COVID-19 Epidemic Research Articles

Digital retailing practices for triggering physical retailers’ bounce-back and bounce-forward performance against a great shock: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper explores the mapping from specific digitalization practices to specific resilient performance against a great shock. Based on an adapted structure–conduct–performance framework, this paper hypothesizes by theoretically analyzing how the pre-shock establishment of digital retailing practices could trigger physical retailers’ bounce-back and bounce-forward performance against the COVID-19 crisis. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, the hypotheses are examined with a sample including 549 observations of 50 Chinese listed retailers from the first quarter of 2018 to the third quarter of 2020. The empirical results mainly indicate the following binary findings. First, regardless of the differences in triggering bounce-back performance, different digital retailing practices are found to be effective in triggering physical retailers’ bounce-forward performance against the COVID-19 crisis. This somewhat addresses the concern about the temporality of digitalization-enabled resilience by revealing the generality across digital retailing practices in the sense of triggering resilient performance. Second, it is shown that physical retailers’ bounce-back performance at a specific stage of the COVID-19 crisis could only be triggered by digital retailing practices that coincidentally apply to the shock-induced market structure changes at the stage. The results emphasize each digitalization practice’s individuality in triggering resilient performance. This justifies the non-negligibility of the direct mapping from specific digitalization practices to specific resilient performance in digitalization-enabled resilience evaluation.

Beyond the blues: The protective influence of adaptability and well-being on university students' mental health.

Theoretical approaches suggest that adaptability and well-being could serve as protective factors in influencing mental health. However, it remains empirically unclear how students' prior adaptability and well-being predict depression (and vice versa) in the long term. Hence, using a longitudinal design, the present study explores the reciprocal relations among university students' adaptability, well-being, as well as depression before, during, and after the lockdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a sample of 7527 Chinese university students (51.7% female; mean age = 18.38, standard deviation [SD] = 0.77), we measured adaptability, university-related well-being, and depression. Self-report assessments were administered before (Time 1, October 2019), 1 year after (Time 2, March 2021), and 2 years after (Time 3, March 2022) the COVID-19 outbreak in a comprehensive public university in China. Cross-lagged panel analysis revealed that prior adaptability and university-related well-being negatively predicted subsequent depression, even when statistically controlling for demographic factors such as gender, family economic status, and so on. Moreover, results showed positive reciprocal relations between adaptability and university-related well-being. Findings indicate that adaptability and university-related well-being have long-term protective effects on the mental health of university students, which could mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 or other crises. The implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Initial crisis leadership during COVID-19 higher education: a systematic review

ABSTRACT The effect of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on the higher education sector is profound. The scholarly research on COVID-19 effects in higher education have largely focused on presenting intra-period facts, often with poor contextualisation to the broader evidence base. This manuscript draws on the first comprehensive systematic literature reviw database comprising 138 publications, the COVID-19 in Higher Education Database, to provide a first glance at six months of COVID-19 crisis leadership responses in the higher education sector. This systematic review aims to consolidate learning and teaching literature between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2020 to share timely educational knowledge with the sector. Through a thematic analysis, the authors identified six key themes emerging in the literature: academic development, edtech, student experience, pedagogy, policy and wellbeing. They found that there were consistencies in the emerging literature across different disciplines and jurisdictions, despite the general lack of interaction between these manuscripts.

Determinants affecting the medical students adoption of mobile learning: extended UTAUT

BackgroundThis research investigates the fundamental factors which may stymie or simplify the adoption of m-learning by medical college educators in Sudan. We made use of the Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use Technology (UTAUT) with COVID-19 fear (CF) and social isolation (SIS) as exogenous components.ObjectiveThis research aims to find out factors impacting medical students’ behavioural intention to use mobile learning.MethodsData was gathered from 499 undergraduate learners from different universities in Sudan. Partial Least Square (PLS) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to examine the data.The resultsShowed that expected performance, effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), facilitation condition (FC), COVID-19 fear, and social isolation (SIS) are predictors of behavioural intentions (BI). In addition, our findings show that COVID-19 fear and social isolation increase student adoption of mobile learning during the COVID-19 epidemics in developing countries.ConclusionsThe study unveiled that the suggested framework, derived from UTAUT, effectively discerns the factors impacting students’ intentions in mobile learning during pandemics. Sudanese medical students’ can strategize and execute effective classroom environments based on these findings.

