Supplements purchase intention: young consumer's perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intention towards dietary supplements (DS) in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThe supplement industry in Malaysia has been growing rapidly recently due to a paradigm shift in healthcare management, from curative to prevention. Thus, it has sparked interest to conduct a study on the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intentions towards DS. With a response rate of 74.5%, a survey questionnaire was used to elicit data from 149 Gen-Y respondents who consume supplements on a regular basis.FindingsThe results revealed that the influencing factors towards purchase decisions among these Gen-Y respondents aged between 17 and 25 are based on product knowledge and product quality. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are outlined at the end of this paper.Originality/valueThis study offers empirical insights from the perspective of an emerging digital economy on the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intentions towards DS in Malaysia.

The Effect of Primary School Education on Preventive Behaviours during COVID-19 in Japan

Education plays a critical role in promoting preventive behaviours against the spread of pandemics. In Japan, handwashing education in primary schools was positively correlated with preventive behaviours against COVID-19 transmission for adults in 2020, during the early stages of COVID-19. The following year, the Tokyo Olympics were held in Japan, and a state of emergency was declared several times. Public perceptions of and risks associated with the pandemic changed drastically with the emergence of COVID-19 vaccines. We re-examined whether the effect of handwashing education on preventive behaviours persisted by covering a longer period of the COVID-19 pandemic than previous studies. A total of 26 surveys were conducted nearly once a month for 30 months from March 2020 (the early stage of COVID-19) to September 2022 in Japan. By corresponding with the same individuals across surveys, we comprehensively gathered data on preventive behaviours during this period. In addition, we asked about the handwashing education they had received in their primary school. We used the data to investigate how and to what degree school education is associated with pandemic-mitigating preventive behaviours. We found that handwashing education in primary school is positively associated with behaviours such as handwashing and mask wearing as a COVID-19 preventive measure but not related to staying at home. We observed a statistically significant difference in handwashing between adults who received childhood handwashing education and those who did not. This difference persisted throughout the study period. In comparison, the difference in mask wearing between the two groups was smaller but still statistically significant. Furthermore, there was no difference in staying at home between them. Childhood hygiene education has resulted in individuals engaging in handwashing and mask wearing to cope with COVID-19. Individuals can form sustainable development-related habits through childhood education.

The Impact of Strategic Experiential Modules (SEMs) Dimension on Visitor's Revisit Intention: A Lesson from the Sunrise of Java, Indonesia: Acces la Success

Mangrove tourism is one of the tourist destinations offered by tourism managers that is currently gaining popularity and popularity among tourists. Keeping tourists coming back can be a very effective strategy for developing tourist destinations. This study employs Experiential Marketing as a strategy to increase tourist interest. Because research in the field of experiential marketing in nature tourism destinations such as mangrove tourism is still limited, the topics of this study are experiential marketing and visitor visit intention. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of strategic experiential modules (SEMs) on visitor revisits intention. The research method used is quantitative with the variable dimensions of SEMs and visitor revisits intention, a sample of 93 tourists with a purposive sampling technique, and multiple linear regression analysis techniques. The results showed that the sense, act, and relate variables had a positive and significant impact on the visitor revisits intention, while the feel variable had a positive but not significant impact, and the think variable had a negative but not significant impact on the visitor revisits intention.

Efficient Machine Learning Model For Covid-19 Spread Prediction

Machine learning models have shown great performance in prediction and detection of many diseases such as cancer, heart attack, liver infection, and kidney infection. COVID-19 emerged as one of the deadly disease. Its cases grownin unpredictable manner. Regression is the mathematical technique in machine learning that can used to find relation between outcome variable with independent variable. In the present manuscript, regression has been used to predict COVID-19 growth. It has been found that the model is highly accurate in the COVID case prediction. © 2023 IEEE.

Effect of Process Variables on Pulp Yield of Indigenous Raw Materials

The biggest issue before pulp and paper producers is availability of quality raw material. India is fiber deficit country, this message has become more intense after covid when price of different raw materials are increased by 20-25%, . Chemical pulp is produced by chemical delignification of wood and non-wood plants. After kraft pulping the remaining lignin is removed by oxygen delignification and bleaching to produce higher purity cellulosic pulp. The goal of delignification processes is to remove lignin from the raw material without a negative effect on the cellulose and strength of pulp. The economics of pulp and paper production is more related to the yield of unbleached and bleached pulp production. Marginal increment in pulp yield reflects into savings of crore of rupees on yearly basis. An overall vigilant concern on process conditions and variables is required during production of pulp. BAT technology for pulping along with utilization of various additives and pretreatment methods allow to fine tune these process to obtain pulp with desired yield and quality. The primary aim of this paper is to review different process variables in respect to the yield of the pulp. © 2022 Indian Pulp and Paper Technical Association. All rights reserved.

