Search Results (19)

Vietnam’s tourism sector has experienced rapid expansion, yielding significant economic gains, but also escalating environmental and socio-cultural challenges. This necessitates a shift toward sustainable tourism practices. This study develops and tests an integrative model combining the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory to investigate the Sustainable Consumption Behavior (SCB) of domestic travelers in Vietnam. Grounded in the country’s collectivist culture—characterized by a strong emphasis on communal values and social harmony—the research examines how rational decision-making and normative pressures jointly drive eco-friendly travel behaviors. Data were collected from 549 Vietnamese tourists through stratified sampling across three major regions, and were analyzed through a robust multi-step methodology, including Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM), supplemented by regression analysis. The SEM results indicate that the proposed model accounts for 60.8% of the variance in SCB, underscoring its explanatory power. Within the TPB framework, Attitude, Subjective Norms, and Perceived Behavioral Control significantly predict Behavioral Intention, which, in turn, mediates their influence on SCB. In the VBN component, Environmental Awareness shapes Altruistic and Biospheric Values, fostering the New Environmental Paradigm and activating Personal Norms, which exert a direct effect on SCB. This direct influence of Personal Norms, bypassing Behavioral Intention, highlights the role of implicit moral obligations in Vietnam’s collectivist cultural context and challenges Western-centric behavioral models. Beyond these frameworks, Destination Attributes and Consumer Innovativeness emerge as critical direct predictors of SCB, with Destination Attributes showing the strongest effect. Mediation analyses confirm Behavioral Intention’s central role, while moderation tests reveal that gender and travel experience modulate TPB-based relationships, suggesting the value of targeted interventions. Theoretically, this study advances TPB–VBN integration by applying it to a collectivist setting, revealing how cultural norms amplify normative influences on sustainable behavior. Practically, it advocates for strategies such as community-driven initiatives leveraging Personal Norms, educational campaigns to enhance Perceived Behavioral Control, and sustainable destination management initiatives in locations like Da Nang and Ha Long Bay. While the cross-sectional design limits causal claims, the findings provide a foundation for future longitudinal studies and cross-cultural comparisons, particularly in other collectivist societies, potentially incorporating digital engagement and policy incentives as novel factors. Full article

The existing literature on environmentally responsible behavior in tourists focuses primarily on the factors that influence this behavior, such as tourists’ attitudes and negative feelings. However, the intrinsic benefits of conservation for individual and societal well-being are often overlooked. Under the theoretical lens of self-expansion theory, this study examined the influence of Chinese tourists’ tourism autobiographical memory on their environmentally responsible behavior using a questionnaire survey (N = 434) with partial least squares structural equation modeling. The result attested that tourists’ self-expansion and psychological richness serially mediate the association between their tourism autobiographical memory and environmentally responsible behavior as a tourist. In addition, the implicit theories of personality moderate the prediction of tourist autobiographical memory on self-expansion. The results provide an additional explanation for environmentally responsible behavior in tourists, with practical implications for marketers and operators in the industry. Full article

Although the Internet grants access to a large amount of information, it is crucial to verify its reliability before relying on it. False information is a dangerous medium that poses a considerable threat, as it impacts individuals’ perceptions and information processing, eventually shaping people’s behaviors. Misinformation can be weaponized, especially in cross-border conflicts, where it can be used as a means to erode social cohesion by manipulating public opinion and exacerbate tensions between nations. Cognitive Warfare targets human cognition shaping to be a realm of warfare. It entails the synergy of activities designed to alter perceptions of reality, along with other Instruments of Power, to affect attitudes and behaviors by influencing, protecting, or disrupting cognition on an individual, group, or population level to gain an advantage over an opponent. The objective of our study was to identify behavioral patterns and profile personality traits most likely to accept fake news as true, aiming to mitigate the phenomenon and impact of misinformation and disinformation, as well as addressing the concerning effects of Cognitive Warfare. Based on the Big Five Theory model, we investigated the variation in visual attention and level of Conscientiousness, Open-Mindedness, and Emotional Stability in regard to the capability to detect fake news. In this study, we measured Implicit reaction time (IRT) and visual behavior (Eye Tracker) while participants were shown both fake and real news. The results indicated that subjects who were able to differentiate between fake news and real news tended to exhibit lower levels of Open-Mindedness and focused heavily on the visual elements of the posts. Full article

