The aim was to examine the relationships between selected demographic and psychographic factors and consumers' willingness to accept content generated by advanced technological innovations (AIGC) in social infrastructure. The sample consisted of 1,308 respondents. Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationships between ordinal variables. To assess the differences between groups of respondents, a one-way analysis of variance was used, during which multiple linear regression analysis was used to confirm the predictive power of awareness and experience in relation to AI-generated content in relation to the tendency to accept such content. The study confirmed a statistically significant but weak negative relationship between the age of respondents and their willingness to accept AIGC, with younger age groups showing a slightly higher rate of acceptance. Respondents' attitudes toward the use of personal data through AI and their overall awareness of technological trends had a more significant impact on acceptance. The findings show that respondents who are open to data collection through AI technologies show a significantly higher level of acceptance of automatically generated content. Similarly, respondents who positively evaluate the current quality of AIGC have higher expectations for the future transformation of marketing strategies and media practices. The decisive factors in the social infrastructure for the acceptance of AIGC are not so much the age of the respondents, but rather their awareness, technological literacy, and level of trust in the technology itself. The study therefore recommends increasing transparency and public awareness about the use of AI in marketing and media practices in order to strengthen consumer confidence in automated content.

This research analyses the effects of openness, telecommunications, and institutional nexus on economic growth in African countries using a panel model with data from 16 landlocked countries from 1996 to 2021 and employing the pooled mean group estimation technique that mitigates bias from country heterogeneity and discerning short-term and long-term equilibrium dynamics and two-step system-generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation for robustness check. The empirical findings indicate that openness exerts a significantly positive effect on economic growth in the models. This supports the neoclassical model, suggesting that being landlocked should not impede economic growth, but rather, growth should depend on opportunities available to each country. However, institutions and telecommunications show a mixed correlation with economic growth. These findings can guide landlocked developing countries in enhancing their exports and fostering skill acquisition to attract advanced technology. In conclusion, policymakers should improve macroeconomic policies, telecommunications infrastructure, and institutional structure to strengthen the sustainability of economic growth in African landlocked countries.

The research utilizes a comprehensive dataset from MENA-listed companies, capturing data from 2013 to 2022 to scrutinize the influence of capital structure (CapSt) level on corporate performance across 11 distinct countries. This study analyzed 6870 firm-year observations using a quantitative research method through static and dynamic panel data analysis. The primary analysis reveals a positive correlation between the CapSt ratio and company performance using fixed effects (FE) techniques. Hence, the preliminary results were re-examined and affirmed using a two-step system generalized method of moment (GMM) estimator to address potential endogeneity concerns. This finding aligns with most studies conducted in advanced countries, indicating a positive correlation between CapSt and corporate performance. Furthermore, it is also consistent with some research conducted in less-developed markets. This research argues that, in the MENA region, the advantages of debt, such as tax saving, may outweigh the potential financial distress cost. Furthermore, it offers insights into the monitoring role of CapSt in MENA-listed companies. We strengthen our research results by employing various methodologies and using alternative measures of accounting performance and controlling size, notably panel quantile regression analysis.

To increase inter-region connectivity, the Indonesian government initiated infrastructure projects such as toll roads, airport, highways, as well as agriculture ones throughout the countries. One of the big projects in road infrastructure was the Cikampek–Palimanan (Cipali) toll road in West Java with a budget of more than USD1 billion which started to operate in July 2015. This paper is aimed to evaluate the impact of the toll road on accessibilities, trades, and investments in the region it traverses. To carry out the analysis, we used qualitative approach, difference-in-difference approach, and ANOVA, utilizing three kinds of data. The first data is collected from a survey of 331 small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the logistics and the hotel and restaurant industries. The second one is bank loan data sourced from Bank Indonesia, while the third one is investment data from Investment Coordinating Board of Indonesia (BKPM).
After two years of its operation, Cipali toll road has increased accessibility, mobility, trade, and investment in the region it traverses. The travel time was reduced by 39%, while the cargo volume of the local businesses increased by 30% to 40%. These led to an improvement of wholesale trade volume in almost all regencies. However, SMEs in the hotel and restaurant industry along the traditional northern coastal highway in Subang, Indramayu, and Brebes experienced a decline due to the traffic shifting. Meanwhile, investments from national companies especially those of labor-intensive manufacturing industries flowed significantly especially to Subang and Majalengka, which reflected a “sorting effect”. However, investments from local and foreign businesses did not increase significantly yet after 2.5 years of toll operation.
To reap the benefit from the presence of Cipali toll road, the local governments should improve the ease of doing business to attract investments that boost employment in return. In addition, given a better accessibility from Greater Jakarta and a large number of potential visitors passing through the toll road, local businesses in the trade sector would benefit if they could promote the local attractions such as in tourism activities supported by the local government. The latter strategy should also be implemented by the local governments and local businesses in the northern coastal traditional route to minimize the negative impact of the toll road due to the traffic shifting. This strategy should be strengthened through increasing connectivity from the toll exits to local business areas and through increasing the ease of doing business.