Digital Commons Network^™

Lgbtq+ People On The Camino De Santiago, Xose Santos, . Wisulanbou

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the many published works on the Camino de Santiago, LGBTQ+ people have never been considered as an subject of study. The widespread idea that the Camino is for everyone serves to invisibilise this group of people. The problems and accusations we have had to face in our fieldwork are proof of how uncomfortable it is for some persons to talk about gender, sexuality and non-heteronormative identities on the Camino. Regardless of the variety of motivations for pilgrimage to Santiago, religion continues to have a very strong presence on this itinerary which generates tensions with sexualities, especially those that are …

Religious Tourism And Local Development In Rural Areas: Analysis Of The Social And Economic Impact Of Holy Week Celebrations In Osuna, Spain, Elena Garcia-De-Soto-Camacho, Miguel A. Garcia-Gordillo Dr., Antonio Montaño-Valle, Carlos Chavarría-Ortiz, Rosa María Vaca-Acosta

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study explores the role of religious tourism in promoting rural development through the case of Holy Week in Osuna, Spain. By applying a quantitative methodology with fieldwork conducted during the 2022 celebration, the research analyses the social and economic impacts derived from the influx of visitors. The study segments tourists based on their motivations, demographic profiles, levels of satisfaction, spending behaviour, and future intentions. Through cluster analysis, three distinct visitor profiles were identified, reflecting varying degrees of religious and cultural interest. The findings confirm that Holy Week tourism generates significant economic benefits for the locality through direct, indirect, and …

Possible Contestation Between Pilgrimage And Tourism: A Spatial Analysis Of The Shrine Of Shahjalal, Zarin Tasnim Rashid

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper aims to examine the contestation between pilgrimage and tourism by conducting a spatial analysis on the shrine of Shahjalal, a prominent pilgrimage site in Bangladesh. It analyses particular components of this site through the lens of Kim Knott’s (2009) concept of a spatial approach based on four essential characteristics that connect a location to the larger whole of space. This paper followed a qualitative research method and more specifically content analysis. Being a prominent pilgrimage site in Bangladesh, the Shrine of Shahjalal, turns into a centre of contestation due to the presence of tourists and other existing stakeholders. …

Religious Visitors’ Spiritual Values And Their Relative Importance: Evidence From Chinese Buddhist Tourism Contexts, Zhiqing Wang, Keji Huang, Jiankang Zhang, Yunyun Fan, Ge Zhang

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Spiritual values are affected by diverse factors with different roles and influence daily life in various ways. Using Mount Jiuhua and Mount Putuo, two mountains in Mainland China with great importance in Buddhism, as examples, this study explores the specific dimensions of religious visitors’ spiritual values. Through a survey study, five factors of these spiritual values were extracted and their relative importance was measured. The identified factors were transcendence, general connectedness, inner balance, positive life direction and special religious feelings. According to factor importance analysis, these spiritual values can be categorised into three levels: fundamental, reflective and surpassing. This study …

Hajj Pilgrimage And Spatial Behaviour In Sacred Space, Zuhriddin Juraev, Young-Jin Ahn, Ji-Yeong Gu

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study examines the behavioural and spatial dynamics of the Hajj pilgrimage through the conceptual lens of behavioural geography, focusing on how sacred space, ritual choreography, and communal experiences shape religious engagement. Centred on the Kaaba and surrounding pilgrimage sites, this study explores how ritual practices such as Tawaf, Sa’i, and standing at Arafat construct immersive and affective experiences for pilgrims. Drawing on an interpretive analysis of visual and textual sources, the study argues that sacred space operates not only as a physical setting but also as a symbolic framework that mediates spiritual transformation and social cohesion. It also highlights …

Exploring Challenges For Relationship Marketing Based On Vertical Partnerships Among Smes For Developing Spiritual Tourism: A Case Of Kartarpu, Farooq Haq, Mohit Vij, Naveed Yasin, Amitabh Upadhya

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Spiritual tourism has evolved as a growing segment of special-interest tourism, attracting increasing attention from both public and private sectors. While government agencies are primarily responsible for infrastructure development at spiritual sites, the private sector plays a crucial role is delivering products and services that enhance the visitor experience. Although collaboration between these stakeholders is vital, the role of relationship marketing, particularly through vertical partnerships, remains underexplored in the context of spiritual tourism. This study addresses this gap by examining vertical partnerships as a relationship marketing strategy at Kartarpur, a prominent Sikh pilgrimage site. Employing a case-study approach, the research …

