The role of big data in public sector accounting and budgeting practices: evidence from a pandemic environment of an emerging economy

This paper investigates the actual and potential application of big data in the public sector accounting and budgeting practices in terms of enhancing accountability and openness in the public sector within the emerging economy of Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research adopted hybrid ethnographic methodology by implementing data triangulation, where multiple datasets from various platforms were combined and analysed. The datasets were combined and analysed using thematic and summative content analyses. Big data use in the public sector could improve both accounting and budgeting practices in developing economies, especially when meeting challenges in a post-COVID-19 era. However, the political culture and the lack of awareness in big data utilisation have been barriers for big data applications. This research offers insights into policy reforms, especially concerning public sector accounting and budgeting practices, for the application of big data

Using moderated mediation modelling and the interaction of person-affect-cognition-execution model to explore relationships between psychological distress, specific addictive behaviors, and quality of life across Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China

Internet-related addictive behaviors are a public health concern, especially in Asian jurisdictions. Guided by theory, the present study employed moderated mediation modeling using cross-sectional data from Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China to explore relationships between psychological distress, internet-related addictive behaviors, and quality of life (QoL). Jurisdictional differences were also explored. Using snowball sampling to recruit online data, 6,074 participants aged 18 years or older were recruited. Moderated mediation models suggested that psychological distress was related to all internet-related addictive behaviors, and specific behaviors were related to poor QoL in specific domains: gaming addiction to physical and social QoL, shopping addiction to physical, social, and environmental QoL, social networking addiction to all QoL domains, and pornography addiction and gambling addiction to psychological and social QoL (albeit more weakly). Jurisdictional variations were observed, with stronger associations in Taiwan and China compared to Malaysia and Hong Kong. The findings suggest important relationships between psychological distress, internet-related addictive behaviors, and QoL. They also suggest a need for culturally tailored interventions that address psychological distress and specific internet-related addictive behaviors to improve QoL

EyeLLM: using lookback fixations to enhance human-LLM alignment for text completion

Recent advances in LLMs offer new opportunities for supporting student writing, particularly through real-time, composition-level feedback. However, for such support to be effective, LLMs need to generate text completions that align with the writer’s internal representation of their developing message, a representation that is often implicit and difficult to observe. This paper investigates the use of eye-tracking data, specifically lookback fixations during pauses in text production, as a cue to this internal representation. Using eye movement data from students composing texts, we compare human-generated completions with LLM-generated completions based on prompts that either include or exclude words and sentences fixated during pauses. We find that incorporating lookback fixations enhances human-LLM alignment in generating text completions. These results provide empirical support for generating fixation-aware LLM feedback and lay the foundation for future educational tools that deliver real-time, composition-level feedback grounded in writers’ attention and cognitive processes

LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion and corporate environmental performance

This study examines the impact of LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion on corporate environmental performance, with a focus on the mediating role of environmental innovation. Drawing on 6419 firm-year observations from 898 US firms between 2010 and 2023, we measure LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion using the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. Our findings show that firms with stronger LGBTQ+ inclusion exhibit higher environmental performance scores and greater renewable energy consumption. We further find that this relationship is partially mediated by environmental innovation, indicating that LGBTQ+-inclusive workplace practices enhance environmental outcomes by fostering innovation. To strengthen causal inference, we implement a quasi-natural experiment based on the staggered legalization of same-sex marriage across states. Results reveal that firms headquartered in states that recognized same-sex marriage prior to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling demonstrate superior environmental performance. These findings are robust across various identification strategies and estimation methods