In the context of crowd innovation and the generative design driven by big language models, the exploration of personalized requirements has become a key in significantly improving product innovation, concept feasibility, and design interaction efficiency. To mine a large number of vague and unexpressed implicit requirements of personalized products, a domain knowledge graph-based method is proposed in this research. First, based on the classical theory of design science, the characteristics and categories of personalized implicit requirements are analyzed, and the theoretical basis of implicit requirement mining is formed. Next, in order to improve the practicability and construction efficiency of the domain knowledge graph, a more informative ontology is constructed, and better-performing natural language processing (NLP) models are proposed. Then, a multi-category personalized implicit requirement mining method based on a knowledge graph is proposed. Finally, a platform was developed based on the technical solution proposed in this study, and an example verification was conducted in the field of electromechanical engineering. The efficiency improvement of the training model proposed in the research was analyzed, and the practicality of implicit requirement mining methods are discussed. Full article

Spatial environmental factors can effectively alleviate children’s fear of the medical environment when they seek medical treatment. This study focuses on the special environmental space of a children’s hospital, thoroughly considering the emotional needs of and the therapeutic effects on children as a unique group during medical treatment. By analyzing the existing design of children’s hospital environments, this research actively explores more suitable environmental design solutions for children’s healthcare settings. This study summarizes the user demand factors of children’s hospital environmental space design through field research and analysis interviews and calculates the weight indicators of user demand through AHP hierarchical analysis. On this basis, based on the QFD theoretical model, user needs are transformed into technical needs, and a house of quality is drawn to judge the conflicting needs through the positive and negative correlations between the factors. Finally, the forty invention principles of the TRIZ innovation theory are used to propose a solution to the environmental space program of children’s hospitals to obtain the optimal solution to the environmental space design effect. This study shows that incorporating theoretical models of AHP, QFD, and TRIZ into the environmental space design of children’s hospitals can improve and optimize the environmental space of children’s hospitals, and the example of a children’s hospital can be designed to meet children’s emotional needs according to this model. A series of interesting innovative practices, such as personalized digital information diagnosis and treatment, interesting visual guidance, and the implicit healing effect of color, can be realized. The aim is to create a modern, child-friendly medical environment that not only meets medical functional requirements but also effectively alleviates the stress of pediatric patients during diagnosis and treatment. This study preliminarily verifies the scientificity and rationality of the entire design process and provides a reference for the design practices of children’s hospital environments. Full article

This research investigated the relation between motivation to avoid uncertainty, as reflected in the need for cognitive closure, implicit theories about the malleability of human attributes, and attitudes toward women as leaders vs. followers. In a cross-sectional study (N = 470) conducted in Italy, we hypothesized and found that the need for cognitive closure directly enhanced the belief that women are compatible with followership roles rather than leadership roles. Furthermore, the results from a mediational analysis revealed that the relation between the need for cognitive closure and the belief that women are compatible with followership roles rather than leadership was mediated by implicit person theories (i.e., the conviction that people features are malleable vs. unchangeable). Notably, we obtained these results while controlling for participants’ gender, educational level, and age. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Full article

The personalization of autonomous vehicles or advanced driver assistance systems has been a widely researched topic, with many proposals aiming to achieve human-like or driver-imitating methods. However, these approaches rely on an implicit assumption that all drivers prefer the vehicle to drive like themselves, which may not hold true for all drivers. To address this issue, this study proposes an online personalized preference learning method (OPPLM) that utilizes a pairwise comparison group preference query and the Bayesian approach. The proposed OPPLM adopts a two-layer hierarchical structure model based on utility theory to represent driver preferences on the trajectory. To improve the accuracy of learning, the uncertainty of driver query answers is modeled. In addition, informative query and greedy query selection methods are used to improve learning speed. To determine when the driver’s preferred trajectory has been found, a convergence criterion is proposed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the OPPLM, a user study is conducted to learn the driver’s preferred trajectory in the curve of the lane centering control (LCC) system. The results show that the OPPLM can converge quickly, requiring only about 11 queries on average. Moreover, it accurately learned the driver’s favorite trajectory, and the estimated utility of the driver preference model is highly consistent with the subject evaluation score. Full article

