Seoki Lee

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · School of Hospitality Management

Considering the growing significance of CSR in the corporate world, this study critically reflects the extant CSR literature and CSR practices, and proposes a conceptual CSR framework, called Strategic CSR, to highlight the importance of developing and implementing CSR practices that can create and optimize both social and business value. Strategic...

Purpose This study aims to identify key contributors, research themes, research gaps, and future directions in hospitality innovation by conducting bibliometric and content analyses of peer-reviewed articles in this field. Design/methodology/approach A bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOSviewer software on 2,698 peer-reviewed English-lang...

This study reviews the rich yet fragmented literature on digital transformation in the hospitality industry. Using 2527 peer-reviewed English articles published between 2000 and 2023, we employed bibliometric and content analyses to determine the overall performance and research themes in this field. Employing co-occurrence analysis, four pivotal r...

Promoting customers’ pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is crucial for greening the hotel industry. However, customers often hesitate to adopt resource-saving PEBs in public places like hotels due to a "dual positive externality/spillover" problem – extra positive economic spillovers and increased positive environmental spillovers, compared to cond...

This study examines how characteristics of top executives moderate the effect of internationalization on hospitality firms’ performance. Using US publicly-traded hospitality firms, this study conducts hierarchical linear modeling to investigate how executives’ functional background and operating ability influence the relationship between internatio...

The literature has paid little attention to the (mis)fit effect between customer service orientation (CSO) and internal service qualities (ISQ). Unlike past studies, we use a non-commensurate and complementary fit approach by adopting a distinctive CSO as a need dimension at the individual level and ISQ as a satisfaction dimension provided by the o...

Purpose – This paper aims to disentangle the mechanism linking digital servitization and manufacturing firm performance. The contributions of the service networks and slack resources are analyzed. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on a survey of manufacturing firms that have implemented or are implementing digital service projects in China, thi...

Based on the trade-off theory of capital structure and the information asymmetry theory of business financing, we evaluated the association of informal financing with the financial performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the restaurant industry. This study collected survey responses directly from small- and medium-sized restaur...

In response to the unprecedented pandemic in recent history, COVID-19 vaccination mandates in the U.S. caused significant changes and disruption in hospitality operations and customer experiences. The primary goal of this study is to examine whether and how customer incivility induced by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the U.S. affects employees' b...

Purpose Drawing on symbolic interaction theory (SIT), this study aims to identify what makes corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication more favorable to customers in the chain restaurants context. Specifically, this study examines the direct relationships between the interactivity of CSR communication, brand trust and brand sincerity. In...

This study explores how corporate proactive environmental strategies are shaped by managerial dual environmental awareness and corporate entrepreneurial orientation (i.e., innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking). Based on survey data from 228 Chinese manufacturing firms, empirical analysis indicates that both executives' environmental risk...

The purpose of the study is to determine whether vaccination rates and the use of franchising have an impact on the volatility of stock returns in the restaurant industry. Based on the agency and resource scarcity theories, this study first examines the effect of vaccinations against COVID-19 on a restaurant firm's stock return volatilities caused...

Although the CSR literature has examined the effect of CSR on a variety of brand, values and customer attitude, limited attention has been paid to investigate whether, going in for CSR activities can benefit brands to enhance customer brand co-creation, behaviors (CBCB), and the effect of customer’s self-efficacy and emotional brand, attachment on...

Although the influence of mobility on place attachment has received attention in the literature, this relationship varies between groups. Unlike those who move to enjoy their retirement, for example, older migrants arriving in Shenzhen come to the city ‘passively,’ drawn by the needs of their children. This paper advances understanding of the conce...

The CSR literature has paid close attention to the effect of CSR on corporate financial performance (CFP), well-known as the CSR-CFP link. Based on the instrumental perspective perceiving CSR as an instrument for enhancing a firm's performance, people began to see CSR as not only a good deed that benefits society but also a strategy that can benefi...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) can influence employee voice behavior in online review platforms. This study utilizes online employee review (OER), builds upon ethical climate theory, and hypothesizes the independent and joint effects of CSR and CSI on two aspects of employee voice – OER volume and OER valence. Usin...

