Search Results (27)

Financial technologies metamorphose economies with customer-focused innovation. In this way, financial inclusion is fostered and economic growth is increased. However, risks, trust issues, and ethical concerns stem from the faster advancement of digital technologies and expanding financial innovation. Thus, this paper aims to understand the risks and barriers associated with FinTech and consumer adoption, focussing on the impact of digitalization on financial products/services’ acceptance. The research investigates the impact of digitalization on financial services and the recognition of the role played in the global economy by FinTech. For this reason, the regression analysis was used to explore the influence and correlation of various variables on FinTech in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, such as Internet usage, online shopping, paying bills via the Internet, and making and receiving digital payments. The results show differences between three clusters of CEEs in terms of FinTech adoption. While several past studies have explored the advantages of FinTech, few studies have investigated the risks associated with its adoption, trust, and barriers to its usage in different country contexts. The present paper fills the gap by analysing the data on Internet usage, online shopping, paying bills via Internet, and sending or receiving digital payments in CEE countries. The study recommends that FinTech companies share information online not only to present their offerings to users, but also to promote financial education through clear and straightforward communication about the features of their services. This approach can indirectly benefit society by contributing to financial development, inclusion, social stability, and, consequently, sustainable development. Full article

Tropical fruit consumption has increased globally, with 95% of production in low- and middle-income countries, often with a questionable social and environmental impact. This study explores the potential of sustainable tropical fruit consumption in Central and Eastern Europe. The researchers surveyed 2266 Czech respondents on their attitudes toward tropical fruits and the role of ethical certification in their purchasing decisions. Using a structural equation model (SEM), the study identified the factors influencing consumers’ decisions to buy Fairtrade fruit, focusing on awareness of related global issues, including their environmental and economic impacts. The findings indicate that despite the increasing supply and consumer awareness of tropical fruits in the Czech market, most respondents preferred traditional tropical fruits like bananas (99%), pineapples (94%), mangoes (78%), and avocados (65%). The study found that 42% of respondents were familiar with Fairtrade and that 55% intended to buy it, but that consumers often purchased it unintentionally due to retailers’ marketing strategies. The results of the SEM showed that consumers’ ethical shopping preferences and environmental awareness significantly contributed to Fairtrade purchasing behaviour, whereas economic and global challenges did not have a substantial impact. Therefore, for the long-term sustainability of the ethical tropical fruit sector, greater consumer education on the social and economic aspects of ethical products is needed. Full article

This study examines the relationships between socio-demographic factors, purchase frequency, internet expertise, and unethical return behavior in apparel e-commerce, with a particular focus on the act of wardrobing—wearing and then returning used apparel. The research involved a survey of 1026 online apparel consumers from Portugal and the Czech Republic. The results show that frequent buyers, internet-savvy users, women and younger e-consumers report more satisfactory return experiences. However, several e-consumers engage in wardrobe shopping, with higher rates observed among males, internet-savvy users and youth. There are differences between the countries studied: in the Czech sample, men and advanced internet users are more likely to engage in wardrobing, while in the Portuguese sample, it is more prevalent among younger e-consumers. The results also document that, overall, men are seven times more likely to practice unethical return, while increasing age decreases the likelihood. The originality of the study lies in its approach and findings, which contribute to the understanding of post-purchase behavior and moral hazards in e-commerce and highlight the need for retailers to balance return policies that prevent abuse while maintaining customer satisfaction. Recommendations are made for improving loyalty programs and personalizing the e-shopping experience to minimize returns and promote ethical consumer behavior. Further research is suggested to develop these findings and improve return management in apparel e-commerce. Full article

