Rory Mulcahy

Purpose
This study aims to review phygital research from 2014 to 2025 to map the field, reduce fragmentation and identify key gaps warranting future exploration. The review expands the view of phygital service research (PSR) to include both consumer and employee perspectives, using consumption value theory and the reality–virtuality continuum to code the literature and examine value outcomes and the blend of physical and digital elements.

Design/methodology/approach
This study follows preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines to select relevant research across multiple databases. Broad search terms, beyond “phygital”, such as “hybrid” and “physical-digital interaction” were used in a scoping review approach to capture interdisciplinary perspectives. Thematic analysis was applied to reduce fragmentation, categorise actor perspectives, synthesise value outcomes and classify phygital experiences on the reality–virtuality continuum.

Findings
The review identified that most phygital literature largely centres on service employee perspectives, particularly in hybrid work and organisational contexts, while consumer and employee perspectives are rarely examined together, revealing a gap in understanding value co-creation. The literature emphasises emotional and functional value, positive emotional value for consumers and aspects of emotional value destruction for employees, while social and epistemic values are underexplored. Most studies focus on augmented reality enhancing physical spaces, with limited attention to virtual-dominant experiences.

Originality/value
This review advances PSR by offering a multidisciplinary analysis of phygital experiences that integrates consumer and employee perspectives, highlighting the need for a multi-actor approach. It conceptualises value as a multidimensional continuum, incorporating both value creation and destruction, while addressing the overemphasis on emotional and functional value by calling for greater attention to social and epistemic dimensions. It also operationalises the reality–virtuality continuum to clarify phygital configurations, enabling more precise theorisation and identification of underexplored service interactions.

Emotion is not peripheral, but rather foundational to tourism's appeal. It shapes imagination and transforms destinations into meaningful experiences. Yet, while the tourism industry increasingly leverages emotional storytelling to inspire action, academic research has not kept pace. This systematic literature review examines how emotion has been theorised, measured and modelled. Despite decades of critique, a limited emotional repertoire persists, with generalised constructs, such as satisfaction, continuing to dominate at the expense of tourism-relevant emotions, such as romance, awe, boredom, amusement and envy. Theoretical integration remains weak, and emotion is typically examined in post-travel contexts, overlooking the pre-travel, acquisition stage where industry campaigns concentrate their emotional appeals and investment. In response, the article advances six propositions that reposition emotion as a core construct in tourism marketing. Together with the Tourism Emotion Framework, these contributions offer a practical and theoretical foundation for designing, measuring and mobilising emotion across the travel journey.

The Victorian election is still months away, yet voters are already being shown events which never happened. A machete attack at a petrol station, a woman giving birth on the roadside, floodwater pouring down the steps of parliament: all “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence (AI), and all reportedly appearing as paid advertising ahead of voters going to the polls.

Previously described as a potential “sleeper issue” for Australian politics, deepfake political content is rapidly becoming a very real electoral challenge.

We have been studying political deepfakes – and how people respond to them – in the lead up to the Victorian state election. Our preliminary results provide important insights into people’s ability to detect deepfakes and will help voters navigate the increasingly fraught information ecosystem as electoral campaigning ramps up.

As the world is increasingly flooded with deepfakes, the European Union is taking action to help people distinguish what is real and what is not.

It recently started enforcing transparency obligations for tech companies which require them to clearly label any photos, videos and audio which are created using their artificial intelligence (AI) systems and designed to look authentic.

This is a step up from the approach of other countries, such as Australia, which only recommend AI developers mark AI-generated content to help people identify it. This matters because research suggests that when confronted with sophisticated AI-generated content, our ability to distinguish fake from real can be little better than a coin-toss.

But will the EU’s approach actually work? And could requiring the labelling of AI-generated content have unintended consequences? Could it potentially make us more vulnerable to the very content designed to deceive us?

Purpose
The purpose of this research is to provide theoretical and practical insight into the night-time economy (NTE), which is underpinned by services that provide consumers with a “third place”. Specifically, the research examines the critical decision-making factors that encourage NTE use and expenditure, and how these are explained by place identity and individuals’ level of fear of missing out (FoMO).

Design/methodology/approach
This research uses a cross-sectional survey of 577 participants in the Sunshine Coast region of Australia. The data are analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling and PROCESS Macro, with mediation and moderated effects tested.

Findings
The results confirm four key decision-making factors: safety, transport, quality and social, which have a significant impact on NTE usage and expenditure. Place identity plays a key mediating role in explaining these relationships between decision-making factors and NTE usage and expenditure. Furthermore, these relationships are stronger for individuals who report higher levels of FoMO.

