Influential Paths Research Articles

Evaluation of Structural Equation Model Forests Performance to Identify Omitted Influential Covariates

Model misspecification is typical in applied structural equation modeling (SEM). Traditional specification search methods, such as modification indices, search for misspecifications within the model’s variables but overlook influential variables not initially included and fail to detect interactions. This study evaluates SEM forests as a complementary method to conduct SEM specification search related to omitted influential covariates. The omitted influential paths include unique, mixed, and interaction paths. SEM forests’ performance is evaluated under different factor loading magnitudes, covariate path magnitudes, and sample sizes. Results show SEM forests accurately identify omitted influential covariates without falsely identifying non-influential covariates in large samples (1,000) with strong covariate-latent variable paths ( β = .5).

Complex factors combinations driving tea growers to adopt ecological agricultural practices in tea gardens

IntroductionThe implementation of ecological agriculture practices in Chinese tea gardens plays a vital role in mitigating N2O emissions and addressing environmental degradation. Nevertheless, a dearth of discourse exists regarding the intricacies surrounding farmers' adoption of tea garden ecological agriculture practices (TGEAP), particularly the complex interplay between adoption factors and outcomes.MethodsUsing data of 310 farmers, this study employed complexity theories and Stimulus-Organism-Response theories, and integrated Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore the complex relationships between farmer characteristics, internal and external factors, and adoption of farmer.ResultsThe results show three influential paths in the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, and environmental protection attitude (EPA) and production expectation (PE) act as intermediaries. Notably, EPA exhibits a masking effect in one pathway. These paths linked closely to three farmer characteristics. Beyond the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, nine combinations lead to farmers' adoption, and four to non-adoption.DiscussionWe discover scenarios where opposing environmental states or age lead to adoption, explaining the masking effect. These combinations highlight how a favorable environment influences both adoption and non-adoption. We also discuss other combinations that lead to adoption or non-adoption. The study suggests that governments employ targeted incentives to facilitate tea farmers' transition in agriculture.

BioPathNet: Enhancing Link Prediction in Biomedical Knowledge Graphs through Path Representation Learning.

Understanding complex interactions in biomedical networks is crucial for advancements in biomedicine, but traditional link prediction (LP) methods are limited in capturing this complexity. Representation-based learning techniques improve prediction accuracy by mapping nodes to low-dimensional embeddings, yet they often struggle with interpretability and scalability. We present BioPathNet, a novel graph neural network framework based on the Neural Bellman-Ford Network (NBFNet), addressing these limitations through path-based reasoning for LP in biomedical knowledge graphs. Unlike node-embedding frameworks, BioPathNet learns representations between node pairs by considering all relations along paths, enhancing prediction accuracy and interpretability. This allows visualization of influential paths and facilitates biological validation. BioPathNet leverages a background regulatory graph (BRG) for enhanced message passing and uses stringent negative sampling to improve precision. In evaluations across various LP tasks, such as gene function annotation, drug-disease indication, synthetic lethality, and lncRNA-mRNA interaction prediction, BioPathNet consistently outperformed shallow node embedding methods, relational graph neural networks and task-specific state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating robust performance and versatility. Our study predicts novel drug indications for diseases like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and Alzheimer's, validated by medical experts and clinical trials. We also identified new synthetic lethality gene pairs and regulatory interactions involving lncRNAs and target genes, confirmed through literature reviews. BioPathNet's interpretability will enable researchers to trace prediction paths and gain molecular insights, making it a valuable tool for drug discovery, personalized medicine and biology in general.

Path-based reasoning for biomedical knowledge graphs with BioPathNet.

Understanding complex interactions in biomedical networks is crucial for advancements in biomedicine, but traditional link prediction (LP) methods are limited in capturing this complexity. Representation-based learning techniques improve prediction accuracy by mapping nodes to low-dimensional embeddings, yet they often struggle with interpretability and scalability. We present BioPathNet, a novel graph neural network framework based on the Neural Bellman-Ford Network (NBFNet), addressing these limitations through path-based reasoning for LP in biomedical knowledge graphs. Unlike node-embedding frameworks, BioPathNet learns representations between node pairs by considering all relations along paths, enhancing prediction accuracy and interpretability. This allows visualization of influential paths and facilitates biological validation. BioPathNet leverages a background regulatory graph (BRG) for enhanced message passing and uses stringent negative sampling to improve precision. In evaluations across various LP tasks, such as gene function annotation, drug-disease indication, synthetic lethality, and lncRNA-mRNA interaction prediction, BioPathNet consistently outperformed shallow node embedding methods, relational graph neural networks and task-specific state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating robust performance and versatility. Our study predicts novel drug indications for diseases like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and Alzheimer's, validated by medical experts and clinical trials. We also identified new synthetic lethality gene pairs and regulatory interactions involving lncRNAs and target genes, confirmed through literature reviews. BioPathNet's interpretability will enable researchers to trace prediction paths and gain molecular insights, making it a valuable tool for drug discovery, personalized medicine and biology in general.

