Cross-cultural nuances in sarcasm comprehension: a comparative study of Chinese and American perspectives.

It is evident that sarcasm can be interpreted differently due to various factors, However, rare research was conducted to investigate the influence of national culture on sarcasm comprehension despite its valuable theoretical implication. This study used an online rating task to explore how national culture impacts the comprehension of sarcasm, focusing on the differences between Chinese and American cultural values (i.e., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, long-term orientation, and masculinity) and their influence on comprehending sarcastic praise and criticism. The study showed that Chinese participants tend to understand sarcasm less than Americans. It also found that Power Distance is linked to better sarcasm comprehension in both cultures, while Uncertainty Avoidance has a negative effect on it, especially in Chinese participants. Collectivism is also associated with improved sarcasm comprehension, especially in Chinese participants. However, Masculinity and Long-Term Orientation do not seem to have a significant impact on sarcasm comprehension, regardless of nationality or the type of comment (praise or criticism). Overall, the study reveals nuanced differences in how cultural values shape the comprehension of sarcasm in Chinese and American contexts, underscoring the complex interplay between culture and communication.

To complain or not to complain: Management responses as a moderator in the relationship between workplace incivility and workplace outcomes among Australia and singaporean targets.

Workplace incivility is a challenging global occupational risk that is frequently considered trivial by managers and organizations. Often, complaints from targets are ignored; when this occurs, complaints can quickly escalate into formal grievances that cost businesses millions of dollars. While existing studies have uncovered cultural and gendered differences in how targets and organizations respond to workplace incivility, few cross-cultural studies have empirically examined how targets and organizations react to formal complaints. This study responds to this gap by using selective incivility, the transactional stress model, and national/cultural theories to conduct a multifaceted analysis of the underlying mechanisms responsible for targets' organizational outcomes. Specifically, we tested a moderated model with 303 Australian (152 males and 151 females) and 304 Singaporean (154 males and 150 females) employees working in multinational organizations to determine whether the degree to which organizations took incivility complaints seriously moderated the organizational outcomes of work withdrawal and work satisfaction. Overall, the results indicated that, compared to Singaporean employees and Australian female employees, Australian male employees were less tolerant of being mistreated and continued to experience heightened job dissatisfaction and withdrawal even when their complaints were taken seriously by their organization. These results suggest that complex gendered and cultural differences influence the impact of incivility complaints on work-related outcomes.

The impact of national culture in the development of complexity reasoning skills: An international comparison.

There is a clear inequality in gender distribution for the STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Furthermore, there is a noticeable lack of diversity and a socio-economic gap that requires actionable solutions. To explore potential factors that affect the participation of women in STEM, this paper reviews two possible groups of determinants: national culture and complexity thinking. A survey with 684 respondents from higher education institutions in Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Spain was undertaken. The instrument measured four components of complexity thinking namely critical, scientific, innovative, and systemic). Using analysis of variance between two groups and between multiple groups, differences were observed between the countries' samples and between genders. Once the significance was confirmed, boxplots for each dimension were elaborated to facilitate the visualization of the distributions. The scores were compared with the national culture values to seek possible behavioral patterns in the data. The results reveal two groups between the observed countries. Also, there are clear indications of a relationship between the national culture dimensions and the complex thinking components.

Unraveling the draft genome and phylogenomic analysis of a multidrug-resistant Planococcus sp. NCCP-2050T: a promising novel bacteria from Pakistan.

Planococcus is a genus of Gram-positive bacteria known for potential industrial and agricultural applications. Here, we report the first draft genome sequence and phylogenomic analysis of a CRISPR-carrying, multidrug-resistant, novel candidate Planococcus sp. NCCP-2050T isolated from agricultural soil in Pakistan. The strain NCCP-2050T exhibited significant resistance to various classes of antibiotics, including fluoroquinolones (i.e., ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, ofloxacin, moxifloxacin, and bacitracin), cephalosporins (cefotaxime, ceftazidime, cefoperazone), rifamycins (rifampicin), macrolides (erythromycin), and glycopeptides (vancomycin). Planococcus sp. NCCP-2050T consists of genome size of 3,463,905 bp, comprised of 3639 annotated genes, including 82 carbohydrate-active enzyme genes and 39 secondary metabolite genes. The genome also contained 80 antibiotic resistance, 162 virulence, and 305 pathogen-host interaction genes along with two CRISPR arrays. Based on phylogenomic analysis, digital DNA-DNA hybridization, and average nucleotide identity values (i.e., 35.4 and 88.5%, respectively) it was suggested that strain NCCP-2050T might represent a potential new species within the genus Planococcus. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-023-03748-z.

