This article analyses the case of Dubai’s smart city from a public policy perspective and demonstrates how critical it is to rely on the use of the public-private partnership (PPP) model. Effective use of this model can guarantee the building of a smart city that could potentially fulfill the vision of the political leadership in Dubai and serve as a catalyst and blueprint for other Gulf states that wish to follow Dubai’s example. This article argues that Dubai’s smart city project enjoys significant political support and has ambitious plans for sustainable growth, and that the government has invested heavily in developing the necessary institutional, legal/regulatory, and supervisory frameworks that are essential foundations for the success of any PPP project. The article also points to some important insights that the Dubai government can learn from the international experience with the delivery of smart cities through PPPs.

Cultural tourism, an important component of the wider tourism industry, has received significant attention due to the complex interplay between cultural heritage and tourism experiences. This form of tourism invites tourists to discover the arts, traditions, and lifestyles of diverse communities, thereby enriching intercultural encounters. Examining the rapidly evolving field of cultural tourism research, this article looks at its many facets, highlighting its growth, thematic focus, and global importance. In order to better understand the wealth and highlight the body of work, this study undertakes a bibliometric analysis of the concept of cultural tourism. This exploration employs bibliometric searching of journals indexed in the web of science database from 1996 to 2023, using the biblioshiny software in rstudio. This approach provides a global perspective, revealing a prolific and multidisciplinary production of the concept of cultural tourism. The study identifies a total of 369 articles published between 1996 and 2023, involving 781 authors and 244 journals. The results underline the widespread engagement with the subject across diverse scientific communities and geographical regions.

Money laundering has become a vital issue all over the world especially in the emerging economy over the last two decades. Till now, the developing and emerging countries face challenges about the remedies and inceptions of anti-money laundering issues. The objective of the study is to provide a thorough picture of the diversified movements of academic research on money laundering and anti-money laundering activities all over the world. This study aims at exploring the contemporary issues in Anti-money laundering based on the academic points of view. Further, the study is explored to render a portrayal of anti-money laundering activities from an emergency country context. A review of publicly available reports, published documents, daily newspapers, case studies, and previous academic research comprised the main sources of data for the study. It is found that the contemporary money laundering and anti-money laundering academic research might be classified into four broad categories. An emerging country like Bangladesh has taken little initiative to inductee anti-money laundering initiatives. It implies that for the successful implementation of anti-money laundering activities, good governance along with a congenial regulatory framework is a prerequisite in an emerging country context. In addition, the machine learning may enhance the quality of money laundering detections in Bangladesh.

This paper utilizes an advanced Network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to examine the impact of mobile payment on the efficiency of Taiwan banking industry. Inheriting the literature, we separate the banking operation process into two stages, namely profitability and marketability. Mobile payment is then considered as the core factor in the second stage. Our paper discovers network DEA model can effectively enhance the analysis of banking industry’s efficiency, and mobile payment has a notable impact on Taiwan banking industry. Regarding the profitability stage, there is only one efficient bank in 2019 and 2022, respectively. These banks also perform better in terms of “mobile payment production”. In the marketability stage, there is also only one bank in 2021 and one bank in 2022, that can reach to unique efficiency score. This indicates many banks attempt to increase earnings per share through investing in mobile payment services. However, the achievement still needs more wait. This leads to the fact that no bank can reach the ultimate overall efficiency. Within our sample, we also find that regarding promoting mobile payment services, Private Banks outperform Government Banks.

The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the need for sustainable, smart tourism and local travel, with rural destinations gaining in their popularity and leading to increased potential of smart rural tourism. However, these processes need adjustments to the current trends, incorporating new transformative business concepts and marketing approaches. In this paper we provide real life examples of new marketing approaches, together with new business models within the context of the use of new digital technologies. Via hermeneutic research approach, consisting of the secondary analysis of the addressed subject of smart rural tourism in adversity of the COVID-19 and 6 semi-structured interviews, the importance of technology is underscored in transforming rural tourism to smart rural tourist destinations. The respondents in the interview section were chosen based on their direct involvement in the presented examples and geographical location, i.e. France, Slovenia and Spain, where presented research examples were developed, concretely within European programmes, i.e. Interreg, Horizon and Rural Development Programme (RDP). Interviews were taking place between 2022 and 2023 in person, email or via Zoom. This two-phased study demonstrates that technology is important in transforming rural tourism to smart tourist destinations and that it ushers new approaches that seem particularly useful in applying to rural areas, creating a rural digital innovation ecosystem, which acts as s heuristic rural tourist model that fosters new types of tourism, i.e. smart rural tourism.

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz on social media, particularly in the form of vlogs, about newly launched semi-high speed trains in India popularly known as Vande Bharat Express. However, no information is available about the extent to which people trust the vlogs promoting the trains and the trains themselves. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the impact of watching vlogs about semi-high speed trains on the trust and attitude towards them, and how they perceive the risks associated. This study is guided by the trust transfer theory to investigate how trust transference can lead to a traveler’s intent to use semi-high speed trains. This study involved 338 participants. The relationship between variables was examined using SmartPLS 4 software. The findings indicate that trust in semi-high speed trains can be established through vlogs leading to intention to use. On the theoretical side, it provides insight into how trust, attitude, and perceived risk can affect the adoption of new technology, while on the practical side, it helps to understand how vlog coverage can be used as a tool to increase trust and ultimately drive adoption. Vlog coverage, trust in vlog content, trust in semi-high speed trains and behavioural intention altogether are not well understood in current literature despite the important implication for managers, academicians and consumers alike. This study contributes to the field of transportation and railways, social media and communication, and hospitality and tourism research. The study helps policy makers to understand users’ characteristics regarding the latest social media tools and adopt them accordingly to provide a better governance policy.