Consumer brand and category switching behaviors after food safety incidents: Factors and mechanisms

The excessive mold found in Three Squirrels' nuts and the clenbuterol abuse of Shuanghui are two infamous food safety incidents in China. We adopted push-pull-mooring theory to conduct a model and examined the factors influencing consumer short-term or long-term brand-switching or category-switching behaviors following the two food safety incidents. We employed multinomial logistic regression and structural equation modeling as tools to analyze 1027 valid questionnaires. The results, for the first time, revealed that perceived risk, alternative selectivity, alternative attractiveness, controllability attribution, and habits were key push, pull and mooring factors influencing Chinese consumers’ brand and category switching from food brands under food safety crisis, and most importantly, that their influential paths differed greatly under the two food safety incidents, suggesting a different influential mechanism across two product categories (i.e., utilitarian food and hedonic food). These findings throw light on the predictors and mechanisms that affect consumer brand and category switching from food brands under food safety crisis and help associated food businesses develop more targeted and powerful crisis management and public relations strategies.

Metode Response Based Unit Segmentation Partial Least Square pada Model Partial Least Square Path Modeling

Education is an important factor that can affect the development of a country and is a basic human need. To ensure the continuous progress of education, it is necessary to pay attention to the results and achievements of education in Indonesia. In this research model, Partial Least Square Path Modeling (PLS PM) is used to explain the relationship between education outcomes and achievements and the quality dimensions of provincial education in Indonesia. However, because there is heterogeneity in the population unit, the Response Based Unit Segmentation Partial Least Square (REBUS PLS) algorithm is used to overcome the alleged heterogeneity. The results showed that there were 20 influential indicators in the structural model, with the influential paths being student activities to participation, educational facilities and infrastructure to educational outcomes and achievements, student activities to educational outcomes and achievements, and participation to educational outcomes and achievements. REBUS PLS successfully detects heterogeneity and produces two segments, with the value of R2 on the local model greater than the value of R2 on the global model and the GoF value in the GoF large category.

The Effect of Information Acquisition Ability on Farmers’ Agricultural Productive Service Behavior: An Empirical Analysis of Corn Farmers in Northeast China

Agricultural productive services are an important means to achieve effective allocation of regional resources and play an important role in ensuring food security and improving farmers’ welfare. However, the development process of agricultural productive services still faces problems such as large differences in service levels in different segments and low participation rates in the full service. In order to investigate the influential paths of the low participation rate of farmers in the full-service process, this study takes maize farmers in northeast China as the research object. Based on 937 survey data from six cities in three northeastern provinces, we used the Item Response Theory (IRT) model to measure farmers’ information acquisition ability and constructed the Heckman two-stage model and the IV-Heckman model to analyze the logical framework of “information acquisition ability—farmers’ choice of productive agricultural services”. The main findings are as follows: firstly, the more channels there are, the stronger the farmers’ channel internalities; the higher the degree of channel differentiation, the stronger the farmers’ channel internalities. Second, after addressing the sample selection bias and endogeneity, there is a small rise in the facilitation effect of information acquisition ability on farmers’ productive agricultural service behavior. Third, this facilitation effect is achieved through farmers’ perceived usefulness of productive agricultural services, and the mediating effect of perceived ease of use is not significant. Therefore, fostering farmers’ self-perceptions and optimizing information delivery strategies are effective ways to promote farmers’ choice of agricultural productive services and to facilitate the modernization of Chinese agriculture. In general, this study helps to reveal the theoretical mechanism of farmers’ information asymmetry, and provides empirical evidence for how to promote the development of agricultural productive services.

Can Ethics and Economic Incentives Mitigate Tax preparers’ Aggressive Judgements and Decisions?