Cultural differences in intertemporal decision making: A comparison between Chile and China.

A cross-cultural comparison is made of delay discounting in samples of participants from Chile and China. Comparisons are made based on previous literature that suggests that individuals from an Asian culture should be willing to postpone delayed rewards more than are individuals from a Latin American culture. To test the cross-cultural validity of a hyperbolic discounting model, the model was fitted to both data sets. Additionally, a self-enhancement measure was evaluated as a potential mediator between culture of origin and delay discounting. Seventy-eight college students from China and 120 college students from Chile, with similar demographic backgrounds, discounted hypothetical monetary outcomes using an adjusting-amount titration procedure. Additionally, participants completed a self-enhancement measure. Age, academic major, gender, and grade point average were controlled. Chilean participants discounted much more steeply than Chinese nationals did. No support was obtained for the mediation of self-enhancement between culture of origin and degree of delay discounting. In both samples, delay discounting was better described by a hyperboloid than an exponential function, the only exception being the $10,000 condition in which the medians for Chilean participants' present subjective value were equally well explained by a hyperboloid and an exponential function.

National culture and the demand for physical money during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was a significant increase in the demand for physical money during the COVID-19 pandemic. This stood in stark contrast to the decline in demand witnessed during previous pandemics. However, the change was not uniform and varied significantly between countries. By employing the "national culture" framework to identify the drivers of this variation, this study found that uncertainty avoidance, as well as social norms regarding gratification, played a major role. This suggests that some central banks should hold larger cash reserves to mitigate the risk of uncertainty and that the national culture framework may prove useful in researching the international differences in past, present, and future money demand.

How National Culture Influences the Speed of COVID-19 Spread: Three Cross-Cultural Studies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected 222 countries and territories around the globe. Notably, the speed of COVID-19 spread varies significantly across countries. This cross-cultural research proposes and empirically examines how national culture influences the speed of COVID-19 spread in three studies. Study 1 examines the effects of Hofstede's national cultural dimensions on the speed of COVID-19 spread in 60 countries. Drawing on the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004), Study 2 investigates how GLOBE cultural dimensions relate to the speed of the pandemic's spread in 55 countries. Study 3 examines the effect of cultural tightness in 31 countries. We find that five national cultural dimensions - power distance, uncertainty avoidance, humane orientation, in-group collectivism, and cultural tightness - are significantly related to the speed of COVID-19 spread in the initial stages, but not in the later stages, of the pandemic. Study 1 shows that the coronavirus spreads faster in countries with small power distance and strong uncertainty avoidance. Study 2 supports these findings and further reveals that countries with low humane orientation and high in-group collectivism report a faster spread of the disease. Lastly, Study 3 shows that COVID-19 spreads slower in countries with high cultural tightness.

Corporate immunity, national culture and stock returns: Startups amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Small and medium-sized firms, particularly startups, are highly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic because of their financial instability. Using a sample of listed startups across four countries, we investigate whether a startup's built-up capacity pre-COVID-19 can stimulate corporate immunity to endure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflected via stock performance. We find that the increase in the accumulated COVID-19 confirmed cases worsens stock returns and that the negative effect is alleviated if startups are greater in size as well as have low debt, large board size and CEO duality. Moreover, national cultural dimensions significantly moderate the relationship between stock returns and COVID-19. The COVID-19 negative impact is relieved in societies where people are more collectivistic and cooperative, less tolerant towards uncertainty, and more long-term oriented. Overall, our results support the consolidation of corporate capacities and suggest policymakers consider national culture when formulating COVID-19 or similar infectious pandemic strategies.

A cross-cultural analysis on the Interpersonal meaning of attitude resources in Chinese and English online consumer reviews.