Shrine Tourism: Fiction And Fact Through An Islamic Lens, Md. Soleman Mollik, Muslima Akter, Mohammad Mominul Islam

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Shrine tourism is highly prevalent in developing countries. Despite this, the volume of research in this field is quite limited. This study makes a novel contribution to shrine tourism from an Islamic lens. It aims to explore the fiction (the beliefs of the pilgrims) held by shrine devotees and the facts (the religious doctrine of Islam) based on Islamic principles, including the noble Quran and the Sunnah (Prophetic tradition), to showcase the facts against the fiction.  The study conducted in-depth interviews with 30 devotees from Bangladesh’s most renowned shrines or mazars between January and November 2023. Later, the data were …

The Role Of Women In A Da’Wah: Mitigating The Bio-Psycho-Socio Problems Of Elderly Pilgrims Who Cancel Hajj, Hasyim Hasanah, Lukmanul Hakim

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The Hajj pilgrimage is the most sacred da’wah ritual and has resilience against global crises and the impact of COVID-19. The cancellation of the 2020-2021 Hajj pilgrimage has implications for the length of the waiting list and the bio-psycho-social conditions of elderly Hajj pilgrims. This study aims to identify the role of female Hajj pilgrims who failed to depart in overcoming bio-psycho-social problems. This study is a field study with a socio-psychological da’wah approach. Data were collected through a Google Form questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and documentation studies of 203 elderly Hajj pilgrims who failed to depart from the Semarang area. …

The Reasons And Motivations For Unsafe Pilgrimage During Covid-19: Analysis Of Shiite Experiences Of Pilgrimage In The Last Days Of Safar In Iran, Hamdollah Sojasi Qeidari, Fahimeh Jafari

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Unsafe pilgrimage is defined a religious journey that may have life risks. From the outbreak of COVID-19, for instance, many people were infected and died, but despite the severe conditions all over the world including Iran, one of the most famous and biggest pilgrimage events was held in Mashhad, Iran. This study tries to explore the causes and motivations of unsafe pilgrimage over the period when COVID-19 was a threat. To do the research, ethnographic method for collecting the data and Colaizzi’s interpretive phenomenological method for analysing the experience of 38 pilgrims doing foot-pilgrimage were used. The results show that …

Pilgrimage As A Regional Socio-Economic Driver: Case Study Of Sarria, Km 0 Of The Camino De Santiago, Mª Carmen Pardo Lopez, Mónica Cortés Garcia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study explores the potential of pilgrimage as a catalyst for tourism growth, with a specific focus on the municipality of Sarria, located along the renowned Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago). Despite its international fame, many municipalities along the route fail to capitalise on the socio-economic opportunities presented by pilgrimage tourism (Machado & Pardo, 2018). Sarria, known as ‘Kilometre Zero’ for pilgrims on the French Way, serves as a critical starting point for obtaining the Compostela certificate. This research employs destination planning methodology, utilising qualitative and quantitative data through surveys, interviews, and mystery shopper audits, to analyse …

Invited Editorial: Scandinavian Pilgrimage Reinvented, Jane Widtfeldt Meged Mrs, Andreas Skriver Hansen Mr

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This editorial offers initial thoughts about how Scandinavian pilgrimage possibly is being re-invented after 500 years of intermission. Although the church has been involved in all three Scandinavian countries, it is argued that pilgrimage to some degree is developing and being practiced along different lines in the three countries. In Denmark, pilgrimage can be said to often fall under an entrepreneurial, tourism start-up category. In Sweden, the church in some ways has appropriated pilgrimage as leverage in connection with the separation of church from the Swedish state. In Norway, pilgrimage has mainly been used by public authorities as valorisation of …

Ijrtp Volume 14(Iii) Table Of Contents, Kevin A. Griffin, Razaq Raj, Carlos Fernandes

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Title page and Table of contents for Volume 14(iii) of IJRTP - International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

From Dissertation To Deployment: A Unified Software Platform Operationalizing Clinical-Prediction And Sequential-Security Ai For Healthcare, Olsi Shehu, Damiana Teliti, Jasmin Kevrić, Bekir Karlik