Social Media in Higher Education: A Study on Use of Social Media by New Entrants at the Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Peradeniya, SRI LANKA, during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The transition to online education prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on educational institutions globally, especially in developing countries. The absence of formal online learning management systems (LMS) in many of these institutions presented significant challenges. In response, many educators and higher educational institutions turned in to social media platforms and other digital tools to continue providing education and support the learning process. The present study attempts to understand social media behaviour of new entrants to the faculty of Dental Sciences of University of Peradeniya, more specifically for fulfilling their information need related to academic programs during the CORONA outbreak. The study was carried out at the Faculty of Dental Sciences during the library orientation program for new entrants. Although 117 undergraduates registered with the dental library for the academic year 2022/2023, only 112 students participated in the survey. An online questionnaire made with Google Forms was administered among the research sample.According to key findings, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Research Gate were the most popular social media platforms used by Dental Science new entrants for the purpose of academic information during the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, 65% of them had been used these online platforms as a tool of searching scientific and academic information related to their academic programs. There were some positive impacts of using social media for academic purposes. One significant benefit was that social media helped them to maintain better relationships with their peers during the CORONA pandemic, facilitating peer support and collaboration etc. However, the students have perceived some negative impacts of social media as well i.e. students found social media to be quite time-consuming. Despite the potential of educational benefits of social media, the study indicated a gap in awareness and utilization of them for academic purposes. A significant proportion of students, about 35%, were not aware of the educational potential of social media. The majority of respondents appeared to prioritize using social media for entertainment rather than accessing educational content or utilizing academic features available on these platforms. On top of these findings, it can be recommended that educational institutions and policymakers in Sri Lanka consider strategies to harness the educational potential of social media for undergraduates. By raising awareness and encouraging the use of social media for academic purposes, they could enhance the learning experience and make better use of digital tools to support education in the context of ongoing and future disruptions.

Robots and the corporate immunity–Evidence from the impact of the epidemic in China

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the influence of industrial robots on corporate immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilising data from Chinese manufacturing listed companies between 2017Q1 and 2020Q1. The primary findings indicate that industrial robots can foster immunity to alleviate the adverse effects of the COVID-19 crisis, and this mitigation effect is substantial. The empirical results remain robust after conducting numerous tests and instrumental variable regression. The development of immunity by industrial robots occurs through two mechanisms: labour substitution and enhanced operational efficiency. The immunity effect of industrial robots is more pronounced in state-owned, high-tech firms, and companies severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Term spread spillovers to Latin America and emergence of the ‘Twin Ds’

This paper investigates the relationship between depreciation and default risks in five key Latin American markets—Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico—in response to shifts in the US yield curve slope. Excluding serial defaulters like Argentina, our focus lies on countries still susceptible to the Twin Ds phenomenon amidst high debt levels. We find that global economic spillovers significantly influence the Twin Ds in these markets; with fluctuations in the US term spread serving as an indicator of broader shifts in global economic conditions. Our analysis reveals asymmetric spillover effects, particularly during periods of positive and increasing spreads such as the Global Financial Crisis, where changes in the term spread disproportionately impact the depreciation tail in currency markets and the high-risk tail in sovereign CDS markets. Notably, such effects are absent in stock markets, which accentuate the particular dynamics of currency and sovereign debt markets. The asymmetry of spillover effects although still present during the most recent Covid-19 crisis, was less pronounced, which may be linked to the accumulation of international FX reserves in the region during the last decades. Our findings emphasize the necessity of incorporating risk spillovers into policy frameworks, highlighting the dominance of risk spillovers over price spillovers and the obscured nature of shocks at the center of the variables’ distribution.

