sectional analysis shows that the detrimental effects of deviations from optimal PPS dispersion decrease during team tenure, increasing as teamwork and coordination become more important to business performance.

In recent years, regulators intend to improve the link between CEO compensation and company performance, and the implementation of performance stock options (PVSO) will help reduce agency behavior between shareholders and management. But the literature shows that the vision is good and the results are not satisfactory. The results of Abernethy, Kuang, and Qin (2015) indicate that strong CEOs can negate certain beneficial effects of PVSO by influencing adoption and selection of performance targets. They investigate whether the power of the CEO influences the company’s decision to change its compensation system in response to regulatory and public pressure, and evaluates whether the power of the CEO influences the choice of performance indicators to minimize the impact of these reforms on their wealth. They looked at one component of CEO compensation, namely the use of the PVSO program, and found that companies with strong CEOs added less of an additional challenge to the initial PVSO given to their CEO. These companies also seem to have adopted the PVSO program early and are more likely to do so in the face of public outrage over executive compensation. The findings suggest that strong CEOs are trying to calm public anger by adopting PVSO quickly, but early adoption of PVSO does not seem to be the best strategy for increasing shareholder value.

3.2. Investor Behavior, Market Price Efficiency and Corporate Performance

A persistent question in financial reporting is whether and how a company’s performance (“return indicator”) prominently measures investor behavior and market price efficiency Elliott et al. (2015) . In the laboratory market, test the impact of important income indicators on investor information search, belief in value, transaction quotes, and market price efficiency. These indicators have some ways of combining continuous and temporary elements. They found that the inclusion of temporary factors in important yield indicators led traders to search for unnecessary further information about these factors and overestimate their impact on basic values. Conversely, displaying permanent elements in revenue alone will increase the accuracy of traders’ valuations. Price usually reflects the trader’s belief in the value of the business, and it is most effective when instantaneous factors are completely excluded from the earnings indicator. Their research helps to study the significant impact of financial reports, including temporary factors in important income indicators that can lead to inefficient information search and beliefs about value bias that can cumulatively affect market prices. They also contribute to the research of the experimental market by showing that redundant disclosure is not always beneficial; excessive redundant disclosure of surplus factors can have a negative impact on investor behavior and market efficiency in particular.

3.3. Goals Setting and Corporate Performance

Although goal setting is important for companies, previous research has rarely provided purposeful uses and minimal impact (Anderson, Dekker and Sedatole, 2010; ttner and Larcker, 2001; Libby and Lindsay, 2010). Although some studies provide mixed evidence of performance results on target difficulty levels, studies have shown that setting difficult targets can improve performance, but empirical evidence from field research is complex and ambiguous. To explain this ambiguity, Arnold and Artz (2015) introduced and analyzed the target flexibility of companies in adjusting their goals during the year. They believe that target flexibility is related to target difficulty and company performance in the field, so it can significantly promote understanding of their relationships. Their review of surveys and archival data from 97 companies supports our predictions. They find that the difficulty of business unit goals has a direct positive impact, but has an indirect negative impact on business performance, which is partially regulated by the target flexibility of the business. In addition, they found that the main purpose of planning and coordinating goals is to reduce performance impact (as opposed to performance evaluation). Their findings may help explain mixed field research evidence on target difficulty effects.

3.4. Management Control System and Enterprise Performance

Although recent case studies detail how managers can balance competitive priorities through MCS (Cardinal et al., 2004; Jørgensen and Messner, 2009; Mundy, 2010), the balance effect between control levers has not been formally tested. Bedford (2015) examined the use of management control systems (MCS) across different innovation models and their impact on corporate performance. Specifically, this study used Simmons’ control framework leverage to investigate how senior managers are trying to balance exploration and mining at the same time, which puts conflicting requirements on companies. Using data collected from a survey of 400 executives at 400 companies, the study showed that patterns of use and interdependence among control levers related to enhanced performance depend on innovation models. The findings suggest that control leverage is related to the independence of companies specializing in exploration or development, suggesting that leverage in these contexts complements rather than supplements control. However, for two independent companies, diagnostic and interactive leverage have shown an interdependent effect on performance. In addition, some evidence suggests that the combination and balanced use of these levers can help generate the dynamic tensions necessary to manage conflicting innovation models.

3.5. Corporate Performance and Accounting Records

Yang (2017) investigated defensive and confident impression management strategies and the impact of company performance on accounting records by investigating FTSE 100 index companies’ earnings disclosure on Twitter. Social media has become a mainstream place for organizations to present themselves because it provides businesses with more control over the image they intend to build and maintain through the communications and content they provide online. Our research results show that companies minimize the disclosure of negative information, but use various models and communication technologies to emphasize positive information. Specifically, improved performers are more willing to publish and disseminate revenue-related tweets to gain a higher degree of stakeholder engagement than during the period when performers declined. Based on these findings, we conclude that companies use social media opportunism to present their positive public image.

3.6. Sustainability of Corporate Performance

Economic theory suggests that the entire industry component of business performance is more durable than the specific component of the business. Early work by Brown and Ball (1967) and Magee (1974) found that a large part of the variability in corporate earnings can be explained by industry-level news. Lev (1983) reported a significant correlation between earnings persistence and economic factors, including product type and industry competition. Hui et al. (2016) provided evidence for this assertion. They found that industry-wide returns are more durable than company-specific returns. However, investors cannot fully distinguish the persistence of this differentiation, because when predicting earnings a year ago, stock prices weighted the two earnings components similarly. They found that these effects were partly due to the persistence of industry-wide disparities in returns when homogeneous industries or huge commercial shocks are not recognized by the market. Finally, the research results show that industry-wide cash flows are the most lasting component of earnings, and company-specific accrued profits are the least durable, suggesting that economic fundamentals and accounting structure are common information about the company’s future earnings. However, the market incorrectly priced these components, which greatly underestimated the sustainability of cash flow across the industry and overemphasized the sustainability of company-specific accruals.

4. Summary of Domestic Enterprise Performance Research

Compared with foreign academic circles, the domestic academic circles pay more attention to corporate performance. They all focus on the relationship between human resources and corporate performance. But in addition, the domestic academic community pays more attention to the impact of national policies, corporate strategies, venture capital institutions and family-owned enterprises on corporate performance, and the research direction has more Chinese characteristics.

4.1. Human Resources and Corporate Performance

In the past three years, domestic research on human resources and corporate performance has shown a downward trend. The publication date of the literature is basically in 2015. Explore the characteristics of executives, the relationship between employees and organizations, and compare the incentive effects of executives and employees to explore how Improve business performance.

Hambrick et al. (1993) believe that the CEO has the individual characteristics of changing the status quo of the organization and seeking new institutional systems and strategic directions. As a result, CEOs with openness can reduce organizational strategic inertia. Lian and He (2015) analyzed the effect mechanism of CEO openness on strategic inertia and organizational performance from the theoretical and empirical perspectives, and obtained the following research conclusions: First, the higher the degree of CEO openness, the more the organization tends to adopt adaptation The environment’s dynamic resource allocation strategy, so the degree of strategic inertia of the organization is lower. Second, the degree of ownership and autonomy of the CEO plays a significant role in regulating the relationship between its openness and organizational inertia, that is, the CEO holds shares The higher the level, the stronger the motivation of the open CEO to maintain the status quo of the organization’s strategy, and the higher the managerial autonomy possessed by the CEO, the more inclined to break the strategic status of the organization; The relationship between inertia also plays a significant moderating role. The CEO of a state-owned enterprise has a smaller degree of negative impact on organizational inertia than the CEO of a family company. Fourth, compared to a linear relationship the inverted U-shape hypothesis is more helpful in explaining the relationship between strategic inertia and organizational performance. This document takes listed companies from 2003 to 2009 as a sample and uses empirical analysis methods to improve the research on CEO personality characteristics and also expand the research on strategic change.

Chen (2015) empirically tested the relationship between the background of private investors, speculative investment, and corporate performance, based on the sample survey data of private enterprises nationwide in 2012 from the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and other 4 departments. The study found that low-age, male private-sector funders with management experience, deputies to the National People’s Congress and CPPCC members, tend to choose speculative investment strategies. In terms of the significant positive effect, the same rules apply to the private enterprise investor’s management experience on net profit and sales, CCP status as net profit and net assets, and acting as a deputy to the National People’s Congress and CPPCC member on net assets. In terms of significant negative effects, private enterprise funders with low and medium education qualifications and decision-making powers on important matters of the enterprise have shown net sales and net assets, and the performance of sales of private enterprise funders who are members of the National People’s Congress and members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and middle-educated private enterprises on sales The rules are the same. Speculative investment has significantly promoted the three performance indicators of the enterprise. The author also finds that the interaction between the background of private investor and speculative investment has different regulating effects on corporate performance. Having management experience and membership of the Communist Party of China has a significant positive regulatory effect on the company’s net profit, net assets and sales. As a deputy to the National People’s Congress and a member of the CPPCC, it has a significant negative regulatory effect on the company’s net profit, net assets and sales. Middle-low age and low-education have a significant negative regulating effect on corporate net profit and sales, and men have a significant positive regulating effect on corporate net profit and net assets. The literature concludes these phenomena, summarizes the research on how to resolve investment risks from the perspective of the investor background of private enterprises, and discusses the research limitations and future research directions.

Compared with the research by Lian and He (2015) , Jia et al. (2015) focused on the impact of the matching relationship between executive competence characteristics and corporate strategic orientation on corporate performance. The viewpoint of contingency theory tells us that there is no theory applicable to all scenarios (Chow, Huang and Liu, 2008; Van de Ven, Ganco and Hinings, 2013). Different strategic orientations require executives with corresponding competence characteristics and Matching, that is, in order to achieve the best results, the competence characteristics of executives need to be consistent with the strategic orientation of the enterprise, and this matching will promote the improvement of corporate performance. Jia et al. (2015) systematically analyzed the impact of the matching of executive competence and strategic orientation on corporate performance based on contingency theory. The author uses questionnaires to obtain data related to variables. In addition to the previous strategy guide vector table and corporate performance scale, the author also designed the executive competency scale. The research results show that there are three strategically oriented enterprises in China, namely cost-oriented, innovation-oriented, and quality-oriented, and different types of strategic orientation have different effects on corporate performance. Among them, innovation-oriented enterprises and quality-oriented enterprises. Enterprises have higher financial performance and human resource performance than cost-oriented enterprises. They also found that the matching of single-dimensional executive competence with different strategic orientations has a different impact on corporate performance. Among them, strategic awareness has a significant impact on the performance of each strategically-oriented enterprise, and organizational building capabilities have a quality-oriented and innovation-oriented nature. Enterprise performance has a significant impact. Quality literacy has a significant impact on the performance of quality-oriented enterprises and the human resource performance of innovation-oriented enterprises, while insight only has a significant impact on the human resource performance of quality-oriented and innovation-oriented enterprises; Multi-dimensional executive competence characteristics and different strategic orientations have different effects on corporate performance. Executives’ strategic consciousness matches cost-oriented and quality-oriented enterprises. Executives’ strategic consciousness and organizational building capabilities are matched with innovation-oriented enterprises. Based on this, the author discusses the research results, expands and analyzes the differences in the impact of single-dimensional and multidimensional executive competence characteristics and strategic orientation on corporate performance, and gives management implications for the research results. This document is conducive to enriching and expanding the research on the matching relationship between executive competence, strategic orientation and corporate performance, and provides theoretical basis and empirical support for understanding and explaining the strategic decisions of Chinese enterprises.

Chen et al. (2015) realized that both executives and employees are corporate value creators, and both are important human resources that need to be motivated. Existing researches focus more on the research of executive incentives, less research on employee incentives, and the lack of research on combining the two. Existing studies have not paid enough attention to motivating executives or motivating employees, and the interaction between the two. Therefore, unlike Jia et al. (2015) , who only studied the impact of executive competence on corporate performance, they used Chinese listed companies as a sample to analyze the comparison of their incentive effects on two types of human resources and their interaction. The study found that executive compensation and employee compensation are sensitive to corporate performance, and that executive compensation is significantly more sensitive than employees, indicating that both types of incentives have a positive effect on future performance growth. In addition, the positive effect of employees on the future performance of the company is higher than that of executives; the more synchronized the changes in the salary of executives and employees, the more positive the positive effect on future performance. This article first studied the comparison and interaction between the incentive effects of executives and employees, which has a profound impact on research in the field of incentives.

Coincidentally, Zhu et al. (2015) also explored the impact of employee organization relations on corporate performance. Employee-Organization Relationship (hereinafter referred to as EOR) is an important research topic in the field of organizational behavior, which reflects the status of a population relationship formed between employees and their organizations due to internal management. Zhu et al. (2015) based on Chinese cultural characteristics, proposed and verified that not only contractual and instrumental economic exchanges and social exchanges exist in the employee-organizational relationships of Chinese enterprises, but also similar family relationships that can reflect a high degree of employee-organization integration Exchange relationship. Through 3 independent empirical studies, a total of 1268 employees in more than 100 companies were surveyed, confirming the existence of the kinship-exchange relationship dimension in Chinese companies; the results of the hypothesis test showed that collectivism and the uncertainty of the work environment are similar An important antecedent of family exchange; similar family exchange has a higher explanatory power in employee emotional commitment, organizational loyalty, overall job performance, in-role behavior, and organizational citizenship than social exchange relationships; business performance negatively regulates family exchange to self Impact of Sacrifice and Suggestion Behavior-When the company’s performance is not good, the higher the employee’s similarity exchange, the more able to make self-sacrifice and suggestion behavior that is conducive to the enterprise.

4.2. National Policies and Corporate Performance

In order to accelerate the improvement and standardization of China’s capital market, some national policies need to be adopted to regulate the market economy. The national policy is at a macro level and has a wide range of influences. It usually affects the micro behavior of enterprises and then affects corporate performance.

Lian et al. (2016) used the data of 1241 non-financial listed companies in China’s A-share market, and measured the market performance of the company in terms of stock returns (specifically, buy and hold return), and examined economic stimulus policies. The impact of the financial crisis and the period of economic downturn after the withdrawal of the economic stimulus policy (referred to as the period of “downward economic pressure”) on the performance of the company’s performance, and then explore the impact of the financial crisis and the economic stimulus policies introduced in China on corporate microbehavior. The study found that: the market performance of enterprises during the financial crisis and the downward pressure of the economy showed a positive correlation, and this result exists only in industries supported by economic stimulus policies; economic stimulus policies have a bearing on the financial crisis and the downward pressure of the economy The impact of corporate performance correlation during the period is stronger in non-state-owned enterprises. In addition, the author finds that economic stimulus policies lead to companies with worse market performance during the financial crisis, and more financing and investment during economic stimulus, and stock price guidance is the possible formation mechanism. Finally, the author also found that there was a positive correlation between the market performance of companies during the financial crisis and the operating efficiency of the financial crisis, economic stimulus, and downward economic pressure. Therefore, the economic stimulus policy of the Chinese government to cope with the financial crisis may cause entrepreneurs to ignore the opportunity to learn from the experience of the financial crisis, thus failing to effectively adjust enterprises during the economic stimulus. This document is helpful for us to deeply understand the impact mechanism of macro policies on enterprises, and to provide certain policy recommendations for the country to formulate macro policies.

The reform of split share structure is an important event in the history of the development of China’s capital market, which aims to solve the historical problems of “shared shares with different rights and different shares with different prices” in listed companies. Chen and Huang (2016) Aimed at the event of profound changes in the capital market in China, based on the perspective of economic consequences, and using data from listed companies from 2001 to 2010, they examined the changes in the company’s equity hierarchy before and after the reform Impact on business performance. Their research found that after the split share structure reform, with the reduction of agency conflicts between the controlling shareholder and other minority shareholders, the company’s equity level has significantly decreased. Further analysis shows that due to the decrease in agency costs and the strengthening of management supervision, the company’s performance after the share split reform has increased due to the reduction of equity levels. Finally, the author also finds that the effect of the split share structure reform on the company’s equity level and operating performance is more significant in non-state-owned companies. This document affirms the role of the shareholding reform and advocates that the government should work hard to promote listed companies to establish a simple and clear structure of equity structure. While achieving improvements in corporate operating efficiency, it will better safeguard investor rights and interests and promote China The healthy development of the capital market.

4.3. Corporate Strategy and Corporate Performance

Corporate strategy and corporate performance are always important topics in the field of management accounting. Enterprise strategy includes development strategy, stable strategy, contraction strategy, merger and acquisition strategy, cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy and concentration strategy. Michael Porter (1980) proposed the basic classification paradigm of competition strategy in the book “Competitive Strategy”, which provided important theoretical basis for subsequent research. Therefore, Michael was also called “the father of competitive strategy”.

