Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the predictabilities of five intra-personal factors to predict pro-environmental consumer behavior (PECB) and the moderating role of religiosity in Oman. Design/methodology/approach The study uses neural network to analyze the antecedents/antecedents × religiosity → PECB relationships by using a sample of 306 consumers from Oman. Findings This study finds that the most important predictors of PECB, according to the order of importance, are attitude × religiosity, knowledge, concern × religiosity, knowledge × religiosity, value, religiosity, attitude, concern and value × religiosity. Research limitations/implications The convenience sample from a single Islamic country limits the generalizability of the findings. Future studies should use probabilistic sampling techniques and multiple Islamic countries located in different geographical regions. Practical implications To promote PECB, businesses and policymakers should provide environmental education to expand knowledge and value, leverage ecological religious values in integrated marketing communications, make positive inducements to change attitude and concern enhancing interventions. Social implications As religiosity enhances PECB by moderating the impacts of environmental intra-personal factors on PECB, businesses and policymakers should find ways to use faith-based ecological messages in Islamic countries. Originality/value Determining the predictabilities of psychological factors and their interactions with religiosity to predict PECB in Islamic countries is necessary for promoting environmentally friendly products in Islamic countries and for reducing the ecological damage to the environment.

Purpose While the importance of social media will continue to grow, the purpose of this study is to provide a retrospective systematic literature review of the social media research published in major hospitality and tourism journals over a specific time period. Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a bibliometric analysis to review the literature of 439 social media articles published in 51 hospitality and tourism journals over a 15-year time span (2002-2016). Findings Ulrike Gretzel authored the highest fractional citations. The results indicated that social media-related research was mostly published in top-tier journals. The International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management was amongst the four leading journals in terms of the percentage of published social media articles. While inter-country social media research collaborations were relatively modest, interestingly, inter-country collaborations have been steadily increasing in the past five years. Another finding indicated that social media research in hospitality and tourism journals has been predominantly quantitative. The results revealed six new areas within the consumer behaviour research theme, namely, eWOM, service recovery, customer satisfaction, brand/destination image and service quality. Finally, it is important to note that four new trends in social media research appeared between 2011 and 2016, namely, big data, netnography, Travel 2.0 and Web 2.0. Research limitations/implications While this study made significant contributions to the social media literature, some limitations do exist. For example, the current research excluded publications from major conferences, books, book chapters and dissertations. Additionally, it is not within the scope of this paper to take into account issues related to self-citations. Practical implications The results obtained from analysis contribute to a comprehensive understanding of social media research progress in hospitality and tourism. For example, evaluating the performance of individual scholars helps educational institutions to compete in the global university ranking system. Additionally, to compete for funding opportunities on the topic of social media, institutions can use citation counts to demonstrate their competitiveness. Furthermore, due to the expected future growth in the number of social media platforms, practitioners need to understand motivating factors and tourists’ needs in different countries, target market segments, age groups and cultures to create highly engaging communities around their brands. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the sample of this study synthesized the largest selection of social media articles published in hospitality and tourism journals. This is the first study to apply the fractional score at the author level, the adjusted appearance score at the university level and the average citation score at the journal and inter-country levels in the analysis. In addition, prevalent research orientations and research trends in social media made significant contributions to existing literature.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind low penetration of Islamic banking in Pakistan. Specifically, the study investigates the differentiation of Islamic banks (IBs) from conventional banks, the role of religion in choosing Islamic banking and the perception of IBs amongst the consumers. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a mixed-method approach, qualitative research along with a survey of users of conventional and Islamic banking. Factor analysis identified underlying dimensions and cluster analysis ascertained the differences between users and non-users of Islamic banking. Inferential statistics were used to test purported hypotheses. Findings The study finds that the users and non-users both perceive that Islamic banking is not completely interest-free. Furthermore, consumers presume that IBs are more of eyewash and are not truly practicing Islamic banking. Moreover, religion is not a major factor that attracts new users but there are also other important factors in marketing Islamic banking, such as service quality, convenience, branch network, etc. Originality/value This is one of the sparse studies in the field of Islamic banking consumer behaviour, which uses focus groups of users and non-users, and in-depth interviews of experts, to identify the issues and factors considered relevant and important by the users rather than relying only on literature review. Furthermore, it also provides a profile of users versus non-users of Islamic banking which is very useful for segmentation and targeting of customers.

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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a pilot study conducted in Pakistan, about the barriers perceived by users and non‐users of Islamic banking when selecting Islamic banks.Design/methodology/approachThis study was conducted to include two types of banking customers, users (customers of Islamic banks only and, Islamic and conventional banks both) and non‐users (customers of conventional banks only). The qualitative research included in‐depth interviews with managers of Islamic banks and two focus groups with users and non‐users, respectively. The survey questionnaire that was subsequently designed received 109 responses. The analysis includes hypothesis testing, factor analysis, and cluster analysis.FindingsA narrow branch network, inconvenient branch locations and perception that “Islamic banks do not completely follow Islamic principles” acted as barriers for non‐users when selecting Islamic banks. Further, “a religious ruling against Islamic banks” was not considered an important barrier when selecting Islamic banks.Originality/valueThis research outlines an alternative methodology of looking at bank selection criteria, by measuring the other side of the coin, i.e. the barriers perceived by users and non‐users of Islamic banking when selecting Islamic banks. Compared to the prevailing literature on the subject, such an approach is enlightening and can have enormous potential as it directly measures the perceived barriers towards Islamic banking. Furthermore, this pilot study is also an important contribution to the limited literature on consumer attitudes towards Islamic banking in Pakistan, where the operations of Islamic banks are still in their formative stage.

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This study presents a citation-based systematic literature review on banking sector performance, particularly in terms of profitability, productivity, and efficiency. Specifically, the study aims to identify the leading sources of knowledge in terms of the most influential journals, authors, and papers. The paper presents a content analysis of the 100 most cited papers. In total, 1996 peerreview papers were found relevant in the Scopus database by using a comprehensive list of keywords. The results show that the Journal of Banking & Finance appears to be the leading journal in terms of publication count and citations. Based on total citations, Allen Berger is the most prolific author. The most cited paper is "Problem loans and cost efficiency in commercial banks" by Allan Berger and Robert DeYoung. The content analysis of the top 100 papers identifies five essential themes: determinants of efficiency, methodology, ownership, financial crises, and scale economies. In terms of estimation approaches, 74% of papers employed frontier analysis, which includes 34% parametric and 40% nonparametric methods, and remaining 26% have used financial ratio analysis. Additionally, stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis are widely used in parametric and nonparametric methods, respectively. An intermediate approach is extensively adopted for the specification of inputs and outputs.