ABSTRACT We examine whether the personal attribute of ethics and an external economic incentive in the form of a standard tax preparation fee can mitigate tax preparers’ aggressive tax reporting behaviour. We use a structural equation model (SEM) to identify the influential paths of ethics and economic incentives on the aggressiveness of tax preparers. Based on the results of a quasi-experiment involving tax preparers in Korea, we find that ethical attributes both directly and indirectly mitigate aggressive tax reporting by reducing tax preparers’ fear of client dissatisfaction. We then find that the introduction of a standard tax preparation fee does not directly or indirectly suppress the tax aggressiveness of tax preparers. Our study contributes to an integral examination of the effectiveness of both psychological and economic factors on tax preparers’ judgements and decisions.

Influential paths of ecosystem services on human well-being in the context of the sustainable development goals

Ecosystem services (ESs) and their demands from people are closely related to human well-being (HWB). Understanding of the influential paths of ecosystem services on human well-being is significant to sustainable landscape management. This study explored the supply of ecosystem services and the ecosystem service supply-demand relationships (i.e. the ecological supply-demand ratio, ESDR) in the Central and Western Inner Mongolia, as well as HWB by combining the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (SDGs). A structural equation model (SEM) was built to quantify the influential paths of the ESs on the HWB. The results indicated that: (1) The HWB was improved during 2000–2018. (2) The supporting services promoted the provisioning services and the regulating services directly. (3) The provisioning services and the regulating services had positive direct influences on the HWB, and also affected the HWB through the ESDR indirectly. The combination of the supporting services and the ESDR presented a panorama of the influential paths of ecosystem services on the HWB and promoted the understanding of the driving mechanisms. Assessments on the ESs, the HWB in the context of SDGs, and their influential paths were instructive for decision-making towards sustainable landscape management.

Factors Influencing Career Advancement of Thai Female Foreign Service Officials: The Mediating Effect of Readiness and the Moderating Role of Gender-Role Attitudes

ABSTRACT Study objectives were to (a) investigate influences of personal attributes, family support, and organizational support on female career advancement; and (b) examine the mediating effect of readiness and the moderating role of gender-role attitudes on those influential paths. Samples are female foreign-service officials from six Thai public organizations. Explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was used by questionnaire of 299 respondents and semi-structured interviews of 15 participants. Questionnaire data were analyzed by SEM, Sobel’s z-test, and a conditional effect of PROCESS Model 1, whereas triangulation technique analyzed semi-structured interview data. Results demonstrated multiple factors, influencing female career advancement in the Thai context, and provided theoretical, practical, and social implications.

Family supportive supervisor behavior and promotive voice: When and why are there gender differences in work–family?

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the differential association of family supportive supervisor behavior on promotive voice under different gender. Further, while employees’ self-concept factors have received considerable attention in the research on the triggering mechanism of employee voice, the authors’ knowledge about how and when family factors affect employee voice remains underdeveloped.Design/methodology/approachAccording to the resource conservation theory and gender role theory, the authors constructed a research model to investigate the influence and boundary of family supportive supervisor behavior on employee promotive voice and tested their research model using a paired data of 332 married employees and their direct supervisors of enterprises in China.FindingsThe findings suggest that family supportive supervisor behavior has a positive effect on employee promotive voice. Family supportive supervisor behavior can strengthen employee promotive voice by improving work-to-family enrichment and reducing work–family conflict, yet no significant mediation effect was found regarding family-to-work enrichment and conflict. Furthermore, family supportive supervisor behavior is more likely to improve female employee work–family enrichment and assuage male employee work–family conflict and thus enhance employee promotive voice.Originality/valueThis study sheds light on the different influential paths of family supportive supervisor behavior on promotive voice of employees of different genders and provides references for enterprises to motivate employees’ promotive voice.