Lei et al. (2015) supported the quarterly financial data of Shanghai enterprises, used confirmatory factor analysis to identify the type of competition strategy of the company, used the grey correlation analysis method to calculate the comprehensive strategic performance index, and used VAR model and impulse response function to analyze Tools to analyze the lag effect of competitive strategic performance. The research results show that the improvement of corporate performance lags behind the implementation of competitive strategy, and the performance of competitive strategy is lagging and sustainable. Compared with low-cost strategies, companies implementing differentiated strategies have more delayed and sustained performance, long. The literature takes into account the effects of strategic lag, collects long-term time data, and studies the continuity of performance response based on this, expanding the research on competitive strategy and corporate performance.

The vertical integration strategy is one of the developmental strategies. Its relationship with corporate performance has long been widely concerned by the academic community, and multi-perspective studies have been conducted, but only a unified conclusion has not been obtained. Wang and Wang (2016) used the data of China, Canada, and Australia from 2010 to 2014 to examine the performance of vertical integration of forestry listed companies in profitability and the unique role of industry heterogeneity. Research shows that whether a company adopts a vertically integrated business strategy will significantly affect its profitability, and this impact will vary widely across countries: the Chinese sample is negative, the Australian sample is positive, and the Canadian sample is not. Further analysis found that the reason behind the phenomenon of country differences is industry heterogeneity. Industry asset characteristics, product characteristics, operating characteristics, supply-demand relationships, and the external environment all affect the cost-benefit relationship of vertical integration, which in turn affects profitability. Therefore, enterprises should choose a vertical integration strategy suitable for their industry characteristics, and continuously optimize the value chain; the government should encourage efficient integration through industrial policy levers, and especially support technological innovation to improve the performance of the industry value chain. The contribution of this document lies in the author’s comparison using data from multiple countries, taking forestry enterprises as an example, analyzing their existing problems, and then drawing the conclusion that the integration strategy should be combined with the characteristics of the enterprise itself.

4.4. Venture Capital Institutions and Corporate Performance

Dong et al. (2017) used Chinese SME board and GEM listed companies as research samples to analyze and test the impact of the basic management methods of venture capital institutions on the performance of entrepreneurial enterprises, and the adjustment mechanism of industry expertise and uncertainty on the above effects. The groundbreaking classification of venture management and venture capital management models explores and validates the matching relationship between the two. Their research results show that: 1) the value-added services provided by venture capital institutions have a significant positive impact on the performance of startups, and the higher the industry expertise of venture capital institutions, the stronger this impact; 2) venture capital institutions The impact of the implemented supervision and control on the performance of entrepreneurial enterprises is not significant, but when the uncertainty faced by entrepreneurial enterprises is higher, more supervision and control will have a negative impact on corporate performance; 3) venture capital management models and entrepreneurial enterprises There is a matching relationship between the types: the coaching management model works best when the venture capital institution has high industry expertise and the startup company faces low uncertainty; the venture capital institution has high industry expertise and the startup company faces In the case of high uncertainty, the service-enhanced management model has the best effect; in the case of venture capital institutions with low industry expertise and entrepreneurial enterprises facing low uncertainty, the control-enhanced management model has the best effect; Venture capital institutions with low industry expertise and start-ups face high uncertainty. What is different from theoretical expectations is stocking. Management was not significant statistically. This document ground breakingly studies the inherent management mechanism of venture capital institutions’ involvement in venture capital to create value, and provides higher academic and practical value for venture capital theory and venture capital theory.

4.5. Family Enterprises and Enterprise Performance

In the past ten years, “family-owned enterprises” have sprung up in China’s capital market and exerted increasingly important influence. Guojian Zhen et al. (2016) summarized and compared the important differences in corporate governance, capital operation, and group management of the three types of organizational forms: family-owned enterprises, non-family-type group-controlled enterprises, and independent (overall listed) enterprises. From 2003 to 2013, 274 family groups (including 770 members of A-share listed companies) were taken as research objects, and empirical analysis was performed on the differences in corporate performance of these three types of organizational forms. We found that, in general, family-owned enterprises performed the worst, followed by non-family-based group-controlled enterprises, and independent enterprises performed best. Moreover, the above organizational forms performed worse in the private sample. Finally, with the unique internal structure data of the family group, the relationship between the internal structural characteristics of the family group and the performance of member companies was empirically investigated for the first time, which provided an important perspective and empirical evidence for understanding the mechanism of the economic consequences of the enterprise group.

5. Summary and Outlook

In summary, in recent years, the number of literatures related to corporate performance has been decreasing year by year, and our blind spots in this field have been decreasing. From the Chinese and foreign literatures I reviewed, the common thing is that they all use human resources as a research point to explore the impact of human resource elements on corporate performance, because human resources have long been an important source of corporate competitive advantage, affecting at multiple levels, Business Performance. At the same time, human resources usually involve incentive mechanisms, which is also a hot topic in the field of management accounting research. Therefore, compared with other types of literature, there are much more literatures exploring human resources and corporate performance. The difference is that foreign literature focuses more on corporate performance evaluation and goal setting. Usually, the research point is small, but the research depth is large and seemingly irrelevant things, but they affect and restrict each other. Domestic journals are more focused on the policy background, corporate strategy, and characteristics of the enterprise itself. In addition, I found that the literature on corporate performance in China in the past three years has rarely used experimental research methods, most of which are empirical articles, and some also use survey research methods.

Compared with foreign language journals, domestic literature research is broader and more macroscopic. For example, research on national policies still has room for subdivision. At present, tax policy, accounting policy and innovation patent policy change frequently. Scholars can use this as a miracle to study the performance before and after the change and explore the contribution of national policy to corporate performance. Also, domestic literature also has relatively single indicators for measuring company performance. We can create more and more targeted indicators to measure company performance in combination with national conditions and the actual situation of enterprises. Therefore, there is still ample space for research on corporate performance. The author hopes that the combing and returning of this article can inspire later scholars to find new perspectives to explore corporate performance, find new ways to improve corporate performance, and enhance national economic strength.

Acknowledgements

On the completion of this thesis, I am very grateful to Mr. Bai Hua for his careful guidance and suggestions from the reviewers, so that my paper can be published.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

•   Articles
•   Archive
•   Indexing
•   Aims & Scope
•   Editorial Board
•   For Authors
•   Publication Fees

Journals Menu  

• Open Special Issues
• Published Special Issues
• Special Issues Guideline
• E-Mail Alert
• JSS Subscription
• Publication Ethics & OA Statement
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recommend to Peers
• Recommend to Library
• History Issue

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

• Journals A-Z

About SCIRP

• Publication Fees
• For Authors
• Peer-Review Issues
• Special Issues
• Manuscript Tracking System
• Subscription
• Translation & Proofreading
• Volume & Issue
• Open Access
• Publication Ethics
• Preservation
• Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 04 September 2024

How to avoid sinking in swamp: exploring the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use a new public infrastructure that combines physical and virtual spaces

• Chengxiang Chu 1   na1 ,
• Zhenyang Shen 1   na1 ,
• Hanyi Xu 2   na1 ,
• Qizhi Wei 1 &
• Cong Cao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4163-2218 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1135 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Science, technology and society

With advances in digital technology, physical and virtual spaces have gradually merged. For digitally disadvantaged groups, this transformation is both convenient and potentially supportive. Previous research on public infrastructure has been limited to improvements in physical facilities, and few researchers have investigated the use of mixed physical and virtual spaces. In this study, we focused on integrated virtual and physical spaces and investigated the factors affecting digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use this new infrastructure. Building on a unified theory of the acceptance and use of technology, we focused on social interaction anxiety, identified the characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups, and constructed a research model to examine intentions to use the new infrastructure. We obtained 337 valid data from the questionnaire and analysed them using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results showed positive relationships between performance expectancy, perceived institutional support, perceived marketplace influence, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions. The influence of psychological reactance was significantly negative. Finally, social interaction anxiety had a regulatory effect on performance expectancy, psychological reactance, perceived marketplace influence, and effort expectancy. Its effects on perceived institutional support and facilitating conditions were not significant. The results support the creation of inclusive smart cities by ensuring that the new public infrastructure is suitable for digitally disadvantaged groups. Meanwhile, this study presents new theoretical concepts of new public infrastructures, mixed physical and virtual spaces, which provides a forward-looking approach to studying digitally disadvantaged groups in this field and paves the way for subsequent scholars to explore the field in theory and literature.

Similar content being viewed by others

The impact of small-scale green infrastructure on the affective wellbeing associated with urban sites

Economic inequalities and discontent in European cities

The appeal of cities may not wane due to the COVID-19 pandemic and remote working

Introduction.

Intelligent systems and modernisation have influenced the direction of people’s lives. With the help of continuously updated and iteratively advancing technology, modern urban construction has taken a ‘big step’ in its development. As China continues to construct smart cities, national investment in public infrastructure has steadily increased. Convenient and efficient public infrastructure has spread throughout the country, covering almost all aspects of residents’ lives and work (Guo et al. 2016 ). Previously, public infrastructure was primarily physical and located in physical spaces, but today, much of it is virtual. To achieve the goal of inclusive urban construction, the government has issued numerous relevant laws and regulations regarding public infrastructure. For example, the Chinese legislature solicited opinions from the community on the ‘Barrier-free environmental construction law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft)’.

Virtual space, based on internet technology, is a major factor in the construction of smart cities. Virtual space can be described as an interactive world built primarily on the internet (Shibusawa, 2000 ), and it has underpinned the development of national public infrastructure. In 2015, China announced its first national pilot list of smart cities, and the government began the process of building smart cities (Liu et al. 2017 ). With the continuous updating and popularisation of technologies such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence (AI) (Gu and Iop, 2020 ), virtual space is becoming widely accessible to the public. For example, in the field of government affairs, public infrastructure is now regularly developed in virtual spaces, such as on e-government platforms.

The construction of smart cities is heavily influenced by technological infrastructure (Nicolas et al. 2020 ). Currently, smart cities are being developed, and the integration of physical and virtual spaces has entered a significant stage. For example, when customers go to an offline bank to transact business, they are often asked by bank employees to use online banking software on their mobile phones, join a queue, or prove their identities. Situations such as these are neither purely virtual nor entirely physical, but in fields like banking, both options need to be considered. Therefore, we propose a new concept of mixed physical and virtual spaces in which individuals can interact, share, collaborate, coordinate with each other, and act.

Currently, new public infrastructure has emerged in mixed physical and virtual spaces, such as ‘Zheli Office’ and Alipay, in Zhejiang Province, China (as shown in Fig. 1 ). ‘Zheli Office’ is a comprehensive government application that integrates government services through digital technology, transferring some processes from offline to online and greatly improving the convenience, efficiency, and personalisation of government services. Due to its convenient payment facilities, Alipay is continuously supporting the integration of various local services, such as live payments and convenient services, and has gradually become Zhejiang’s largest living service platform. Zhejiang residents can handle almost all government and life affairs using these two applications. ‘Zheli Office’ and Alipay are key to the new public infrastructure in China, which is already leading the world in terms of a new public infrastructure that combines physical and virtual spaces; thus, China provided a valuable research context for this study.

This figure shows the new public infrastructure has emerged in mixed physical and virtual spaces.

There is no doubt that the mixing of physical and virtual spaces is a helpful trend that makes life easier for most people. However, mixed physical and virtual spaces still have a threshold for their use, which makes it difficult for some groups to use the new public infrastructure effectively. Within society, there are people whose living conditions are restricted for physiological reasons. They may be elderly people, people with disabilities, or people who lack certain abilities. According to the results of China’s seventh (2021) national population census, there are 264.02 million elderly people aged 60 years and over in China, accounting for 18.7 per cent of the total population. China is expected to have a predominantly ageing population by around 2035. In addition, according to data released by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the total number of people with disabilities in China is more than 85 million, which is equivalent to one person with a disability for every 16 Chinese people. In this study, we downplay the differences between these groups, focusing only on common characteristics that hinder their use of the new public infrastructure. We collectively refer to these groups as digitally disadvantaged groups who may have difficulty adapting to the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces. This gap not only makes the new public infrastructure inconvenient for these digitally disadvantaged groups, but also leads to their exclusion and isolation from the advancing digital trend.

In the current context, in which the virtual and the real mix, digitally disadvantaged groups resemble stones in a turbulent flowing river. Although they can move forward, they do so with difficulty and will eventually be left behind. Besides facing the inherent inconveniences of new public infrastructure that integrates mixed physical and virtual spaces, digitally disadvantaged groups encounter additional obstacles. Unlike the traditional public infrastructure, the new public infrastructure requires users to log on to terminals, such as mobile phones, to engage with mixed physical and virtual spaces. However, a significant proportion of digitally disadvantaged groups cannot use the new public infrastructure effectively due to economic costs or a lack of familiarity with the technology. In addition, the use of facilities in physical and virtual mixed spaces requires engagement with numerous interactive elements, which further hinders digitally disadvantaged groups with weak social or technical skills.

The United Nations (UN) has stated the creation of ‘sustainable cities and communities’ as one of its sustainable development goals, and the construction of smart cities can help achieve this goal (Blasi et al. 2022 ). Recent studies have pointed out that the spread of COVID-19 exacerbated the marginalisation of vulnerable groups, while the lack of universal service processes and virtual facilities has created significant obstacles for digitally disadvantaged groups (Narzt et al. 2016 ; C. H. J. Wang et al. 2021 ). It should be noted that smart cities result from coordinated progress between technology and society (Al-Masri et al. 2019 ). The development of society should not be at the expense of certain people, and improving inclusiveness is key to the construction of smart cities, which should rest on people-oriented development (Ji et al. 2021 ). This paper focuses on the new public infrastructure that integrates mixed physical and virtual spaces. In it, we aim to explore how improved inclusiveness can be achieved for digitally disadvantaged groups during the construction of smart cities, and we propose the following research questions:

RQ1 . In a situation where there is a mix of physical and virtual spaces, what factors affect digitally disadvantaged groups’ use of the new public infrastructure?

RQ2 . What requirements will enable digitally disadvantaged groups to participate fully in the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces?

To answer these questions, we built a research model based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to explore the construction of a new public infrastructure that integrates mixed physical and virtual spaces (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). During the research process, we focused on the attitudes, willingness, and other behavioural characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups in relation to mixed physical and virtual spaces, aiming to ultimately provide research support for the construction of highly inclusive smart cities. Compared to existing research, this study goes further in exploring the integration and interconnection of urban public infrastructure in the process of smart city construction. We conducted empirical research to delve more deeply into the factors that influence digitally disadvantaged groups’ use of the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces. The results of this study can provide valuable guidelines and a theoretical framework for the construction of new public infrastructure and the improvement of relevant systems in mixed physical and virtual spaces. We also considered the psychological characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups, introduced psychological reactance into the model, and used social interaction anxiety as a moderator for the model, thereby further enriching the research results regarding mixed physical and virtual spaces. This study directs social and government attention towards the issues affecting digitally disadvantaged groups in the construction of inclusive smart cities, and it has practical implications for the future digitally inclusive development of cities in China and across the world.

Theoretical background and literature review

Theoretical background of utaut.

Currently, the theories used to explore user acceptance behaviour are mainly applied separately in the online and offline fields. Theories relating to people’s offline use behaviour include the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA). Theories used to explore users’ online use behaviour include the technology acceptance model (TAM). Unlike previous researchers, who focused on either physical or virtual space, we focused on both. This required us to consider the characteristics of both physical and virtual spaces based on a combination of user acceptance theories (TPB, TRA, and TAM) and UTAUT, which was proposed by Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ) in 2003. These theories have mainly been used to study the factors affecting user acceptance and the application of information technology. UTAUT integrates user acceptance theories to examine eight online and offline scenarios, thereby meeting our need for a theoretical model for this study that could include both physical and virtual spaces. UTAUT includes four key factors that directly affect users’ acceptance and usage behaviours: performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, social influence, and effort expectancy. Compared to other models, UTAUT has better interpretation and prediction capabilities for user acceptance behaviour (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). A review of previous research showed that UTAUT has mainly been used to explore usage behaviours in online environments (Hoque and Sorwar, 2017 ) and regarding technology acceptance (Heerink et al. 2010 ). Thus, UTAUT is effective for exploring acceptance and usage behaviours. We therefore based this study on the belief that UTAUT could be applied to people’s intentions to use the new public infrastructure that integrates mixed physical and virtual spaces.