Online consumer reviews benefit not only buyers but also sellers in the virtual market place. For consumers, they can realize their attitudes to products through the various lexical attitudinal resources indicating emotion and judgment, and for sellers they act as a form of customer feedback which can enhance the relationship between buyers and sellers. In that sense they improve the operation of the market price mechanism. The purpose of this study is to investigate the Interpersonal meanings realized through the attitude resources drawn upon by English and Chinese online consumers. Based on the Appraisal System, especially the Attitude System in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this study conducts a contrastive analysis of the attitudinal resources employed by consumers in Amazon UK and Amazon China. These features are analyzed by using the UAM CorpusTool to annotate the relevant resources, with similarities and differences in the general distribution of attitudinal resources identified, and any potential underlying reasons explained. The results of this study suggest that different features and distribution of attitudinal resources are employed in English and Chinese online consumer reviews, and that more attitudinal units are involved in English online consumer reviews than in the Chinese versions. Consumers from the United Kingdom also seem to use more affect resources than Chinese consumers in their online reviews, while Chinese consumers employ slightly more judgment resources and more appreciation resources. Possible factors that may cause such differences are examined in terms of the differing contexts of cultures.

Acceptability of the COVID-19 contact-tracing app - Does culture matter?

During the pandemic, several countries deployed contact-tracing apps in order to contain or reduce the community spread of COVID-19. However, the success rate in terms of acceptance and use of these apps was reportedly low. Using information gathered from citizens across four European countries and the United States of America, this study explores the role of national culture in relation to the acceptance of these apps. Using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), an analysis was undertaken of 3595 records from a cross-country survey dataset that is in the public domain and can be obtained from the Centre for Open Science (Study 1). This analysis was followed by another survey comprising 910 respondents (Study 2). The research model was then validated by using a qualitative approach and undertaking interviews with 51 participants from four countries (Study 3). The results confirmed the moderating role of national culture on the acceptability of the contact-tracing apps in relation to power-distance, masculinity, individualism, long-term orientation and indulgence in the pre-deployment phase (Study 1). There were, however, no significant differences in acceptability of the apps between countries in relation to uncertainty avoidance; and none of the hypotheses in Study 2 was supported. The study concludes that national culture is significant in terms of the acceptance of COVID-19 apps only during the pre-deployment phase; therefore attention is required with pertinence to pre-deployment strategies. Recommendations regarding how governments and public health institutions can increase the acceptability of contact-tracing apps have been highlighted.

Impact of the Moderating Effect of National Culture on Adoption Intention in Wearable Health Care Devices: Meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Wearable health care devices have not yet been commercialized on a large scale. Additionally, people in different countries have different utilization rates. Therefore, more in-depth studies on the moderating effect of national culture on adoption intention in wearable health care devices are necessary. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore the summary results of the relationships between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use with adoption intention in wearable health care devices and the impact of the moderating effect of national culture on these two relationships. METHODS: We searched for studies published before September 2021 in the Web of Science, EBSCO, Engineering Village, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, IEEE Xplore, and Wiley Online Library databases. CMA (version 2.0, Biostat Inc) software was used to perform the meta-analysis. We conducted publication bias and heterogeneity tests on the data. The random-effects model was used to estimate the main effect size, and a sensitivity analysis was conducted. A meta-regression analysis was used to test the moderating effect of national culture. RESULTS: This meta-analysis included 20 publications with a total of 6128 participants. Perceived usefulness (r=0.612, P<.001) and perceived ease of use (r=0.462, P<.001) positively affect adoption intention. The relationship between perceived usefulness and adoption intention is positively moderated by individualism/collectivism (ß=.003, P<.001), masculinity/femininity (ß=.008, P<.001) and indulgence/restraint (ß=.005, P<.001), and negatively moderated by uncertainty avoidance (ß=-.005, P<.001). The relationship between perceived ease of use and adoption intention is positively moderated by individualism/collectivism (ß=.003, P<.001), masculinity/femininity (ß=.006, P<.001) and indulgence/restraint (ß=.009, P<.001), and negatively moderated by uncertainty avoidance (ß=-.004, P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis provided comprehensive evidence on the positive relationship between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use with adoption intention and the moderating effect of national culture on these two relationships. Regarding the moderating effect, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a greater impact on adoption intention for people in individualistic, masculine, low uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence cultures, respectively.

