“Your ride has arrived” – Exploring the nexus between subjective well-being, socio-cultural beliefs, COVID-19, and the sharing economy

Understanding the role of corporate social responsibility and sustainable supply chain management in shaping the consumers’ intention to use sharing platforms

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in sharing economy platforms supports resource management and achieves environmental sustainability. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an essential pillar of sustainability, but the link between CSR and SSCM has been missing in the literature. Therefore, the current study intends to examine the connection between CSR and SSCM practices in sharing economy-based platforms. This study has applied the means-end theory to understand customer intention in the sharing economy. The data of 379 respondents from five main cities of Pakistan have been collected through convenience sampling. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has been used to test the proposed conceptual model. The study results show that the corporate social responsibility approach adopted by the sharing economy platforms improves internal supply chain management that drives customers’ intention to use sharing economy platforms. Green concern has a significant moderating effect on customers’ tendency toward environmental issues and solutions. However, findings revealed that eco-design in the sustainable supply chain does not affect customer purchase intention in sharing economy platforms. The study findings provide practical implications to organizations focusing on sustainable supply chain management practices in the sharing economy.

The relationship between global stock and precious metals under Covid-19 and happiness perspectives

In this paper, we examine the relationship between global stock markets, as respectively represented by the FTSE All-World Series and the MSCI Emerging Markets indexes, and the S&P GSCI Precious Metals index from 01 September 1999 to 03 May 2021. We employ the conditional correlation multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH) to investigate this stock-precious metals nexus in terms of return and volatility spillovers. The study assesses impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the stock-precious metals nexus and further examine this relationship by supplementing the Twitter's Daily Happiness Sentiment index to the methodological framework for the period from 01 January 2020 to 03 May 2021. We find that precious metals positively influence stock markets before the Covid-19 outbreak and firmly play a valuable role due to their hedge and safe haven characteristics. In contrast, the bivariate GARCH framework does not provide statistically significant evidence on the stock-precious metals nexus during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the tri-variate GARCH approach with stock markets, precious metals, and happiness sentiment indexes reveals sufficiently complicated interactions between these return series. Prominently, past change in the happiness index negatively affects the stock returns but positively drives the performance of precious metals. These findings indirectly demonstrate the stock-precious metals nexus under impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect the demand of precious metals during crisis periods. Accordingly, we suggest a reasonable method of adjusting the proxies when no interaction effect is significantly found during unprecedented outbreaks.