In this paper, we refine and extend UTAUT based on the characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups, and we propose a model to explore the willingness of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces. We categorised possible influences on digitally disadvantaged groups’ use of the new public infrastructure into three areas: user factors, social factors, and technical factors. Among the user factors, we explored the willingness of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure based on their performance expectancy and psychological reactance, as performance expectations are one of the UTAUT variables. To consider situations in which some users resist using new technologies due to cognitive bias, we combined (Hoque and Sorwar, 2017 ) showing that resistance among elderly people is a key factor affecting their adoption of mobile medical services with the theory of psychological reactance and introduced psychological reactance as an independent variable (Miron and Brehm, 2006 ). Among the social factors, we expanded the UTAUT social influence variable to include perceived institutional support and perceived marketplace influence. The new public infrastructure cannot be separated from the relevant government policies and the economic development status of the society in which it is constructed. Therefore, we aimed to explore the willingness of digitally disadvantaged people to use the new public infrastructure in terms of perceived institutional support and perceived marketplace influence. Among the technical factors, we explored the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use new public infrastructure based on effort expectancy and facilitating conditions—both variables taken from UTAUT. In addition, considering that users with different levels of social interaction anxiety may have different levels of intention to use the new public infrastructure, we drew on research regarding the moderating role of consumer technological anxiety in adopting mobile shopping and introduced social interaction anxiety as a moderating variable (Yang and Forney, 2013 ). Believing that these modifications would further improve the interpretive ability of UTAUT, we considered it helpful to study the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure.

Intentions to use mixed physical and virtual spaces

Many scholars have researched the factors that affect users’ willingness to use intelligent facilities, which can be broadly divided into two categories: for-profit and public welfare facilities. In the traditional business field, modern information technologies, such as the internet of things and AI, have become important means by which businesses can reduce costs and expand production. Even in traditional industries, such as agriculture (Kadylak and Cotten, 2020 ) and aquaculture (Cai et al. 2023 ), virtual technology now plays a significant role. Operators hope to use advanced technology to change traditional production and marketing models and to keep pace with new developments. However, mixed physical and virtual spaces should be inclusive for all people. Already, technological development is making it clear that no one will be able to entirely avoid mixed physical and virtual spaces. The virtualisation of public welfare facilities has gradually emerged in many areas of daily life, such as electronic health (D. D. Lee et al. 2019 ) and telemedicine (Werner and Karnieli, 2003 ). Government affairs are increasingly managed jointly in both physical and virtual spaces, resulting in an increase in e-government research (Ahn and Chen, 2022 ).

A review of the literature over the past decade showed that users’ willingness to use both for-profit and public welfare facilities is influenced by three sets of factors: user factors, social factors, and technical factors. First, regarding user factors, Bélanger and Carter ( 2008 ) pointed out that consumer trust in the government and technology are key factors affecting people’s intentions to use technology. Research on older people has shown that self-perceived ageing can have a significant impact on emotional attachment and willingness to use technology (B. A. Wang et al. 2021 ). Second, social factors include consumers’ intentions to use, which may vary significantly in different market contexts (Chiu and Hofer, 2015 ). For example, research has shown that people’s willingness to use digital healthcare tools is influenced by the attitudes of the healthcare professionals they encounter (Thapa et al. 2021 ). Third, technical factors include appropriate technical designs that help consumers use facilities more easily. Yadav et al. ( 2019 ) considered technical factors, such as ease of use, quality of service provided, and efficiency parameters, in their experiments.

The rapid development of virtual technology has inevitably drawn attention away from the physical world. Most previous researchers have focused on either virtual or physical spaces. However, scholars have noted the increasing mixing of these two spaces and have begun to study the relationships between them (Aslesen et al. 2019 ; Cocciolo, 2010 ). Wang ( 2007 ) proposed enhancing virtual environments by inserting real entities. Existing research has shown that physical and virtual spaces have begun to permeate each other in both economic and public spheres, blurring the boundaries between them (K. F. Chen et al. 2024 ; Paköz et al. 2022 ). Jakonen ( 2024 ) pointed out that, currently, with the integration of digital technologies into city building, the role of urban space in various stakeholders’ lives needs to be fully considered. The intermingling of physical and virtual spaces began to occur in people’s daily work (J. Chen et al. 2024 ) during the COVID-19 pandemic, which enhanced the integration trend (Yeung and Hao, 2024 ). The intermingling of virtual and physical spaces is a sign of social progress, but it is a considerable challenge for digitally disadvantaged people. For example, people with disabilities experience infrastructure, access, regulatory, communication, and legislative barriers when using telehealth services (Annaswamy et al. 2020 ). However, from an overall perspective, few relevant studies have considered the mixing of virtual and physical spaces.

People who are familiar with information technology, especially Generation Z, generally consider the integration of physical and virtual spaces convenient. However, for digitally disadvantaged groups, such ‘science fiction’-type changes can be disorientating and may undermine their quality of life. The elderly are an important group among the digitally disadvantaged groups referred to in this paper, and they have been the primary target of previous research on issues of inclusivity. Many researchers have considered the factors influencing older people’s willingness to use emerging technologies. For example, for the elderly, ease of use is often a prerequisite for enjoyment (Dogruel et al. 2015 ). Iancu and Iancu ( 2020 ) explored the interaction of elderly with technology, with a particular focus on mobile device design. The study emphasised that elderly people’s difficulties with technology stem from usability issues that can be addressed through improved design and appropriate training (Iancu and Iancu, 2020 ). Moreover, people with disabilities are an important group among digitally disadvantaged groups and an essential concern for the inclusive construction of cities. The rapid development of emerging technologies offers convenience to people with disabilities and has spawned many physical accessibility facilities and electronic accessibility systems (Botelho, 2021 ; Perez et al. 2023 ). Ease of use, convenience, and affordability are also key elements for enabling disadvantaged groups to use these facilities (Mogaji et al. 2023 ; Mogaji and Nguyen, 2021 ). Zander et al. ( 2023 ) explored the facilitators of and barriers to the implementation of welfare technologies for elderly people and people with disabilities. Factors such as abilities, attitudes, values, and lifestyles must be considered when planning the implementation of welfare technology for older people and people with disabilities (Zander et al. 2023 ).

In summary, scholars have conducted extensive research on the factors influencing intentions to use virtual facilities. These studies have revealed the underlying logic behind people’s adoption of virtual technology and have laid the foundations for the construction of inclusive new public infrastructure. Moreover, scholars have proposed solutions to the problems experienced by digitally disadvantaged groups in adapting to virtual facilities, but most of these scholars have focused on the elderly. Furthermore, scholars have recently conducted preliminary explorations of the mixing of physical and virtual spaces. These studies provided insights for this study, enabling us to identify both relevant background factors and current developments in the integration of virtual spaces with reality. However, most researchers have viewed the development of technology from the perspective of either virtual space or physical space, and they have rarely explored technology from the perspective of mixed physical and virtual spaces. In addition, when focusing on designs for the inclusion of digitally disadvantaged groups, scholars have mainly provided suggestions for specific practices, such as improvements in technology, hardware facilities, or device interaction interfaces, while little consideration has been given to the psychological characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups or to the overall impact of society on these groups. Finally, in studying inclusive modernisation, researchers have generally focused on the elderly or people with disabilities, with less exploration of behavioural differences caused by factors such as social anxiety. Therefore, based on UTAUT, we explored the willingness of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces in a Chinese context (as shown in Fig. 2 ).

This figure explores the willingness of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces in a Chinese context.

Research hypotheses

User factors.

Performance expectancy is defined as the degree to which an individual believes that using a system will help him or her achieve gains in job performance (Chao, 2019 ; Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). In this paper, performance expectancy refers to the extent to which digitally disadvantaged groups obtain tangible results from the use of the new public infrastructure. Since individuals have a strong desire to improve their work performance, they have strong intentions to use systems that can improve that performance. Previous studies in various fields have confirmed the view that high performance expectancy can effectively promote individuals’ sustained intentions to use technology (Abbad, 2021 ; Chou et al. 2010 ; S. W. Lee et al. 2019 ). For example, the role of performance expectancy was verified in a study on intentions to use e-government (Zeebaree et al. 2022 ). We believe that if digitally disadvantaged groups have confidence that the new public infrastructure will help them improve their lives or work performance, even in complex environments, such as mixed physical and virtual spaces, they will have a greater willingness to use it. Therefore, we developed the following hypothesis:

H1: Performance expectancy has a positive impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Brehm ( 1966 ) proposed the psychological reactance theory in 1966. According to this theory, when individuals perceive that their freedom to make their own choices is under threat, a motivational state to restore that freedom is awakened (Miron and Brehm, 2006 ). Psychological reactance manifests in an individual’s intentional or unintentional resistance to external factors. Previous studies have shown that when individuals are in the process of using systems or receiving information, they may have cognitive biases that lead to erroneous interpretations of the external environment, resulting in psychological reactance (Roubroeks et al. 2010 ). Surprisingly, cognitive biases may prompt individuals to experience psychological reactance, even when offered support with helpful intentions (Tian et al. 2020 ). In this paper, we define psychological resistance as the cognitive-level or psychological-level obstacles or resistance of digitally disadvantaged groups to the new public infrastructure. This resistance may be due to digitally disadvantaged groups misunderstanding the purpose or use of the new public infrastructure. For example, they may think that the new public infrastructure will harm their self-respect or personal interests. When digitally disadvantaged groups view the new public infrastructure as a threat to their status or freedom to make their own decisions, they may develop resistance to its use. Therefore, psychological reactance cannot be ignored as an important factor potentially affecting digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. Hence, we developed the following hypothesis:

H2: Psychological reactance has a negative impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Social factors

In many countries, the main providers of public infrastructure are government and public institutions (Susilawati et al. 2010 ). Government decision-making is generally based on laws or government regulations (Acharya et al. 2022 ). Government decision-making procedures affect not only the builders of infrastructure, but also the intentions of users. In life, individuals and social organisations tend to abide by and maintain social norms to ensure that their behaviours are socially attractive and acceptable (Bygrave and Minniti, 2000 ; Martins et al. 2019 ). For example, national financial policies influence the marketing effectiveness of enterprises (Chen et al. 2021 ). Therefore, we believe that perceived institutional support is a key element influencing the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure. In this paper, perceived institutional support refers to digitally disadvantaged groups’ perceived policy state or government support for using the new public infrastructure, including institutional norms, laws, and regulations. Existing institutions have mainly been designed around public infrastructure that exists in physical space. We hope to explore whether perceived institutional support for digitally disadvantaged groups affects their intentions to use the new public infrastructure that integrates mixed physical and virtual spaces. Thus, we formulated the following hypothesis:

H3: Perceived institutional support has a positive impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Perceived marketplace influence is defined as actions or decisions that affect the market behaviour of consumers and organisations (Joshi et al. 2021 ; Leary et al. 2014 ). In this paper, perceived marketplace influence is defined as the behaviour of others using the new public infrastructure that affects the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use it. Perceived marketplace influence increases consumers’ perceptions of market dynamics and their sense of control through the influence of other participants in the marketplace (Leary et al. 2019 ). Scholars have explored the impact of perceived marketplace influence on consumers’ purchase and use intentions in relation to fair trade and charity (Leary et al. 2019 ; Schneider and Leonard, 2022 ). Schneider and Leonard ( 2022 ) claimed that if consumers believe that their mask-wearing behaviour will motivate others around them to follow suit, then this belief will in turn motivate them to wear masks. Similarly, when digitally disadvantaged people see the people around them using the new public infrastructure, this creates an invisible market that influences their ability and motivation to try using the infrastructure themselves. Therefore, we developed the following hypotheses:

H4: Perceived marketplace influence has a positive impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Technical factors

Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ) defined effort expectancy as the ease with which individuals can use a system. According to Tam et al. ( 2020 ), effort expectancy positively affects individuals’ performance expectancy and their sustained intentions to use mobile applications. In this paper, effort expectancy refers to the ease of use of the new public infrastructure for digitally disadvantaged groups: the higher the level of innovation and the more steps involved in using a facility, the poorer the user experience and the lower the utilisation rate (Venkatesh and Brown, 2001 ). A study on the use of AI devices for service delivery noted that the higher the level of anthropomorphism, the higher the cost of effort required by the customer to use a humanoid AI device (Gursoy et al. 2019 ). In mixed physical and virtual spaces, the design and use of new public infrastructure may become increasingly complex, negatively affecting the lives of digitally disadvantaged groups. We believe that the simpler the new public infrastructure, the more it will attract digitally disadvantaged groups to use it, while also enhancing their intentions to use it. Therefore, we formulated the following hypothesis:

H5: Effort expectancy has a positive impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ) defined facilitating conditions as the degree to which an individual believes that an organisation and its technical infrastructure exist to support the use of a system. In this paper, facilitating conditions refer to the external conditions that support digitally disadvantaged groups in using the new public infrastructure, including resources, knowledge bases, skills, etc. According to Zhong et al. ( 2021 ), facilitating conditions can affect users’ attitudes towards the use of face recognition payment systems and, further, affect their intentions to use them. Moreover, scholars have shown that facilitating conditions significantly promote people’s intentions to use e-learning systems and e-government (Abbad, 2021 ; Purohit et al. 2022 ). Currently, the new public infrastructure involves mixed physical and virtual spaces, and external facilitating conditions, such as a ‘knowledge salon’ or a training session, can significantly promote digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions and willingness to the infrastructure. Therefore, we developed the following hypothesis:

H6: Facilitating conditions have a positive impact on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure integrating a mixed physical and virtual spaces.

Moderator variable

Magee et al. ( 1996 ) claimed that social interaction anxiety is an uncomfortable emotion that some people experience in social situations, leading to avoidance, a desire for solitude, and a fear of criticism. In this paper, social interaction anxiety refers to the worries and fears of digitally disadvantaged groups about the social interactions they will be exposed to when using the new public infrastructure. Research has confirmed that people with high levels of dissatisfaction with their own bodies are more anxious in social situations (Li Mo and Bai, 2023 ). Moreover, people with high degrees of social interaction anxiety may feel uncomfortable in front of strangers or when observed by others (Zhu and Deng, 2021 ). Digitally disadvantaged groups usually have some physiological inadequacies and may be rejected by ‘normal’ groups. Previous studies have shown that the pain caused by social exclusion is positively correlated with anxiety (Davidson et al. 2019 ). Digitally disadvantaged groups may have higher degrees of dissatisfaction with their own physical abilities, which may exacerbate any social interaction anxiety they already have. We believe that high social interaction anxiety is a common characteristic of digitally disadvantaged groups, defining them as ‘different’ from other groups.

In mixed physical and virtual spaces, if the design of the new public infrastructure is not friendly and does not help digitally disadvantaged groups use it easily, their perceived social exclusion is likely to increase, resulting in a heightened sense of anxiety. However, compared with face-to-face and offline social communication, online platforms offer convenience in terms of both communication method and duration (Ali et al. 2020 ). Therefore, people with a high degree of social interaction anxiety frequently prefer and are likely to choose online social communication (Hutchins et al. 2021 ). However, digitally disadvantaged groups may be unable to avoid social interaction by using the facilities offered in virtual spaces. Therefore, we believe that influencing factors may have different effects on intentions to use the new public infrastructure, according to the different levels of social interaction anxiety experienced. Therefore, we predicted the following:

H7: Social interaction anxiety has a moderating effect on each path.

Research methodology

Research background and cases.

To better demonstrate the phenomenon of the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces, we considered the cases of ‘Zheli Office’ (as shown in Fig. 3 ) and Alipay (as shown in Fig. 4 ) to explain the two areas of government affairs and daily life affairs, which greatly affect the daily lives of residents. Examining the functions of ‘Zheli Office’ and Alipay in mixed physical and virtual spaces allowed us to provide examples of the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces.

This figure shows the ‘Zheli Office’, it is a comprehensive government application that integrates government services through digital technology, transferring some processes from offline to online and greatly improving the convenience, efficiency, and personalisation of government services.

This figure shows Alipay, it supports the integration of various local services, such as live payments and convenient services, and has gradually become Zhejiang’s largest living service platform.

‘Zheli Office’ provides Zhejiang residents with a channel to handle their tax affairs. Residents who need to manage their tax affairs can choose the corresponding tax department through ‘Zheli Office’ and schedule the date and time for offline processing. Residents can also upload tax-related materials directly to ‘Zheli Office’ to submit them to the tax department for preapproval. Residents only need to present the vouchers generated by ‘Zheli Office’ to the tax department at the scheduled time to manage tax affairs and undergo final review. By mitigating long waiting times and tedious tax material review steps through the transfer of processes from physical spaces to virtual spaces, ‘Zheli Office’ greatly optimises the tax declaration process and saves residents time and effort in tax declaration.

Alipay provides residents with a channel to rent shared bicycles. Residents who want to rent bicycles can enter their personal information on Alipay in advance and provide a guarantee (an Alipay credit score or deposit payment). When renting a shared bicycle offline, residents only need to scan the QR code on the bike through Alipay to unlock and use it. When returning the bike, residents can also click the return button to automatically lock the bike and pay the fee anytime and anywhere. By automating leasing procedures and fee settlement in virtual spaces, Alipay avoids the tedious operations that residents experience when renting bicycles in physical stores.