Objective: The current study aimed to investigate the effect of SNS use on graduate students’ depression and further explored the effect of negative social comparison and an individual’s implicit personality theory. Methods: Scales for Social Networking Site Use Intensity, the Negative Social Comparison Measure, the Implicit Personality Theory Inventory, and CES-D were used to investigate 1792 graduate students from a full-time university in Wuhan. Result: (1) Social networking site use was positively correlated with negative social comparison and depression; (2) the mediating effect of negative social comparison was significant in social networking site use’s influence on depression; (3) after controlling for negative social comparison, graduate students’ use of SNS could negatively predict depression; and (4) the mediation effect of negative social comparison was moderated by an individual’s implicit personality theory. Specifically, the mediation effect was more pronounced among the entity theorists, while the graduate students’ incremental implicit personality theory may buffer the depressive effect of negative social comparison. Conclusions: Negative social comparison mediates the relationship between SNS use and depression; in addition, individual differences in implicit personality theory (the entity theorist vs. incremental theorist) moderate the link between negative social comparison and depression. Full article

This study starts from the cyber-ostracism experience that often occurs during social media use. Based on compensatory control theory, we explore the mechanism by which cyber-ostracism affects consumers’ conspicuous consumption through the sense of control and also explore the moderating role of social media use intensity and implicit personality. This study used a sample of 407 social media users in China to verify the relationship between variables. The findings show that: there is a significant positive effect of cyber-ostracism on conspicuous consumption; sense of control plays a mediating role in the relationship between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption; social media use intensity negatively moderates the relationship between cyber-ostracism and sense of control, and implicit personality moderates the relationship between sense of control and conspicuous consumption. The findings of the study help to reveal the formation mechanism of social media users’ conspicuous consumption, which has important theoretical significance and practical value for establishing correct consumption concepts in the social media context. Full article

This investigation identified contemporary beliefs about workplace romance and compared how those beliefs have changed since 1986. Different kinds of advice about workplace romance, and how that advice was related to extant beliefs, were also evaluated. A nationwide sample (N = 259) of organizational members with a variety of professional experiences responded to an anonymous online survey. Results indicated that there were three fundamental underlying beliefs about workplace romance: workplace romance is valuable, the right to demand privacy about workplace romance, and anti-workplace romance. Different types of advice—encouraging, warning, gender concern, and silence—were related to these existing beliefs. The substantial associations between beliefs and advice provide evidence for an implicit theory of workplace romance. Personal experience with such relationships was strongly related to the belief that workplace romance is valuable and the right to demand privacy about workplace romance. Additionally, personal experience was also associated with providing advice promoting workplace romance and advocating that employees should remain silent about engaging in such relationships. These results are discussed within the theoretical lens of boundary blending between the work sphere and the private sphere of social life. Full article

Realist evaluation provides a general method of evaluating the application of interventions including policy, legislation, projects, and new processes in social settings such as law enforcement, healthcare and education. Realist evaluation focuses on what about interventions works, for whom, and in what circumstances, and there is a growing body of work using realist evaluation to analyse interventions in healthcare organizations, including those using Lean Six Sigma improvement methodologies. Whilst realist evaluation facilitates the analysis of interventions using both qualitative and quantitative research, there is little guidance given on methods of data collection and analysis. The purpose of this study is to address this lack of guidance through detailing the use of innovative person-centred methods of data collection and analysis in a realist evaluation that enabled us to understand the contribution of Lean Six Sigma to person-centred care and cultures. This use of person-centred principles in the adjudication of identified program theories has informed novel methods of collecting and analysing data in realist evaluation that facilitate a person-centred approach to working with research participants and a way of making the implicit explicit when adjudicating program theory. Full article