Communications of the IIMA

Advances in machine learning for healthcare are abundant, yet most validated models remain confined to research notebooks and never reach secure, usable clinical software. This paper addresses that deployment gap by presenting a unified, security-hardened software platform that operationalizes two complementary streams of doctoral research inside a single, role-based hospital information system. The first stream contributes a clinical-prediction capability: an ultra-hybrid ensemble that couples a quantum-inspired feature transformation, particle-swarm feature selection, and calibrated soft voting for cancer-outcome prediction (96.41% accuracy, AUC-ROC 0.983 on TCGA-BRCA), survival stratification, multi-cancer generalization, and pharmacogenomic drug-response classification (89.31% mean accuracy across 25 compounds). The second …

Ai-Enhanced Knowledge Ecosystems: A Paradox Framework For Understanding Knowledge Sharing And Hiding In Generative Ai, Martin Sposato, Eduardo Carlos Dittmar

All Works

Organisations increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to capture, synthesise and generate knowledge, yet the governance consequences of this shift remain poorly theorised. This paper develops a conceptual framework for AI-enhanced knowledge ecosystems, arguing that AI does not simply augment knowledge management practice but reshapes what counts as organisational knowledge. Drawing selectively on work in knowledge management, AI and paradox theory, the framework sets out five dimensions of such ecosystems and four paradoxes: sharing and hiding, transparency and opacity, control and autonomy, exploitation and exploration. These tensions are treated as generative forces to be navigated, not problems to be solved, since …

Attitudes And Norms About Intimate Partner Violence: What Makes Women More Impressionable?, Gaurav Dhamija, Mehreen Mookerjee, Manini Ojha, Sanket Roy

All Works

This article evaluates the causal impact of average neighborhood attitudes justifying intimate partner violence (IPV) on own attitudes using nationally representative data from the fifth wave of the National Family Health Survey of India. The study utilizes exogenous variation in average exposure of neighborhood women to their parental IPV in a leave-one-out instrumental variable strategy to address endogeneity concerns in estimating peer influences. The study finds robust evidence that a 1 standard deviation increase in a woman’s average neighborhood attitudes justifying IPV leads to a 0.36 standard deviation increase in her attitudes justifying the same. The article establishes the importance …

Ai-Supported Analysis Of Jury Deliberation Impact Factors, Jennifer Siciliani Phd

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students conduct a controlled, two-run generative AI jury simulation to examine how a single socio-legal variable affects simulated jury deliberation. They compare and manually code the AI-generated outcomes against peer-reviewed human jury research to evaluate the model’s accuracy, limitations, and potential biases.

The Influence Of Entrepreneurial Marketing On Sustainable Competitive Advantage In Tanzanian Smes: A Lower-Order Dimensional Analysis, Omari Khalifa Mbura

Business Management Review

Although entrepreneurial marketing is increasingly recognised as multidimensional, limited understanding remains of whether its individual behaviours exhibit equivalent relationships with competitive advantage, particularly when behaviours associated with the same broad dynamic-capability process are considered separately. This study examines the associations between five lower-order dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing (EM)—proactiveness, innovativeness, resource leveraging, customer intensity and value creation—and sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) among food-processing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Guided by Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT), cross-sectional survey data from 255 SMEs were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in the SEMinR package in R. …

From Kitchen To Canon: Women And Culinary Recognition Executive Summary, Eulanda A. Sanders, Andra Harris

ICHRIE Research Reports

Despite women comprising a majority of the U.S. restaurant workforce, they remain significantly underrepresented in culinary leadership and elite recognition. Using an exploratory, descriptive design that draws on secondary data from the ACS, NRA, U.S. Census Bureau, and the James Beard Foundation, this study maps gender disparities across the culinary career pipeline. Women represent approximately 54% of the restaurant workforce but only 24.8% of chefs and head cooks, with a substantial gender wage gap persisting across the occupation (NRA, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau, 2024). Of 402 James Beard Award winners analyzed, 71.6% were male and 28.1% female. Disparities intensify at …

How Philadelphia Markets Itself As A Fifa 2026 Host City: A Social Media Strategy Analysis, Taylor C. Mickley, Kelly G. Barr, Lali Odosashvili