Purpose: The link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate firm performance (CFP) has been extensively studied, but a significant research gap remains when considering potential mediating factors that can provide a more comprehensive and complete picture of the CSR-CFP link. Among the possible mediators, innovation is one of the...

Eco-innovation is the most promising way for enterprises to achieve green growth, and its adoption depends largely on executives’ choices. Therefore, this study investigates how executives’ ecological embeddedness affects the three dimensions of corporate eco-innovation by impacting two forms of executives’ environmental awareness. Eco-innovation i...

Central environmental inspection (CEI) is an environmental governance tool launched by the Chinese central government in recent years. The aim of CEI is to enhance the implementation of environmental regulations by going beyond supervising enterprises to supervise local governments. Previous studies have shown that CEI is beneficial for improving c...

Purpose Through the lens of the upper echelons theory, this study aims to investigate how generalist chief executive officers (CEOs) affect social novelty. This paper also explores the moderating effect of CEO power on the relationship between generalist CEOs and social novelty. Design/methodology/approach This study uses generalized estimating eq...

In today’s media-saturated world, intense media attention propels some CEOs to stardom. This social escalation of CEOs to celebrities inherently affects their actions and strategic choices, and thus the performance of their host organizations. Despite the importance of understanding upper echelons—especially celebrity CEOs in the tourism and hospit...

Recently, many firms that have caused direct pollution to the environment have begun to think about the necessity of environmental management. As buildings have played an important role in environmental issues, the real estate industry can no longer ignore demands for environmental management. Research on environmental management has mainly focused...

This study takes Chinese hotels as example, explores the driving forces and objectives underlying the cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) of hotel corporations based in emerging economies (EEs) from three perspectives: the institutional conditions of EEs; the characteristics of the hotel industry; and the types of the acquiring corporations. To this e...

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new type of respiratory disease that has been announced as a pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the way we live. It has also changed the food service industry. This study aimed to identify trends in the food and food service industry after the COVID-19 outbreak and suggest research themes induced by...

Corporate proactive environmental strategies (PESs), which are guided by proactive pollution prevention instead of passive pollution control, have attracted much attention from academia and industry in recent years. Thus, many previous studies have examined how manufacturers can be motivated to adopt PESs. Drawing on social embeddedness theory, thi...

While an examination of various implications of CSR is essential for all businesses, such an investigation is particularly important for casino companies as various social issues such as gambling addiction, family abuse, embezzlement, and other crimes are embedded in the casino industry. Although some attention has been given to the casino industry...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of family involvement on the CSR-firm performance relationship in the US hospitality industry. Building on agency theory, this study examines how family ownership, management, and board control influence the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm...

Purpose This study aims to develop a theoretical framework that specifies how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical climate (ETHIC) affect pride in membership (PRIDE), and in turn, attitudinal responses (i.e. job satisfaction and turnover intention) among employees, solely focusing on dealers in the casino industry. In addition, the mod...

Given the crippling impact of COVID-19 on global economy, this study examines whether stock returns reacting to COVID-19 differ, contingent on a firm’s CSR activities in the U.S. tourism and hospitality industry. With 2,736 observations of the U.S. hotel, casino, and restaurant firms altogether, this study found that CSR activities positively moder...

The current study explores the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. restaurant industry in terms of its stock performance, and further incorporates a global perspective into this examination by testing both the main and moderating effects of non-U.S. COVID-19 and also the moderating effect of the internationalization strategy of the U.S. restaurant indus...

Given the strategic importance of resources and service that interlocking directors bring to a firm, this study aims to examine the influence of board interlocks on financial performance in the restaurant industry based on the resource dependence theory. Further, as the primary purpose, this study incorporates geographic diversification as a pivota...

In accordance with the economic influences of an increase in minimum wage on labor markets, this study examines the effects of the federal-level minimum wage increase on U.S. hotel properties employing a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation method. We compared NYC which witnessed a federal minimum wage increase in 2009 to Washington, D.C whic...

