Munif Zoubi

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Livestream commerce has become an increasingly important channel in digital fashion retail because it integrates entertainment, interaction, and real-time purchasing within a single shopping environment. This study aimed to examine how four digital marketing strategy elements — presenter type, layout design, interactivity features, and call-to-action timing — affect consumer engagement, interactivity, and purchase behavior in fashion livestream commerce across the Gulf region (the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia) and Singapore. The study used a contextual multi-armed bandit design across 25 live fashion sessions, generating more than 12,000 usable impressions from approximately 1,500 unique viewers, and estimated causal effects using doubly robust estimation with session-clustered inference. The results show that influencer- or celebrity-led sessions increased engagement by 0.9 minutes relative to staff-led sessions and improved purchase consideration by 0.5 points. Dynamic overlay layouts increased interactivity by 6.5 actions, while interactive features raised add-to-bag outcomes by 3.4 percentage points. Mid-stream call-to-action placement outperformed early and late placement, improving add-to-bag outcomes by approximately 4-5 percentage points. Mediation analysis further showed a significant indirect effect of engagement on add-to-bag through interactivity of 1.2 percentage points. Cross-market comparisons revealed that presenter effects were stronger in the Gulf, whereas layout and timing effects were stronger in Singapore. The findings conclude that effective livestream commerce performance depends on the alignment of presenter credibility, interface design, interactivity, and action timing within specific market contexts.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Creating credibility and transparency in green finance is a persistent challenge, particularly in Islamic capital markets, where green sukuk must satisfy Shariah-compliant structuring and credible verification of environmental use of proceeds. This study examines whether blockchain adoption strengthens disclosure verifiability, improves financial reporting quality, and reduces the cost of capital in green sukuk markets. Using annual issuer-level panel data (2016–2025) from Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, we apply a staggered Difference-in-Differences design and validate the estimates using Double Machine Learning under high-dimensional controls. Blockchain adoption is associated with faster and more credible reporting, reducing audit-report lag by 12.4 days (p < 0.01), discretionary accruals by 1.8 percentage points (p < 0.05), and the probability of restatement by 8.1 percentage points (p < 0.05). Financing conditions also improve issue spreads fall by 21.7 bps (p < 0.01), secondary z-spreads by 18.3 bps (p < 0.05), and bid-ask spreads by 5.6 bps (p < 0.05). Mechanism tests show that adoption increases the Text-to-Ledger Alignment Index (δ = 0.142, p < 0.01), indicating that verifiable alignment between narratives and traceable records is a key channel. Cross-country results are strongest in Malaysia and the UAE, consistent with higher regulatory readiness. Overall, blockchain appears to function as both an integrity-enhancing reporting infrastructure and a credibility signal; scaling these benefits requires policy and standards harmonization.