Search Results (21)

The climate emergency is increasingly looming, and its consequences on nature and human systems are increasingly severe and pervasive, as reported by the world’s leading conferences and organizations on the subject. There appears to be an immediate need to adopt more sustainable behaviors in order to stem consequences that are becoming increasingly dramatic. In this regard, environmental psychology and other related disciplines have sought and still seek to understand how to translate the environmental concerns of individuals and communities into effective and efficient conservation and protection actions to contain the emergency and avoid further consequences. The contribution of psychological theories, particularly the transtheoretical model of change and the planned behavior model, appears very promising for assessing and promoting the potential for activation toward sustainability. The aim of this study was to develop a new conceptualization of the psychological construct of readiness to change (RtC) applied to sustainability issues and validated internally and externally through two separate studies (N1 = 228, N2 = 713). The sample for the two studies was recruited by distributing an anonymous online survey. For Study 1, we administered an online survey investigating basic sociodemographic characteristics and the preliminary set of 42 items of the readiness to change scale. For Study 2, the survey was composed of the following tools: a sociodemographic form, the readiness to change scale, a connectedness to nature scale, a climate change attitude survey, consumers’ perceived readiness toward green products, and a pro-environmental behaviors scale. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, 29 items were selected from an initial set of 42. The 29 items were divided and organized into seven factors (namely: perceived importance of the problem/change, motivation, self-efficacy, effectiveness of the proposed solution, social support, action and involvement, and perceived readiness). Each factor showed adequate reliability (McDonald’s ω range: 0.74–0.87). Regarding external validity, the scale showed correlations—with typical to large effect sizes—with pro-environmental identity, green attitudes, sustainable intentions, and pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) (i.e., conservation, environmental citizenship, food, transportation). Given the results obtained, we can say that the scale we constructed can infer the individual’s propensity to enact PEBs, and consequently it can give input to the implementation of interventions aimed at stimulating RtC and, therefore, sustainable behaviors. In conclusion, the scale appears valid and usable for assessing the activation potential of both individuals but also at the group and community levels—the latter factor being an important contribution to scientific research, since most of the instruments used to date fail to estimate this aspect. Full article

The digital era has profoundly reshaped consumer behavior, with social media and e-commerce platforms revolutionizing shopping experiences. This study integrates interviews with questionnaire survey to investigate the nuanced differences in consumer citizenship behavior (CCB) across online and offline shopping contexts, as well as the influence of consumer perceived value (CPV) and consumer perceived corporate social responsibility (CPCSR). Through the use of multiple regression and permutation tests to analyze the interplay between consumer perception and CCB, the study reveals the following: (1) CPV positively influences all four dimensions of CCB, while CPCSR significantly impacts only recommendation and feedback; (2) the influence of CPV on dimensions other than recommendation and of CPCSR on dimensions other than helping varies significantly between online and offline contexts. These results enhance our understanding of consumer behavior and offer actionable insights for businesses to build and enhance consumer connections in the digital age. Full article

Understanding the factors and motivations that drive consumers to engage in eco-friendly behavior within the realm of social commerce is essential to provide insights into crafting targeted marketing efforts and campaigns. By aligning eco-friendly initiatives with the inherent motivations of social commerce users, businesses can enhance the effectiveness of their sustainability efforts. Despite that, limited research has investigated the potential impact of social commerce, aligned with green customer citizenship, on eco-friendly behavior and staying in green hotels. To address this gap, this study aims to examine the level to which social commerce practices contribute to shaping customers’ eco-friendly behavior in the context of eco-friendly hotels. A quantitative approach design using a questionnaire survey to collect primary data was conducted. Based on valid responses from 336 participants, a structured equation modeling was performed using Smart PLS 4.0 to examine the conceptual model and justify the hypotheses of the study. The findings highlighted the critical role of social commerce in shaping customer eco-friendly behavior and staying in green hotels. The results also confirmed the moderating role of green customer citizenship in supporting the linkage between social commerce and customer eco-friendly behavior in hotel settings. These results contribute to the growing hospitality body of knowledge and provide some valuable practical implications enabling eco-friendly hotels to leverage social commerce as a medium for promoting green initiatives and services. Full article

The goal of this study is to analyze a proposed model that shows how customer perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer citizenship behavior (CCB) in the banking sector are directly and indirectly related. In addition, we examine how CSR contributes to the growth of customer engagement. Customers of Indian banks made up the study’s target population, and 363 responses were collected as part of the sample. According to the findings, customer perception of CSR is favorably correlated with customer engagement and CCB. Moreover, customer engagement serves as a mediating factor in the link between consumer perception of CSR and CCB. Our findings demonstrate that CSR influences consumer engagement directly, and that customer engagement partially mediates the relationship between CSR and CCB. The results also provide evidence in favor of CSR and customer engagement as CCB outcomes. Full article

