University of Malta has recently appraised its academic members of staff, who were listed among the world’s top 2% scientists, in Elsevier-Stanford University’s 2025 ranking: https://lnkd.in/dQmrPqz5
In this media release, the University of Malta has identified those who were recognized for their “career-long” (lifetime) high-impact publications, including:
Professor Camilleri, Mark A. (c-score 3.7352); Professor Caruana, Albert R. (c-score 3.6561); Professor Baldacchino, Godfrey (c-score 3.6299); Professor Cuschieri, Sarah (c-score 3.5770); Professor Grima, Joseph N. (c-score 3.3261); Professor Baldacchino, Donia R. (c-score 3.0595); Professor Poh, Norman (c-score 2.9874); Professor Galea, Michael (c-score 2.7935); and Professor Liapis, Antonios (c-score 2.7905).
The contributor of this global study is Stanford University Professor, John P.A. Ioannidis. His selection is “based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score or a percentile rank of 2% or above in the sub-field”.
The citation indicators and the methodology of his rankings are available here: https://lnkd.in/dpxrCJtx
Suggested citation: Camilleri, M.A. (2025). Cocreating Value Through Open Circular Innovation Strategies: A Results-Driven Work Plan and Future Research Avenues, Business Strategy and the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.4216
This research raises awareness of practitioners’ crowdsourcing initiatives and collaborative approaches, such as sharing ideas and resources with external partners, expert consultants, marketplace stakeholders (like suppliers and customers), university institutions, research centers, and even competitors, as the latter can help them develop innovation labs and to foster industrial symbiosis (Calabrese et al. 2024; Sundar et al. 2023; Triguero et al. 2022). It reported that open innovation networks would enable them to work in tandem with other entities to extend the life of products and their components. It also indicated how and where circular open innovations would facilitate the sharing of unwanted materials and resources that can be reused, repaired, restored, refurbished, or recycled through resource recovery systems and reverse logistics approaches. In addition, it postulates that circular economy practitioners could differentiate their business models by offering product-service systems, sharing economies, and/or leasing models to increase resource efficiencies and to minimize waste.
Arguably, the cocreation of open innovations can contribute to improve the financial performance of practitioners as well as of their partners who are supporting them in fostering closed-loop systems and sharing economy practices. They enable businesses and their stakeholders to minimize externalities like waste and pollution that can ultimately impact the long-term viability of our planet. Figure 1 presents a conceptual framework that clarifies how open innovation cocreation approaches can be utilized to advance circular, closed-loop models while adding value to the businesses’ financial performance.
The collaborative efforts between organizations, individuals, and various stakeholders can lead to sustainable innovations, including to the advancement of circular economy models (Jesus and Jugend 2023; Tumuyu et al. 2024). Such practices are not without their own inherent challenges and pitfalls. For example, resource sharing, the recovery of waste and by-products from other organizations, and industrial symbiosis involve close partnership agreements among firms and their collaborators, as they strive in their endeavors to optimize resource use and to minimize waste (Battistella and Pessot 2024; Eisenreich et al. 2021). While the open innovation strategies that are mentioned in this article can lead to significant efficiency gains and to waste reductions, practitioners may encounter several difficulties and hurdles, to implement the required changes (Phonthanukitithaworn et al. 2024). Different entities will have their own organizational culture, strategic goals, and modus operandi that may result in coordination challenges among stakeholders.
Organizations may become overly reliant on sharing resources or on their symbiotic relationships, leading to vulnerabilities related to stakeholder dependencies (Battistella and Pessot 2024). For instance, if one partner experiences disruptions, such as operational issues or financial difficulties, it can adversely affect the feasibility of the entire network. Notwithstanding, organizations are usually expected to share information and resources when they are involved in corporate innovation hubs and clusters. Their openness can lead to concerns about knowledge leakages and intellectual property theft, which may deter companies from fully engaging in resource-sharing initiatives, as they pursue outbound innovation approaches.