Guided by resource-based view, this study investigates performance stabilization of new hotels in emerging markets. Profitability measures (e.g., gross operating profit percentage [GOP%]) and standard operating metrics (i.e., average daily rate [ADR], occupancy, and revenue per available room [RevPAR]) for 105 hotels in China, Indonesia, and Thaila...

As business environments become more competitive, making it more difficult for firms to survive, it is important to understand how a firm's strategic actions affect the firm's competitiveness. The franchising strategy is a significant and representative strategic action in the hospitality industry, so this study examines the relationship between th...

The current study examines how the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. restaurant firms’ stock returns varies according to the firms’ pre-pandemic characteristics by employing three firm-level dimensions (financial conditions, corporate strategies, and ownership structure). Employing 795 firm-year observations obtained from annual reports and other database...

As corporate social responsibility becomes increasingly important in today’s business world, firms strive hard to implementing and effectively communicating their CSR initiatives. A review of the extensive literature in the field of hospitality and tourism reveals that the theoretical conceptualization of CSR communication remains underdeveloped. I...

Considering the unprecedented event of COVID-19 as both global public health and economic crisis, its impacts on society including businesses are almost unimaginable. In particular, since the tourism and hospitality industries are among the hardest hit, tourism and hospitality researchers should examine how to understand its implications for these...

In recognition of the significance of external business environments for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study examines the relationship between macroenvironments and financing decisions of SMEs in the restaurant industry. With a focus on formal and informal credits, the study is grounded in agency theory, which explains how informat...

The effect of internationalization on firm performance has been investigated in the hospitality literature in a relatively extensive manner. However, the literature has still provided mixed findings. Furthermore, the moderating role of top management teams (TMTs) on the relationship between internationalization and firm performance has not been exp...

Employees' engagement in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is crucial for greening hotels and improving hotel performance. This paper argues that we can explore employees' PEB motivations from a positive externality/spillover perspective because such voluntary behaviors benefit actors other than the employees, namely, the hotels that employ them a...

The purpose of this study empirically investigates the influence of corporate governance structure on the firm’s financial performance of the alcohol beverage industry in the United States. Secondary financial data were collected for the U.S.-based alcohol beverage firms. Bivariate correlation and fixed-effects model analyses were performed to exam...

While short-term rentals such as Airbnb have experienced very rapid growth in recent years, many local governments have been introducing intensive limits, restricting its operations. For example, in 2016, New York State prohibited listing an advertisement for illegal short-term rentals, which has raised an interesting of question whether the regula...

This study examines the health halo and horn effects in the context of two fast food brands commonly associated with healthy and unhealthy food (i.e., Subway and McDonald's). Health halo is consumers' tendency to overestimate the healthiness of certain food categories or items based on a single claim, whereas health horn is the tendency to underest...

Porter and Kramer proposed creating shared value (CSV) as the next phase after corporate social responsibility (CSR). Unlike CSR, CSV aims to create social value through business functions. By implementing CSV, a company can make a positive impact on society while creating economic value for itself simultaneously. The current study examines the eff...

As internationalization has been widely implemented throughout the tourism industry, it is important to understand what motivates a firm to internationalize its business. Thus, this study examines the motivation for internationalization based on the neoinstitutional theory. This study employs a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test the propose...

This study discusses endogeneity and causality issues in analyzing panel data and presents possible suggestions to alleviate them. Establishing causality is of paramount interest for researchers, yet the hospitality literature has tended to employ econometric techniques that rely heavily on modeling assumptions for endogeneity problems. Accordingly...

The current study developed and examined integrative models to analyze the influence of national culture on purchase decision attributes (PDAs) between American and Chinese amusement park customers using the consumer style inventory (CSI), attributes of purchase decisions, and cultural dimensions. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confir...

CSR and sustainability engagement is growing rapidly with ever-increasing attention. Accordingly, restaurant stakeholders now demand restaurant companies to disclose relevant ESG information (i.e., materiality) to analyze risks and opportunities that ESG factors bring to firms over the long term. As established in stakeholder theory, restaurant mat...