Through the preceding two examples, we demonstrate the specific performance of the integration of virtual spaces and physical spaces. The government/life affairs of residents, such as tax declarations, certificate processing, transportation, shopping, and various other affairs, all require public infrastructure support. With the emergence of new digital trends in residents’ daily lives, mixed physical and virtual spaces have produced a public infrastructure that can support residents’ daily activities in mixed physical and virtual spaces. Due to the essential differences between public infrastructure involving mixed physical and virtual spaces and traditional physical and virtual public infrastructures, we propose a new concept—new public infrastructure. This is defined as ‘a public infrastructure that supports residents in conducting daily activities in mixed physical and virtual spaces’. It is worth noting that the new public infrastructure may encompass not only the virtual spaces provided by digital applications but also the physical spaces provided by machines capable of receiving digital messages, such as smart screens, scanners, and so forth.

The UN Sustainable Development Goal Report highlights that human society needs to build sustainable cities and communities that do not sacrifice the equality of some people. Digitally disadvantaged groups should not be excluded from the sustainable development of cities due to the increasing digitalisation trend because everyone should enjoy the convenience of the new public infrastructure provided by cities. Hence, ensuring that digitally disadvantaged groups can easily and comfortably use the new public infrastructure will help promote the construction of smart cities, making them more inclusive and universal. It will also promote the development of smart cities in a more equal and sustainable direction, ensuring that everyone can enjoy the benefits of urban development. Therefore, in this article, we emphasise the importance of digitally disadvantaged groups in the construction of sustainable smart cities. Through their participation and feedback, we can build more inclusive and sustainable smart cities in the future.

Research design

The aim of this paper was to explore the specific factors that influence the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces, and to provide a rational explanation for the role of each factor. To achieve this goal, we first reviewed numerous relevant academic papers. This formed the basis of our research assumptions and helped determine the measurement items we included. Second, we collected data through a questionnaire survey and then analysed the data using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to explore the influence of the different factors on digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. Finally, we considered in depth the mechanisms by which the various factors influenced digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use mixed physical and virtual spaces.

We distributed a structured questionnaire to collect data for the study. To ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, we based the item development on the scales used in previous studies (as shown in Appendix A). The first part of the questionnaire concerned the participants’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. Responses to this part of the questionnaire were given on a seven-point Likert scale to measure the participants’ agreement or disagreement with various statements, with 1 indicating ‘strong disagreement’ and 7 indicating ‘strong agreement’. In addition, we designed cumulative scoring questions to measure the participants’ social interaction anxiety according to Fergus’s Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (Fergus et al. 2012 ). The second part of the questionnaire concerned the demographic characteristics of the participants, including but not limited to gender, age, and education level. Participants were informed that completing the survey was voluntary and that they had the right to refuse or withdraw at any time. They were informed that the researchers would not collect any personal information that would make it possible to identify them. Only after we had obtained the participants’ consent did we commence the questionnaire survey and data collection. Since the new public infrastructure referred to in this study was quite abstract, it was not conducive to the understanding and perceptions of digitally disadvantaged groups. Therefore, to better enable the respondents to understand our concept of the new public infrastructure, we simplified it to ‘an accessible infrastructure’ and informed them about typical cases and the relevant context of this study before they began to complete the questionnaire.

Once the questionnaire design was finalised, we conducted a pretest to ensure that the questions met the basic requirements of reliability and validity and that the participants could accurately understand the questions. In the formal questionnaire survey stage, we distributed the online questionnaire to digitally disadvantaged groups based on the principle of simple random sampling and collected data through the Questionnaire Star platform. Our sampling principle was based on the following points: first, the respondents had to belong to digitally disadvantaged groups and have experienced digital divide problems; second, they had to own at least one smart device and have access to the new public infrastructure, such as via ‘Zheli Office’ or Alipay, and third, they must have used government or daily life services on ‘Zheli Office’ or Alipay at least once in the past three months. After eliminating any invalid questionnaires, 337 valid completed questionnaires remained. The demographic characteristics of the participants are shown in Table 1 . In terms of gender, 54.30% of the participants were male, and 45.70% were female. In terms of age, 64.09% of the participants were aged 18–45 years. In terms of social interaction anxiety, the data showed that 46.59% of the participants had low social interaction anxiety, and 53.41% had high social interaction anxiety.

Data analysis

PLS-SEM imposes few restrictions on the measurement scale, sample size, and residual distribution (Ringle et al. 2012 ). However, the environment in which the research object was located was relatively new, so we added two special variables—psychological reactance and perceived institutional support—to the model. The PLS-SEM model was considered suitable for conducting exploratory research on the newly constructed theory and research framework. Building on previous experience, the data analysis was divided into two stages: 1) the measurement model was used to evaluate the reliability and validity of the experiment, and 2) the structural model was used to test the study hypotheses by examining the relationships between the variables.

Measurement model

First, we tested the reliability of the model by evaluating the reliability of the constructs. As shown in Table 2 , the Cronbach’s alpha (CA) range for this study was 0.858–0.901, so both extremes were higher than the acceptable threshold (Jöreskog, 1971 ). The composite reliability (CR) scores ranged from 0.904 to 0.931; therefore, both extremes were above the threshold of 0.7 (Bagozzi and Phillips, 1982 ) (see Table 2 ).

We then assessed the validity. The test for structural validity included convergent validity and discriminant validity. Convergent validity was mainly verified by the average variance extracted (AVE) value. The recommended value for AVE is 0.5 (Kim and Park, 2013 ). In this study, the AVE values for all structures far exceeded this value (the minimum AVE value was 0.702; see Table 2 ). This result showed that the structure of this model was reliable. The Fornell–Larcker criterion is commonly used to evaluate discriminant validity; that is, the square root of the AVE should be far larger than the correlations for other constructs, meaning that each construct best explains the variance of its own construct (Hair et al. 2014 ), as shown in Table 3 . The validity of the measurement model was further evaluated by calculating the cross-loading values of the reflection construct. It can clearly be seen from Table 4 that compared with other constructs included in the structural model, the indicators of the reflection metric model had the highest loading on their potential constructs (Hair et al. 2022 ), indicating that all inspection results met the evaluation criterion for cross-loading.

In addition, we used the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations to analyse discriminant validity (Henseler et al. 2015 ). Generally, an HTMT value greater than 0.85 indicates that there are potential discriminant validity risks (Hair et al. 2022 ), but Table 5 shows that the HTMT ratios of the correlations in this study were all lower than this value (the maximum value was 0.844).

Structural model

Figure 5 presents the evaluation results for the structural model for the whole sample. The R 2 value for the structural model in this study was 0.740; that is, the explanatory power of the model regarding intention to use was 74.00%. The first step was to ensure that there was no significant collinearity between the predicted value structures, otherwise there would be redundancy in the analysis (Hair et al. 2019 ). All VIF values in this study were between 1.743 and 2.869 and were therefore lower than the 3.3 threshold value for the collinearity test (Hair et al. 2022 ), which proved that the path coefficient had not deviated. This also proves that the model had a low probability of common method bias.

This figure shows the evaluation results for the structural model.

As shown in Fig. 5 , performance expectation ( β  = 0.505, p  < 0.001), perceived institutional support ( β  = 0.338, p  < 0.001), perceived marketplace influence ( β  = 0.190, p  < 0.001), effort expectation ( β  = 0.176, p  < 0.001) and facilitating conditions ( β  = 0.108, p  < 0.001) all had significant and positive effects on intention to use. Moreover, the results showed that the relationship between psychological reaction ( β  = −0.271, p  < 0.001) and intention to use was negative and significant. Therefore, all the paths in this paper, except for the moderator variables, have been verified.

Multi-group analysis

To study the moderating effect between the independent variables and the dependent variables, Henseler et al. ( 2009 ) recommended using a multigroup analysis (MGA). In this study, we used MGA to analyse the moderating effect of different levels of social interaction anxiety. We designed six items for social interaction anxiety (as shown in Appendix A). According to the subjects’ responses to these six items and based on the principle of accumulation, questionnaires with scores of 6–20 indicated low social interaction anxiety, while questionnaires with scores of 28–42 indicated high social interaction anxiety. Questionnaires with scores of 21–27 were considered neutral and eliminated from the analysis involving social interaction anxiety. Based on multigroup validation factor analysis, we determined the component invariance, the configurable invariance, and the equality between compound variance and mean (Hair et al. 2019 ). As shown in Formula 1 , we used an independent sample t -test as a significance test, and a p -value below 0.05 indicated the significance of the parameters.

As shown in Table 6 , under social factors, the p -value for perceived institutional support in relation to intention to use was 0.335, which failed the significance test. This showed that there were no differences between the different degrees of social interaction anxiety. For technical factors, the p -value for facilitating conditions in relation to intention to use was 0.054, which again failed the test. This showed that there were no differences between the different levels of social interaction anxiety. However, the p -values for performance expectancy, psychological reaction, perceived marketplace influence, and effort expectancy in relation to intention to use were all less than 0.05; therefore, they passed the test for significance. This revealed that different degrees of social interaction anxiety had significant effects on these factors and that social interaction anxiety moderated some of the independent variables.

Next, we considered the path coefficients and p- values for the high and low social anxiety groups, as shown in Table 6 . First, with different levels of social anxiety, performance expectation had significantly different effects on intention to use, with low social anxiety ( β  = −0.129, p  = 0.394) failing the test and high social anxiety ( β  = 0.202, p  = 0.004) passing the test. This shows that high social anxiety levels had a greater influence of performance expectations on intention to use than low social anxiety levels. Second, psychological reactance showed significant differences in its effect on intention to use under different degrees of social anxiety, with low social anxiety ( β  = 0.184, p  = 0.065) failing the test and high social anxiety ( β  = −0.466, p  = 0.000) passing the test. Third, with different levels of social anxiety, perceived marketplace influence had significantly different effects on intention to use. Of these, perceived marketplace influence had a significant effect with low social anxiety levels ( β  = 0.312, p  = 0.001) but not with high social anxiety levels ( β  = 0.085, p  = 0.189). Finally, with differing degrees of social anxiety, expected effort had significantly different effects on intention to use. Of these, expected effort was insignificant at a low social anxiety level ( β  = −0.058, p  = 0.488), but it was significant at a high social anxiety level ( β  = 0.326, p  = 0.000). Therefore, different degrees of social interaction anxiety had significantly different effects on performance expectation, psychological reactance, perceived marketplace influence, and effort expectation.

Compared with previous studies, this study constituted a preliminary but groundbreaking exploration of mixed physical and virtual spaces. Moreover, we focused on the inclusivity problems encountered by digitally disadvantaged groups in these mixed physical and virtual spaces. We focused on performance expectancy, psychological reactance, perceived institutional support, perceived marketplace influence, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions as the six factors, with intention to use being the measure of the perceived value of the new public infrastructure. However, digitally disadvantaged groups, depending on their own characteristics or social influences, can provoke different responses from the general population in their social interactions. Therefore, we added social interaction anxiety to the model as a moderating variable, in line with the assumed psychological characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups. The empirical results revealed a strong correlation between influencing factors and intention to use. This shows that this model has good applicability for mixed physical and virtual spaces.

According to the empirical results, performance expectancy has a significant and positive impact on intention to use, suggesting that the mixing of the virtual and the real will create usage issues and cognitive difficulties for digitally disadvantaged groups. However, if the new public infrastructure can capitalise on the advantages of blended virtual and physical spaces, it could help users build confidence in its use, which would improve their intentions to use it. Furthermore, users’ intentions to use and high social interaction anxiety are likely to be promoted by performance expectancy. In most cases, social interaction anxiety stems from self-generated avoidance, isolation, and fear of criticism (Schultz and Heimberg, 2008 ). This may result in highly anxious digitally disadvantaged groups being reluctant to engage with others when using public facilities (Mulvale et al. 2019 ; Schou and Pors, 2019 ). However, the new public infrastructure is often unattended, which could be an advantage for users with high social anxiety. Therefore, the effect of performance expectancy in promoting intentions to use would be more significant in this group.

We also found that the psychological reactance of digitally disadvantaged groups had a reverse impact on their intentions to use technology in mixed physical and virtual spaces. However, social interaction anxiety had a moderating effect on this, such that the negative effect of psychological reactance on intention to use the new public infrastructure was more pronounced in the group with high social interaction anxiety. Facilities involving social or interactive factors may make users with high social interaction anxiety think that their autonomy is, to some extent, being violated, thus triggering subconscious resistance. The communication anxiety of digitally disadvantaged groups stems not only from the new public infrastructure itself but also from the environment in which it is used (Fang et al. 2019 ). Complex, mixed physical and virtual spaces can disrupt the habits that digitally disadvantaged groups have developed in purely physical spaces, resulting in greater anxiety (Hu et al. 2022 ), while groups with high levels of social anxiety tend to remain independent because they prefer to maintain their independence. Therefore, a high degree of social interaction anxiety will induce psychological reactance towards using the new public infrastructure.

The results of this paper shed further light on the role of social factors. In particular, the relationship between perceived institutional support and intention to use reflects the fact that perceived institutional support plays a role in promoting digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. This indicates that promotion measures need to be introduced by the government and public institutions if digitally disadvantaged groups are to accept the new public infrastructure. The development of a new public infrastructure integrating mixed physical and virtual spaces requires a high level of involvement from government institutions to facilitate the inclusive development of sustainable smart cities (Khan et al. 2020 ). An interesting finding of this study was that there were no significant differences between the effects of either high or low levels of social interaction anxiety on perceived institutional support and intention to use. This may be because social interaction anxiety mainly occurs in individuals within their close microenvironments. The policies and institutional norms of perceived institutional support tend to act at the macro level (Chen and Zhang, 2021 ; Mora et al. 2023 ), so levels of social interaction anxiety do not differ insignificantly between perceived institutional support and intentions to use the new public infrastructure.

We also found that digitally disadvantaged groups with low social interaction anxiety were more influenced by perceived marketplace influence. Consequently, they were more willing to use the new public infrastructure. When the market trend is to aggressively build a new public infrastructure, companies will accelerate their infrastructure upgrades to keep up with the trend (Hu et al. 2023 ; Liu and Zhao, 2022 ). Companies are increasingly incorporating virtual objects into familiar areas, forcing users to embrace mixed physical and virtual spaces. In addition, it is inevitable that digitally disadvantaged groups will have to use the new public infrastructure due to the market influence of people around them using this infrastructure to manage their government or life issues. When digitally disadvantaged groups with low levels of social interaction anxiety use the new public infrastructure, they are less likely to feel fearful and excluded (Kaihlanen et al. 2022 ) and will tend to be positively influenced by the use behaviours of others to use the new public infrastructure themselves (Troisi et al. 2022 ). The opposite is true for groups with high social interaction anxiety, which leads to significant differences in perceived marketplace influence and intentions to use among digitally disadvantaged groups with different levels of social interaction anxiety.

Existing mixed physical and virtual spaces exhibit exceptional technical complexity, and the results of this study affirm the importance of technical factors in affecting intentions to use. In this paper, we emphasised effort expectancy as the ease of use of the new public infrastructure (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ), which had a significant effect on digitally disadvantaged groups with high levels of social interaction anxiety but no significant effect on those with low levels of social interaction anxiety. Digitally disadvantaged groups with high levels of social interaction anxiety are likely to have a stronger sense of rejection due to environmental pressures if the new public infrastructure is too cumbersome to run or operate; they may therefore prefer using simple facilities and services. Numerous scholars have proven in educational (Hu et al. 2022 ), medical (Bai and Guo, 2022 ), business (Susanto et al. 2018 ), and other fields that good product design promotes users’ intentions to use technology (Chen et al. 2023 ). For digitally disadvantaged groups, accessible and inclusive product designs can more effectively incentivise their intentions to use the new public infrastructure (Hsu and Peng, 2022 ).

Facilitating conditions are technical factors that represent facility-related support services. The study results showed a significant positive effect of facilitating conditions on intention to use. This result is consistent with the results of previous studies regarding physical space. Professional consultation (Vinnikova et al. 2020 ) and training (Yang et al. 2023 ) on products in conventional fields can enhance users’ confidence, which can then be translated into intentions to use (Saparudin et al. 2020 ). Although the form of the new public infrastructure has changed in the direction of integration, its target object is still the user in physical space. Therefore, better facilitating conditions can enhance users’ sense of trust and promote their intentions to use (Alalwan et al. 2017 ; Mogaji et al. 2021 ). Concerning integration, because the new public infrastructure can assume multiple forms, it is difficult for digitally disadvantaged groups to know whether a particular infrastructure has good facilitating conditions. It is precisely such uncertainties that cause users with high social interaction anxiety to worry that they will be unable to use the facilities effectively. They may then worry that they will be burdened by scrutiny from strangers, causing resistance. Even when good facilitating conditions exist, groups with high social interaction anxiety do not necessarily intend to use them. Therefore, there were no significant differences between the different levels of social interaction anxiety in terms of facilitating conditions and intention to use them.

Theoretical value

In this study, we mainly examined the factors influencing digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure consisting of mixed physical and virtual spaces. The empirical results of this paper make theoretical contributions to the inclusive construction of mixed spaces in several areas.

