At a time when the world economy is uncertain, people need to be financially prepared to ensure stability. However, many people are prone to financial vulnerability because of their attitude and behaviour, apart from their environment. Some people have excessive online shopping lifestyles, poor spending habits, and a lack of self-control, leading them into a major debt trap and other financial obstacles that increase their financial vulnerability. This study aims to examine the impact of the abovementioned factors on the financial vulnerability of Malaysians. The online survey targeted Malaysian consumers and received 2241 responses. The data were analysed by Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) using Smart PLS software. The results show that compulsive online shopping behaviour has a negative impact on financial vulnerability, while spending behaviour and locus of control have a positive effect. The findings of this study hold significance for both academics and practitioners alike. Theoretically, this study adds to the limited knowledge base in financial health and promotes a better understanding of the behavioural and psychological factors that influence individuals' financial vulnerability. Practically, this study highlights the importance of collaboration between the government and relevant agencies in developing comprehensive strategies to improve the financial stability and well-being of Malaysians to achieve the country's goal of becoming a highincome country with a high standard of living.

This study attempts to develop a practical model of social entrepreneurship in crowdfunding platforms toward communities. Crowdfunding is a way to raise money from the crowd in order to achieve project goals. Three important elements involves: crowd, project owner and platform. Meanwhile, social entrepreneurship is all about recognizing the social problems and achieving social change by employing entrepreneurial principles, processes and operations. As pandemic of COVID-19 has shown the struggle of people to survive and the challenges caused by the pandemic. Recent studies found that social entrepreneurs can apply as a response to a major crisis in the local community. In other words, social entrepreneurs can become an entity that can help the community to better prepare during crisis. This study proposes the framework that reconceptualizing the concept of the social entrepreneurship in crowdfunding platform toward communities during pandemic. The respondents consist of project owner that do a social project and the funder. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach that is based on interviews, content analysis and surveys by investigating the components of the social entrepreneurship model in crowdfunding platform perspective. The outcome of this study may contribute to developing a model that will enhance the sustainability of social projects among social entrepreneurship

This study uses a systematic review to discover, analyses, and summarize donation-based crowdfunding. The related literature was subjected to a systematic literature review (SLR) for the current paper. By searching electronic open-access databases like Google Scholar, Scopus, and Emerald Insights, a systematic review of the literature was able to be conducted. A publication date between 2018 and 2022, a country, a methodology, and a dimension were the inclusion criteria. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) search methodology strategy, a narrative synthesis and systematic review were carried out and reported in accordance with the preferred reporting items statement. 409 studies from different sources have been found through a systematic review of the literature. 30 studies have been determined to be pertinent to the current study after the 379 studies were eliminated based on the selection criteria. According to the review, donation-based crowdfunding is essential to advance the development and raise awareness of those who cannot obtain loans. The study develops a research model that policymakers can use to develop a crowdfunding platform appropriately. The platform will help the country's economy grow thanks to improved performance and better financial access. This study proposes a one-of-a-kind research model to demonstrate donation-based crowdfunding.

This paper seeks to review the literature trends on employee performance publications in the recent 5 years (2018-2022) using bibliometric analysis. 1338 full-paper journal articles that were downloaded indexed by SCOPUS have been analysed. The selection criteria also include the recent 5 years publication from 2018- 2022, with English only language. It was found that Indonesia, China, USA, India and Malaysia have been the top country producing employee productivity research articles and Journal of Frontiers in Psychology has the highest publications among other top journals. Employee productivity in terms of country wise, Malaysia still has a long way to climb the ladder and be at par with the top-notch countries.

Higher education today has expanded and become more complex, where numerous degrees, training programs, and fields of study are offered. Additionally, the dynamic labour market has transformed remarkably, resulting in intense employment among graduates. The notion of graduate employability is becoming an increasingly important global issue. Employers now look for individual factors such as attitude, behaviours, and skills. Therefore, universities have gradually moved their focus on enhancing graduate employability. This paper examines how far the graduate employability program has achieved its target. The program involved 93 graduates of 2021 and 2022 from various local public universities taking the SCLE Modules 6 and 7 professional exams. The participants were required to attend a course and take an examination in this program. Sitting the Module 6 and 7 exams will enable the participants to get the professional license as Capital Market Service Representative License (CMSRL) through capital market participating organizations. The program started in June 2022 with four days of lectures from the industry, followed by six days of tutorial sessions, and finally sitting the exams in August 2022. Collaboration between university and industry can achieve the mission of bridging the academics ivory tower and industry labour market with the required skills.