Introduction: The popularity of vegetarian and vegan diets is linked to various motivations, such as health, ethics, ecology, and social and religious influence. India has the highest proportion of vegetarians and vegans. The practise of these diets is linked to moral and health reasons and environmental concerns. Vegetarianism may also be associated with eating disorders such as orthorexia (ON). Aim: The main aim of this study was to determine the psychosocial aspects of vegetarian diets. Understanding these aspects is crucial for identifying potential risks and developing effective interventions. This study investigated the reasons for following vegetarian diets, the duration of dietary adherence, the occurrence of feelings of restriction in selected situations, and the risk of orthorexia and other eating disorders. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted among 186 individuals (82 vegetarians and 104 traditional dieters) between October 2023 and April 2024. The survey was administered via a Computer-Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) using Google Forms, distributed through social media, forums, and private messages. The inclusion criteria for the study group included consent, an age over 18, and a vegetarian diet, excluding those with eating disorders or diseases requiring strict diet therapy. The control group criteria were similar, excluding vegetarians and those requiring special diets. Four unreliable questionnaires were excluded from the analysis. The survey consisted of four sections: metric data, the ORTO-15 questionnaire, the EAT-26 questionnaire, and the TFEQ-13 questionnaire. Results: The main motivations for following vegetarian diets were ethical and environmental (86.9%) and health (32.1%) reasons. Over half of the vegetarians had been following a plant-based diet for over five years. Vegetarians were more likely to feel restricted in restaurants and when grocery shopping. The ORTO-15 results indicate a higher risk of orthorexia among vegetarians (48.8% vs. 29.4% in the control group; p = 0.00673). The EAT-26 questionnaire showed a higher, but not statistically significant, risk of eating disorders among vegetarians (23.8% vs. 14.7%; p = 0.11391). The TFEQ-13 showed no significant differences between groups (Subscale 1: food restriction, p = 0.77279; Subscale 2: lack of control in overeating, p = 0.91935; Subscale 3: eating under the influence of emotions, p = 0.16612). Conclusions: This study concluded that ethical and environmental considerations and a belief in health benefits mainly drive vegetarians. An analysis of BMI revealed no significant differences between groups. The ORTO-15 results suggest a higher risk of orthorexia among vegetarians. The EAT-26 indicated a higher, but not statistically significant, risk of eating disorders among vegetarians and vegans. The TFEQ-13 showed no significant differences in restrictive eating, lack of control in overeating, and emotional eating. Vegetarians were likelier to encounter dietary difficulties in restaurants and shopping but less likely to feel socially excluded. Full article

Existing research has tended to overlook the diverse roles of union leadership in contributing to member attitudes. Drawing on the social information processing theory, this study examines how union leaders’ (shop stewards) service-oriented leadership relates to member job satisfaction. To clarify the mechanism underlying this relationship, this study focuses on union instrumentality as a mediator. The research also examines managers’ ethical leadership as a conditional factor in the relationship between union leaders’ service-oriented leadership and member job satisfaction through union instrumentality. To test our hypothesis, this study analyzed the results of a survey of 603 respondents from two branches of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union. The findings of this study indicate that union instrumentality is the link between service-oriented union leadership and member job satisfaction. Additionally, the strength of the mediated relationship between the aforementioned factors through union instrumentality is contingent on managerial ethical leadership. This study contributes to an integrated understanding of the way in which service-oriented union stewards and ethical managers influence member job satisfaction through their leadership. Full article

The dramatic growth of online shopping worldwide in the last few years generated negative consequences for local small retailers who do not adopt information technologies. Furthermore, the e-commerce sector is considered a good opportunity to develop sustainable logistic processes. To reach this goal, the proposed paper presents a mathematical model and a metaheuristic algorithm to solve a multi-objective capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) distinguished by economic, green, and ethical objective functions. The proposed algorithm is a multi-objective simulated annealing (MOSA) that is implemented in a software architecture and validated with real-world instances that differ for the product type delivered and the geographic distribution of customers. The main result of each test is a tri-dimensional Pareto front, i.e., a decision-support system for practitioners in selecting the best solution according to their needs. From these fronts, it can be observed that if the economic and environmental performances slightly deteriorate by 1.6% and 4.5%, respectively, the social one improves by 19.4%. Furthermore, the developed MOSA shows that the environmental and social objective functions depend on the product dimensions and the geographic distribution of customers. Regarding the former aspect, this paper reports that, counter-intuitively, the metabolic energy consumption per driver decreases with bigger products because the number of necessary vehicles (and drivers) increases, and, thus, the workload is divided among more employees. Regarding the geographic distribution, this manuscript illustrates that, despite similar traveled distances, highly variable altitudes cause more carbon emissions compared to flat distributions. Finally, this contribution shows that delivering small goods decreases the distance that vehicles travel empty by 59%, with a consequent cost reduction of 16%. Full article

In the contemporary digital marketing context, this study aimed to investigate the influence of firm-generated content and social media advertising on fast-food consumption patterns among the adult population. Utilizing a questionnaire distributed to customers of a restaurant in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, convenience sampling was employed. The findings underscored a significant positive relationship between firm-generated content and social media engagement, as well as between the latter and online shopping behavior. However, it was determined that word of mouth did not significantly moderate the relationship between attitudes towards social media advertisements and fast-food consumption patterns. From a theoretical perspective, these results enrich the understanding of how digital dynamics shape consumer behavior in specific contexts. Practically speaking, they prompt a critical reflection on the ethics of marketing in promoting products potentially detrimental to health, urging both companies and policymakers to reconsider their strategies and regulations, respectively. Full article