First, based on an understanding of urban development involving a deep integration of physical space with virtual space, we contextualise virtual space within the parameters of public infrastructure to shape the concept of a new public infrastructure. At the same time, by including the service system, the virtual community, and other non-physical factors in the realm where the virtual and the real are integrated, we form a concept of mixed physical and virtual spaces, which expands the scope of research related to virtual and physical spaces and provides new ideas for relevant future research.

Second, this paper makes a preliminary investigation of inclusion in the construction of the new public infrastructure and innovatively examines the factors that affect digitally disadvantaged groups’ willingness to use the mixed infrastructure, considering them in terms of individual, social, and technical factors. Moreover, holding that social interaction anxiety is consistent with the psychological characteristics of digitally disadvantaged groups, we introduce social interaction anxiety into the research field and distinguish between the performance of subjects with high social interaction anxiety and the performance of those with low social interaction anxiety. From the perspective of digitally disadvantaged groups, this shows the regulatory effect of social interaction anxiety on users’ psychology and behaviours. These preliminary findings may lead to greater attention being paid to digitally disadvantaged groups and prompt more studies on inclusion.

In addition, while conducting background research, we visited public welfare organisations and viewed government service lists to obtain first-hand information about digitally disadvantaged groups. Through our paper, we encourage the academic community to pay greater attention to theoretical research on digitally disadvantaged groups in the hope that deepening and broadening such research will promote the inclusion of digitally disadvantaged groups in the design of public infrastructure.

Practical value

Based on a large quantity of empirical research data, we explored the digital integration factors that affect users’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. To some extent, this provides new ideas and development directions for inclusive smart city construction. Inclusion in existing cities mainly concerns the improvement of specific technologies, but the results of this study show that technological factors are only part of the picture. The government should introduce relevant policies to promptly adapt the new public infrastructure to digitally disadvantaged groups, and the legislature should enact appropriate laws. In addition, the study results can guide the design of mixed physical and virtual spaces for the new public infrastructure. Enterprises can refer to the results of this study to identify inconveniences in their existing facilities, optimise their service processes, and improve the inclusiveness of urban institutions. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the moderating role of social interaction anxiety in the process. Inclusive urban construction should not only be physical but should closely consider the inner workings of digitally disadvantaged groups. The government and enterprises should consider the specific requirements of people with high social interaction anxiety, such as by simplifying the enquiry processes in their facilities or inserting psychological comfort measures into the processes.

Limitations and future research

Due to resource and time limitations, this paper has some shortcomings. First, we considered a broad range of digitally disadvantaged groups and conducted a forward-looking exploratory study. Since we collected data through an online questionnaire, there were restrictions on the range of volunteers who responded. Only if participants met at least one of the conditions could they be identified as members of digitally disadvantaged groups and participate in a follow-up survey. To reduce the participants’ introspection and painful recollections of their disabilities or related conditions, and to avoid expected deviations from the data obtained through the survey, we made no detailed distinction between the participants’ degrees of impairment or the reasons for impairment. We adopted a twofold experimental approach.: first, a questionnaire that was too detailed might have infringed on the participants’ privacy rights, and second, since little research has been conducted on inclusiveness in relation to mixed physical and virtual spaces, this work was pioneering. Therefore, we paid greater attention to digitally disadvantaged groups’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure. In future research, we could focus on digitally disadvantaged individuals who exhibit the same deficiencies, or further increase the sample size to investigate the participants’ intentions to use the new public infrastructure in more detail.

Second, different countries have different economic development statuses and numbers of digitally disadvantaged groups. Our study mainly concerned the willingness of digitally disadvantaged groups to use the new public infrastructure in China. Therefore, in the future, the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use new public infrastructures involving mixed physical and virtual spaces can be further explored in different national contexts. Furthermore, in addition to the effects of social interaction anxiety examined in this paper, future researchers could consider other moderators associated with individual differences, such as age, familiarity with technology, and disability status. We also call for more scholars to explore digitally disadvantaged groups’ use of the new public infrastructure to promote inclusive smart city construction and sustainable social development.

Previous researchers have explored users’ intentions to use virtual technology services and have analysed the factors that influence those intentions (Akdim et al. 2022 ; Liébana-Cabanillas et al. 2020 ; Nguyen and Dao, 2024 ). However, researchers have mainly focused on single virtual or physical spaces (Scavarelli et al. 2021 ; Zhang et al. 2020 ), and the topic has rarely been discussed in relation to mixed physical and virtual spaces. In addition, previous studies have mainly considered the technology perspective (Buckingham et al. 2022 ; Carney and Kandt, 2022 ), and the influence of digitally disadvantaged groups’ psychological characteristics and the effect of the overall social environment on their intentions to use have largely been ignored. To fill this gap, we constructed a UTAUT-based model for intentions to use the new public infrastructure that involved a mixing of physical and virtual spaces. We considered the mechanisms influencing digitally disadvantaged groups’ use of the new public infrastructure, considering them from the perspectives of individual, social, and technical factors. We processed and analysed 337 valid samples using PLS-SEM. The results showed that there were significant correlations between the six user factor variables and intention to use the new public infrastructure. In addition, for digitally disadvantaged groups, different degrees of social interaction anxiety had significantly different effects on the impacts of performance expectancy, psychological reactance, perceived marketplace influence, and effort expectancy on intention to use, while there were no differences in the impacts of perceived institutional support and facilitating conditions on intention to use.

In the theoretical value, we build on previous scholarly research on the conceptualisation of new public infrastructures, mixed physical and virtual spaces (Aslesen et al. 2019 ; Cocciolo, 2010 ), arguing for user, social and technological dimensions influencing the use of new public infrastructures by digitally disadvantaged groups in mixed physical and virtual spaces, and for the moderating role of social interaction anxiety. Meanwhile, this study prospectively explores the new phenomenon of digitally disadvantaged groups using new public infrastructures in mixed physical and virtual spaces, which paves the way for future scholars to explore the field both in theory and literature. In the practical value, the research findings will be helpful in promoting effective government policies and corporate designs and in prompting the development of a new public infrastructure that better meets the needs of digitally disadvantaged groups. Moreover, this study will help to direct social and government attention to the problems that exist in the use of new public infrastructures by digitally disadvantaged groups. It will have a significant implication for the future development of smart cities and urban digital inclusiveness in China and worldwide.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the confidentiality of the respondents’ information but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request for academic purposes only.

Abbad MMM (2021) Using the UTAUT model to understand students’ usage of e-learning systems in developing countries. Educ. Inf. Technol. 26(6):7205–7224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10573-5

Article   Google Scholar  

Acharya B, Lee J, Moon H (2022) Preference heterogeneity of local government for implementing ICT infrastructure and services through public-private partnership mechanism. Socio-Economic Plan. Sci. 79(9):101103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2021.101103

Ahn MJ, Chen YC (2022) Digital transformation toward AI-augmented public administration: the perception of government employees and the willingness to use AI in government. Gov. Inf. Q. 39(2):101664. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101664

Akdim K, Casalo LV, Flavián C (2022) The role of utilitarian and hedonic aspects in the continuance intention to use social mobile apps. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 66:102888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102888

Al-Masri AN, Ijeh A, Nasir M (2019) Smart city framework development: challenges and solutions. Smart Technologies and Innovation for a Sustainable Future, Cham

Google Scholar  

Alalwan AA, Dwivedi YK, Rana NP (2017) Factors influencing adoption of mobile banking by Jordanian bank customers: extending UTAUT2 with trust. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 37(3):99–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.01.002

Ali A, Li C, Hussain A, Bakhtawar (2020) Hedonic shopping motivations and obsessive–compulsive buying on the internet. Glob. Bus. Rev. 25(1):198–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/0972150920937535

Ali U, Mehmood A, Majeed MF, Muhammad S, Khan MK, Song HB, Malik KM (2019) Innovative citizen’s services through public cloud in Pakistan: user’s privacy concerns and impacts on adoption. Mob. Netw. Appl. 24(1):47–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-018-1132-x

Almaiah MA, Alamri MM, Al-Rahmi W (2019) Applying the UTAUT model to explain the students’ acceptance of mobile learning system in higher education. IEEE Access 7:174673–174686. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2957206

Annaswamy TM, Verduzco-Gutierrez M, Frieden L (2020) Telemedicine barriers and challenges for persons with disabilities: COVID-19 and beyond. Disabil Health J 13(4):100973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2020.100973.3

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Aslesen HW, Martin R, Sardo S (2019) The virtual is reality! On physical and virtual space in software firms’ knowledge formation. Entrepreneurship Regional Dev. 31(9-10):669–682. https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2018.1552314

Bagozzi RP, Phillips LW (1982) Representing and testing organizational theories: a holistic construal. Adm. Sci. Q. 27(3):459–489. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392322

Bai B, Guo ZQ (2022) Understanding users’ continuance usage behavior towards digital health information system driven by the digital revolution under COVID-19 context: an extended UTAUT model. Psychol. Res. Behav. Manag. 15:2831–2842. https://doi.org/10.2147/prbm.S364275

Bélanger F, Carter L (2008) Trust and risk in e-government adoption. J. Strategic Inf. Syst. 17(2):165–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2007.12.002

Blasi S, Ganzaroli A, De Noni I (2022) Smartening sustainable development in cities: strengthening the theoretical linkage between smart cities and SDGs. Sustain. Cities Soc. 80:103793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103793

Botelho FHF (2021) Accessibility to digital technology: virtual barriers, real opportunities. Assistive Technol. 33:27–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400435.2021.1945705

Brehm, JW (1966). A theory of psychological reactance . Academic Press

Buckingham SA, Walker T, Morrissey K, Smartline Project T (2022) The feasibility and acceptability of digital technology for health and wellbeing in social housing residents in Cornwall: a qualitative scoping study. Digital Health 8:20552076221074124. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076221074124

Bygrave W, Minniti M (2000) The social dynamics of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory Pract. 24(3):25–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/104225870002400302

Cai Y, Qi W, Yi FM (2023) Smartphone use and willingness to adopt digital pest and disease management: evidence from litchi growers in rural China. Agribusiness 39(1):131–147. https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21766

Carney F, Kandt J (2022) Health, out-of-home activities and digital inclusion in later life: implications for emerging mobility services. Journal of Transport & Health 24:101311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101311

Chao CM (2019) Factors determining the behavioral intention to use mobile learning: an application and extension of the UTAUT model. Front. Psychol. 10:1652. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01652

Chen HY, Chen HY, Zhang W, Yang CD, Cui HX (2021) Research on marketing prediction model based on Markov Prediction. Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2021(9):4535181. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/4535181

Chen J, Cui MY, Levinson D (2024) The cost of working: measuring physical and virtual access to jobs. Int. J. Urban Sci. 28(2):318–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2023.2253208

Chen JX, Wang T, Fang ZY, Wang HT (2023) Research on elderly users’ intentions to accept wearable devices based on the improved UTAUT model. Front. Public Health 10(12):1035398. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1035398

Chen KF, Guaralda M, Kerr J, Turkay S (2024) Digital intervention in the city: a conceptual framework for digital placemaking. Urban Des. Int. 29(1):26–38. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-022-00203-y

Chen L, Zhang H (2021) Strategic authoritarianism: the political cycles and selectivity of China’s tax-break policy. Am. J. Political Sci. 65(4):845–861. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12648

Chiu YTH, Hofer KM (2015) Service innovation and usage intention: a cross-market analysis. J. Serv. Manag. 26(3):516–538. https://doi.org/10.1108/josm-10-2014-0274

Chou SW, Min HT, Chang YC, Lin CT (2010) Understanding continuance intention of knowledge creation using extended expectation-confirmation theory: an empirical study of Taiwan and China online communities. Behav. Inf. Technol. 29(6):557–570. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290903401986

Cocciolo A (2010) Alleviating physical space constraints using virtual space? A study from an urban academic library. Libr. Hi Tech. 28(4):523–535. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831011096204

Davidson CA, Willner CJ, van Noordt SJR, Banz BC, Wu J, Kenney JG, Johannesen JK, Crowley MJ (2019) One-month stability of cyberball post-exclusion ostracism distress in Adolescents. J. Psychopathol. Behav. Assess. 41(3):400–408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-019-09723-4

Dogruel L, Joeckel S, Bowman ND (2015) The use and acceptance of new media entertainment technology by elderly users: development of an expanded technology acceptance model. Behav. Inf. Technol. 34(11):1052–1063. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2015.1077890

Fang ML, Canham SL, Battersby L, Sixsmith J, Wada M, Sixsmith A (2019) Exploring privilege in the digital divide: implications for theory, policy, and practice. Gerontologist 59(1):E1–E15. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gny037

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Fergus TA, Valentiner DP, McGrath PB, Gier-Lonsway SL, Kim HS (2012) Short forms of the social interaction anxiety scale and the social phobia scale. J. Personal. Assess. 94(3):310–320. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2012.660291

Garone A, Pynoo B, Tondeur J, Cocquyt C, Vanslambrouck S, Bruggeman B, Struyven K (2019) Clustering university teaching staff through UTAUT: implications for the acceptance of a new learning management system. Br. J. Educ. Technol. 50(5):2466–2483. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12867

Gu QH, Iop (2020) Frame-based conceptual model of smart city’s applications in China. International Conference on Green Development and Environmental Science and Technology (ICGDE), Changsha, CHINA

Book   Google Scholar  

Guo MJ, Liu YH, Yu HB, Hu BY, Sang ZQ (2016) An overview of smart city in China. China Commun. 13(5):203–211. https://doi.org/10.1109/cc.2016.7489987

Gursoy D, Chi OHX, Lu L, Nunkoo R (2019) Consumers acceptance of artificially intelligent (AI) device use in service delivery. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 49:157–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.03.008

Hair, JF, Hult, GTM, Ringle, CM, & Sarstedt, M (2022). A primer on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) (Third edition. ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc

Hair Jr JF, Sarstedt M, Hopkins L, Kuppelwieser VG (2014) Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM): an emerging tool in business research. Eur. Bus. Rev. 26(2):106–121. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr-10-2013-0128

Hair JF, Risher JJ, Sarstedt M, Ringle CM (2019) When to use and how to report the results of PLS-SEM. Eur. Bus. Rev. 31(1):2–24. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr-11-2018-0203

Heerink M, Kröse B, Evers V, Wielinga B (2010) Assessing acceptance of assistive social agent technology by older adults: the almere model. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 2(4):361–375. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-010-0068-5

Henseler J, Ringle CM, Sarstedt M (2015) A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 43(1):115–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8

Henseler, J, Ringle, CM, & Sinkovics, RR (2009). The use of partial least squares path modeling in international marketing. In RR Sinkovics & PN Ghauri (Eds.), New Challenges to International Marketing (Vol. 20, pp. 277-319). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-7979 (2009)0000020014

Hoque R, Sorwar G (2017) Understanding factors influencing the adoption of mHealth by the elderly: an extension of the UTAUT model. Int. J. Med. Inform. 101:75–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2017.02.002

Hsu CW, Peng CC (2022) What drives older adults’ use of mobile registration apps in Taiwan? An investigation using the extended UTAUT model. Inform. Health Soc. Care 47(3):258–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538157.2021.1990299

Hu J, Zhang H, Irfan M (2023) How does digital infrastructure construction affect low-carbon development? A multidimensional interpretation of evidence from China. J. Clean. Prod. 396(9):136467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136467

Hu TF, Guo RS, Chen C (2022) Understanding mobile payment adaption with the integrated model of UTAUT and MOA model. 2022 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), Portland, OR, USA

Hutchins N, Allen A, Curran M, Kannis-Dymand L (2021) Social anxiety and online social interaction. Aust. Psychologist 56(2):142–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050067.2021.1890977

Iancu I, Iancu B (2020) Designing mobile technology for elderly. A theoretical overview. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 155(9):119977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119977

Jakonen, OI (2024). Smart cities, virtual futures? - Interests of urban actors in mediating digital technology and urban space in Tallinn, Estonia. Urban Studies , 17. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241245871

Ji TT, Chen JH, Wei HH, Su YC (2021) Towards people-centric smart city development: investigating the citizens’ preferences and perceptions about smart-city services in Taiwan. Sustain. Cities Soc. 67(14):102691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102691

Jöreskog KG (1971) Simultaneous factor analysis in several populations. Psychometrika 36(4):409–426. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02291366

Joshi Y, Uniyal DP, Sangroya D (2021) Investigating consumers’ green purchase intention: examining the role of economic value, emotional value and perceived marketplace influence. J. Clean. Prod. 328(8):129638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129638

Kadylak T, Cotten SR (2020) United States older adults’ willingness to use emerging technologies. Inf. Commun. Soc. 23(5):736–750. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2020.1713848

Kaihlanen AM, Virtanen L, Buchert U, Safarov N, Valkonen P, Hietapakka L, Hörhammer I, Kujala S, Kouvonen A, Heponiemi T (2022) Towards digital health equity-a qualitative study of the challenges experienced by vulnerable groups in using digital health services in the COVID-19 era. BMC Health Services Research 22(1):188. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07584-4