The hometown brand is symbolic of a hometown and can induce homesickness in consumers. Especially for those who live in other countries, it can stimulate their inner sense of belonging, self-identity, and effectiveness, in turn generating a series of brand behaviors and promoting sustainable brand development. In this study, we adopt a situational experimental research method from the perspective of sense of place theory and social exchange theory in order to assess the regulatory mechanism of place attachment through the mediating mechanism of psychological ownership. In this way, we explore the mechanism underlying the relationship between homesickness advertising (vs. non-homesickness advertising) on the hometown brand citizenship behavior of consumers. Our findings suggest that (1) homesickness advertising has a more positive effect on consumer hometown brand citizenship behavior than non-homesickness advertising; (2) psychological ownership plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between homesickness advertising (vs. non-homesickness advertising) and consumer hometown brand citizenship behavior; and (3) place attachment plays a moderating role in the influence of homesickness advertising (vs. non-homesickness advertising) on the hometown brand citizenship behavior of consumers through psychological ownership. Full article

The objective of this study was to verify the influence of corporate image and subjective norms on consumers’ purchase intention of a firm’s products. Another important objective was to determine what kind of citizenship—corporate citizenship or customer citizenship—has a greater impact on the relationships between corporate image and purchase intention, and between subjective norms and purchase intention. The findings suggest that both ethical corporate image and subjective norms have positive effects on ethical purchase intention, and that both corporate and customer citizenship significantly moderate this causal relationship. Specifically, we found that corporate citizenship exerted greater impact as a moderator than customer citizenship on ethical purchase behavior. This finding has important theoretical/practical implications as it highlights the weighted attention to be paid to individual versus corporate focus in the study of ethical consumption behavior. In particular, the finding sheds light on the importance of subjective norms as a social peer pressure mechanism since ethical consumption is embedded with socially responsible consumption behavior. Full article

Recently, with increasing customer awareness about environmental issues, guests staying in hotels and potential consumers are more and more concerned about environmentally sustainable practices and their associated consequences. From the hotel industry perspective, empirical studies conducted on the association between customer citizenship behavior (CCB) and environmentally sustainable practices (ESPs) with the existence of green satisfaction (GS) are scarce. Consequently, the primary aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of ESPs on GS and CCB in a sample of five-star eco-friendly hotels in Egypt, as well as exploring the potential mediative role of GS in the relationship between CCB and ESPs. Additionally, we attempt to empirically determine to what extent GS directly impacts CCB. The study suggests a conceptual model for testing four hypothesized relationships between ESPs, GS, and CCB. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping was employed for testing our hypotheses. The findings of the study confirmed the significant positive impacts of ESPs on GS and CCB. Further, GS significantly and positively affects CCB. Moreover, GS partially mediates the relationship between CCB and ESPs. Given the study findings, some practical implications for improving GS and boosting CCBs in the green/eco-friendly hotel industry context are suggested. Full article

Agritourism is not a new phenomenon; moreover, it has increased significantly over the past decade and is expected to continue growing in the future. Despite this growth, there is no shared understanding of agritourism, which is problematic because it creates confusion and diminishes its appeal among consumers, thereby impeding communication and collaboration between stakeholders. Agritourism activities can be carried out on a microscale in rural areas by families and agricultural practitioners or on a large scale by hotels, restaurants, and catering firms. Despite many developing countries’ agricultural potential, agritourism has not been inserted into development plans in these countries. Only agritourism in small accommodation enterprises is carried out on a microscale by rural families. This study seeks to test the relationship between the positive impacts of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation and agritourism performance, with the mediating effects of support for P2P accommodations and organizational citizenship behavior towards P2P accommodations. The data were derived from 300 Airbnb consumers and hosts of agritourism accommodations in the eastern province of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The results of “Structural Equation Modeling” (SEM) via the “Partial least squares” (PLS) showed a positive direct relationship between peer-to-peer accommodation and agritourism performance with a significant mediating role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior and a positive moderating role of information on Agritourism destinations. Several theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Full article