An empirical study on collaborative grassland governance in Inner Mongolia, China

Collaborative governance is a promising pattern for grassland governance because the failure of single-subject governance has gradually increased in recent years. To conduct better collaborative governance, it is necessary to specify the roles of the factors that influence grassland collaborative governance. However, there are still few studies that focus on the influencing mechanisms for grassland collaborative governance. To systematically explore the influencing mechanisms, a case study was conducted in 4 banners and counties of Inner Mongolia based on questionnaire surveys and the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that the following three factors all have a positive influence on the collaboration degree (CD): the participation degree of collaborative participants (PDCP), the effectiveness of collaborative leadership (ECL) and the trust degree (TD), and their effects vary. Additionally, TD has a positive mediation effect on the influential paths of PDCP to CD and ECL to CD. Moreover, multigroup analysis shows that both gender and income have significant moderating effects. These findings not only offer a theoretical foundation for the further exploration of the mechanism of collaborative governance but also provide a practical reference for the implementation of collaborative governance in grassland governance and other fields in China and other regions of the world.

Who influences higher education decision-making in Taiwan? An analysis of internal stakeholders

ABSTRACT In the past two decades, Taiwan has gone through a series of drastic higher education transformations in response to the multi-faceted demands from globalization and domestic social change. Among the driving forces, new public management and neoliberal ideology have reshaped the nature and culture of higher education in Taiwan. The current study focuses on the broader internal stakeholders’ relationships to higher education policy as they systematically engage with governance through decision-making. We empirically explore who the main actors are that make decisions at the ministerial level. The study identifies six key groups with different characteristics and traits. Acting as coalitions, these groups frequently influence policy formulation. Moreover, their influential paths – identified as elite approach, professional engagement, and political networking – jointly steer higher education decision-making. These triangular paths serve as a valuable conceptual framework to understand the complicated influential paths from internal stakeholders who have affected Taiwan’s higher education policy.

Organisational Power, Cohesiveness and Culture of Taiwan’s Cosmetology Industry

Manuscript type: Research paper Research aims: This study aims to examine the influential paths and internal relationships of organisational power, organisational culture and organisational cohesiveness. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) is used to analyse the survey data collected from 222 practitioners who are from five cosmetology industries based in Taiwan. Research findings: This study reveals that: (1) both organisational power and organisational culture individually creates significant impacts on organisational cohesiveness, and (2) organisational culture plays an important role as a mediator between organisational power, and organisational cohesiveness.Theoretical contribution/Originality: This finding encourages the need for more positive organisational culture to be built to enhance organisational cohesiveness which contributes to the achievement and performance of both the individuals and the organisations at large.Practitioner/Policy implications: The interactive factors’ effect overwhelms the single-factor effect, where individuals develop their organisational cohesiveness, even if each single factor functions separately. In reality, organisational culture needs to be the first priority factor to be developed in a workplace so as to build cohesiveness. Research limitations/Implications: This study is conducted based on a fundamental assumption, hence the limitation lies in that the surveyed sample may or may not fully understand the question/ items provided in the questionnaire. This could affect the level of honest answers revealed through their perceptions. Future studies may consider taking the qualitative approach. Keywords: Cosmetology Industry, Organisational Power, Organisational Culture, Organisational Cohesiveness JEL Classification: L66, L2, D91

Effects of Leaders’ Positive/Negative Emotional Expression on Subordinates’ Voice Behavior: Mediation Effect of Subordinates’ Liking to Superiors

Employees’ voice could benefit organizational development and progress; however, emotional mechanism to induce such a behavior still requires further research. This study investigates the relations between leaders’ different emotional expression and employees’ voice behavior in China. By investigating 215 pairs of superior-subordinate samples of enterprises in China, it is discovered that leaders’ positive emotional expression could enhance employees’ voice, and the negative emotional expression would negatively affect employees’ voice behavior. Meanwhile, subordinates’ liking to superiors shows partial mediation effects on the effect of leaders’ positive/negative emotional expression on employees’ voice behavior. The research results reveal that leaders emphasize the function of positive emotional expression in organizational management. Future research could further investigate various influential paths and distinguish leaders’ emotional expression.