An MCDM Approach to Assessing Influential Factors on Healthcare Providers' Safe Performance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Probing into Demographic Variables

This study assessed the influence of occupational stress, individual resilience, and organizational resilience on the safety performance of healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demographic variables including age, work experience, and sex were explored. Data were collected from 344 healthcare providers employed at a teaching hospital. The entropy method and the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method were used to examine the influence of occupational stress, individual resilience, and organizational resilience on the safe performance of healthcare providers. The results of the entropy method showed that organizational resilience was the most influential factor in the safe performance of older healthcare providers. In contrast, individual resilience was the most significant factor in enhancing the safety performance of younger healthcare providers. Analyses of work experience indicated that individual resilience was the most influential factor in the safe performance of less experienced healthcare providers. Gender-based analysis revealed that individual resilience had a major effect on the safety performance of both women and men. The findings of this study could assist managers in improving the performance of the healthcare sector during pandemics by using and implementing resilience concepts at both the individual and organizational levels.

Marketing Strategy: The Way to Create Store Loyalty in Indonesia Modern Retail

Supermarket in Indonesia and other countries is important for people to come and shop for primary and secondary necessities. With high economy growth supermarket business should have a good opportunity to survive the Covid 19 pandemic. Many people still shop in a brickand-mortar store for supermarket in Indonesia, thus it is possible that this type of business will still be growing in the future. As one of the leading local modern supermarkets in Surabaya, Hokky Supermarket defines itself as supermarket that provides premium ingredients and unique products. The sample used in this study includes Hokky Supermarket costumers domiciled in Surabaya, who are man and woman aged between 18-60, have visited and make a purchase at Hokky Supermarket Surabaya for at least 2 times in the last 3 months, have visited and made a purchase at other supermarkets in Surabaya for at least 2 times in the last 3 months, and have asked for help or interacted with Hokky Supermarket Surabaya employees. There are 139 respondents. Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that all the five hypotheses in this research are supported.

Stress Factors and the Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review on the Aviation Industry

This study outlines the stress factors and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stress variables among aviation workers, which includes airline employees, flight crews, pilots, maintenance crews, air traffic controllers, airport or ground workers, engineers, training personnel, and other aviation-related personnel. A review was done on 37 research papers using systematic literature review (SLR) and discovered nine stress factors among aviation workers which are working hours, workloads, internal factors, ergonomic issues, job uncertainty, job demands, organizational issues, team conflict, and the COVID-19 itself. The findings of this study could provide insights to employers in the aviation industry for mitigation actions that could help to successfully reduce and eliminate stress factors in the workplace. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

IDENTIFICATION OF FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH A WORSE OUTCOME -EXITUS- IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND SEVERE INFECTION

BackgroundInfections constitute an important and frequent cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic inflammatory and systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases. In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), this increased risk has been related to the immune system alterations inherent to the disease, the drugs used to control it (corticosteroids, DMARDs and immunosuppressants) and associated comorbidities. Most studies focus on the search for factors associated with the development of infections but do not explore the worst outcome: patient failure.ObjectivesTo identify factors that help to predict an unfavorable outcome (exitus) after a severe infection in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.MethodsThis study was a retrospective case-control study at a single institution over a 10-year period. Patients with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis with hospital admission for infection from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2019 (pre-pandemic SARS-COV-2) were selected. The main variable was exitus due to the infectious episode. We collected: age, sex, time of evolution of RA, previous treatment and at the time of admission, number of admissions for infection, location of the infection, comorbidities, and other associated serious diseases. The statistics included a descriptive analysis of the different variables (expressed as median and interquartile range -IR- for quantitative variables and percentages for qualitative variables), and the association study using the χ2 test or Fisher's exact test for qualitative variables, and t-student or Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis for quantitative variables.ResultsWe obtained 152 patients (71.7% female, 28.3% male), with a total of 214 episodes of admission for infection (115 patients with 1 episode (75.7%), 25 (16.4%) with 2 episodes, 6 being the maximum number of episodes recorded). The median age at admission was 77 years, and the median time of RA evolution was 8 years (IR 4-16). The location of the infection responsible for admission was mainly respiratory and urinary. Forty-eight patients died in the episode (31.6% of the sample, 15 males and 33 females, median age 81.5 years (IR 69.5-86.5)). Comparing the patients with unfavorable outcomes (exitus) with the rest, we only found a statistically significant difference in the number of previous admissions (p=0.011), and in the coexistence of some other serious disease (exitus 85.4%, rest 61.5% p=0.003). There were no differences by sex, age, time of RA evolution, drugs, location of the infection, or comorbidities.ConclusionA history of hospital admission due to infection, and having another serious disease, are factors associated with an unfavorable outcome (exitus) in patients with RA admitted for an infectious process.References[1] Listing J, Gerhold K, Zink A. The risk of infections associated with rheumatoid arthritis, with its comorbidity and treatment. Rheumatology 2013;52(1):53-61.[2] George MD, Baker JF, Winthrop K, Hsu JY, Wu Q, Chen L, et al. Risk for serious infection with low-dose glucocorticoids in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: A cohort study. Ann Intern Med. 2020;173(11):870-8.[3] Singh JA, Cameron C, Noorbaloochi S, Cullis T, Tucker M, Christensen R, et al. Risk of serious infection in biological treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet. 2015;386(9990):258-65.Acknowledgements:NIL.Disclosure of InterestsNone Declared.