This work deals with the proposal of a methodology for the survey of citizens’ attitudes in relation to their citizenship in light of the economic dimensions of environmental citizenship (EC). This is especially beneficial for university students, doctoral students and young researchers. The design allows for quantitative data processing. Thus, closed questions are dominant. However, open questions may serve as an incentive to set up further research. Demographic questions (age, education, gender, residence, social status, etc.) are used to perform a contingency analysis. Relevant hypotheses will be tested with suitable statistical methods, depending on the method of sampling (random vs. intentional). How the respondents perceived the status of being a citizen shall be investigated using the semantic differential method—a pair of opposite adjectives on the value scale. The proposed pairs are: actual–outdated, active–passive, easy–hard, significant–meaningless, normal–subnormal, attractive–repulsive. The concepts of a global citizen [¹,²] and “Environmental Citizen” defined by ENEC [³] point to the citizen as a mediator of change from the local to global level. Thus follows, especially within EU countries, the verification of whether citizenship is perceived as more “regional” (country affiliation) or more as “European”. This attitude can be further related to attitudes towards EU institutions. Based on the above definitions, we propose determining the involvement of respondents in civic activities (social and environmental level, etc.). The frequency of involvement is examined at set levels from “none” (through sporadic) to “permanent”. Barry [⁴] criticized firms and public bodies for adopting the language of EC as being motivated either by compliance with corporate environmental reporting or as evidence of a commitment to the concept of CSR. Here, encouraging employees to be environmental citizens is simply an integral part of corporate systems. Barry describes such EC as a part-time occupation—something one engages in during working hours [⁵]. Thus, we include a question focused on the transfer of habits and standards of behavior from the organization to civic life (the answers use a Likert-type scale). The potential transfer of habits can be at the following levels: ethical principles, responsibility for the environment, the ways of communicating with people, and the relationship with local communities. Moreover, the cultural environment specifics could be included. The next part focuses on which entities play an important role in environmental responsibility: the state (institutions); EU institutions; businesses; individuals (their civic activities); individuals (their consumer decisions). Considering the last two items, the awareness of citizenship is surveyed with regard to: having rights, having responsibility, and having an affiliation with society. From the consumer’s position, consumer rights, responsibility (for purchasing decisions), and belonging to a group of consumers are also examined. The respondents assess the extent to which their purchasing behavior is affected by: global trends, their own discretion, personalities or institutions, media, and local influences. Full article

The twenty-first century has been full of fundamental changes in consumers’ behavior patterns, especially with the use of diverse social media knowledge-sharing platforms. Therefore, companies have highlighted the significance of knowledge sharing and the importance of social network use in purchasing processes. Accordingly, his paper tries to reveal how consumer purchase behavior (CPB) can be affected by consumer knowledge sharing behavior (CKSB) and the moderating role played by value co-creation dimensions, which are citizenship behavior (CB) and participation behavior (PB), within a sustainable e-commerce field. To test our hypotheses deducted from the literature review, we opted for the PLS-SEM method. We also employed other innovative approaches, such as the IPMA matrix, MAICOM test, FIMIX approach, and CTA analysis, to evaluate the outer and inner model. Our statistical population covered individuals living in Hungary with at least one online purchase involvement. We distributed the questionnaire via various online platforms and, finally, 433 completed questionnaires were prepared for analysis. The results showed that CPB, CB, and PB are positively influenced by the CKSB. However, the link between CPB and CB was not confirmed. As for the moderating role of gender, the permutation test was applied to compare male and female groups and see the difference between them. With a focus on CKSB, this study contributes to the success of international marketing strategies to attain higher competitive advantages. Full article

Brand symbolism, which stems from the vitality of the brand and feeds self-symbolism and social symbolism, has become an increasingly important strategy for firms to enhance consumer behavior. Building on attachment theory, social identity theory, and cognitive consistency theory, and using data from 439 customers of Starbucks in Lebanon, we used an integrative model to examine how brand symbolism, perceived service quality, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) skepticism jointly affect two types of Customer Citizenship Behavior (CCB): helping other customers and policing other customers. The findings revealed that brand symbolism has a significant positive impact on CCBs and is a stronger predictor of policing other customers than helping other customers in the hospitality context. Further, perceived service quality acts as a mediator between the brand symbolism and CCB dimensions. This study discovered that CSR skepticism negatively moderates the direct and indirect effects of brand symbolism on CCBs through perceived service quality. The findings contribute to the literature by examining the boundary conditions of how and under what conditions brand symbolism affects CCBs by enrolling perceived service quality as a mediator variable and CSR skepticism as a moderator variable in the brand symbolism–CCB relationship. Full article