Executive hour or political competition in times of crisis?—An analysis of public crisis reporting on the COVID‐19 lockdowns in Germany

AbstractWhile much work has looked at how governments responded to the Corona pandemic, little consideration has been given to how the crisis affected party competition and what positions political actors took during this period. How were political actors' positions on COVID‐19 portrayed in daily newspapers? And how can we explain these patterns? To answer these questions, this article examines the discourse surrounding both German lockdown decisions by analyzing the public coverage of two German daily newspapers. By means of discourse network analysis, the most central actors of the public discourse are revealed at first. Second, relevant factors influencing the discourse centrality of political actors are analyzed. Therefore, a linear regression is performed to identify party‐political factors that have a significant influence on political actors' discourse centrality. Participation in the executive branch in the Länder and federal level as well as having candidate status emerge as central factors influencing discourse centrality.

Corporate Integration Processes: Lessons from the Covid-19 Crisis

Corporate Integration Processes: Lessons from the Covid-19 Crisis

Asymmetric dynamic correlations and portfolio management between Bitcoin and stablecoins

ABSTRACT This study unveils the unique properties of crypto assets and investigates the dynamic connectedness between six prominent stablecoins and Bitcoin in comparison with Bitcoin/stablecoin pairs involving portfolio management. Empirically, using the DCC-GJR-GARCH and partial wavelet coherence approaches, we show that Bitcoin provides greater diversification potential benefits compared to stablecoins during the COVID-19 crisis. The evidence suggests that Bitcoin, as the dominant cryptoasset, can serve as a suitable asset for portfolio diversification against stablecoins. Besides, we evaluate potential hedging benefits of cryptocurrencies for market participants and find that stablecoins are poor hedging products in most of the cases considered. The optimal portfolio for the hedging strategy involving a mix of Bitcoin and stablecoins reveals that the weights assigned to stablecoins are lower than those for Bitcoin. In particular, our results provide timely implications for market participants whose crypto portfolios include stablecoins, especially after Terra’s collapse.

Causal Hierarchy in the Financial Market Network-Uncovered by the Helmholtz-Hodge-Kodaira Decomposition.

Granger causality can uncover the cause-and-effect relationships in financial networks. However, such networks can be convoluted and difficult to interpret, but the Helmholtz-Hodge-Kodaira decomposition can split them into rotational and gradient components which reveal the hierarchy of the Granger causality flow. Using Kenneth French's business sector return time series, it is revealed that during the COVID crisis, precious metals and pharmaceutical products were causal drivers of the financial network. Moreover, the estimated Granger causality network shows a high connectivity during the crisis, which means that the research presented here can be especially useful for understanding crises in the market better by revealing the dominant drivers of crisis dynamics.

The Impact of the Corona Pandemic on the Revenues and Expenditures of the Jordanian General Government and the Gross domestic Product

The research aimed to know The impact of the Corona pandemic on the revenues and expenditures of the Jordanian general government and the gross domestic product And reached the following results: The Corona Covid-19 pandemic is greater than being limited to a health crisis, it is a humanitarian disaster that led to changes and transformations that attacked the heart of societies and their economies, so it was imperative for countries to work on the continuity of economic activity and the preservation of the wheel of production in the country while limiting the spread of the disease. It led to a complete and total halt to any economic activity, which caused the cancellation of many capital expenditures scheduled in the context of strict measures, as the restrictions imposed on travel and trade resulted in a decrease in revenues and an increase in expenditures, and the Corona pandemic caused an increase in the deficit rate in the state's general budget, as a result of the large expenses incurred by the state, with a clear decrease in annual revenues, but the state was able in the years following the pandemic to reduce the deficit rate in the budget and cancel many capital expenditures and freeze the performance of some economic activities, which is considered a severe blow to the domestic product, considering that revenues and expenditures enable the state to play its role effectively, as the decrease in revenues and the increase in expenditures call for a review of the structure of government institutions and the duties assigned to them The services it provides, which calls for a mix of its services to ensure mitigation of the pandemic and any crisis that the country may be exposed to, which confirms the validity of the first hypothesis and in light of such crises, and practicing that pivotal role that links the actors in the economic sectors, which allows them to be stronger than before, which confirms the validity of the second hypothesis. They recommended the following: Establishing permanent centers for crisis and risk management at the state level and at the level of the various economic sectors, and activating coordination between them to deal with various crises and risks, and developing training programs for workers on how to deal with crises and how to deal with their effects, and appointing experts and specialists to monitor, analyze and prepare reports on the various crises that the various sectors are going through and building a comprehensive database to predict crises before they occur. 10- Strengthening relations between the various governmental, civil and economic sectors with the media institutions due to their importance in spreading awareness and participating in conferences and interviews that help spread knowledge, and the need to benefit from the experiences of other countries in how to overcome crises.