College Students' Stress Responses and Anxiety during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

The purpose of this current study was twofold: first, to identify the potential ecological risk and resiliency factors that contribute to emerging adult college students' generalized anxiety, as well as physiological and depressive responses to stress during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic;second, to compare domestic and international college students' sources of stress, social supports, stress responses, and generalized anxiety. Results indicated elevated levels of generalized anxiety and depressive symptoms. Significant differences between international and domestic students were found in generalized anxiety, dating frustrations, and physiological responses to stress. Three separate multiple regressions on physiological responses to stress, depression, and generalized anxiety were conducted. Results and implications will be discussed.

The Investigation of Change Fatigue in Teacher Candidates Following the Emergency Remote Teaching Process during the Pandemic

Education has gone through rapid changes during the emergency remote teaching period resulting by the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes, in part, have been associated with educational institutions attempting to implement a viable solution to the problem of distance education. Although organizational management theory literature suggests that great change in very little time results in a detrimental psychological phenomenon called change fatigue in employees and that this phenomenon has even been investigated in the context of teaching staff in the past;there have been no attempt at understanding change fatigue from a student perspective. This quantitative study attempts at proposing a structural equation model towards the understanding of how to change fatigue and other variables, namely, digital literacy, online learning attitude and school alienation that might have been influenced by it have affected teacher candidates after resuming face-to-face education followed by a 1.5 year of emergency remote teaching period. Results indicated that change fatigue predicts school alienation and yet;does not predict online learning attitude;hinting that there might be another category of alienating organizational change that universities have gone through that does not solely involve online education. Nevertheless, digital literacy is a beneficial skill for all students that helps bolster online learning attitudes and reduce overall school alienation.

A Documentary Review on Private School Human Resource Management During Disruption Era

This preliminary study aimed to identify attributes for observed and latent variables. A documentary review was employed to investigate the attributes for latent variables, namely technological integration, disruptive leadership, and organizational transformation while the observed variable was human resource management during the disruption era. The findings revealed that there are six attributes for human resource management during the disruption era, four attributes for technological integration, five attributes for disruptive leadership, and four attributes for organizational transformation. All these variables and their attributes are going to investigate using structural equation modeling in order to explore relations between observed and latent variables.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Health Literacy in US Southern States