This study proposes a framework for a systems engineering-based approach to context-aware personalization, which is applied to e-commerce through the understanding and modeling of user behavior from their interactions with sales channels and media. The framework is practical and built on systems engineering principles. It combines three conceptual components to produce signals that provide content relevant to the users based on their behavior, thus enhancing their experience. These components are the ‘recognition and knowledge’ of the users and their behavior (persona); the awareness of users’ current contexts; and the comprehension of their situation and projection of their future status (intent prediction). The persona generator is implemented by leveraging an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to assign users into cohorts and learn cohort behavior while preserving their privacy in an ethical framework. The component of the users’ current context is fulfilled as a microservice that adopts novel e-commerce data interpretations. The best result of 97.3% accuracy for the intent prediction component was obtained by tokenizing categorical features with a pre-trained BERT (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers) model and passing these, as the contextual embedding input, to an LSTM (long short-term memory) neural network. Paired cohort-directed prescriptive action is generated from learned behavior as a recommended alternative to users’ shopping steps. The practical implementation of this e-commerce personalization framework is demonstrated in this study through the empirical evaluation of experimental results. Full article

The fashion industry represents a significant source of consumerism within the global economy and requires substantial funding, eco-friendly practices, and ethical attitudes towards human capital, which are the triple bottom line of sustainability. Conscious customers are the key to reshaping the fashion industry by shopping and supporting fashion brands that adopt sustainable practices. Thus, the purpose of this study is to extract the factors affecting the decision-making process of conscious customers in selecting fashion brands adopting ethical and sustainable implementations, to present a case study covering alternative fashion brands, and to evaluate them in terms of sustainability measures. A bibliometric analysis is conducted within the scope of this research to address the most suitable and original decision-making technique; hence, a novel neutrosophic set-based ORESTE approach is proposed to rank the alternative brands. Next, after reaching the case study findings, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to illustrate the parameter changes’ impact on the result in order to validate the findings’ outcomes. Thus, this paper contributes to the literature by proposing a novel approach as an alternative to Besson ranking, extracting sustainable and ethical fashion practices of brands, and identifying the related reports and websites as references to measure sustainability in the fashion industry. The practitioners and managers can comprehend the factors to be taken into consideration by assessing the sustainability status of the particular fashion enterprises and can examine their positions in the global market within their competitors. Full article

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused sicknesses ranging from mild to deadly, which disrupted lives and healthcare systems across the globe. Despite the availability of vaccines that are effective in significantly reducing the risks of death and severe disease, misperceptions of COVID-19 vaccine safety, efficacy, risks, and mistrust in institutions responsible for vaccination campaigns have been reported as factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy, leading to an unsatisfactory vaccination rate, which resulted in some countries implementing mandatory COVID-19 vaccination to increase vaccine uptake. This scoping review aimed at mapping global countries that have adopted mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and the reaction of citizens. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews was used. Google Scholar was used to identify papers published in English from December 2019 to February 2022, irrespective of their methodology. A total of 140 studies were identified. After screening for duplication, access, and relevance, 24 were eligible for review. Approximately eleven countries implemented mandatory vaccination, mostly among healthcare workers. Citizens’ reactions towards the policy varied, with some in support of the policy but with a preference for the healthcare workers, and some in support but with the condition that it will only apply to travel, schools, and shopping areas, while others rejected the policy. Studies that may be relevant but were excluded due to eligibility criteria may be a limiting factor to this study. Several ethical considerations should be explicitly addressed when evaluating whether mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is an ethically justifiable policy option as recommended by the WHO policy brief. Full article