The Relationship of Self-Care Knowledge Towards COVID-19 Crisis with Anxiety and Quality of Life in Infertile Women

Introduction: Self-care is any activity that establishes and maintains one’s own health and prevents and deals with illnesses. According to the evidence, epidemiological crises affect individuals' mental health. Also, dealing with infertility can lead to mental health issues. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship of self-care knowledge towards the COVID-19 crisis with anxiety and quality of life in infertile women. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey via the social media platform WhatsApp based on convenience sampling of infertile women was conducted from April to December 2019 during the COVID- 19 pandemic in Infertility centers of Shiraz, a metropolis in the South of Iran. Data was collected by demographic and infertility-related questionnaire, self-structured questionnaire of self-care knowledge towards the COVID-19 crisis, Spielberger state anxiety and Fertility Quality of Life questionnaire using Porsline software on a self-report basis. Inclusion criteria were infertile women active in the virtual network. SPSS software IBM company version 20 was used for data analysis. Results: Most of the participants (62.2%) had average self-care knowledge about Covid-19. There was an inverse, and significant relationship between self-care knowledge of COVID-19 and anxiety of infertile women, i. e., the lower level of self-care knowledge of infertile women towards Covid-19 crisis was associated with a higher level of anxiety (p < 0.05). No significant relationship was found between the level of self-care knowledge of COVID-19 and infertile women’s quality of life (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Increasing self-care knowledge of COVID-19 among infertile women could affect their mental health. Education and increasing self-care knowledge during pandemics are recommended to manage the anxiety of infertile women and, as a consequence, promote fertility.

Cotton market contagion: analyzing volatility spillovers across borders

PurposeThe paper analyzes the volatility transmission within the cotton markets by utilizing commodity futures prices from the USA, China and India, encompassing important global events that have significantly influenced the global cotton markets, like the China-USA trade dispute, the COVID-19 outbreak and the Russia–Ukraine conflict.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ a volatility spillover measure developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2014). Additionally, the methodology proposed by Baruník and Křehlík (2018), which divides the overall volatility spillover into short, medium and long-term segments has been used. To investigate the volatility connectedness, weekly (close-to-close) returns of the cotton futures contracts that are traded on the Chicago Board of Trade Dalian Commodity Exchange National Commodity Exchange of India (NCDEX), and Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) are considered.FindingsThe paper identifies the presence of long-term volatility transmission among the three cotton futures markets. It demonstrates that a global shock like the Russia–Ukraine conflict has a greater impact on volatility in other markets than USA–China trade disputes. It also highlights the weakening role of the US cotton futures markets as a price leader for Indian and Chinese markets.Research limitations/implicationsSince only three major markets have been studied, the future studies can explore the interconnectedness by including other important markets including Brazil, Turkey, Bangladesh, etc. Further, the moderating role of relationship between other important variables such as cotton production, harvest, inventory, exchange rate, oil price, trade policies, etc. can be examined. Furthermore, the interconnectedness with the regional spot markets in India can also be examined to study how the volatility from the futures market can affect the volatility in the spot markets and vice-versa.Practical implicationsThe understanding of domestic food price volatility and its transmission from international to domestic markets is crucial for designing effective policies to address excessive volatility and protect vulnerable groups like producers, consumers, etc.Social implicationsThe findings emphasize on the substantial market dependence with the US and the Chinese markets which have a significant impact on the Indian markets with considerable implications for hedgers, producers and exporters, particularly during periods of higher volatility.Originality/valueThis study assesses the interdependencies among three major cotton-producing countries and the influence of factors like the USA–China trade tensions in 2018, the COVID-19 crisis and the Russia–Ukraine conflict in order to gauge the degree of volatility interconnection among these key players in the cotton market.