The following are the highlights of our study: * Vaccine hesitancy in Southern states is complex and extends beyond health literacy. * Vaccine hesitancy in Southern states transcends many sociodemographic differences. * Effective public health communication should be unambiguous about negative externalities of COVID-19 beyond individual threats. _____ The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 remains a public health crisis, accounting for more than 100 million confirmed cases with more than 1,121,800 deaths in the United States as of April 26, 2023.1 Despite widespread vaccination efforts by the US government and public health leadership, the rate of vaccine uptake is still far from desirable, as researchers estimate that about 70% to 85% of the country will need to be immunized before SARS-CoV-2 can be fully contained through herd immunity.2 As of April 19, 2023, about 81% of the US population had received at least 1 dose, whereas 69.4% had completed a full primary vaccine series and only 16.7% had received an updated bivalent booster, with variations in the rate of vaccination across states and regions.3 The Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia) have relatively lower rates of full vaccination (primary series) compared with other states (mean of 61.3%, ranging from 53.2% in Alabama to 79.9% in Maryland);6 Southern states rank among the 10 states with the lowest fully vaccinated rates in the nation.3 The predominant barrier to uptake has been vaccine hesitancy,4-9 defined as the intention to delay or refuse taking vaccinations despite availability and accessibility.10,11 It may be influenced by complex contextual factors, ranging from individual and group factors to vaccine-specific characteristics.10 In particular, individual factors may be related to health literacy (HL),12 which is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.13 HL is a phenomenon that involves individuals, families, communities, and systems, and it could be implicated in the level of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.5 Although HL is a major determinant of individuals' health behaviors,14 a systematic review study reported that HL's relationship with vaccination uptake prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was unclear because of variations in assessment tools, target populations, and outcome measures across available limited studies.15 Evidence suggests a relationship between HL and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.12,16,17 In the United States, a study among women recently released from jails found that low HL is related to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.16 Similarly, a study in Turkey found that low HL and a high perception of health care system distrust are associated with higher vaccine hesitancy.17 A study in China found that higher HL is associated with low likelihood of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, and the effect was moderated by stress.12 Overall, to the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the association between HL and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in populations with low vaccine uptake within the United States, including those residing in the Southern states, which served as the impetus for this study.18,19 This study aimed to estimate the level of HL among a population residing in Southern states and its association with vaccine hesitancy. Nearly 20% of the United States population had still not received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of April 26, 2023, despite increases in both vaccine availability and individual eligibility over the previous 2 years.20 The observed trends in overall and region-specific COVID-19 cases and rates of vaccination in the United States demonstrate the need to examine the impact of HL on vaccine hesitancy in the Southern states, especially with the release of simplified eligibility guidelines and expanded booster recommendations.21 METHODS Participants This study included adults 18 years and older. Upon receiving institutional review board (IRB) approval from East Tennessee State University (IRB No. c0221.22e), a cross-sectional study was initiated. Race/ethnicity was collected as: (1) Asian or Pacific Islander, (2) Black or African American, (3) Hispanic/Latino, (4) Native American or Alaskan Native, (5) non-Hispanic White, (6) biracial or multicultural, and (7) race/ethnicity not listed here. Because of small sample sizes for non-White racial/ethnic groups in the study population, race/ethnicity was recoded as non-Hispanic White and other.

Exploring Employee Well-Being during the COVID-19 Remote Work: Evidence from South Africa

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated a shift to remote working for previously office-based employees in South Africa, impacting employee outcomes such as well-being. The remote work trend is expected to continue even post the pandemic, necessitating for organizational understanding of the factors impacting employee well-being. Using the Job Demands-Resources model as the theoretical framework, this study aims to understand the role of job demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being in the pandemic context. Design/methodology/approach: A self-administered online survey questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data about remote workers' (n = 204) perceptions of specifically identified demands, resources and employee well-being. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation and moderated hierarchical regression were used to analyse the data. Findings: This study found that job demands in the form of work-home conflict were associated with reduced employee well-being. Resources, namely, job autonomy, effective communication and social support were associated with increased employee well-being. Job autonomy was positively correlated to remote work frequency, and gender had a significant positive association to work-home conflict. Social support was found to moderate the relationship between work-home conflict and employee well-being. Findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work-home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. This study advances knowledge on the role of demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being of remote workforces during COVID-19 and beyond. Originality/value: This paper provides insight on employee well-being during COVID-19 remote work. Further, the findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work-home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study carried out to explore the employee well-being during COVID-19 pandemic and will be beneficial to stakeholders for understanding the factors impacting employee well-being.

Identifying the Influencing Factors of Depressive Symptoms among Nurses in China by Machine Learning: A Multicentre Cross-Sectional Study

Background. Nurses' high workload can result in depressive symptoms. However, the research has underexplored the internal and external variables, such as organisational support, career identity, and burnout, which may predict depressive symptoms among Chinese nurses via machine learning (ML). Aim. To predict nurses' depressive symptoms and identify the relevant factors by machine learning (ML) algorithms. Methods. A self-administered smartphone questionnaire was delivered to nurses to evaluate their depressive symptoms;1,431 questionnaires and 28 internal and external features were collected. In the training set, the use of maximum relevance minimum redundancy ranked the features' importance. Five ML algorithms were used to establish models to identify nurses' depressive symptoms using different feature subsets, and the area under the curve (AUC) determined the optimal feature subset. Demographic characteristics were added to the optimal feature subset to establish the combined models. Each model's performance was evaluated using the test set. Results. The prevalence rate of depressive symptoms among Chinese nurses was 31.86%. The optimal feature subset comprised of sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue, physical fatigue, exhaustion, and perceived organisation support. The five models based on the optimal feature subset had good prediction performance on the test set (AUC: 0.871–0.895 and accuracy: 0.798–0.815). After adding the significant demographic characteristics, the performance of the five combined models slightly improved;the AUC and accuracy increased to 0.904 and 0.826 on the test set, respectively. The logistic regression analysis results showed the best and most stable performance while the univariate analysis results showed that external and internal personal features (AUC: 0.739–0.841) were more effective than demographic characteristics (AUC: 0.572–0.588) for predicting nurses' depressive symptoms. Conclusions. ML could effectively predict nurses' depressive symptoms. Interventions to manage physical fatigue, sleep disorders, burnout, and organisational support may prevent depressive symptoms.