The cultural differences in the effects of carbon emissions - an EKC analysis.

The postmodernism stance critiques the current discourse of modern consumption-based societies. These societies legitimize their embedded beliefs and actions based on their lifestyle reflected through their consumption patterns. Their consumption patterns relate to carbon footprints that are yet to be explored in the current body of knowledge at the macro level. The legitimacy of their lifestyle and consumption patterns rely on their conscious efforts in reducing carbon footprints. This study uses the environmental Kuznets curve model and explores the impact of household lifestyle and household consumption patterns on CO2 emissions across different cultures and societies worldwide. 49 countries were taken to assess how different cultures define consumption patterns related to CO2 emission. The results showed that the curvilinear relationship between consumption and CO2 depends on the country's national cultural orientation.

Effect of national cultural dimensions and HIV prevalence rates on stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS.

This paper examines the main and interactive effects of national culture dimensions and HIV prevalence rates on stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIVA). We examined these various relationships using data from a sample of 68,041 individuals from 49 countries, obtained from the World Values Survey. We used Hierarchical Linear Modeling to conduct our cross-level analyses. Our results indicated that collectivistic societies were positively associated while egalitarian and performance-oriented societies were negatively associated with stigma towards PLHIVA. Additionally, HIV prevalence rates interact with several cultural dimensions to worsen stigma towards PLHIVA. Our findings indicate the need to tailor stigma reduction strategies by taking the national culture dimensions of a given society into consideration when designing and implementing programs.

Impact of national culture on the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study examines how cultural differences can affect the transmission of COVID-19 in different countries. From a sample of 92 countries, we used cross-country data based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions to investigate the impact of culture on COVID-19 transmission. We found a significant impact of culture on the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, this study reveals that individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance have a positive impact on confirmed COVID-19 cases. The relationships between cultural differences and the total number of COVID-19 deaths were also positive. This study provides valuable insights into the influences that national culture could have on the effectiveness of responses to a similar global pandemic situation in the future.

Socio-Demographic and Attitudinal Correlates of Problematic Social Media Use: Analysis of Ithra's 30-Nation Digital Wellbeing Survey.

Time spent on social media continues to rise globally. For some individuals, social media use can become maladaptive and associated with clinically significant social and occupational impairments. This problematic social media use (PSMU) is also linked with poorer health and wellbeing. Much of our existing PSMU knowledge comes from single nation studies, heavily focused on adolescent and college-age samples. This study uses data from Ithra's 2021 global digital wellbeing survey to explore rates of PSMU and identify socio-demographic and attitudinal correlates. Participants (N = 15,000) were representative adult samples (N = 500) drawn from 30 nations. All participants provided socio-demographic data and completed a measure of PSMU, along with questions assessing attitudes toward social media and general usage patterns. PSMU prevalence was 6.82%, varying from 1.7 to 18.4% between nations. Multivariate logistical regression identified several correlates, including national culture, age, parenthood and frequency of use. These findings can help inform public policy and public health initiatives to reduce PSMU prevalence.

Explaing users' technology acceptance through national cultural values in the hospital context.

BACKGROUND: Current research demonstrates that health information technology can improve the efficiency and quality of health services. However, many implementation projects have failed due to behavioural problems associated with technology usages, such as underuse, resistance, sabotage, and even rejection by potential users. Therefore, user acceptance was one of the main factors contributing to the success of health information technology implementation. However, research suggests that behavioural models do not universally hold across cultures. The present article considers national cultural values (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and time orientation) as individual difference variables that affect user behaviour and incorporates them into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as moderators of technology acceptance relationships. Therefore, this research analyses which national cultural values affect technology acceptance behaviour in hospitals. METHODS: The authors develop and test seven hypotheses regarding this relationship using the partial least squares (PLS) technique, a structural equation modelling method. The authors collected data from 160 questionnaires completed by clinicians and non-clinicians working in one hospital. RESULTS: The findings show that uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and time orientation are the national cultural values that affect technology acceptance in hospitals. In particular, individuals with masculine cultural values, higher uncertainty avoidance, and a long-term orientation influence behavioural intention to use technology. CONCLUSION: The bureaucratic model still decisively characterises the Italian health sector and consequently affects the choices of firms and workers, including the choice of technology adoption. Cultural values of masculinity, risk aversion, and long-term orientation affect intention to use through social norms rather than through perceived utility.