This study explored green restaurant consumers’ self-actualization and self-transcendence motivations that drive customer citizenship behavior (CCB). A survey of green restaurant consumers was administered, and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was performed. The findings indicate the presence of positive associations between pride and self-actualization, and healthy social narcissism and self-transcendence. This study also found a positive relationship between self-actualization and self-transcendence, and they are positively associated with CCB. Interestingly, the findings suggest that green restaurant consumers’ pride, self-actualization and CCB path is more dominant path vis-à-vis the path from healthy social narcissism mediated by self-transcendence to CCB. Full article

In this study, expectancy–valence theory was used from the perspective of corporate green management to investigate green shared vision (GSV). Moreover, organizational identity theory and psychological ownership theory were combined to propose an integrated conceptual framework. To fill research gaps, an investigation was also conducted with frontline R & D and sales employees to further examine the effect of GSV on organization members’ psychology and behavior. The research results indicate that when under the following circumstances, corporate members can enhance organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) to improve green management performance, gain the favor of green consumers and achieve sustainable consumption goals. First, enterprises should focus on environmental issues and develop their GSV. Second, enterprises should implement the GSV in different aspects, such as product design, processing, marketing and management. Finally, corporate GSV should be in line with the expectations and values of organization members on environmental issues to motivate their OCBE. Therefore, enterprises must implement their GSV to strengthen the green organizational identity and green product psychological ownership of their members. Full article

With sustainability being one of the most common issues facing consumers and society today, this paper explores the status of sustainable consumption in Korea and Japan—societies expected to drive the changes pertaining to sustainable consumption in Asia. Although Korea and Japan have been implementing sustainability-related policies, there is still room for development of sustainability in terms of consumers’ participation. As sustainable consumption is defined as consumers’ environmental decision-making process, which requires cognitive efforts, it is necessary to understand individual’s sustainable consumption based on the conceptual model of behavior, in order to encourage the adoption of more sustainable consumer practices. Being grounded in the revised Theory of Reasoned Action, which adds consumers’ awareness, pro-environmental self-identity, and descriptive norm, this study contributes to a better empirical understanding of the factors that underlie sustainable consumption behaviors with respect to social-cognitive viewpoint. By involving a survey of Korean and Japanese respondents’ awareness, descriptive norm, practical behavior to 47 specific activities, as well as attitude and pro-environmental self-identity, the study works on two levels: on one level, it is a study of sustainability-related consumer activities and behaviors in Korea and Japan; on another level, it identifies key variables to explain sustainable consumption behavior through hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that among the numerous sectors requiring prioritized expansion of sustainable consumption, the area of consumer citizenship has received relatively little publicity. Another important finding is that the failure to practically engage in sustainability-related activities by consumers cannot simply be attributed to knowledge deficit, as consumers in both countries appropriately recognize sustainable consumption. Our results clearly illustrate that consumers perform sustainable consumption behavior based mostly on socially shared connotations—the descriptive norm—while the other key variables affecting sustainable consumption are awareness, and pro-environmental self-identity. However, we also observed that there is no significant effect on attitude, indicating that even a favorable attitude toward performing sustainability-related activities does not directly translate into actual behavior. This paper shows how consumer perceptions of the normality of environmentally friendly behaviors can be used for the design of strategies to promote sustainable consumption in Korean and Japanese societies. In addition, we provide practical guidelines for the expansion of sustainable consumption tailored for the characteristics of each society. Full article

While the number of theoretical concepts surrounding sustainable citizenship, political consumerism and ethical lifestyles is rising continuously, this article is interested in how citizens themselves delineate sustainable citizenship through their practices. Asking which contours real-world sustainable citizenship has, we draw on the practice turn. From this perspective, sustainable citizenship might be an empirical nexus of material practices, like buying organic products or sharing goods. These practices rely on dispositions that include practical rules, attitudes and political values. With survey data from Germany (N = 1350) and using principle component analysis, we reconstruct sustainable citizenship through stable and widespread real-world patterns. The results suggest that sustainable citizenship is a relatively coherent, nonetheless hybrid bundle of performances and dispositions. Real-world sustainable citizenship most resembles political consumerism, but consists overall of three distinct practices: sustainable purchasing, reduced consumption, and green mobility. All three are shown to be connected to engaged citizenship norms and the intention to advance social-ecological change. However, social class seems to prevent some citizens particularly from applying sustainable purchasing, while age and infrastructures constrain green mobility. Altogether, our results show that citizens from all social backgrounds practice sustainable citizenship. Yet they do so through different forms of practices, adjusted to their capabilities. Full article