ICHRIE Research Reports

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup around the corner, host cities are competing for global attention on social media. This study analyzed 543 Instagram posts from three host cities: Philadelphia and New York/New Jersey from the USA and Monterrey, Mexico. Posts were collected between August and December 2025 during the FIFA World Cup qualifying period for North and Central America and the Caribbean. Content was classified by category and format, and engagement was measured through reactions, comments, reposts, and shares. The findings challenge a common assumption: cities that posted the most did not generate the most engagement. Commercial content such …

Beyond The Lab: A Competency-Rated Model For Building Industry-Ready Hospitality Leaders, Arlene M. Garrick

ICHRIE Research Reports

Hospitality employers continue to report a persistent readiness gap between academic preparation and operational performance. Supervisors cite inconsistent communication, limited cultural intelligence, weak leadership judgment, and subjective evaluation systems as barriers to building strong talent pipelines (Baum, 2015). This report presents the Competency‑Rated Experiential Assessment Model (C.R.E.A.M.), implemented within a live hotel operation at The Lodge at Hocking College to address these challenges. Within eight weeks, students demonstrated measurable improvements in communication clarity, cultural awareness, bias mitigation, and professional judgment. The model provides a scalable, low‑cost framework that hospitality operators and educators can adopt within a 30‑day cycle to strengthen …

The Use Of Job Design Optimization In The Hospitality Industry To Reduce Turnover, Emily Zirbes

ICHRIE Research Reports

Employee turnover remains one of the most persistent challenges in the hospitality industry, where high job demands, limited support, and chronic understaffing contribute to burnout and voluntary exits. This report examines how job design imbalances shaped the resignation of a long‑tenured front desk supervisor at a mid‑sized hotel. Using the Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT), the analysis evaluates the alignment of job demands and resources across four dimensions: span of control, span of accountability, span of influence, and span of support. Findings reveal that disproportionate accountability expectations and insufficient support create a structurally unsustainable role. The report argues that turnover …

The Impact Of Social Expectations And Gender Norms On Women Leaders' Marital And Partner Relationships And Their Influence On Workplace Outcomes, Hedi Kovacs-Resnik

Economic and Business Review

Leadership sustainability among women remains insufficiently explained in leadership research, as dominant models prioritise workplace factors, neglecting the role of private-life demands. This research explored how social expectations and gender norms influence women's private lives and how the emotional impact spills over into their leadership style and performance, thereby influencing their career progression. Using a qualitative design and thematic analysis of 18 interviews with women in leadership roles, the research examined what it means to lead while also navigating family and relationships.
The findings revealed that the boundaries between women's private and professional lives are almost nonexistent. Professional success often …

When Loyalty Intentions Fail: Evidence On The Intention–Behaviour Gap And Customer Retention In Mobile Telecommunications, Danilo Tomšič

Economic and Business Review

This paper quantifies and explains the consumer intention–behaviour gap in mobile telecommunications and shows how it matters for competitive resource allocation. Using a two-wave longitudinal survey of 4887 consumers, I compare stated switching intentions at time t with self-reported provider choice at t + 1 and identify a 15.4% divergence comprising two forms: nonswitching intenders (consumers who intended to switch but did not) and switching nonintenders (consumers who did not intend to switch but did). Binary logistic models reveal temporal asymmetry in determinants. Among nonswitching intenders, higher baseline loyalty (satisfaction, repeat-choice commitment, and recommendation intention) lowers the likelihood of remaining …

Beyond Adoption: How Technology–Organization–Environment Factors Shape The Use Of Social Media Technologies And Performance In B2b Companies, Peter Grabner, Barbara Čater

Economic and Business Review

This study examines how technological, organizational, and environmental factors shape social media technology (SMT) use in business-to-business (B2B) markets and how SMT use relates to customer relationship performance and marketing performance. Building on the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, we develop and test a structural model in which perceived simplicity of SMT (technology), SMT strategy (organization), and mimetic competitive pressure (environment) shape SMT use, which in turn affects customer relationship and marketing performance. We collected data with an online survey of 195 marketing and sales professionals from B2B companies in Slovenia. Results indicate that SMT strategy is the strongest predictor of SMT …

The Pickleball Opportunity: A Case Study To Evaluate The Market Demand And Feasibility Of Opening A Private Pickleball Facility, Dene Williamson, Janet Jones