The Impact of Distance Learning During the Corona Pandemic on the Mental Health of Primary School Students

This paper investigates the impact of distance learning, within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the mental health of primary school students, as perceived by their parents. The critical factors examined in this paper include the use of technology, the lack of physical interaction between the students and the teachers, and whether adequate psychological support was provided to the students from school. It wants to explain how such variables influenced the emotional life of students, whether they developed anxiety or stress, had behavioral changes, or had much change in social interactions. A sample of 150 parents whose students were at the primary level of education and attended distance learning classes during the pandemic took part in the data collection. The structured questionnaire would be prepared to assess the parents' perception of their children's mental health. The items would range from a 3-point Likert scale addressing mental health and wellbeing, the influence of technology, and school support. The results of the present study indicated that, from the perspective of their parents, primary school students have been considerably affected mentally as a consequence of distance learning. The highest mean, 2.26, refers to increased anxiety and stress, which is very strong. Changes in behavior were moderate, as reflected by the mean of 2.11, and so was its impact on sleep at 2.01. With the advent of technology, stress levels went up, as shown by the strong correlation of 0.66, while technology influencing independent learning was negatively correlated at -0.46. Not having physical interaction with others greatly affected the mental health status of the students, as depicted by the mean of 2.31 and significant results in introversion: F-statistic 7.06 and p-value 0.0006. Moreover, more than 53% of parents felt that psychological support from schools needed to be increased, and 60.1% needed more recommendations for helping their children cope with the psychological burden of transitioning to remote learning.

Validity and Reliability of the Persian Translation of the World Health Organization (WHO) Oral Health Self-assessment Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents

Background: Regularly assessing the oral health of children and adolescents is crucial. Researchers seek valid and reliable questionnaires to obtain comparable global data, enabling oral health evaluation in large populations, remote regions, or even during an epidemic like COVID-19, while saving time and money. Objectives: The present study was conducted to translate and validate the Persian version of the World Health Organization (WHO) Oral Health Self-assessment Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents. Methods: In 2022, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Kerman, Iran. The Persian questionnaire was tested on 20 individuals to assess the fluency and clarity of the Persian translation. The questionnaire was then filled out by 40 individuals, and reliability was evaluated using the test-retest method. The final questionnaire was completed by 878 randomly selected participants aged 7 - 18 years online. To establish concurrent validity, the researchers added three questions related to the presence of toothache without dental visits, filled teeth, and teeth with endodontic treatment. Internal consistency was checked by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Results: A total of 290 students aged 7 to 12 and 588 students aged 13 to 18 participated in the study. Cronbach’s alpha for the entire questionnaire was 0.656 for students under 12 years old and 0.643 for those over 12 years old. The intra-cluster correlation coefficient for both age groups was between 0.81 and 0.87. Examining the concurrent validity of this questionnaire showed that the three additional questions added by the researchers have a significant relationship with the questions describing the health of teeth and gums (oral health), the number of times participants felt toothache in the last 12 months, and the problem of biting and chewing. However, they had no significant relationship with the risk factor related to nutrition. Moreover, the questionnaire is multifactorial. Conclusions: The Persian version of the WHO Oral Health Self-assessment Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents is reliable over time. If the questionnaire is repeated and the responses of people in the same population are collected, it yields similar results. It has internal consistency, but it is a multi-factor questionnaire.