This study aims to evaluate the current status of merger and acquisition (M&A) studies in the hotel industry and propose directions for future research. Forty-six articles were identified from ScienceDirect, Scopus, and EBSCOhost including 31 empirical and 15 conceptual articles. We review these articles from five perspectives, namely, journal/year...

During recent years, there has been a growing interest in CEO narcissism across disciplines. Various scholars document that CEO narcissism is an important factor that should not be overlooked when analyzing various organizational outcomes and strategies. Research on CEO narcissism has focused on its negative implications on organization outcomes. H...

Purpose Based on the agency theory and risk management perspective, this study aims to examine the relationship between CEOs’ pay schemes and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in the restaurant industry. Specifically, the authors propose that CEOs with a higher proportion of equity-based compensation (EBC), which induces a greater pr...

Motivating employees to engage in pro-environmental behaviours is an essential topic in the tourism and hotel fields. This paper advances this research direction by integrating the mechanisms of cognition and incentives from the externalities/spillovers perspective. This paper argues that we can view the environmental and financial benefits receive...

Guided by the resource base theory, this study investigates the performance stabilization of new hotels in emerging markets. Potential competitive advantages, i.e., real estate type (mixed-use vs. standalone), location type (distance from downtown and airport) and scale (room count and meeting space), were assessed for their impacts on pace and lev...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how the lodging market and the state economy affected by Hurricane Sandy have recovered from the damages sustained. Specifically, this study examines and predicts the influence of revenue management key performance indicators (KPIs) on recovery and lodging revenue in the affected states and the state...

Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) has been widely used as the standard performance measure for the hotel industry. However, hoteliers have also recognized limitations of RevPAR and developed other alternative performance measures. Gross Operating Profit per Available Room (GOPPAR) has become popular as an important alternative performance measure...

Purpose This study aims to examine how geographic diversification affects firms’ risk by introducing the franchising strategy as a moderator. Design/methodology/approach The panel regression analysis was conducted with a sample of US restaurant firms. Specifically, a two-way random (or fixed) effects model clustered by firm was used to test hypo...

Purpose Considering the increasing significance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the corporate world and the mixed findings of the financial implication of CSR investment in the financial economics literature, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between (im)material CSR investment and firm performance and the moderat...

Purpose This study aims to examine how employees’ perceptions of customer-related and employee-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence their job satisfaction. Further, the study investigates whether employees’ organizational commitment mediates this proposed relationship and, more importantly, tests how such mediated re...

The current study examines CSR issues in the casino context from employees' perspectives, especially due to the essential role of employees for business success in service industries. This study first investigates the main effect of employees' perceived CSR on organizational commitment, mediated by job satisfaction. This study further explores this...

Purpose The existing literature has focused heavily on investigating the effect of corporate social performance (CSP) on financial performance (FP) but has not paid sufficient attention to an inverse causation of the relationship. Moreover, while some of the literature argues that FP positively affects CSP, based on the slack resources theory, oth...

Purpose The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the relationship between restaurant firms’ internationalization and systematic risk, and to further examine the relationship between internationalization and systematic risk based on the type of restaurant firm (i.e. limited-service vs full-service restaurants). Design/methodology/appro...

This study investigates the effects of a firm's involvement in franchising on efficiency and differentiation as defined in Porter's generic competitive strategy framework. The study further examines the moderating effects of organizational characteristics (prior experience in franchising and business type) on the relationship between franchising an...

Although some theories argued that investment decisions are irrelevant to financing decisions under the assumption of perfect market, investment decisions and capital structure seem interdependent in real-world circumstances. Further, the past literature also suggested a close relationship between internal cash flows and investment decisions, that...

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the existence of a moderating effect of a green initiative on the relationship between service quality and customers’ satisfaction in the Chinese hotel context. The study adopts a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design using scenarios. Four scenarios provide a mixed combination of high or low c...

This study investigates the impact of an industry’s involvement in franchising on its competitive condition. Findings show that, for services industries in general, franchising involvement (a) discourages industry instability and dynamic competition, and (b) has a non-significant impact on industry concentration. However, in the hospitality industr...