Khan HH, Malik MN, Zafar R, Goni FA, Chofreh AG, Klemes JJ, Alotaibi Y (2020) Challenges for sustainable smart city development: a conceptual framework. Sustain. Dev. 28(5):1507–1518. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2090

Kim S, Park H (2013) Effects of various characteristics of social commerce (s-commerce) on consumers’ trust and trust performance. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 33(2):318–332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2012.11.006

Leary RB, Vann RJ, Mittelstaedt JD (2019) Perceived marketplace influence and consumer ethical action. J. Consum. Aff. 53(3):1117–1145. https://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12220

Leary RB, Vann RJ, Mittelstaedt JD, Murphy PE, Sherry JF (2014) Changing the marketplace one behavior at a time: perceived marketplace influence and sustainable consumption. J. Bus. Res. 67(9):1953–1958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.11.004

Lee DD, Arya LA, Andy UU, Sammel MD, Harvie HS (2019) Willingness of women with pelvic floor disorders to use mobile technology to communicate with their health care providers. Female Pelvic Med. Reconstructive Surg. 25(2):134–138. https://doi.org/10.1097/spv.0000000000000668

Lee SW, Sung HJ, Jeon HM (2019) Determinants of continuous intention on food delivery apps: extending UTAUT2 with information quality. Sustainability 11(11):3141. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113141 . 15

Li Mo QZ, Bai BY (2023) Height dissatisfaction and loneliness among adolescents: the chain mediating role of social anxiety and social support. Curr. Psychol. 42(31):27296–27304. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03855-9

Liébana-Cabanillas F, Japutra A, Molinillo S, Singh N, Sinha N (2020) Assessment of mobile technology use in the emerging market: analyzing intention to use m-payment services in India. Telecommun. Policy 44(9):102009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102009 . 17

Liu HD, Zhao HF (2022) Upgrading models, evolutionary mechanisms and vertical cases of service-oriented manufacturing in SVC leading enterprises: product-development and service-innovation for industry 4.0. Humanities Soc. Sci. Commun. 9(1):387. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01409-9 . 24

Liu ZL, Wang Y, Xu Q, Yan T, Iop (2017) Study on smart city construction of Jiujiang based on IOT technology. 3rd International Conference on Advances in Energy, Environment and Chemical Engineering (AEECE), Chengdu, CHINA

Magee WJ, Eaton WW, Wittchen H-U, McGonagle KA, Kessler RC (1996) Agoraphobia, simple phobia, and social phobia in the National Comorbidity Survey. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 53(2):159–168

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Martins R, Oliveira T, Thomas M, Tomás S (2019) Firms’ continuance intention on SaaS use - an empirical study. Inf. Technol. People 32(1):189–216. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp-01-2018-0027

Miron AM, Brehm JW (2006) Reactance theory - 40 Years later. Z. Fur Sozialpsychologie 37(1):9–18. https://doi.org/10.1024/0044-3514.37.1.9

Mogaji E, Balakrishnan J, Nwoba AC, Nguyen NP (2021) Emerging-market consumers’ interactions with banking chatbots. Telematics and Informatics 65:101711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2021.101711

Mogaji E, Bosah G, Nguyen NP (2023) Transport and mobility decisions of consumers with disabilities. J. Consum. Behav. 22(2):422–438. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2089

Mogaji E, Nguyen NP (2021) Transportation satisfaction of disabled passengers: evidence from a developing country. Transportation Res. Part D.-Transp. Environ. 98:102982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.102982

Mora L, Gerli P, Ardito L, Petruzzelli AM (2023) Smart city governance from an innovation management perspective: theoretical framing, review of current practices, and future research agenda. Technovation 123:102717. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2023.102717

Mulvale G, Moll S, Miatello A, Robert G, Larkin M, Palmer VJ, Powell A, Gable C, Girling M (2019) Codesigning health and other public services with vulnerable and disadvantaged populations: insights from an international collaboration. Health Expectations 22(3):284–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12864

Narzt W, Mayerhofer S, Weichselbaum O, Pomberger G, Tarkus A, Schumann M (2016) Designing and evaluating barrier-free travel assistance services. 3rd International Conference on HCI in Business, Government, and Organizations - Information Systems (HCIBGO) Held as Part of 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International), Toronto, CANADA

Nguyen GD, Dao THT (2024) Factors influencing continuance intention to use mobile banking: an extended expectation-confirmation model with moderating role of trust. Humanities Soc. Sci. Commun. 11(1):276. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02778-z

Nicolas C, Kim J, Chi S (2020) Quantifying the dynamic effects of smart city development enablers using structural equation modeling. Sustain. Cities Soc. 53:101916. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2019.101916

Paköz MZ, Sözer C, Dogan A (2022) Changing perceptions and usage of public and pseudo-public spaces in the post-pandemic city: the case of Istanbul. Urban Des. Int. 27(1):64–79. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00147-1

Perez AJ, Siddiqui F, Zeadally S, Lane D (2023) A review of IoT systems to enable independence for the elderly and disabled individuals. Internet Things 21:100653. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.2022.100653

Purohit S, Arora R, Paul J (2022) The bright side of online consumer behavior: continuance intention for mobile payments. J. Consum. Behav. 21(3):523–542. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2017

Ringle CM, Sarstedt M, Straub DW (2012) Editor’s Comments: A Critical Look at the Use of PLS-SEM in “MIS Quarterly”. MIS Q. 36(1):III–XIV

Roubroeks MAJ, Ham JRC, Midden CJH (2010) The dominant robot: threatening robots cause psychological reactance, especially when they have incongruent goals. 5th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, Copenhagen, DENMARK

Saparudin M, Rahayu A, Hurriyati R, Sultan MA, Ramdan AM, Ieee (2020) Consumers’ continuance intention use of mobile banking in Jakarta: extending UTAUT models with trust. 5th International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech), Bandung, Indonesia

Scavarelli A, Arya A, Teather RJ (2021) Virtual reality and augmented reality in social learning spaces: a literature review. Virtual Real. 25(1):257–277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00444-8

Schneider AB, Leonard B (2022) From anxiety to control: mask-wearing, perceived marketplace influence, and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. J. Consum. Aff. 56(1):97–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12412

Schou J, Pors AS (2019) Digital by default? A qualitative study of exclusion in digitalised welfare. Soc. Policy Adm. 53(3):464–477. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12470

Schultz LT, Heimberg RG (2008) Attentional focus in social anxiety disorder: potential for interactive processes. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 28(7):1206–1221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2008.04.003

Shibusawa H (2000) Cyberspace and physical space in an urban economy. Pap. Regional Sci. 79(3):253–270. https://doi.org/10.1007/pl00013610

Susanto A, Mahadika PR, Subiyakto A, Nuryasin, Ieee (2018) Analysis of electronic ticketing system acceptance using an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). 6th International Conference on Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM), Parapat, Indonesia

Susilawati C, Wong J, Chikolwa B (2010) Public participation, values and interests in the procurement of infrastructure projects in Australia: a review and future research direction. 2010 International Conference on Construction and Real Estate Management, Brisbane, Australia

Tam C, Santos D, Oliveira T (2020) Exploring the influential factors of continuance intention to use mobile Apps: extending the expectation confirmation model. Inf. Syst. Front. 22(1):243–257. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-018-9864-5

Teo T, Zhou MM, Fan ACW, Huang F (2019) Factors that influence university students’ intention to use Moodle: a study in Macau. EtrD-Educ. Technol. Res. Dev. 67(3):749–766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09650-x

Thapa S, Nielsen JB, Aldahmash AM, Qadri FR, Leppin A (2021) Willingness to use digital health tools in patient care among health care professionals and students at a university hospital in Saudi Arabia: quantitative cross-sectional survey. JMIR Med. Educ. 7(1):e18590. https://doi.org/10.2196/18590

Tian X, Solomon DH, Brisini KS (2020) How the comforting process fails: psychological reactance to support messages. J. Commun. 70(1):13–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz040

Troisi O, Fenza G, Grimaldi M, Loia F (2022) Covid-19 sentiments in smart cities: the role of technology anxiety before and during the pandemic. Computers in Human Behavior 126:106986. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106986

Venkatesh V, Brown SA (2001) A longitudinal investigation of personal computers in homes: adoption determinants and emerging challenges. MIS Q. 25(1):71–102. https://doi.org/10.2307/3250959

Venkatesh V, Morris MG, Davis GB, Davis FD (2003) User acceptance of information technology: toward a unified view. MIS Q. 27(3):425–478. https://doi.org/10.2307/30036540

Vinnikova A, Lu LD, Wei JC, Fang GB, Yan J (2020) The Use of smartphone fitness applications: the role of self-efficacy and self-regulation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17(20):7639. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17207639

Wang BA, Zhang R, Wang Y (2021) Mechanism influencing older people’s willingness to use intelligent aged-care products. Healthcare 9(7):864. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9070864

Wang CHJ, Steinfeld E, Maisel JL, Kang B (2021) Is your smart city inclusive? Evaluating proposals from the US department of transportation’s smart city challenge. Sustainable Cities and Society 74:103148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103148

Wang XY (2007) Mutually augmented virtual environments for architecural design and collaboration. 12th Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures Conference, Sydney, Australia

Werner P, Karnieli E (2003) A model of the willingness to use telemedicine for routine and specialized care. J. Telemed. Telecare 9(5):264–272. https://doi.org/10.1258/135763303769211274

Yadav J, Saini AK, Yadav AK (2019) Measuring citizens engagement in e-Government projects - Indian perspective. J. Stat. Manag. Syst. 22(2):327–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/09720510.2019.1580908

Yang CC, Liu C, Wang YS (2023) The acceptance and use of smartphones among older adults: differences in UTAUT determinants before and after training. Libr. Hi Tech. 41(5):1357–1375. https://doi.org/10.1108/lht-12-2021-0432

Yang K, Forney JC (2013) The moderating role of consumer technology anxiety in mobile shopping adoption: differential effects of facilitating conditions and social influences. J. Electron. Commer. Res. 14(4):334–347

Yeung HL, Hao P (2024) Telecommuting amid Covid-19: the Governmobility of work-from-home employees in Hong Kong. Cities 148:104873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.104873

Zander V, Gustafsson C, Stridsberg SL, Borg J (2023) Implementation of welfare technology: a systematic review of barriers and facilitators. Disabil. Rehabilitation-Assistive Technol. 18(6):913–928. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2021.1938707

Zeebaree M, Agoyi M, Agel M (2022) Sustainable adoption of e-government from the UTAUT perspective. Sustainability 14(9):5370. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095370

Zhang YX, Liu HX, Kang SC, Al-Hussein M (2020) Virtual reality applications for the built environment: Research trends and opportunities. Autom. Constr. 118:103311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103311

Zhong YP, Oh S, Moon HC (2021) Service transformation under industry 4.0: investigating acceptance of facial recognition payment through an extended technology acceptance model. Technology in Society 64:101515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101515

Zhu DH, Deng ZZ (2021) Effect of social anxiety on the adoption of robotic training partner. Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw. 24(5):343–348. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0179

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China, grant number 22BGJ037; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang, grant number GB202301004; and the Zhejiang Province University Students Science and Technology Innovation Activity Program, grant numbers 2023R403013, 2023R403010 & 2023R403086.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Chengxiang Chu, Zhenyang Shen, Hanyi Xu.

Authors and Affiliations

School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China

Chengxiang Chu, Zhenyang Shen, Qizhi Wei & Cong Cao

Law School, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Conceptualisation: C.C., CX.C. and ZY.S.; Methodology: CX.C. and HY.X.; Validation: ZY.S. and QZ.W.; Formal analysis: HY.X.; Investigation: CX.C., ZY.S. and HY.X.; Resources: C.C.; Data curation: CX.C. and HY.X.; Writing–original draft preparation: CX.C, ZY.S., HY.X. and QZ.W.; Writing–review & editing: CX.C and C.C.; Visualisation: ZY.S. and HY.X.; Supervision: C.C.; Funding acquisition: C.C., CX.C. and ZY.S.; all authors approved the final manuscript to be submitted.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cong Cao .

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval.

Ethical approval for the involvement of human subjects in this study was granted by Institutional Review Board of School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, China, Reference number CC-2023-1-0008-0005-SOM-ZJUT.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix A. Measurement items

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Chu, C., Shen, Z., Xu, H. et al. How to avoid sinking in swamp: exploring the intentions of digitally disadvantaged groups to use a new public infrastructure that combines physical and virtual spaces. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1135 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03684-0

Download citation

Received : 28 October 2023

Accepted : 29 August 2024

Published : 04 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03684-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Effective teacher professional development for school-based mental health promotion: a review of the literature.

1. Introduction

1.1. teachers’ role in smhp, 1.2. teacher preparation for smhp, 1.3. capacity building is critical for implementation, 1.4. effective teacher pd for smhp, 1.5. purpose of current review.

• What are the components of high-quality teacher PD for SMHP that lead to effective implementation of innovations?
• What is the evidence base for these components?

2. Materials and Methods

3.1. training, 3.1.1. interactive, 3.1.2. staff input, 3.2. technical assistance, 3.2.1. goals, 3.2.2. approach, 3.2.3. activities, 3.3. pd delivery considerations, 3.3.1. online vs. in-person format, 3.3.2. dosage, 3.3.3. expertise of the provider.