The aim of this study to review the position of Malaysia in terms of financial inclusion and crowdfunding. The goal of financial inclusion is not only to enhance a country's economic growth but also to eradicate poverty and reduce the gap between the rich and the poor within a country. Crowdfunding can be used as a banking alternative, and countries with a large number of crowdfunding platforms have demonstrated great financial inclusion. By expanding access to capital and displacing unregulated lenders, crowdfunding has the potential to promote financial inclusiveness in the society. This study employs content analysis using secondary data to explore financial inclusion initiatives that can be achieved through crowdfunding platforms. It is hoped that the review would be useful for understanding and promoting crowdfunding as one of the important tools to achieve financial inclusivity in Malaysia. The paper will be useful to researchers, professionals and others concerned with financial inclusion to understand the importance of crowdfunding as one the mechanisms to promote financial inclusiveness. Other than revealing ambiguities, gaps and contradictions in the literature, this paper provides information and guidance for other researchers wishing to embark on research on financial inclusion and crowdfunding.

This study aims to explore current financial management practices covering governance and financial operation aspects in Islamic donation-based crowdfunding (DCF) in Malaysia. A series of interviews with six Islamic DCF platforms in Malaysia were conducted. For reporting purposes, this study employed a single-case study approach. The interview was conducted and completed at the end of August 2022 via an online approach through Google Meet. The findings highlight the governance background in terms of legal establishment as well as monitoring the function of Islamic DCFs in Malaysia. In addition, for financial operation, several findings related to the funding management process model, income generation, financial sustainability and financial disclosure of Islamic DCFs in Malaysia were discussed. This study is among the pioneer studies that explore financial management practices in Islamic DCF platforms in Malaysia. The study findings and recommendations are useful for Islamic DCF platforms as well as related parties like regulators, funders, potential project managers and the public in general to understand financial management practices in Islamic DCF platforms in Malaysia.

This paper seeks to review Financial Stress literature. Using bibliometric analysis, 690 full-paper articles from an open access journals indexed by SCOPUS have been selected. The selection criteria also include the recent five years publication from 2018- 2022, with English only language. It was found that USA have been the top country producing financial stress research articles and Journal of Affective Disorders has the highest publications among other top journals. Financial Stress Country wise, Malaysia still has a long way to climb the ladder and be at par with the top-notch countries.

The theory of human behavior change is developed from psychological studies and then applied to consumer behavior. Psychologists believe that human behavior can change through stimuli and responses based on theories developed by psychologists and behaviorists. The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic has led some countries to take drastic actions such as implementing movement control orders (MCO) to curb the spread of the pandemic and provide economic stimulus packages to restore the current economic situation. In the context of Malaysia, this study suggests that the actions taken by the government can create positive and negative responses through consumer learning theory. This study is based on operant conditioning theory and the study suggests four categories of consumer behavior after the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this article is to propose a conceptual research framework related to consumer segments that exist as a result of COVID-19 and propose new types of wealth creation post-COVID-19. It is expected that the results of the study will prove that there are four segments of consumers based on reactions through behaviors that are highlighted during a pandemic. It involves the behavior of returning to the old norms, adjusting and adapting to new norms, going back to square one, and recycling the previous behaviours. Certain policies can be developed to highlight the new normative behavior among consumers to overcome the impact of COVID-19, and even to ensure that Malaysia is competitive in the face of economic recovery. Future studies need to be conducted on an ongoing basis to ensure that the proposed framework can be adapted in different contexts and industries.