Forecasting Residential Energy Consumption: A Case Study for Greece

Residential energy consumption forecasting has immense value in energy efficiency and sustainability. In the current work we tried to forecast energy consumption on residences in Athens, Greece. As a proof of concept, smart sensors were installed into two residences that recorded energy consumption, as well as indoors environmental variables (humidity and temperature). It should be noted that the data set was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we integrated weather data from a public weather site. A dashboard was designed to facilitate monitoring of the sensors' data. We addressed various issues related to data quality and then we tried different models to forecast daily energy consumption. In particular, LSTM neural networks, ARIMA, SARIMA, SARIMAX and Facebook (FB) Prophet were tested. Overall SARIMA and FB Prophet had the best performance. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Impact of Renewable Energy on the Economy of Saudi Arabia

The objective of the study was to identify the impact of renewable energy on Saudi economy during 2000-2021. Analytical techniques were used to conduct this study. An analysis of the study used a set of variables, in which Renewable energy perceives as independent variable and the dependent variables are GDP per capita, net foreign direct investment, unemployment, fixed capital formation, and net foreign trade. The data of the study were analyzed using the E-views program. According to the study, renewable energy has an impact on certain economic variables and does not have an impact on others. A partial validity is found for the study's central hypothesis. According to our findings, renewable energy contributes significantly to net foreign direct investment, unemployment, and fixed capital formation, but not to GDP per capita, net foreign trade, or fixed capital formation.

Understanding and Addressing the Well-Being of School Counselors

Diminished self-care practices and heightened stress of school counselors are continuing problems in education. With role ambiguity, high student-to-counselor ratios, emotional exhaustion, and other factors adding pressure to the roles and responsibilities of school counselors, this study investigated the well-being practiced of Missouri school counselors and the internal and external factors which influence them. Findings demonstrate several ways in which school counselors fail to meet basic well-being benchmarks, examples of positive school principal supports, and systemic counselor role ambiguity, mission creep, and high caseloads that contribute to stress and burnout. These results indicate three levels of decision-making that are paramount to school counselors achieving and sustaining healthy well-being practices--the individual counselor's role in self-care and professional advocacy;the school leader's approach to defining the counselor's role and promoting a healthy workplace culture;and the ways in which policymakers affect systemic change.

Fitting Percentage of Body Fat to Simple Body Measurements: College Women

Percentage of body fat, age, weight, height, and 14 circumference measurements (e.g., waist) are given for 184 women aged 18–25. Body fat, one measure of health, was accurately determined by an underwater weighing technique which requires special equipment and training of the individuals conducting the process. Modeling body fat percentage using multiple regression provides a convenient method of estimating body fat percentage using measures collected using only a measuring tape and a scale. This dataset can be used to show students the utility of multiple regression and to provide practice in model building.

Industry Structure of Commercial Districts and the Impact of COVID-19

This paper aims to empirically analyze the difference in the closure rate of the commercial district according to the industry structure of the commercial district. Theoretically, the larger the number of stores in a commercial district, the greater the positive externality caused by the agglomeration economies in consumption, namely, the external economies of scale. However, the agglomeration economies could occur from comparison shopping or one-stop shopping, depending on the business structure of the commercial district. According to the empirical results of the regression analysis of all 1164 commercial districts in Korea, the more specialized a commercial district is by stores in a specific industry, the lower the closure rate of that commercial district. This means that the agglomeration economies in consumption are driven by comparison shopping rather than by one-stop shopping and implies that it is necessary to introduce incentives that allow stores in the same industry to cluster together in terms of policy. Meanwhile, if the closure is limited to a specific industry, it will cause an endogeneity problem since it affects the industry structure of the commercial district. Considering this, as a result of additional estimation by 2SLS and GMM using instrumental variables, the error in estimation due to the endogeneity problem was not large, confirming that COVID-19 corresponds to an overall external shock that is not limited to a specific industry. In addition, this paper presents diagnostic indicators for commercial districts to measure the impact of COVID-19. Through this, it will be possible to alleviate conflicts between social classes over compensation or subsidies for sanctions for quarantine. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to use all commercial districts in Korea for a research in evaluating the impact of COVID-19, and empirical results on agglomeration economies focusing on the consumption side are limited.