Global Sport Business Journal

This case study explores the market demand and financial feasibility of opening a privately owned, indoor pickleball facility in Warrensburg, Missouri. The central character, Mr. Dink, returns to his rural hometown with the goal of building a community-centric recreational space centered around America’s fastest-growing sport—pickleball. Students are asked to evaluate the business opportunity through comprehensive market research, financial forecasting, and risk assessment. Drawing from comparative data provided by an established facility in Florida, the case challenges students to adapt proven strategies to a smaller, lower-cost market. The case provides a platform to practice feasibility analysis, pricing strategy, break-even modeling, marketing, …

Analyst Visibility And Earnings Forecast Quality, Qiang Cheng, Tian Deng, Sterling Huang, An-Ping Lin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines how a reduction in analysts’ visibility, resulting from brokerages’ switch to anonymous forecasts on Eikon, affects earnings forecast quality. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that treatment analysts respond by issuing more accurate forecasts in the post-anonymization period. Treatment analysts who improve forecast quality the most can sustain visibility, as reflected in their coverage by the financial media, enhance their likelihood of being voted as star analysts, and induce greater client trading. These results are consistent with analysts’ incentives to offset the reduced visibility so as to advance their careers and increase trading commissions for their brokerages. …

Human Capital Disclosure And Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From Regulation S-K, Jung Ho Choi, Dan Li, Daniele Macciocchi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the labor market consequences of the 2020 Regulation S-K requiring human capital disclosure in 10K filings. Using large-sample job-level data and a Generative Large Language Model (GLLM), we observe that public firms subject to the regulation increase their disclosure of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) information in job postings relative to a matched sample of large private firms. The increase in job-posting disclosure is more pronounced among firms facing greater external pressure to increase their workforce diversity. These findings suggest a shift in demand for diverse candidates by public firms following the regulation. Yet, consistent with short-term inelastic …

Exnovation And Digital Open Innovation: A Capability Pathway From Digital Dependency To Digital Sovereignty, Areeba Abid, Balqees Almessabi, Ajmal Waheed, Noor Ul Hadi

All Works

Digital transformation in emerging economies increasingly unfolds under conditions of dependence on externally controlled platforms, infrastructures, standards, and data ecosystems. Although digital sovereignty has become a prominent policy objective, the institutional processes through which public organizations move from digital dependency toward greater governance autonomy remain insufficiently theorized. To address this gap, this study develops a conceptual framework through a concept-driven hermeneutic narrative review to explain how digital open innovation can support the development of digital sovereignty. The framework conceptualizes digital sovereignty as an institutional governance capability that emerges through a sequential process rather than as a static policy objective. Specifically, …

Neural Symphony Of Flow Experience: Evidence For High-Dimensional Metastable Dynamics, Abdelrahman B.M. Eldaly, Kris Zhangguang Kang, Fiona Fui Hoon Nah, Leanne Lai Hang Chan, Keng Leng Siau, Xiao Fan Liu, Richard Huskey, Langtao Chen, Tejaswini Yelamanchili, René Weber

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Flow, an optimal experience characterized by deep immersion and engagement in an activity, has been extensively studied in behavioral research. However, its neural dynamic mechanism remains poorly understood. In a within-subject video gaming experiment, we captured neural activity underlying flow, boredom, and anxiety using a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) system. Compared to boredom and anxiety, flow exhibits the highest global functional connectivity, metastability, and dimensionality of dynamic functional connectivity patterns, suggesting that flow is a highly adaptable process that is supported by high-dimensional neural dynamics. Unlike previous studies that focused on identifying static or localized brain activity, we examine the neural …

Green Information Systems Adoption And Business Outcomes In Ugandan Smes: An Extended Theory Of Planned Behaviour Approach, Sonny Juma Nyeko, Samali Mlay, Cosmas Ogenmungu, Abdallah Ibrahim Nyero

Business Management Review

The study assesses the relationship between TPB antecedents and GIS business outcomes in SMEs, using an expanded TPB framework. Researchers gathered data from SMEs via a survey and analysed it using PLS-SEM. The framework used in the study explains 58.5% of the differences in GIS business outcomes. The results reveal that subjective norms, attitude, benefits, and obstacles are significant predictors of GIS business outcomes such as ecological IT practices, although perceived behavioural control displays an insignificant negative relationship. The study extended the TPB model by incorporating GIS benefits and GIS obstacles as additional factors influencing GIS adoption, business outcomes, …