Teori perubahan gelagat pengguna dibangunkan daripada kajian psikologi seterusnya diaplikasikan kepada gelagat pengguna. Pakar psikologi percaya bahawa gelagat manusia boleh berubah melalui rangsangan dan tindak balas berdasarkan teori-teori yang dibangunkan oleh Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, dan lain-lain. Ancaman pandemik Covid-19 telah menyebabkan beberapa negara mengambil tindakan drastik seperti menyekat pergerakan rakyat, menyediakan pakej rangsangan ekonomi untuk memulihkan keadaan ekonomi semasa dan menguatkuasakan prosedur operasi standard (SOP) bertujuan untuk mengekang penularan wabak ini. Dalam konteks negara Malaysia, kajian ini mencadangkan bahawa semua tindakan yang diambil oleh pihak kerajaan mampu mewujudkan tindak balas positif dan negatif melalui teori pembelajaran pengguna. Kajian ini didasari oleh teori Pelaziman Operan (Conditioning Theory) yang mencadangkan empat kategori gelagat pengguna semasa berlakunya Covid-19. Tujuan kertas kerja ini untuk mencadangkan rangka kerja konseptual berkaitan segmen pasaran yang wujud akibat Covid-19 dan cadangan jenis penjanaan dan pengembangan kekayaan yang baharu pasca Covid19. Jangkaan hasil kajian akan membuktikan terdapat empat kategori pengguna berdasarkan reaksi melalui gelagat yang ditonjolkan semasa pasca pandemik berlangsung. Ia melibatkan gelagat kembali ke tabiat asal, norma baharu norma baharu yang sederhana, dan kitar semula. Dasar-dasar tertentu boleh dibangunkan bertujuan untuk mengetengahkan gelagat norma baharu dalam kalangan pengguna bagi mengatasi impak Covid-19 malahan untuk memastikan Malaysia berdaya saing dalam mengharungi revolusi industri 4.0. Kajian di masa akan datang perlu dijalankan secara berterusan untuk memastikan rangka kerja yang dicadangkan dapat diadaptasi dalam konteks dan industri yang berbeza.

Crowdfunding refers to a method of raising money from a large number of people where each individual provides a small money for a specific project through crowdfunding platform. To make crowd pledge and sustain the project, it is important to promote and publicize the project on a large scale over the social media. Hence, this study explores social media as a tool to promote, publicize and fund for sustainability of the crowdfunding project. In order to examine the impact of social media on the success project, this study will focus on the project owner’s activities and connectivity with selected social media. A proposed framework based on the sharing project campaign and social media connectivity is designed to predict the success outcome of a project campaign.

Fenomena pandemik telah menyebabkan populasi miskin semakin terbeban dari sudut ekonomi disebabkan peluang pekerjaan yang semakin terbatas, kos perubatan meningkat dan akses fasiliti kesihatan yang terhad. Takaful mikro merupakan antara instrumen kewangan patuh Syariah yang menyediakan skim perlindungan kepada populasi berpendapatan rendah. Takaful mikro dikatakan mengalami beberapa permasalahan terutamanya yang melibatkan kos operasi. Justeru, aplikasi takaful mikro dengan sokongan dana wakaf dilihat antara solusi yang ideal. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneroka potensi, isu serta cabaran bagi integrasi takaful mikro dan wakaf ke arah memperkasakan perlindungan kesihatan bagi golongan miskin dalam mendepani wabak pandemik. Metode kajian kepustakaan dan dokumentasi digunakan untuk mendapatkan data. Bagi tujuan analisis, kaedah analisis kandungan, diskriptif, induktif dan deduktif digunakan secara konsisten. Hasil kajian telah mengenalpasti beberapa prospek dan cabaran bagi penggunaan wakaf dalam operasi takaful mikro turut dikenalpasti. Kajian diharapkan mampu menyumbang kepada perlaksanaan wakaf dan takaful mikro yang lebih dinamik dan lestari.

Bencana penyakit berjangkit antara faktor yang merencatkan kestabilan sosioekonomi sesebuah masyarakat khususnya populasi miskin dek kerana aktiviti perekonomian yang terbatas, kos perubatan yang meningkat dan akses fasiliti kesihatan yang terhad. Takaful mikro merupakan antara instrumen kewangan Islam yang menawarkan skim perlindungan kepada populasi ini. Walau bagaimanapun, masih tidak jelas tentang hubungjalin antara takaful mikro dan bencana pandemik. Sungguhpun secara teoritikalnya, zakat sering dikaitkan sebagai sumber dana alternatif untuk operasi takaful, namun dari sudut praktikalnya idea ini masih samar. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneroka potensi, isu serta cabaran takaful mikro sebagai instrumen perlindungan kesihatan bagi mendepani wabak pandemik bagi populasi miskin. Integrasi takaful mikro dan zakat merupakan tema utama kajian ini. Metode kajian kepustakaan dan dokumentasi digunakan untuk mendapatkan data. Bagi tujuan analisis, kaedah analisis kandungan, diskriptif, induktif dan deduktif digunakan secara konsisten. Hasil kajian mendapati bahawa takaful mikro adalah relevan untuk menghadapi pandemik khususnya bagi populasi miskin. Namun, kekangan kewangan merupakan permasalahan yang utama. Penyaluran dana zakat dianggap antara solusi munasabah bagi permasalahan ini. Beberapa prospek dan cabaran bagi penggunaan zakat dalam operasi takaful mikro turut dikenalpasti. Kajian ini sesuai dijadikan rujukan bagi institusi takaful mikro, zakat dan agensi lainnya yang terlibat dalam pemerkasaan golongan miskin dalam rangka untuk menambahbaik aspek kesihatan mereka.