Corporate governance, environmental sustainability performance, and normative isomorphic force of national culture.

With the increasing concern regarding climate change, academics and practitioners are devoting attention to corporate environmental sustainability development. However, corporate environmental responsibility as an outcome of corporate governance (CG) practice is also constrained by national culture as an institutional factor, and research on the relationship between CG and environmental sustainability performance (ESP) with consideration for national culture remains scarce. Therefore, this study investigates the ESP data of Forbes' listed multinational corporations (MNCs) through content analysis and applies STATA software with stepwise regression models to empirically test the relationship between CG and MNCs' ESP and the moderating effects of national culture on this relationship. The results show that board independence and board size positively affect MNCs' ESP, and the relationship between board independence and MNCs' ESP is negatively moderated by masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Our results emphasize the importance of CG in environmental decision-making by board management supervision enhancement and explain how national culture affects ESP because of its influence on CG. Our study explains the agency effect of board composition on MNCs' environmental sustainability development and the influence of national culture, which establishes a link between CG, ESP, and national culture. Moreover, policymakers and MNCs' suggestions for enhancing ESP through CG measures, while considering national culture, are also provided.

Inheritance pattern recognition method of national traditional sports culture in e-commerce platform / Método de reconocimiento de patrones de herencia de la cultura deportiva tradicional nacional en la plataforma de comercio electrónico

An E-commerce platform is a new network platform in which information push can improve the speed of information analysis. The traditional pattern recognition ability of cultural heritage recognition is poor, and the amount of recognition data is too small. To solve this problem, the e-commerce platform is used to realize the feature recognition of national traditional sports culture. Through the analysis of national culture data, online information feature extraction is completed to identify the lifestyle, religious belief, ethics and festival customs of national traditional sports culture, and determine the inheritance mode of National Traditional Sports culture in the e-commerce platform. The experimental results show that the recognition method of e-commerce platform has strong recognition ability, and can better identify the inheritance pattern.(AU)

The Antecedents of Thriving at Work: A Meta-Analytic Review.

In this study, a systematic and comprehensive meta-analysis of the relationship between thriving at work and its antecedents is conducted. The antecedents in terms of the characteristics of unit contextual features, the resources produced at work, agentic work behaviors, and personality traits are illustrated according to the socially embedded model of thriving described by Spreitzer and research. Additionally, we examine possible cultural influence on the relationship between thriving and its antecedents at different levels of individualistic culture. According to 67 independent samples (N = 28,097), our findings reveal the correlations between thriving at work and the antecedents such as those in the form of unit contextual features, the resources produced at work, agentic work behaviors, and personality traits. Furthermore, we find that individualism moderate the relationships between certain antecedents and thriving at work. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this study as well as the directions for future research.

Distribution of Pathogen Resources by the National Culture Collection for Pathogens in South Korea from 2015 to 2019.

Introduction: The National Culture Collection for Pathogens (NCCP) in the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) is in charge of the collection, quality control, and commercialization of pathogens and of information on pathogens that cause infectious diseases, and distributes them to be utilized for promoting public health and the health care industry. Since the NCCP Task Force was established in 2009 and the law for collection, management, and exploitation of pathogen resources became effective in 2017, NCCP has been responsible for the deposition, registration, and preservation of pathogen resources. Herein, we provide information on the recent status of pathogen resource distribution over the past 5 years and pathogen resources that are available for distribution presently. Results: Within the past 5 years, the numbers of pathogen resources distributed were 1659, 1823, 1457, 1156, and 1706 in the years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. In addition, more pathogens were distributed in February, March, September, and October than in other months. When categorized by the type of institution, profit organizations (3069) requested more pathogen resources than national and public research institutes (2291). Furthermore, based on the purpose of distribution, 440 cases were for vaccine or therapeutic development, 3041 for diagnostic technology development, 2487 for education, and 1134 for quality control. Conclusion: Based on these findings, we publicized the information on the distribution of pathogen resources to encourage their widespread use in infectious disease research and public health.