4. Discussion

4.1. future directions: research to practice, 4.2. future directions: practice to research, 5. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary and Trends Report 2011–2021. 2023. Available online: www.cdc.gov/yrbs (accessed on 20 October 2023).
• Office of the Surgeon General (OSG). Protecting Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory ; US Department of Health and Human Services: Washington, DC, USA, 2021. [ Google Scholar ]
• Greenberg, M.T.; Domitrovich, C.; Bumbarger, B. The Prevention of Mental Disorders in School-Aged Children: Current State of the Field. Prev. Treat. 2001 , 4 , 1–62. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Swain-Bradway, J.; Johnson, J.; Eber, L.; Barret, S.; Weist, M.D. Interconnecting School Mental Health and School-Wide Positive Behavior Support. In School Mental Health: Global Challenges and Opportunities ; Kutcher, S., Wei, Y., Weist, M.D., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA, 2015; pp. 282–298. [ Google Scholar ]
• Durlak, J.A.; Weissberg, R.P.; Dymnicki, A.B.; Taylor, R.D.; Schellinger, K.B. The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Dev. 2011 , 82 , 405–432. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hoagwood, K.E.; Olin, S.S.; Kerker, B.D.; Kratochwill, T.R.; Crowe, M.; Saka, N. Empirically based school interventions targeted at academic and mental health functioning. J. Emot. Behav. Disord. 2007 , 15 , 65–92. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Rones, M.; Hoagwood, K. School-based mental health services: A research review. Clin. Child Fam. Psychol. Rev. 2000 , 3 , 223–241. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Weare, K.; Nind, M. Mental health promotion and problem prevention in schools: What does the evidence say? Health Promot. Int. 2011 , 26 , i29–i69. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kaufman, S.E.R.; Hulleman, C.S. SEL in Elementary School Settings: Identifying Mechanisms that Matter. In The Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning ; Durlak, J.A., Domitrovich, C.E., Weissberg, R.P., Gullotta, T.P., Eds.; The Guilford Press: New York, NY, USA, 2016; pp. 151–166. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fixsen, D.L.; Blase, K.A.; Naoom, S.F.; Wallace, F. Core implementation components. Res. Soc. Work Pract. 2009 , 19 , 531–540. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Flaspohler, P.D.; Duffy, J.; Wandersman, A.; Stillman, L.; Maras, M.A. Unpacking prevention capacity: An intersection of research-to-practice models and community-centered models. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2008 , 41 , 182–196. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Lyon, A.R.; Bruns, E.J. From evidence to impact: Joining our best school mental health practices with our best implementation strategies. Sch. Ment. Health 2019 , 11 , 106–114. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Flaspohler, P.D.; Anderson-Butcher, D.; Paternite, C.E.; Weist, M.; Wandersman, A. Community science and expanded school mental health: Bridging the research-to-practice gap to promote child well-being and academic success. Educ. Child Psychol. 2006 , 23 , 27–41. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Lee, J.; Frey, A.J.; Herman, K.; Reinke, W. Motivational interviewing as a framework to guide school-based coaching. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2014 , 7 , 225–239. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Owens, J.S.; Lyon, A.R.; Brandt, N.E.; Warner, C.M.; Nadeem, E.; Spiel, C.; Wagner, M. Implementation science in school mental health: Key constructs in a developing research agenda. Sch. Ment. Health 2014 , 6 , 99–111. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Weist, M.D. Fulfilling the promise of school-based mental health: Moving toward a Public Mental Health Promotion approach. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2005 , 33 , 735–741. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• ScHARR Public Health Collaborating Centre. Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Universal Interventions Which Aim to Promote Emotional and Social Wellbeing in Secondary Schools ; The University of Sheffield: Sheffield, UK, 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Franklin, C.G.S.; Kim, J.S.; Ryan, T.N.; Kelly, M.S.; Montgomery, K.L. Teacher involvement in school mental health interventions: A systematic review. Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 2012 , 34 , 973–982. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Han, S.S.; Weiss, B. Sustainability of teacher implementation of school-based mental health programs. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2005 , 33 , 665–679. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Baskin, T.W.; Slaten, C.D.; Sorenson, C.; Glover-Russell, J.; Merson, D.N. Does youth psychotherapy improve academically related outcomes? A meta-analysis. J. Couns. Psychol. 2010 , 57 , 290–296. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Domitrovich, C.E.; Bradshaw, C.P.; Poduska, J.M.; Hoagwood, K.; Buckley, J.A.; Olin, S.; Romanelli, L.H.; Leaf, P.J.; Greenberg, M.T.; Ialongo, N.S. Maximizing the implementation quality of evidence-based preventive interventions in schools: A conceptual framework. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2008 , 1 , 6–28. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Gottfredson, D.C.; Gottfredson, G.D. Quality of school-based prevention programs: Results from a national survey. J. Res. Crime Delinq. 2002 , 39 , 3–35. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ball, A.; Anderson-Butcher, D. Understanding Teachers’ Perceptions of Student Support Systems in Relation to Teachers’ Stress. Child. Sch. 2014 , 36 , 221–229. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ransford, C.R.; Greenberg, M.T.; Domitrovich, C.E.; Small, M.; Jacobson, L. The role of teachers’ psychological experiences and perceptions of curriculum supports on the implementation of a social and emotional learning curriculum. Sch. Psychol. Rev. 2009 , 38 , 510–532. [ Google Scholar ]
• Koller, J.R.; Bertel, J.M. Responding to Today’s Mental Health Needs of Children, Families and Schools: Revisiting the Preservice Training and Preparation of School-Based Personnel. Educ. Treat. Child. 2006 , 29 , 197–217. Available online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42899882 (accessed on 2 August 2019).
• Brown, E.L.; Phillippo, K.L.; Weston, K.; Rodger, S. United States and Canada pre-service teacher certification standards for student mental health: A comparative case study. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2019 , 80 , 71–82. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ball, A.; Iachini, A.L.; Bohnenkamp, J.H.; Togno, N.M.; Brown, E.L.; Hoffman, J.A.; George, M.W. School mental health content in state in-service K-12 teaching standards in the United States. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2016 , 60 , 312–320. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• State, T.M.; Kern, L.; Starosta, K.M.; Mukherjee, A.D. Elementary Pre-service Teacher Preparation in the Area of Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Problems. Sch. Ment. Health 2011 , 3 , 13–23. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Andrews, A.; McCabe, M.; Wideman-Johnston, T. Mental health issues in the schools: Are educators prepared? J. Ment. Health Train. Educ. Pract. 2014 , 9 , 261–272. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Moon, J.; Williford, A.; Mendenhall, A. Educators’ perceptions of youth mental health: Implications for training and the promotion of mental health services in schools. Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 2017 , 73 , 384–391. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Roeser, R.W.; Midgley, C. Teachers’ views of issues involving students’ mental health. Elem. Sch. J. 1997 , 98 , 115–133. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Walter, H.J.; Gouze, K.; Lim, K.G. Teachers’ beliefs about mental health needs in inner city elementary schools. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 2006 , 45 , 61–68. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kidger, J.; Gunnell, D.; Biddle, L.; Campbell, R.; Donovan, J. Part and parcel of teaching? Secondary school staff’s views on supporting student emotional health and well-being. Br. Educ. Res. J. 2010 , 36 , 919–935. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Phillippo, K.L.; Kelly, M.S. On the Fault Line: A Qualitative Exploration of High School Teachers’ Involvement with Student Mental Health Issues. Sch. Ment. Health 2014 , 6 , 184–200. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Chinman, M.; Hannah, G.; Wandersman, A.; Ebener, P.; Hunter, S.B.; Imm, P.; Sheldon, J. Developing a community science research agenda for building community capacity for effective preventive interventions. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2005 , 35 , 143–157. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Dalton, J.H.; Elias, M.J.; Wandersman, A. Prevention and Promotion: Implementing Programs. In Community Psychology: Linking Individuals and Communities , 2nd ed.; Cengage Learning: Boston, MA, USA, 2006; pp. 360–397. [ Google Scholar ]
• Franks, R.P.; Schroeder, J. Implementation Science: Defining the New Frontier. In Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems ; Halle, T., Metz, A., Martinez-Beck, I., Eds.; Brookes Publishing: Baltimore, MD, USA, 2013; pp. 5–19. Available online: https://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=reference&D=psyc10&NEWS=N&AN=2013-17206-000 (accessed on 25 July 2019).
• Wandersman, A.; Duffy, J.; Flaspohler, P.; Noonan, R.; Lubell, K.; Stillman, L.; Blachman, M.; Dunville, R.; Saul, J. Bridging the gap between prevention research and practice: The Interactive Systems Framework for dissemination and implementation. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2008 , 41 , 171–181. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Chinman, M.; Hunter, S.B.; Ebener, P.; Paddock, S.M.; Stillman, L.; Imm, P.; Wandersman, A. Illustration of the Prevention Support System. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2008 , 41 , 206–224. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Greenberg, M.T.; Weissberg, R.P.; Brien, M.U.O.; Zins, J.E.; Fredericks, L.; Resnik, H.; Elias, M.J. Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. Am. Psychol. 2003 , 58 , 466–474. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Forman, S.G.; Olin, S.S.; Hoagwood, K.E.; Crowe, M.; Saka, N. Evidence-based interventions in schools: Developers’ views of implementation barriers and facilitators. Sch. Ment. Health 2009 , 1 , 26–36. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Darling-Hammond, L.; Hyler, M.E.; Gardner, M. Effective Teacher Professional Development ; Learning Policy Institute: Palo Alto, CA, USA, 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Durlak, J.A.; DuPre, E.P. Implementation matters: A review of research on the influence of implementation on program outcomes and the factors affecting implementation. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2008 , 41 , 327–350. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Blank, R.K.; de las Alas, N. Effects of Teacher Professional Development on Gains in Student Achievement ; Council of Chief State School Officers: Washington, DC, USA, 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wei, R.C.; Darling-Hammond, L.; Andree, A.; Richardson, N.; Orphanos, S. Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the United States and Abroad ; National Staff Development Council: Dallas, TX, USA, 2009. Available online: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED504168 (accessed on 21 August 2019).
• Bayar, A. The components of effective professional development activities in terms of teachers’ perspective. Int. Online J. Educ. Sci. 2014 , 6 , 319–327. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Borko, H. Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educ. Res. 2004 , 33 , 3–15. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Penuel, W.R.; Fishman, B.J.; Yamaguchi, R.; Gallagher, L.P. What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation. Am. Educ. Res. J. 2007 , 44 , 921–958. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Katz, J.; Wandersman, A. Technical assistance to enhance prevention capacity: A research synthesis of the evidence base. Prev. Sci. 2016 , 17 , 417–428. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Weiss, C.A. Evaluation , 2nd ed.; Prentice Hall: Saddle River, NJ, USA, 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• Chafouleas, S.M.; Johnson, A.H.; Overstreet, S.; Santos, N.M. Toward a blueprint for trauma-informed service delivery in schools. Sch. Ment. Health 2016 , 8 , 144–162. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Elias, M.J. From Model Implementation to Sustainability: A Multisite Study of Pathways to Excellence in Social-Emotional Learning and Related School Programs. In Sustaining Professional Learning Communities ; Blankstein, A.M., Houston, P.D., Cole, R.W., Eds.; Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2008; pp. 59–95. [ Google Scholar ]
• Eppler-Wolff, N.; Martin, A.; Homayoonfar, S. The School-Based Mental Health Collaboration (SBMHC): A multi-level university-school partnership. J. Infant Child Adolesc. Psychother. 2019 , 18 , 13–28. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hemmeter, M.L.; Snyder, P.; Fox, L. Using the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT) to support implementation of social–emotional teaching practices. Sch. Ment. Health 2018 , 10 , 202–213. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Becker, K.D.; Darney, D.; Domitrovich, C.; Keperling, J.P.; Ialongo, N.S. Supporting universal prevention programs: A two-phased coaching model. Clin. Child Fam. Psychol. Rev. 2013 , 16 , 213–228. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Hough, D.L. Characteristics of effective professional development: An examination of the Developmental Designs character education classroom management approach in middle grades schools. Middle Grades Res. J. 2011 , 6 , 129–143. Available online: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=66179257&site=ehost-live (accessed on 11 July 2019).
• Kutcher, S.; Wei, Y.; McLuckie, A.; Bullock, L. Educator mental health literacy: A programme evaluation of the teacher training education on the mental health & high school curriculum guide. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2013 , 6 , 83–93. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Edgar, S.N. Introducing social emotional learning to music education professional development. Update Appl. Res. Music Educ. 2013 , 31 , 28–36. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hamre, B.K.; Downer, J.T.; Jamil, F.M.; Pianta, R.C. Enhancing Teachers’ Intentional use of Effective Interactions with Children: Designing and Testing Professional Development Interventions. In Handbook of Early Childhood Education ; Pianta, R.C., Ed.; The Guilford Press: New York, NY, USA, 2012; pp. 507–532. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pas, E.T.; Bradshaw, C.P.; Cash, A.H. Coaching Classroom-Based Preventive Interventions. In Handbook of School Mental Health: Research, Training, Practice, and Policy , 2nd ed.; Weist, M.D., Lever, N.A., Bradshaw, C.P., Owens, J.S., Eds.; Springer Science: New York, NY, USA, 2014; pp. 255–267. [ Google Scholar ]
• Silva, D.Y.; Gimbert, B.G. Character education and teacher inquiry: A promising partnership for enhancing children’s classrooms. Int. J. Soc. Educ. 2001 , 16 , 18–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Becker, K.D.; Bohnenkamp, J.; Domitrovich, C.; Keperling, J.P.; Ialongo, N.S. Online training for teachers delivering evidence-based preventive interventions. Sch. Ment. Health 2014 , 6 , 225–236. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Cappella, E.; Jackson, D.R.; Bilal, C.; Hamre, B.K.; Soulé, C. Bridging mental health and education in urban elementary schools: Participatory research to inform intervention development. Sch. Psychol. Rev. 2011 , 40 , 486–508. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Cunningham, C.E.; Barwick, M.; Short, K.; Chen, Y.; Rimas, H.; Ratcliffe, J.; Mielko, S. Modeling the mental health practice change preferences of educators: A discrete-choice conjoint experiment. Sch. Ment. Health 2014 , 6 , 1–14. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Berkowitz, M.W. What works in values education. Int. J. Educ. Res. 2011 , 50 , 153–158. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Vetter, J.B. A Leadership Team Approach to Sustaining Social and Emotional Learning. In Sustaining Professional Learning Communities ; Blankstein, A.M., Houston, P.D., Cole, R.W., Eds.; Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2008; pp. 97–119. [ Google Scholar ]
• Domitrovich, C.E.; Moore, J.E.; Thompson, R.A.; CASEL Preschool to Elementary School Social and Emotional Learning Assessment Workgroup. Interventions that Promote Social-Emotional Learning in Young Children. In Handbook of Early Childhood Education ; Pianta, R.C., Ed.; The Guilford Press: New York, NY, USA, 2012; pp. 393–415. [ Google Scholar ]
• Erchul, W.P. Put me in, coach: Observations on selected studies implementing supportive interventions to teachers. Sch. Ment. Health 2015 , 7 , 74–79. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Gibson, J.E.; Stephan, S.; Brandt, N.E.; Lever, N.A. Supporting Teachers Through Consultation and Training in Mental Health. In Handbook of School Mental Health: Research, Training, Practice, and Policy , 2nd ed.; Weist, M.D., Lever, N.A., Bradshaw, C.P., Owens, J.S., Eds.; Springer Science: New York, NY, USA, 2014; pp. 269–282. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pas, E.T.; Bradshaw, C.P.; Becker, K.D.; Domitrovich, C.; Berg, J.; Musci, R.; Ialongo, N.S. Identifying patterns of coaching to support the implementation of the good behavior game: The role of teacher characteristics. Sch. Ment. Health 2015 , 7 , 61–73. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Schultz, B.K.; Arora, P.; Mautone, J.A. Consultation and coaching to increase the uptake of evidence-based practices: Introduction to the special issue. Sch. Ment. Health 2015 , 7 , 1–5. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Livet, M.; Yannayon, M.; Sheppard, K.; Kocher, K.; Upright, J.; McMillen, J. Exploring provider use of a digital implementation support system for school mental health: A pilot study. Adm. Policy Ment. Health Ment. Health Serv. Res. 2018 , 45 , 362–380. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Sutherland, K.S.; Conroy, M.A.; Vo, A.; Ladwig, C. Implementation Integrity of Practice-Based Coaching: Preliminary Results from the BEST in CLASS Efficacy Trial. Sch. Ment. Health 2015 , 7 , 21–33. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Bradshaw, C.P.; Pas, E.T.; Goldweber, A.; Rosenberg, M.S.; Leaf, P.J. Integrating school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports with tier 2 coaching to student support teams: The PBISplus model. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2012 , 5 , 177–193. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hamre, B.K.; Pianta, R.C.; Mashburn, A.J.; Downer, J.T. Promoting young children’s social competence through the preschool PATHS curriculum and MyTeachingPartner professional development resources. Early Educ. Dev. 2012 , 23 , 809–832. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Wanless, S.B.; Patton, C.L.; Rimm-Kaufman, S.E.; Deutsch, N.L. Setting-level influences on implementation of the responsive classroom approach. Prev. Sci. 2013 , 14 , 40–51. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ashworth, E.; Demkowicz, O.; Lendrum, A.; Frearson, K. Coaching models of school-based prevention and promotion programmes: A qualitative exploration of UK teachers’ perceptions. Sch. Ment. Health 2018 , 10 , 287–300. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Owens, J.S.; Coles, E.K.; Evans, S.W.; Himawan, L.K.; Girio-Herrera, E.; Holdaway, A.S.; Zoromski, A.K.; Schamberg, T.; Schulte, A.C. Using multi-component consultation to increase the integrity with which teachers implement behavioral classroom interventions: A pilot study. Sch. Ment. Health 2017 , 9 , 218–234. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Frey, A.J.; Lee, J.; Small, J.W.; Seeley, J.R.; Walker, H.M.; Feil, E.G. The motivational interviewing navigation guide: A process for enhancing teachers’ motivation to adopt and implement school-based interventions. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2013 , 6 , 158–173. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Steed, E.A.; Durand, V.M. Optimistic teaching: Improving the capacity for teachers to reduce young children’s challenging behavior. Sch. Ment. Health 2013 , 5 , 15–24. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Reinke, W.M.; Herman, K.C.; Darney, D.; Pitchford, J.; Becker, K.; Domitrovich, C.; Ialongo, N. Using the Classroom Check-Up model to support implementation of PATHS to PAX. Adv. Sch. Ment. Health Promot. 2012 , 5 , 220–232. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Scaccia, J.P.; Cook, S.B.; Lamont, A.; Wandersman, A.; Castellow, J.; Katz, J.; Beidas, R.S. A practical implementation science heuristic for organizational readiness: R = MC 2 . J. Community Psychol. 2015 , 43 , 484–501. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]

Click here to enlarge figure

Share and Cite

Dinnen, H.L.; Litvitskiy, N.S.; Flaspohler, P.D. Effective Teacher Professional Development for School-Based Mental Health Promotion: A Review of the Literature. Behav. Sci. 2024 , 14 , 780. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090780

Dinnen HL, Litvitskiy NS, Flaspohler PD. Effective Teacher Professional Development for School-Based Mental Health Promotion: A Review of the Literature. Behavioral Sciences . 2024; 14(9):780. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090780

Dinnen, Hannah L., Nicole S. Litvitskiy, and Paul D. Flaspohler. 2024. "Effective Teacher Professional Development for School-Based Mental Health Promotion: A Review of the Literature" Behavioral Sciences 14, no. 9: 780. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090780

Article Metrics

Article access statistics, further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals

An empirical investigation of corporate governance attributes and firm performance: evidence from the ethiopian insurance industry

• Original Article
• Published: 03 September 2024
• Volume 4 , article number  108 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Nebyu Adamu Abebe   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4121-5345 1 &
• Navkiranjit Kaur Dhaliwal 1  

This study investigates the relationship between CG attributes and the financial performance of Ethiopian insurance companies. This study used quantitative methodologies and an explanatory research design. The study used a panel data approach with 17 insurance companies, and the timeline for the study was 2015/16–2022/23. The secondary data were obtained from various sources, including yearly reports, the National Bank of Ethiopia, published reports, and pertinent websites. This study employs regression techniques, particularly the fixed effects model and random effects model. This study revealed that board size positively correlates with the financial performance of Ethiopian insurance companies (ROA). This finding shows that a larger board size improves insurance financial performance (ROA) more effectively and efficiently. However, a negative association exists between the size of the board of directors and insurance financial performance (ROE). Nonexecutive board members negatively impact financial performance; this may be due to a lack of industry knowledge and prioritizing interests over shareholders. Audit committees significantly improve financial performance, whereas board meetings and board gender diversity do not significantly impact financial performance. However, CEO dualism has a detrimental effect on the financial performance of insurance companies. The study also revealed no significant association between the financial success of government-owned and privately held insurance companies. This study provides useful insights for academics and policymakers (including the National Bank of Ethiopia, insurance companies, and other corporations).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Impact of the Corporate Governance on the Financial Performance of Insurance Companies in the Slovak and Czech Republics

Enterprise risk management and performance of the South African insurers: the moderating role of corporate governance

Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Evidence from Insurance Companies of GCC Countries

Data availability.