Despite the importance of achieving a competitive advantage in human resources in the restaurant industry, restaurant firms often hesitate to make significant investments in human resource management (HRM) practices because of outcome uncertainty, operational issues, and limited financial resources, among other issues. Building upon the strategic h...

Despite growing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the tourism literature, the relationship between CSR activities and systematic risk, one of the critical components in evaluating shareholder value, has been a topic of scarce examination. Further, the moderating role of geographical diversification on the link between CSR and sy...

Brand equity plays a significant role in the restaurant industry due to the competitive advantage gained by differentiation. It has been identified as a main component of intangible assets that decides the market value of a firm in the industry. Although the importance of brand equity has been well recognized in the restaurant literature, there has...

In the hospitality context, the diversification literature has evolved to mostly focus on the impact of diversification on firm performance. However, without accounting for risk, the effect of diversification on firm value likely provides an incomplete picture. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of domestic and international geographi...

Purpose This study aims to examine previously identified hotel automated valuation models (AVMs) using a more extensive and updated sample of hotel sale transaction data, introduce economic conditions as a new determinant for hotel market value and test the moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between the previously identifie...

This study develops three hypotheses regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of the hotel industry. First, the study examines a ranking of consumers’ perceived importance of the four CSR dimensions proposed by Carroll’s hierarchy of CSR in 1991, expecting the following orders: philanthropic, ethical, legal, and economic dimen...

This study investigates the impact of CSR on firms’ performances within the restaurant industry context in the U.S. Contrary to findings from previous studies, this study finds positive main effects of overall CSR and positive CSR (PCSR) on restaurant firms’ value as measured by Tobin's q. This study also argues that restaurant type moderates the e...

Purpose The purpose of the current study is to investigate the possible existence of a synergistic effect of internationalization and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on a firm’s value performance. Design/methodology/approach To empirically test the argument, this study analyzed data from 40 US-based publicly traded restaurant companies (251...

Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of different dimensions of national culture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of hospitality firms, including lodging, casino and restaurant firms. Design/methodology/approach This study performs a panel regression analysis to examine the effect of Hofstede’s national culture dimensi...

The use of debt is prevalent in the restaurant industry. While there have been numerous studies on restaurant capital structure, this study examines the relationship between firm performance and effective interest rate on debt used by restaurant firms. This study uses a sample of 56 publicly traded U.S. restaurant firms for the years 2012–2014. We...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to invoke prospect theory to construct an empirical framework to predict idiosyncratic risk, and argue that when a firm performs better than its benchmarks, the firm tends to play safe by avoiding firm-specific risk to maintain its satisfactory performance level, but when a firm performs worse than its benchmark...

This study aimed to examine a long-term motivation for franchising by considering the influence of experience franchisors gain through conducting the franchising strategy. The study mainly investigates the moderating effect of franchising experience on the relationship between three main motivations for franchising (derived from agency theory, reso...

Although the implications of adopting a franchising strategy in the restaurant industry have been examined in previous literature, the role of franchising has mostly been viewed as a means of growth, without much attention paid to its role in reducing risk via alleviating earnings volatility. In this study, we examine whether, and to what extent, f...

Although diversification strategies in the US restaurant industry are actively implemented with strategic importance, research on the effects of diversification on firm value has been rare. This study investigates the individual effect of geographical diversification and brand diversification on firm value in the US restaurant industry context. Fur...

Systematic risk, or the variance of asset returns that cannot be eliminated through diversification of a portfolio, has received limited attention from tourism researchers. This is problematic given the dramatic changes experienced by the industry in the last two decades and the fact that there are unique determinants of systematic risk owing to th...

Today is the Green Economy era and green strategies, like recycling can provide a great benefit to hotel industry. However, there is a lack of research to support these financial benefits. Therefore, this study investigates the role of recycling to enhance hotel businesses by contributing to its bottom line. The study uses a waste-audit technique o...

Purpose – The purpose of the current study is to investigate the existence of a negative synergy effect of internationalization and firm size on firm performance for publicly traded US hotels. Design/methodology/approach – The study performs the two-way fixed-effects model to investigate the proposed negative synergy effect. Findings – The findin...