Other challenges may arise from resource recovery, reverse logistics, and product-life extension strategies (Johnstone 2024). The implementation of reverse logistics systems can be costly, especially for small and micro enterprises. The costs associated with the collection, sorting, and processing of returned products and components may outweigh the benefits, particularly if the market for recovered materials is not well established (Panza et al. 2022; Sgambaro et al. 2024). Moreover, the effectiveness of resource recovery methodologies and of product-life extension strategies would be highly dependent on the stakeholders’ willingness to return products or to participate in recycling programs. Circular economy practitioners may have to invest in promotional campaigns to educate their stakeholders about sustainable behaviors. There may be instances where existing recovery and recycling technologies are not sufficiently advanced or widely available, in certain contexts, thereby posing significant barriers to the effective implementation of open circular innovations. Notwithstanding, there may be responsible practitioners and sustainability champions that may struggle to find reliable partners with appropriate technological solutions that could help them close the loop of their circular economy.
In some scenarios, emerging circular economy enthusiasts may be eager to shift from traditional product sales models to innovative product-service systems. Yet, such budding practitioners can face operational challenges in their transitions to such circular business models. They may have to change certain business processes, reformulate supply chains, and also redefine their customer relationships, to foster compliance with their modus operandi. These dynamic aspects can be time-consuming, costly, and resource intensive (Eisenreich et al. 2021). For instance, the customers who are accustomed to owning tangible assets may resist shifting to a product-service system model. Their reluctance to accept the service providers’ revised terms and conditions can hinder the adoption of circular economy practices. The former may struggle to convince their consumers to change their status quo, by accessing products as a service, rather than owning them (Sgambaro et al. 2024). In addition, the practitioners adopting products-as-a-service systems may find it difficult to quantify their performance outcomes related to resource savings and customer satisfaction levels and to evaluate the success of their product-service models, accurately, due to a lack of established metrics.
In a similar vein, the customers of sharing economies and leasing systems ought to trust the quality standards and safety features of the products and services they use (Sergianni et al. 2024). Any negative incidents reported through previous consumers’ testimonials and reviews can undermine the prospective customers’ confidence in the service provider or in the manufacturer who produced the product in the first place. Notwithstanding, several sharing economy models rely on community participation and localized networks, which can pose possible challenges for scalability. As businesses seek to expand their operations, it may prove hard for them to consistently maintain the same level of trust and quality in their service delivery. Moreover, many commentators argue that the rapid growth of sharing economies often outpaces existing regulatory frameworks. The lack of regulations, in certain jurisdictions, in this regard, can create uncertainties and gray areas for businesses as well as for their consumers.
I have just returned back to base after a productive two-day foreign expert meeting.
Once again, it was a positive experience to connect with European academic colleagues, to review and discuss research proposals worth thousands of Euros.
My big congratulations go to the successful scholars who passed the shortlisting phase, based on our evaluation scores.
The best proposals will eventually receive national government funds for transformative projects that will add value to society and the natural environment.
Featuring snippets from an article that was accepted for publication through Springer’s “Service Business”.
Suggested citation: Camilleri, M.A., Bhatnagar, S.B. & Chakraborty, D. (2025). Exaggerated statements in online consumer reviews: Causes and implications. Service Business, 19, Art. 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-025-00590-6
Abstract
This study investigates the factors that contribute to the creation of inflated consumer testimonials. Quantitative data were gathered from four hundred forty (440) respondents who shared their service experiences through popular social media platforms. A covariance-based structural equations model approach has been used to analyze the data. The results suggest that psychological and emotional factors including the consumers’ self-image, self-enhancement as well as their motivations for retribution against service providers, are having a significant effect on the development of amplified review content.
Researchers have frequently reported that certain individuals tend to misrepresent facts and may willingly decide to deceive other persons, in their daily conversations, including in virtual ones (Moqbel and Jain 2025; Sahut et al. 2024). It is very likely that such persons would fabricate content when they engage in online conversations (Plotkina et al. 2020) and may even create inflated claims in their user generated content, while sharing personal experiences with online users (Belarmino et al. 2022; Bozkurt et al. 2023). Electronic word of mouth communications, like online reviews, are not always truthful (Camilleri, 2022; Kapoor et al. 2021; Lee et al. 2022; Tomazelli et al. 2024), as they may frequently feature inflated claims (Román et al. 2023). A few researchers have even suggested that exaggerated reviews can have an adverse effect on their credibility (Chatterjee et al. 2023).