We are already more than year away from the pandemic period of COVID-19; its effects and the changes it caused in our lives are becoming ever clearer, and these effects include our food choices and motives. In this study, we investigated changes in food choice motives due to the COVID-19 in college students in Greece; we used the 10 key food motives, namely health, convenience, sensory pleasure, appeal, nutritional quality, moral concerns, weight control, mood and stress, familiarity, price, and shopping frequency and behavior. A sample of 1017 college students answered the questionnaire survey through the Google platform, conducted in January to February 2023. The collected data were analyzed with statistical tools, combining cross and chi-square tests. The students exhibited subtle and very important preferences in terms of health, convenience, weight control, and mood and stress. Food choices related to sensory appeal, nutritional quality, and familiarity were of less importance for the students, similarly to ethical concerns; concern regarding the environmental impact of the food was greater than expected. The motive which continues to be of the highest concern for students before and after the pandemic is price; the students look for value for money in food (88.8%), inexpensiveness (80.7%), and cheapness (78.7%). The shopping frequency and behavior motives, which changed during the pandemic, have now returned to the preferences of the pre-pandemic period, with the purchasing of foods distributed between supermarkets (29%), local grocery stores (37.6%), online (12.3%), and by delivery services (20.4%), weekly or every two weeks. College students’ preference for cooking full meals at home is now very high, reaching 74.4%; students mostly avoid eating at restaurants or eating fast food (only 27%). Our findings indicate that students have already returned to their food choice motives of the period before COVID-19, except with regard to home-cooked food which now ranks higher in their preferences. Full article

If one looks at the United States over the past sixty years, it becomes clear that religious and spiritual practices have proliferated in unexpected places and spaces. They have become thoroughly ensconced in the boardrooms, offices, shop floors, and retail spaces of business establishments. From there, they have seeped into just about every imaginable area of American life, turning schools, parks, shopping malls, sports stadiums, hospitals, gyms, health food restaurants, spas, and the very apps on our computers and cell phones into corporate spaces promising new and enticing forms of spiritual enchantment. The purpose of this essay is to document the way new forms of spirituality have become part of a much longer history of the entanglement of business and religion, a history that began in monasteries, formed the bedrock of the Puritan work ethic, and is now an established aspect of the neoliberal ideal of the privatization and corporatization of all aspects of human life. Full article

The sustainable consumption trend is gaining popularity among Gen Z. Guided by the environmental awareness construct, Norm Activation Model, corporate social responsibility paradigm, and shopping value perspective, this study aims to assess how environmental awareness is connected to consumer evaluations of their personal consumption behavior and corporate social responsibility to help explain their sustainable apparel purchase intention, in conjunction with consumer shopping motivation. An online survey was conducted with a group of Gen Z consumers (N = 192). The results from testing the conceptual model indicated that environmental awareness was positively linked to personal norms and CSR expectations, both of which were similarly related to green purchase intentions. While hedonic and utilitarian shopping value was positively associated with CSR expectations, they were both negative predictors of green purchase intentions. This study is the first to integrate environmental ethics, personal ethics, expectations of corporate ethics, and hedonic vs. utilitarian consumption value to better understand the attitude–behavior gap in sustainable apparel purchase decision-making. Full article

Despite local instances of single arbitrators’ corruption not having proven completely absent from arbitration chronicles over the last decades, one may safely argue that until very recently, no scandal had ever been severe enough to shake the foundations of arbitration communities on a regional, let alone global, level. However, this eventually occurred in 2019 in Peru as the outcome of one of the countless parallel investigations stemming from the 2016 Odebrecht corruption saga, propagated from Brazil to the whole of Latin America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and beyond, and labelled by many as the largest scandal of its kind in recent history. Peru’s vicissitudes revolved around a number of corrupted arbitrators who systematically accepted bribes and political favours from Odebrecht in return for favourable awards upholding the repricing of public-procurement contracts. This story can teach us about more than the simple evidence that arbitrators, too, might fall for corruption; criminologically, it suggests that arbitration as a dispute-resolution mechanism can find itself embedded within regionalised networked systems of corruption-prone regulatory capture, and even play an active role in their normalised perpetuation. To prevent this, while having regard for safeguarding the independence and confidentiality of arbitral proceedings to the highest possible extent, the enactment of context-sensitive binding regulation is advised. Full article

The outbreak of COVID-19 has entirely changed how consumers behave, due to an over-reliance on online shopping. With the global pandemic demanding people to stay home, multiple companies had to find innovative strategies to remain competitive and adapt to these rapid changes. However, the pandemic has also propelled the development of technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI concerns the engineering of machines and programs to make them intelligent, make decisions on their own or provide humans with information that will aid them in the decision-making process. Artificial intelligence software can be programmed according to an organization’s needs and performance goals. Although AI offers e-businesses multiple advantages, in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors, it is still a relatively new technology. A lack of understanding of its implementation will hinder organizations from reaping the full benefits of this technology. Moreover, multiple disputes regarding AI’s ethicality and privacy concerns have led to further research focused on making these systems more reliable and ethical. Full article