The study used open-source secondary data from the insurance company, which are available upon request.

Abdullah SN, Aziz A, Azani A (2022) The effect of board independence, gender diversity and board size on firm performance in Malaysia. J Soc Econmics Res 9(4):179–192. https://doi.org/10.18488/35.v9i4.3226

Article   Google Scholar  

Ajao MG, Ogieriakhi E (2018) Firm specific factors and performance of insurance firms in Nigeria. Amity J Finance 3(1):14–28

Google Scholar  

Alam A, Ali Shah SZ (2013) Corporate governance and its impact on firm risk. Int J Manag, Econ Soc Sci 2(2):76–98. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2280479

Al-Daoud KI, Saidin SZ, Abidin S (2016) Board meeting and firm performance: evidence from the amman stock exchange. Corp Board: Role, Duties Compos 12(2):6–11. https://doi.org/10.22495/cbv12i2art1

Aljughaiman AA (2019) Effects of corporate governance mechanisms on financial flexibility, risk-taking behaviour and risk management effectiveness: a comparison study between conventional and Islamic banking systems (Doctoral dissertation, Newcastle University). http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/4660 . Accessed 20 Dec 2023

Almajali AY, Alamro SA, Al-Soub YZ (2012) Factors affecting the financial performance of Jordanian insurance companies listed at amman stock exchange. J Manag Res 4(2):266

Al-Matari EM, Al-Arussi AS (2016) The effect of the ownership structure characteristics on firm performance in oman: empirical study. Corp Ownersh Control 13(2):93–100. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv13i2p10

Azegele M, Okeyo W, Nyambegera S (2021) The relationship between corporate governance and organizational performance of insurance companies in Kenya. J Public Policy Gov 5(3):21–36. https://doi.org/10.53819/81018102t2009

Azutoru IHC, Obinne UG, Chinelo OO (2017) Effect of corporate governance mechanisms on financial performance of insurance companies in Nigeria. J Finance Account 5(3):93–103. https://doi.org/10.12691/jfa-5-3-4

Badu LA, Appiah KO (2017) The impact of corporate board size on firm performance: evidence from Ghana and Nigeria. Res Business Manag 4(2):1. https://doi.org/10.5296/rbm.v4i2.11721

Banda M (2023) Corporate governance: a theoretical review. Euro J Business Manag 15(16):60–70. https://doi.org/10.7176/EJBM/15-16-08

Bazhair AH (2021) Corporate governance mechanism and firm performance in Saudi Arabia. Estudios de Economia Aplicada. https://doi.org/10.25115/eea.v39i4.4317

Borlea SN, Achim MV (2013) Theories of corporate governance. Studia Universitatis “Vasile Goldiş” Arad Economics Series, 23 (1), 117–128

Buchdadi AD, Gulupui IGKA, Dalimunthe S, Pamungkas BG, Fauziyyah Y (2019) Board of director meeting and firm performance. Acad Account Financial Stud J 23(2):1–7

Bunea M, Dobre F, Popa AF, Sahlian DN (2018) Risk management, corporate governance and financial performance of the banking system in Romania. Proceedings of the international conference on business excellence, 12(1), 182–196. https://doi.org/10.2478/picbe-2018-0018

Chijoke-Mgbame AM, Boateng A, Mgbame CO (2020) Board gender diversity, audit committee and financial performance: evidence from Nigeria. Accounting Forum 44(3):262–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/01559982.2020.1766280

Dandago KI, Gugong BK (2016) Impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the financial performance of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. Account Financial History Res J 10:245–264

Dankwano RN, Hassan Z (2018) Impact of gender diversity on indian firm’s financial performance. Int J Manag, Account Econ 5(5):319–341

Dao B, Pham H (2015) Corporate governance and bank credit risk: default probability, distance to default. SSRN Electron J. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2708994

Datta N (2018) Impact of corporate governance on financial performance: a study on dse listed insurance companies in Bangladesh. Global J Manag Business Res 18(2):32–39

Debnath P, Das P, Laskar N, Khan SB, Dhand S, Kaushal K (2021) CEO duality and firm performance: an empirical study on listed companies from an emerging market. Corp Gov Organ Behav Rev 5(2):194–202. https://doi.org/10.22495/cgobrv5i2sip7

Demeke AT (2016) Corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance: the case of ethiopian insurance industry. J Invest Manag 5(2):6. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jim.20160502.11

Dogan M, Elitas BL, Agca V, Ögel S (2013) The impact of CEO duality on firm performance: evidence from Turkey. Int J Bus Soc Sci 4(2):149–155

Duru A, Iyengar RJ, Zampelli EM (2016) The dynamic relationship between CEO duality and firm performance: the moderating role of board independence. J Bus Res 69(10):4269–4277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.001

Ebere CC, EAL, I., & Ogbonna, G. (2016) Corporate governance system and financial performance of quoted insurance companies in Nigeria. Int J Business Law Res 4(4):34–41

Eling M, Marek SD (2014) Corporate governance and risk taking: evidence from the UK and German insurance markets. J Risk Insur 81(3):653–682

Emile R, Ragab A, Kyaw S (2014) The effect of corporate governance on firm performance, evidence from Egypt. Asian Econ Financial Rev 4(12):1865–1877

Fekadu GW (2015) Corporate governance on financial performance of insurance industRY. Corp Ownersh Control 13(1):1201–1209. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv13i1c10p7

Foyeke OI, Oluku MD, Titilayo AD, Folashade O (2016) Corporate governance mechanisms and the financial performance of companies in Nigeria. J South Afr Business Res 2016:1–11. https://doi.org/10.5171/2016.985669

Franke GR (2010) Multicollinearity. Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK, pp 197–198. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444316568.wiem02066

Book   Google Scholar  

Freeman RE (2010) Strategic management: a stakeholder approach. Cambridge University Press

Garba T, Abubakar BA (2014) Corporate board diversity and financial performance of insurance companies in nigeria: an application of panel data approach. Asian Econ Financial Rev 4(2):257–277

Gugong BK, Arugu LO, Dandago KI (2014) The impact of ownership structure on the financial performance of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. Int J Acad Res Account, Finance Manag Sci 4(1):409–416

Gujarati DN, Porter DC (2009) Basic econometrics, 5th edn. McGraw-hill

Guluma TF (2021) The impact of corporate governance measures on firm performance: the influences of managerial overconfidence. Future Business J 7(1):1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-021-00093-6

Hassan MK, Houston R, Karim MS, Sabit A (2023) CEO duality and firm performance during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak. J Econ Asymmetries 27:e00278

Himaj S (2014) Corporate governance in banks and its impact on risk and performance: review of literature on the selected governance mechanisms. J Central Banking Theor Pract 3(3):53–85

Ibrahim HB, Ouma C, Koshal JO (2019) Effect of audit committee independence on the financial performance of insurance firms in Kenya. Int J Res Business Soc Sci 8(6):15–24. https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v8i6.501

Islam MN, Akter A, Sheikh MI (2018) Does board diversity matter for insurance company’s profitability? J Jessore Univ Sci Technol 03(02):65–71

Jaishi B, Poudel RL (2021) Impact of firm specific factors on financial performance: a comparative study of life and non-life insurance companies in Nepal. Prithvi Acad J 4:39–55. https://doi.org/10.3126/paj.v4i0.37014

Jarque CM, Bera AK (1987) A Test for Normality of Observations and Regression Residuals. Int Stat Rev/Revue Int De Statistique 55(2):163. https://doi.org/10.2307/1403192

Jensen M, Meckling W (1976) Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure. J Financ Econ 3(4):305–360. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817410.023

Johnson Jr BL (1995) Resource Dependence theory: A Political Economy Model of Organizations. Working Paper of the Department of Educational Administration. University of Utah

Junaid M, Xue Y, Wasim Syed M, Ziaullah M, Riffat N (2020) Corporate governance mechanism and performance of insurers in Pakistan. Green Finance 2(3):243–262. https://doi.org/10.3934/gf.2020014

Kafidipe A, Uwalomwa U, Dahunsi O, Okeme FO (2021) Corporate governance, risk management and financial performance of listed deposit money bank in Nigeria. Cogent Business Manag. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1888679

Kamau AM, Olweny T, Muturi WM (2021) Effect of firm characteristics on financial performance of insurance firms in Kenya. Int J Business Manag 9(6):292–300. https://doi.org/10.24940/theijbm/2021/v9/i6/bm2105-061

Kaushal S, Ghosh A (2016) Financial institutions and economic growth: an empirical analysis of Indian economy in the post liberalized era. Int J Econ Financial Issue 6(3):1003–1013

Kiptoo IK, Kariuki SN, Ocharo KN (2021) Risk management and financial performance of insurance firms in Kenya. Cogent Business Manag. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1997246

Koji K, Adhikary BK, Tram L (2020) Corporate governance and firm performance: a comparative analysis between listed family and non-family firms in Japan. J Risk Financial Manag 13(9):215. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13090215

Kufo A, Shtembari E (2023) How board size and board independence affect insurance companies’ performance. Euro J Interdiscip Stud 15(1):68–80. https://doi.org/10.24818/ejis.2023.05

Kyei SM, Polovina N, Kumah SP (2022) The dynamic relationship between bank risk and corporate governance in Africa. Cogent Business Manag. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2124597

Laporšek S, Dolenc P, Grum A, Stubelj I (2021) Ownership structure and firm performance–the case of Slovenia. Econ Res-Ekonomska Istrazivanja 34(1):2975–2996. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2020.1865827

Lawala OD, Agbib ES, Mustapha LO (2018) Effect of ownership structure on financial performance of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. J Account, Finance Audit Stud 4(3):123–148

Lipton M, Lorsch JW (1992) A modest proposal for improved corporate governance. Business Lawyer 48(1):59–77

Maharjan R (2019) Corporate governance and financial performance of insurance companies in Nepal. Int Res J Manag Sci 4(1):99–117. https://doi.org/10.3126/irjms.v4i0.27888

Mallinguh E, Wasike C, Zoltan Z (2020) The business sector, firm age, and performance: the mediating role of foreign ownership and financial leverage. Int J Financial Stud 8(4):1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs8040079

Marinova J, Plantenga J, Remery C (2016) Gender diversity and firm performance: evidence from Dutch and Danish boardrooms. Int J Hum Resour Manag 27(15):1777–1790. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2015.1079229

Martínez MDCV, Rambaud SC (2019) Women on corporate boards and firm’s financial performance. Women’s Stud Int Forum 76:102251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2019.102251

Mbah AK, Paothong A (2015) Shapiro-Francia test compared to other normality test using expected p-value. J Stat Comput Simul 85(15):3002–3016. https://doi.org/10.1080/00949655.2014.947986

McNulty, T., Florackis, C., & Ormrod, P. (2012). Corporate governance and risk: a study of board structure and process. In ACCA Research Report (Vol. 129)

Mohammad SJ, Abdullatif M, Zakzouk F (2018) The effect of gender diversity on the financial performance of Jordanian banks. Acad Account Financial Stud J 22(2):1–11

Moses GL (2020) Corporate board diversity and financial performance: the nigerian insurance sector’s perspective. Growth 7(1):20–25. https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.511.2020.71.20.25

Mubeen R, Han D, Abbas J, Álvarez-Otero S, Sial MS (2021) The relationship between CEO duality and business firms’ performance: the moderating role of firm size and corporate social responsibility. Front Psychol 12:1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669715

Nandi S, Ghosh S (2013) Corporate governance attributes, firm characteristics and the level of corporate disclosure: evidence from the Indian listed firms. Decision Sci Lett 2(1):45–58

Nduati Kariuki S (2023) Corporate governance mechanisms and efficiency of insurance firms: evidence from an emerging market. Cogent Econ Finance. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2023.2207265

Onofrei M, Firtescu BN, Terinte PA (2019) CEO duality and firm profitability. Evidence from emerging Europe. Romanian Stat Rev 2(2):85–102

Opeyemi A (2019) The impact of firm size on firms performance in nigeria: a comparative study of selected firms in the building industry in Nigeria. Asian Develop Policy Rev 7(1):1–11

Osborne JW, Waters E (2002) Four assumptions of multiple regression that researchers should always test. Pract Assess, Res Eval. https://doi.org/10.7275/r222-hv23

Osman MAM, Samontaray DP (2022) Corporate Governance and Performance of Insurance Companies in the Saudi Market. J Asian Finance, Econ Business 9(4):213–0228. https://doi.org/10.13106/jafeb.2022.vol9.no4.0213

Postnova A (2012) Does good corporate governance reduce credit risk? Master Thesis, Hanken School of Economics. https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/8491bf05-9b07-4af7-ba6c-7e3b5b66fb80

Qadorah AAM, Fadzil FHB (2018) The relationship between board size and CEO duality and firm performance: evidence from Jordan. Int J Account, Finance Risk Manag 3(3):16–20. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijafrm.20180303.11

Rachdi H, Trabelsi MA, Trad N (2013) Banking governance and risk: The case of tunisian conventional banks. Rev Econ Perspect 13(4):195–206. https://doi.org/10.2478/revecp-2013-0009

Shrivastav SM, Kalsie A (2016) The relationship between CEO duality and firm performance: an analysis using panel data approach. IUP J Corp Gov 15(2):37–38

Subedi SD (2018) Role of corporate governance on the performance of insurance companies of Nepal. J Business Soc Sci Res 3(2):151–164. https://doi.org/10.3126/jbssr.v3i2.28131

Sulimany HG, Ramakrishnan S, Chaudhry A, Bazhair AH (2021) Impact of corporate governance and financial sustainability on shareholder value. Stud Appl Econ 39(4):1–17. https://doi.org/10.25115/eea.v39i4.431

Tornyeva K, Wereko T (2012) Corporate governance and firm performance : evidence from the insurance sector of Ghana. Euro J Business Manag 4(13):95–113

Trinh TH, Duyen TTT, Thao NT (2015) The impact of corporate governance on financial risk in Vietnamese commercial banks. Int J Econ Financ 7(7):123–130. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijef.v7n7p123

Vincent, K., Modjo, M. I., & Limijaya, A. (2023). The Effect of Corporate Governance Regulation on the Profitability of Insurance Companies in Indonesia. E3S Web of Conferences, 426, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202342602095

Wiedmaier-Pfister, M., Gesesse, D., Amha, W., Mommartz, R., Dufllos, E., & Steel, W. (2008). Access to finance in Ethiopia. Sector Assessment Study, 2

Wondem BA, Singh Batra G (2019) The impact of corporate governance practices on corporate financial performance in Ethiopia. Int J Account Res 07(01):1–10. https://doi.org/10.35248/2472-114x.19.7.196

Yemane AA, Raju ML (2015) The impact of corporate governance on firm’s performance: evidence from ethiopian insurance companies. Res J Finance Account 6(15):20–28

Yihun WA, Kolech AG, Tole MG (2019) The impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the performance of commercial banks: the case of private banks in Ethiopia. Financial Stud 23(1(83)):6–24. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n15p93

Young J (2010) Corporate governance and risk management: a South African perspective. Corp Ownersh Control 7(3):138–148. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv7i3p10

Zelalem BA, Abebe AA, Bezabih SW (2022) Corporate governance and financial performance in the emerging economy: the case of Ethiopian insurance companies. Cogent Econ Finance. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2022.2117117

Download references

Not funded.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Commerce, Punjabi University, Patiala, India

Nebyu Adamu Abebe & Navkiranjit Kaur Dhaliwal

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All the authors collaborated to design and conceptualize the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nebyu Adamu Abebe .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

There are no financial or nonfinancial interests to disclose.

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Abebe, N.A., Dhaliwal, N.K. An empirical investigation of corporate governance attributes and firm performance: evidence from the ethiopian insurance industry. SN Bus Econ 4 , 108 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-024-00707-5

Download citation

Received : 14 February 2024

Accepted : 14 August 2024

Published : 03 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-024-00707-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Corporate governance
• National bank
• Performance

JEL Classification

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research