The emergence of innovative digital financial technologies has made donation-crowdfunding viable as a method that can supplement traditional fundraising mechanisms. Crowdfunding has recently gained worldwide attention as an alternative financing mechanism to the traditional fundraising methods for business ventures or social projects. While donation-crowdfunding which utilise platforms has demonstrated promising growth, there is no established legal framework available to accommodate its operation, especially for Islamic ones. Therefore, this study provides intuitive information pertaining to legal and Shariah issues in governing Islamic donation-based crowdfunding in Malaysia. Drawing from the conceptual framework of Islamic economics and qualitative data collection through semi-structured with six representatives of the Islamic donation-crowdfunding platforms, this study concludes that the issues associated with Malaysian regulations regimes and Shariah issues revolve around the donation- based crowdfunding platforms business model should be considered when devising a Shariah framework for donation-crowdfunding schemes. The findings will help policymakers to formulate and put in place the appropriate regulatory framework to facilitate Islamic donation-based crowdfunding practice.

Purpose – The study aims to explore language style and gender match as a key part of initial trust among potential donors and how this leads to funding success based on the similarity attraction and homophily theories. Empirical analyses of 160 respondents revealed that people are more concerned about “how it is written”(language style) than “who has written it”(gender). Design/methodology/approach – Crowdfunding (CF) is an internet-based method of funding employed by project founders, allowing individuals to raise funds from the crowd to support their projects. It is important for project founders to attract the crowd’s interest as potential funders commonly have limited information about projects. One of the early cues about a project that can be picked up by the crowd in CF projects is the text description of the proposal. This text description is crucial for giving the crowd an understanding of the project and for promoting the crowd’s trust in the founder, encouraging them to fund the CF project. Based on the similarity attraction and homophily theories, this study sets out to explore language style and gender match as key elements of initial trust among potential donors and how they lead to funding success. A 2 2 factorial experimental design (e.g. subject, male and female, male language style and female language style) was used for the study. To determine the sample size of the experiment, this study applied power and sample size estimations to measure how many respondents were needed for the experiment. Based on the power table of effect size, 128 respondents were considered to be a sufficient number for this experiment to ensure sufficient statistical power of 0.8 and a significance level of 0.05. This study fulfilled the requirement by recruiting 160 respondents, which corresponded to 40 subjects per group based on a 2 2 factorial design (the respondents’ gender, male and female, and text language style, male and female). The empirical analysis of 160 respondents revealed that people are more concerned about “how it is written” (language style) than “who has written it” (gender). Findings – This paper contributes to project founders’ understanding and knowledge of the importance of linguistic style, which can determine the success of a CF project. One of the important results of this study is that the crowd can identify the author’s gender based on their writing style. Through an experiment applying factorial analysis (2 2), it was found that people are more concerned about “how it is written” (language style) than with “who it is written by” (gender). This means that the project founder, if they know who their audience is, should know how to write the project proposal so that it fits the audience’s preferences. More specifically, the success rate of CF projects can be increased by integrating suitable word dimensions in promotions of projects on CF platforms. Therefore, it can be argued that linguistic style is a powerful agent for building a connection with a target audience. The findings of this study can be used as theoretical guidance, and eventually, the potential antecedents of funding intention can be further explored. Research limitations/implications – This study is subject to several limitations. The result is limited to donation-based CF. As this study focuses on the language style of project founders when they describe their CF projects, donation-based CF was the most appropriate platform for this research. In donation-based CF, the style words are more emotion-based, compared to other CF platforms. The experiment, however, could also be replicated for other CF types such as reward-based CF. One important part of CF projects is persuading the crowd to fund them. It is worth mentioning that reward-based CF involves individuals pledging to a business in exchange for a reward. Yet, even though reward-based CF offers rewards, it is generally considered a subset of donation-based CF because there is no financial return to the backer. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should also consider case studies in reward-based CF. Second, from the persuading perspective, this study focusses on narrative language style only, as it facilitates the crowd’s understanding of a CF project. Future study can further focus on other information content such as videos in the project proposal. Prior research has found that providing a video in a CF project increases the crowd’s confidence in funding (Mitra, 2012). The study is also supported by previous studies that suggest producing a higher quality of video in the project proposal positively related to the success of CF projects (Mollick (2014)). Practical implications – The result of this study empirically confirmed that the crowd’s willingness to fund a project proposal and their trust are dependent on the text description of the project proposal. The project founders need to know how to describe the content of a project so that it signals the quality of the project, especially in early start-ups. In other words, the way that a project is created and published through a CF platform will send a valuable signal to the potential donors about the project, and they will either find it acceptable or reject it. If the project appears to lack demand among potential donors, it is easier for project founders to quickly identify that the project will fail, without the need to invest additional capital. Social implications – The findings of this study have important social implications that provide guidelines for project founders on establishing a strategy to help the crowd understand their projects. At the same time, the findings can help the crowd to make their funding decisions. First, the text language used in the CF project by the project founder plays an important role in presenting the campaign and all the ideas need to be presented in a clear way so that the crowd understands the project. In CF projects, pitch is everything (Varsamis, 2018). The pitch refers to the text or video that is provided by the project founder to show their project proposal to the crowd. Compared with traditional funding channels (such as venture capital, i.e. banks), CF is more convenient for raising funds. This is because the project founders need to show their ideas in a creative way to the crowd online, rather than preparing a complex plan and racking their brains on how they can persuade investors to participate (Wang and Yang (2019)). This research intends to help project founders understand how they can influence the crowd by improving the text language used in their CF projects.

