No abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived importance of soft skills for hotel employees, their willingness to use electronic learning (e-learning) as a training tool to improve their soft skills, and the impact of hotel employees' individual characteristics (i.e. motivation, self-efficacy, technology anxiety) on their intentions to use e-learning across different age groups. Design/methodology/approach -The sample was randomly selected from hotel employees working at various upscale international chain hotels in South Korea. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to simultaneously measure the impact of four independent variables on the intention to use e-learning for both younger and older learners. Findings -The analysis revealed that responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, and working with diverse groups were rated more important by younger hotel employees. The results suggest that learners who have higher extrinsic motivations in using e-learning will be more likely to use e-learning. However, the other variables (i.e. technology anxiety, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation) did not significantly affect the intention to use e-learning.Research limitations/implications -The findings are practical for hotel managers/trainers, because they can focus on external rewards instead of internal rewards to motivate employees to use e-learning. Age did not have a moderating effect between technology anxiety and the intention to use e-learning. Since the respondents tend to be younger and have a higher standard of education compared with those of the general population, they may more accurately represent hotel employees at upscale or international chain hotels. Originality/value -The study proposes a framework to examine the impact of hotel employees' individual characteristics on their intention to use e-learning. The study also validates some relationships that have shown inconsistent results in previous studies. Future research could employ qualitative studies to investigate underlying dimensions of the variables tested in this study.

The expansion of legalized commercial gaming in Macau has motivated stakeholders to explore opportunities in other Asian countries. However, there is a lack of research focusing on casino customers in these markets. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore gambling superstitious beliefs and motivations of those visiting a casino in South Korea, and how these factors are different across four ethnic groups. The researchers surveyed 323 casino customers in the lounge area on the casino floor, including Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans living abroad. This study found American gamblers could be characterized as more superstitious than Japanese gamblers, while the Chinese and American gamblers exhibited many similarities regarding the pattern of superstitious beliefs that they were most likely to endorse. The findings also suggest the culture and the area around the casino might be more important to Chinese, while novelty to Japanese and winning money to Korean gamblers are seen as most important. This study contributes to gambling literature by examining gamblers' beliefs and motives in a different setting with more diverse populations than those in previous studies. The findings of this study will help casino operators properly develop and adjust strategies to thrive in the Asian marketplace.

Injecting charge carriers into the mobile bands of an inorganic oxide insulator (for example, SiO2, HfO2) is a highly complicated task, or even impossible without external energy sources such as photons. This is because oxide insulators exhibit very low electron affinity and high ionization energy levels. Here we show that a ZnO layer acting as a cathode buffer layer permits direct electron injection into the conduction bands of various oxide insulators (for example, SiO2, Ta2O5, HfO2, Al2O3) from a metal cathode. Studies of current–voltage characteristics reveal that the current ohmically passes through the ZnO/oxide-insulator interface. Our findings suggests that the oxide insulators could be used for simply fabricated, transparent and highly stable electronic valves. With this strategy, we demonstrate an electrostatic discharging diode that uses 100-nm SiO2 as an active layer exhibiting an on/off ratio of ∼107, and protects the ZnO thin-film transistors from high electrical stresses.