A lack of credibility and trustworthiness in online reviews could negatively affect the consumers’ perceptions and attitudes toward the business (Camilleri and Filieri 2023; Tan and Chen 2023). For instance, Fong et al. (2024) distinguished between trustworthy and untrustworthy content presented in online consumer testimonials. Yet, for the time being, there is still scarce research focused on the propagation of inflated claims in online reviews (Arif and Chandwani 2024). Various researchers have often attempted to find ways to detect misinformation and prefabricated online content including in social media and review platforms (Chen et al. 2022).
However, in many cases, it proves difficult to recognize the identities of those reviewers who are sharing overblown and deceitful statements about their experiences in online platforms (Bylok 2022). Notwithstanding, there may be different reasons why individuals engage in deceptive behaviors. People may decide to deceive others for personal gain, and/or to protect their own image or reputation. Their intention could be to manipulate others to achieve desired outcomes (Min and Wakslak 2022). Alternatively, they may rationalize their deceitful behaviors due to psychological factors. Such individuals would probably convince themselves that their actions are justified or harmless (Costa Filho et al. 2023; Petrescu et al. 2022).
Undoubtedly, the topic about deceitful, unreliable and inflated online reviews warrants further investigation, as these electronic word-of-mouth communications may constitute false advertising or fraud. Prospective consumers can be manipulated and misled into buying substandard or misrepresented products/services. For example, the use of generative AI could exacerbate the pervasiveness of fake inflated review content with high linguistic sophistication. Hence, it may prove hard for online users to detect the legitimacy and veracity of consumer reviews. Certainly, further investigation is warranted on this topic, to better understand the incidence and the scale of the exaggerated claims featured in user-generated content, their underlying motivations and drivers, as well as the identification of technological and regulatory responses.
In this light, this research identifies the factors and the extent to which online users share overstatements and amplified assertions in consumer review platforms. Specifically, the underlying research questions are: [RQ1] How and to what extent are the consumers’ altruistic intentions to provide customer-focused reviews contributing to the development of exaggerated claims in their testimonials? [RQ2] How and to what extent are the consumers’ constructive reviews aimed at service providers having an effect on the development of exaggerated claims in their testimonials? [RQ3] How and to what extent are the consumers’ psychological factors including their self-esteem and self-image having an effect on the development of exaggerated claims in their testimonials? [RQ4] How and to what extent are the consumers’ dissatisfaction levels with the services they receive and their retribution motivations having an effect on the development of exaggerated claims in their testimonials?
This empirical study builds on extant theoretical underpinnings related to the interpersonal deception theory (Buller and Burgoon 1996; Buller et al. 1996; Burgoon 2015; Gaspar et al. 2022) to delve into the factors that can lead consumers to create inflated claims in online reviews (Hill Cummings et al. 2024; Valdez et al. 2018). The researchers validate constructs that were tried and tested in academia including altruistic motivations to support prospects and/or businesses (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004; Yoo and Gretzel 2008), perceived self-enhancement, perceived self-image and retribution behaviors (Yoo and Gretzel 2008).
Unlike previous studies, that focus on how reviews could influence purchase decisions, or those that investigate the rationale for sharing reviews, this contribution examines the processes and motivations that lead to the articulation of exaggerated claims in testimonials (that can be either positive or negative). From the outset, this original research rejects the dominant assumption that inflated reviews are simply driven by the consumers’ egos, or from their malicious intentions. On the contrary, it suggests that altruistic appraisals that are meant to support prospective customers, constructive criticism to service providers or feedback motivated by retributive intentions, after experiencing service failures, and/or the integration of psychological self-concepts could amplify or trigger exaggerated claims in consumer reviews. As far as the authors are aware, for the time being, there are no other studies that have integrated the above factors in the same conceptual model by referring to the interpersonal deception theory as an exploratory lens. Therefore, this contribution aims to address this knowledge gap, in the tourism and hospitality industry context. The study advances a novel theoretical model that is empirically tested, in terms of the constructs’ reliabilities and validities. Moreover, it also sheds light on the significance of the causal paths that predict the consumers’ likelihood of creating exaggerated content in review platforms.
Substantia Mea 
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