Van Gordon et al. outline the classification of their Ontological Addiction Theory (OAT), including its aetiology and treatment. In this review article I will from an appreciative perspective question some of its fundamental assumptions by presenting an alternative view on the ontology of ‘the person’, as distinct from its presently assumed conventional conflation with a contracted separate egoic self. I will propose this view as structurally and ethically significant for the ‘embodied’ experience of a reconstructed “dynamic and non-dual self”, as cultivated in their treatment. Rather than this reconstructed self simply being socially desirable for functional purposes, I will underscore the meaning-generative case for ontological status, in the absence of which, a pervasive ‘sense of lack’ is evident, with all attendant individual, psychological, social, ecological and ethical implications. This article brings a developmental psychology perspective to bear in appreciating ‘personhood’ as an emergent, progressively realised and is thus similarly aligned with the intent of OAT in overcoming egoic addictive suffering. This mapping of the territory however populates a blind spot in OAT’s diagnosis by affirming unique personhood, a quality of ‘integrative presence’, meaningfully understood as a psycho-spiritual ontological reality. It offers, as with OAT’s stated intent, the merit of avoiding attendant mental health and developmental pitfalls, which can beset what we may discern as an implicit transcendental reductionist assumption operative in OAT, where ‘the many’ are reduced to ‘the One’ and there are, it is assumed, no real many. This framing is resonant with the lived experience of healthy ‘individuation’, a process distinct from the problematic phenomenon of ‘individualism’, evidenced by the empirical data on post-conventional human development, which potentially provides diagnostic markers for any optimal treatment discernment. It is also attuned to what many recognise as a contemporary Fourth Turning in Buddhism, in its conscious evolutionary recognition of the emergence in non-dual states of a ‘unique personal perspective’, and/or a relative individuation within the whole. This differentiation has formerly been interpreted through an ‘impersonal’ lens as an egoic holdover, and potentially inhibits ethical action in the world, as distinct from the ethical import and potential fruits stemming from the ontological affirmation of the person. Full article

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and within a very short period of time, teaching in the 2020 summer term changed from predominantly on-site to online instruction. Students suddenly faced having to adapt their learning process to new demands for which they may have had both insufficient digital skills and a lack of learning resources. Such a situation carries the risk that a substantial number of students become helpless. The aim of our empirical study was to test a hybrid framework of helplessness that includes both objective causes of helplessness and students’ subjective interpretations of them. Before lectures or courses began, students of a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. The final sample consists of 1690 students. Results indicate that objective factors as well as their subjective interpretations contributed to the formation of helplessness. Full article

The current manuscript presents the results of a cross-cultural comparison of the relationships between empathy and implicit theories of emotion in individuals from China and Russia. We hypothesized that the members of the Chinese culture would differ from the more Western Russian participants in terms of relationships between the various components of the emotional domain. Thus, we aimed to identify latent personality profiles while hypothesizing that the Chinese sample would demonstrate more prominent links between empathy and implicit theories regarding the possibility of controlling emotions. We also assumed that immediate social context could affect the results, and therefore, we compare two groups of Chinese participants—those living in China and those living in Russia, predominantly studying in Russian universities. The initial sample included Russians (N = 523), Chinese living in Russia (N = 376), and Chinese living in China (N = 423). However, following matching procedures to enable the sociodemographic comparability of samples, the final comparison was reduced to a final sample of Russians (N = 400), a sample of Chinese living in Russia (N = 363), and a sample of Chinese living in China (N = 421). We used latent class analysis and correlation analyses to test the study hypotheses. The study found that, unlike Russians, the Chinese participants demonstrated a positive correlation between incremental implicit theories of emotions and empathy. We also established significant group and gender differences. Russian women reported higher affective empathy than men, whereas Chinese women demonstrated higher affective empathy and cognitive empathy, as well as incremental implicit theories of emotion. Full article

Despite the booming interest in determinants of green (i.e., sustainable) consumption, the psychological factors that influence pro-environmental consumption patterns are not yet fully understood. To answer this call, we developed and analysed a model that offers an integrative approach to sustainable consumption patterns by addressing the full palette of consumers’ personal value orientations. Specifically, we linked consumers’ egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values at the personal level to pro-environmental purchasing intentions, behaviours, and experiences. Furthermore, we examined whether implicit beliefs about the balance between humanity and nature (i.e., worldviews) moderate these relationships. To support the theoretical propositions in our model, we drew on the key premises of the theory of planned behaviour. Data from 291 Polish respondents were analysed by using multiple linear regression analysis, and the moderating effect of worldviews was investigated with simple slope analysis. While controlling for cultural values, the findings show that personal values, specifically biospheric values, predict sustainable consumer patterns and that consumers’ worldview moderates this relationship. Our study offers a novel holistic approach to analyse sustainable consumption patterns, which will assist environmental management scholars and practitioners who seek to understand and stimulate pro-environmental consumer behaviour. Our findings may help practitioners to develop strategies to influence consumer intentions and behaviours concerning green products. Full article