Background: The algorithmic structuring of digital platforms increasingly shapes how users perceive risk, build trust, and engage with automated systems. These dynamics are especially relevant for younger users navigating opaque decision-making environments, where automation affects behavioural alignment and perceived control. Objectives: This study investigates the influence of algorithmic awareness, digital literacy, perceived risk, and platform trust on users' sense of digital responsibility and automated behavioural responses. A research model is developed to examine how cognitive sensitivity and platform trust interact to shape user compliance in algorithmic environments. Methods/Approach: The study was conducted with a sample of 508 Croatian digital users and used the Digital Engagement and Awareness Scale (DEAS), an instrument developed for this study and subjected to preliminary validation through pilot testing and subsequent measurement-model assessment. The data were analysed using PLS-SEM to examine direct relationships among constructs. Results: Algorithmic awareness increased perceived risk and reduced platform trust. Digital literacy significantly reduced algorithmic subjection, and platform trust also showed a negative association with it. Platform trust demonstrated a weak mediating role in explaining automated behavioural compliance. Conclusions: This study contributes a multidimensional framework of digital responsibility that integrates cognitive and affective user factors. The findings provide empirical insights relevant for ethical platform design, algorithmic governance, and user engagement in complex digital systems.
Background: Firm resilience is a critical concept for organisations aiming to navigate disruptions effectively, yet its translation into regularly applicable metrics remains underdeveloped. Thus, existing frameworks often lack systematic validation and fail to capture resilience's dynamic nature across various disruptions, hindering managers' confident implementation of resilience strategies. Objectives: This study aims to identify a content-valid and practical metric for measuring firm resilience, applicable across diverse firm contexts and disruptions. Approach: The research evaluates and compares existing metrics, based on their alignment with a newly proposed axiom system, to identify the most suitable measure for assessing firm resilience in post-disruption contexts. Results: The metric assessment revealed that the Dominance axiom posed the greatest challenge, with only two metrics fully satisfying the requirement. The semi-quantitative Likert scales encountered further issues with the Operationalisation axiom because of their unsettled interpretation as either ordinal or interval scales, a problem not observed with purely quantitative metrics. Conclusions: The BRAVE metric emerged as the most reliable for evaluating firm resilience, owing to its flexibility in accommodating varying time horizons. Future research should test the metric in real-world settings and explore potential simplifications or additional axioms to refine the resilience measurement framework.
Background This paper examines factors influencing students' engagement with information and communication technologies (ICT) in secondary education. While prior research typically distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic inhibitors, empirical evidence on their joint and differentiated effects remains limited, particularly in the context of transition economies. Objectives The study aims to analyse the role of intrinsic inhibitors and external influences in shaping ICT-related attitudes and use among secondary school students, with a focus on their interrelationships. Methods/Approach Data were collected from 187 high school students in Northern Croatia and the City of Zagreb. The analysis combines confirmatory factor analysis, network analysis, and structural equation modelling. Results The results support a three-factor structure consisting of intrinsic inhibitors, external influences, and ICT use. External influences have a strong positive effect on intrinsic inhibitors, which, in turn, negatively affect ICT use. At the same time, external influences have a direct positive effect on ICT use, indicating the presence of competing effects. This suggests that external factors simultaneously increase exposure to ICT while generating psychological barriers that limit its effective use. Conclusions The findings highlight the complex role of external influences in ICT adoption. Rather than acting solely as barriers, they also function as drivers of ICT exposure. Policy efforts should therefore focus not only on improving infrastructure and teacher preparedness but also on reducing students' psychological barriers to ICT use.
Background: This paper analyses the gender pay gap among full-time and part-time employees, focusing on the labour market in the Republic of Serbia. Objectives: Using data from the annual household survey on income and living conditions, this paper examines whether the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the extent of the pay gap in the Republic of Serbia between the two groups of workers who can be defined as full-time and part-time employees in terms of the employment contract. Methods/Approach: Separate models were estimated for full-time and parttime employees in the wage sector using the 2019-2020 data sample. Results: Applying this approach reveals differences in wages between men and women depending on working hours. The efficiency of full-time and part-time employed women in earning their potential wage is 9.3% and 19.8% lower than that of men, respectively. Conclusions: In Serbia, during the COVID-19 period, there was a significant decline in part-time employment for both men and women, but this trend continued after the crisis, showing a new reality in the labour market.
Background: This study examines post-COVID digital payment adoption in Kosovo, following banks' expansion of digital channels and the temporary loan moratoria introduced during the pandemic. Objectives: It analyses how trust and perceived utility influence digital payment usage, how reliance on ATMs and bank branches shapes these perceptions, and whether these relationships differ by gender. Methods/Approach: The study uses 673 survey responses collected between June 2023 and February 2024. CFA was applied to validate the constructs, SEM to estimate the proposed relationships, and multi-group SEM to test gender moderation. Results: Trust is the strongest predictor of digital payment usage, while perceived utility has only a marginal effect. Trust also increases perceived utility. Reliance on physical channels shows a substitution pattern: greater ATM use is associated with lower perceived utility, and more frequent branch visits are associated with lower trust. Utility-trust and ATM-branch reliance covary positively. Gender moderation is limited, although substitution effects are stronger among men. Conclusions: Post-pandemic digital payment adoption depends mainly on trust, supported by perceived utility. Banks should strengthen the visibility of security, reliability, and user value, while gradually nudging heavy ATM and branch users toward digital channels through targeted training.