Originality/value
This research contributes to understanding how an NTE can be conceptualised as a sustainable ecosystem in which both social outcomes (senses of place identity) and economic outcomes (usage and expenditure) can be achieved. In doing so, it also draws greater scholarly attention to NTE, a sector embedded in services such as tourism, hospitality and retail, yet underexplored in the services marketing literature. Furthermore, the research addresses the fragmented understanding of factors influencing NTE usage by synthesising, validating and modelling key decision-making factors, along with establishing their quantified associations with NTE usage and expenditure.

Advances in media technologies have afforded audiences greater control over how, and to what extent, they engage with brand content and advertising. In response, brands have pursued more immersive and participatory ways of reaching consumers, with transmedia storytelling—the coordinated communication of a narrative across multiple platforms with each medium contributing unique elements—emerging as one such approach. While scholarship has examined transmedia storytelling in brand contexts, research has largely centred on case studies of completed campaigns or conceptual investigations, leaving the dynamics of practice underexplored. Drawing on 21 interviews and a cross-national survey of 256 brand communicators, this study investigates the challenges of adopting transmedia storytelling, the industry categories perceived as most suited, and whether obstacles vary across sectors or are broadly consistent. Findings suggest that the most significant barriers tend to arise from external and organisational constraints rather than creative limitations. Although obstacles were largely consistent, sectors such as fashion, health and beauty revealed distinct implementation challenges, while categories like automotive and education showed more uniform patterns. Informed by these findings, the Transmedia Brand Storytelling Model for Practice is reframed to emphasise the organisational and relational conditions shaping the practice in contemporary brand communication.

Purpose
This study extends marketing knowledge on donation behaviours through Conservation of Resources Theory. It examines how emotional resource management and depletion influence individuals’ likelihood of financially donating and how this varies between donors and non-donors.

Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual model explores the relationship between emotional intelligence and donation intentions, with donor status as a moderator and emotional resource depletion, conceptualised as emotional exhaustion and compassion fatigue, as mediators. Survey data from Australian donors (n = 749) and non-donors (n = 301) are analysed using PLS-SEM.

Findings
Results show that emotional intelligence increases donation intentions, particularly among donors. For non-donors, emotional intelligence reduces emotional exhaustion and compassion fatigue, leading to higher donation intentions. However, among donors, emotional exhaustion and compassion fatigue do not mediate the relationship between emotional intelligence and donation.

Originality/value
These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting emotional resource management and depletion and how this differs across donors and non-donors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, particularly regarding differences in emotional management between donors and non-donors.

Online trolling, a unique form of consumer deviance targeting organisations, can cause significant harm, yet the role of bystanders in supporting victimised organisations remains underexplored. The current research examines how organisational responses to trolling (non-response, negative response, and positive response) and trolling types (sadistic, moral) influence bystander engagement in support of organisational victims. Furthermore, the research considers whether bystander engagement may be explained via the hostility triad, a set of negative emotions (anger, disgust, and contempt) that are triggered due to social norm violations. In three experimental studies involving a total of 1126 participants, with hypotheses grounded in prior literature and the affect infusion model (AIM), this research establishes that an organisation's non-response leads to greater bystander engagement, particularly in cases of sadistic trolls. Further, it demonstrates that this relationship is explained and mediated by anger, contempt and disgust. The results also provide evidence of bystander engagement being positive in supporting the organisation, as opposed to negative and attacking the troller. These findings are discussed in relation to their theoretical implications and practical insights.

Staff at satellite campuses of regional universities face distinct challenges in building research communities. Limited opportunities for research collaboration and professional development can lead to feelings of isolation, disconnection, and marginalisation, which can undermine wellbeing and research productivity. This chapter discusses how a Shut Up and Write! initiative helped overcome the geographic constraints of our campus by creating a convivial space for collegiality, wellbeing, and shared purpose. Through collective reflection and the visual metaphor of the mandala, we convey the personal and collective significance of our group. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's concept of communicative democracy, we present six strategies for cultivating a vibrant, co-located quiet writing group grounded in convivial practice. Our experience shows how such a writing community can support personal development and mutual care, fostering connection, creativity, and sustained productivity.

The ubiquitous presence of smartphones has led to their prominence as a dominant source of news for a vast majority of people. In this context, the impact of mobile technology’s affordances, including access, applications, and mobile alerts, on news engagement has been the subject of numerous studies. At the same time, recent research has found an increase in those who either have very low news usage or intentionally or unintentionally avoid news. Within a deliberative public sphere perspective, habitual news avoidance presents many problems, including lack of civic engagement and lack of critical information for partaking in public life. Drawing on framing theory and results from two experimental studies, this research sought to examine the intersection of the promise of mobile news alerts for enhancing news engagement intentions and curiosity among high-level news avoiders. Study 1 shows that positive frames in mobile alerts are associated with higher engagement intentions in high news avoiders, and this effect is mediated by curiosity. In study 2, the results show that positive framing with three facts is associated with higher levels of engagement intentions, and this is mediated by curiosity. Further, the results show that for moderate news avoiders, two facts, which are negatively framed, should be used.