Servant and Crisis Manager? The Association of Servant Leadership with Followers’ Adaptivity and Proactivity

Crisis situations require employees to be adaptive and proactive in order to be successfully managed. Because servant leaders focus on serving their followers, they should be able to fulfill their followers’ needs and respond appropriately to situations that cause uncertainty, thereby helping them manage crises. Against this backdrop, we investigated whether the perception of servant leadership can support follower adaptivity and proactivity in a crisis context. Additionally, we examined two potential mediating processes to explain these relationships (i.e., followers’ basic psychological need satisfaction and procedural justice perceptions). Using a longitudinal study with three measurement points between March 2020 (at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis) and October 2020, we surveyed 129 teachers employed at several schools in a private school association in Germany. In line with our hypotheses, the results of the path analysis showed that servant leadership perceptions were positively associated with both mediators. The relationships between servant leadership and followers’ proactivity and adaptivity were mediated by basic need satisfaction. However, contrary to our assumptions, we found no direct associations between servant leadership and follower behavior, no indirect relationship between servant leadership and adaptivity via procedural justice, and even a negative indirect relationship between servant leadership and proactive behavior via procedural justice. Based on our findings, we discuss the potential benefits and negative implications of servant leadership in the crisis context.

Nexus of firm specific variables and capital structure decisions: an evidence from Asia Pacific region amid covid-19 crisis times

Nexus of firm specific variables and capital structure decisions: an evidence from Asia Pacific region amid covid-19 crisis times

The intensity of regional food trade among the Western Balkan countries during periods of crisis

This study explores the intensity of food trade among the Western Balkan (WB) countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) during periods of crisis, emphasizing the impact of COVID-19 and the Ukrainian-Russian conflict on regional trade dynamics. The impact of this crisis was measured over three analyzed years: 2018, representing a reference year for comparison, then 2020 as the year affected by COVID-19, and 2022, being affected by the pandemic as well as the Ukrainian-Russian crisis. All data collected are from the “Trade Statistics for International Business Development Database”. Conclusions about the intensity of exchange of agricultural and food products within the WB region were obtained by calculating Regional Intensity of Trade of Export (RITE) and Regional Intensity of Trade of Import (RITI). Higher values than 1 indicate intensity in trade or dominance of trade in specific products with a particular region compared with the trade with the world. In the case of trade among the WB countries, the COVID-19 crisis did not affect the increase in trade volume. However, there was an increase in intra-regional trade by about 50% when compared with 2020 and 2022. The RITE coefficients for all countries except Albania were greater than 1, indicating intensified export of agricultural and food products to the WB region compared with their global export. The RITI index is very important in crisis, as it somewhat answers the question of who "feeds" the country during crises. All WB countries had the RITI indices greater than 1, indicating a higher intensity of food imports from the region compared with the world. According to this research, the RIT coefficients measured generally declined in the years of crises, meaning that the countries shifted their export focus to other regions but still the most significant foreign and intense trade partners in agricultural and food products were countries from the region.

Different impacts of similar crises? The financial and COVID-19 crisis in border and non-border regions

ABSTRACT The last two decades have seen an increase in the number and intensity of shocks and crises. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 and the COVID-19 crisis of 2020/2021 have led to economic recessions. During the COVID-19 crisis, national borders and the impact of crises in border regions were often the subject of political debate and media coverage. Border-regional resilience has only been discussed in the academic discourse for the last few years. This article uses a diverse set of socio-economic indicators to examine the (border)–regional resilience of German regions in the wake of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. A distinction is made between border and non-border regions, urban and rural regions, and regions in the old and new German federal states. The results show, first, that the COVID-19 crisis had a stronger socio-economic impact than the financial crisis. Second, border regions tended to be more affected by the financial crisis than non-border regions. Surprisingly, this was not the case for the border-specific COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, the study shows that it is not so much the border location that determines regional resilience, but rather the socio-economic level, the degree of urbanization and the associated embeddedness in global networks.