Meeting the World’s Energy Needs Through Innovation and Insight

Special Section: The Value and Future of Petroleum Engineering JPT asked several active SPE members about the appeal of petroleum engineering, the significance of the work they do, and what the future may hold. Here are some of their answers. What are the most positive aspects of being a petroleum engineer? I dreamed of being a petroleum engineer as early as middle school in the 1990s. Eventually, I studied petroleum engineering in college. After spending more than 20 years in the oil and gas industry, working in numerous countries and being involved in many megaprojects, I believe the most positive aspect of being a petroleum engineer is the fact that we deal with the world’s energy needs. The task of pro-duction alone faces many challenges, but at the same time, we as petroleum engineers are responsible for a proactive approach to safety and the environment in our operations. We are heavily involved in technology, which allows us to explore and produce resources safely and minimize environmental impact. Ardian Nengkoda, Group Lead, Saudi Aramco Being a petroleum engineer means that you follow one of the most influential career paths in our society because hydrocarbon resources will continue to be the dominant source of energy for the next 5 decades, and their use will be required for the next century and beyond. Luigi Saputelli, Petroleum Engineering Consultant, Frontender I have always felt that by being a petroleum engineer I am helping people to live a better life. We make transportation possible; we keep people warm; we provide medicine and material for plastics such as cell phones, computers, and many other things that are part of the modern lifestyle. I enjoy being a petroleum engineer because in a single day you can do a huge variety of things, and over the course of a career you can change your focus from production to reservoir or drilling and face new challenges and learn more with each passing year. Through SPE we can always be learning. I have also loved the fact that in every company I was encouraged to do volunteer work in the community, from giving talks to grade schools, judging science fairs, teaching children and adults to read, planting trees, picking up trash, mentoring, and serving on a board. The ways we are encouraged to serve is endless. Joyce Holtzclaw, Senior Vice President, E&B Natural Resources

Sequential graph-based extraction of curvilinear structures

In this paper, a new approach is proposed to extract an ordered sequence of curvilinear structures in images, capturing the largest and most influential paths first and then progressively extracting smaller paths until a prespecified size is reached. The results are demonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively using synthetic and real-world images. The method is shown to outperform comparator methods for certain cases of noise, object class, and scale, while remaining fundamentally easier to use due to its low parameter requirement.

A Review of Influential Factors Affecting Undergraduate Students’ Creative Thinking

Creative thinking was listed among the skills that are required for upcoming graduating students’ entry-level careers which become more important to global industries. Due to the importance of this concept, the need to investigate undergraduate students’ creative thinking has been rising. This article presents an overview of influential factors on undergraduate students’ creative thinking. The influential factors were reviewed in two main aspects – contextual and individual levels. Researchers have investigated the relationship between educational setting and parental factors affecting creative thinking in the contextual aspect, while in the individual level aspect, researcher has investigated the relationship between intelligence and personality affecting creative thinking. Based on various recent studies and related theories, key factors that influence undergraduate students’ creative thinking are outlined along with a proposed conceptual framework. In the future, establishing and testing the proposed conceptual framework in terms of defining the influential paths and key factors affecting creative thinking will be conducted.

The influential factors and hierarchical structure of college students’ creative capabilities—An empirical study in Taiwan

A series of empirical studies and related theories all declared that affective creativity, imagination, and self-efficacy separately enhance students’ creative thinking and academic achievement, testifying to the single-factor effect. Conversely, there was no empirical study simultaneously considering the interactive effects among these personality factors and collaboratively affecting students’ performance. Therefore, this study purports to establish and test a theory-driven framework of the hierarchical structure and influential paths indicating how affective creativity, imagination, and self-efficacy interactively affecting creative thinking and academic achievement. Data were collected through questionnaires from 322 students of the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Taking a structural equation modeling analysis, this study illustrated that the hierarchical model was acceptable (with good fits) and specified that higher students’ affective creativity led to their creative thinking through imagination and self-efficacy as mediators, and continuously influenced students’ academic achievement. These intrapersonal constructs were reconfirmed to be significantly related to each other and concurrently influenced their academic achievement. These conclusions both retrospectively and introspectively proposed further suggestions to explore some approaches to enhance students’ creative thinking and academic achievement, while considering the complex interaction of intrapersonal and external factors.

A Fixed Pricing Group Buying Decision Model

In order to explain the consumer decision process in the fixed pricing group buying (FPGB) context, this study proposed an FPGB decision model from the social perspective. To reflect the social perspective, the proposed FPGB decision model included social factors such as network externalities and subjective norm as triggers for shopping motivations. According to the analysis results, all social factors directly or indirectly affected consumers' buying intention at FPGB websites. To be more specific, of the social factors, perceived complementarity was the most significant determinant of FPGB buying intention not just in the direct influential paths but in the indirect influential paths. Subjective norm did not directly affect FPGB buying intention, but it did indirectly. These results imply that the managers of FPGB websites should carefully consider social factors as triggers for shopping motivations when designing and operating FPGB websites.