This study investigates the marketing strategies of Islamic donation-based crowdfunding platforms in Malaysia, focusing on pricing and promotional tactics to increase customer value and foster lasting relationships. A series of interviews were conducted with managers from six Islamic donation-based crowdfunding platforms in Malaysia. For the purposes of analysis, this study employed a single-case study approach. The interviews were conducted via Google Meet and completed by the end of August 2022. These findings aim to equip project owners with better marketing strategies for their initiatives. The research highlights the critical importance of effective marketing in the success of Islamic crowdfunding platforms. It shows that strategic pricing and promotional tactics can significantly increase the platform's appeal and significantly increase the likelihood of project success.

Theories on consumer behavioral change emerged from the study of psychology and later used on consumer behaviors. Behaviorists believe that human behaviors can change from stimulus and responses based on the theories developed by Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, and many others. In this paper, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many countries to take actions such as restricting people movement, providing economic stimulus to push the economy back up, and enforcing social distancing rules and alike to flatten the pandemic curve. The study envisioned that all the actions taken by the government, especially in the context of Malaysia, as stimulus that create positive and negative responses from the learning consumers. The study emulates the operant conditioning theory and proposes four different types of behavior categories that arises from the pandemic. The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework of the market segmentation arising from COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology used by the study is based from the literature search and secondary data to come out with the suggested framework. The expected findings of the study are the four segments of the consumers based on their behavioral reactions post pandemic. The four segments are the back to square one, new normal, moderately new norm, and recycle consumer groups. Their preferences, needs, and wants can change the landscape of how market can be segmented apart from how business should react towards the changes in the future. Policy could be developed in terms of promoting the new norms behavior to overcome COVID-19 problems and future outbreaks as well as to ensure that Malaysia can be accommodative to the industrial revolution 4.0. Future research should be conducted to replicate the framework in different contexts and industries.

Every aspect of human life is inherently risky. The fatal infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has been considered a black swan event and compared to the economic scene of World War Two. The concept and practices of takaful al-ijtimai’ or social security are pertinent area to be discussed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic recovery mission because its meaning and applications are much wider; encompasses both financial and non-financial assistance and is not limited by the country's regulations. Using secondary data, this study will examine the concept and scopes of takaful al-ijtimai’, from an Islamic perspective, as well as provide the current state of the art in its application during the COVID-19 epidemic in Malaysia. The study is intended to contribute to an understanding and promotion of the concept of takaful al-ijtimai’ as an important tool for achieving maqasid shariah and sustainable development goals.