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This paper aims to describe and evaluate the impact of a compassion-focused therapy (CFT) group for adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

People with ID are commonly subjected to stigmatising experiences that can contribute to feelings of shame. CFT targets shame and self-criticism by helping people to cultivate self-compassion. There is evidence to suggest that CFT can be meaningfully adapted for people with ID. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using a mixed-methods design, aiming to gain a rich evaluation of the CFT group. Eight adults with ID were referred by their local community psychology team. An 11-week group protocol was based on materials from previous research. The protocol included the development of a “compassion box”, aiming to make CFT concepts more concrete and tangible. Questionnaires measuring psychological distress, self-compassion and negative social comparisons were completed pre- and post-group. Feedback from participants and carers were collated and facilitators’ observations were recorded.

Questionnaire findings were mixed, and some participants found the measures difficult to understand. Participants’ qualitative feedback and facilitators’ observations suggested that the group created feelings of safety and connectedness whilst facilitating engagement and action with shame and self-criticism. Several participants highlighted the usefulness of the ‘”compassion box”, although some barriers were noted.

This paper provides a rich description of how group CFT can be adapted to meet the needs of adults with ID and is the first study of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to evaluate the incorporation of the “compassion box”.

Recent scholarship has explored higher education institutions’ (HEIs) role in transitioning to a sustainable society, but empirically, questions remain regarding their impact on the sustainability of surrounding areas. This study aims to examine the correlation between HEIs’ sustainability actions and local sustainability performance.

This study uses a linear regression model and principal component analysis to examine the sustainability performance of 105 US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) using the US cities sustainable development goal (SDG) index, which hosts 427 HEIs known for sustainability efforts. The weighted HEI sustainability performance score is calculated based on the QS sustainability universities ranking.

The correlation between MSA and HEI sustainability performance exhibits a mix of positive and negative associations, with individual and interlinked SDGs serving as proxies. These correlations encompass a wide range of goals, from economic aspects of SDG 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, social aspects of SDG10 and 16, to socio-environmental aspects of SDG12.

Further exploration is needed to identify the causal mechanisms behind associations between SDG measures and HEI sustainability performance, whether influenced by the institution, the individual or both.

This study suggests that HEIs are already associated with some aspects of community sustainability, but greater contributions to a broader array of sustainability measures are possible.

The correlation found between HEI sustainability actions and SDG10, 12 and 16 index performance in an MSA highlights a connection between HEIs and the attainment of societal goals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the correlation between HEI and MSA sustainability performance in the US through individual and interlinked SDG proxies. It provides novel empirical evidence that demonstrates an association between HEI and some aspects of community sustainability performance.

This paper aims to define intergenerational housing support and assesses and synthesizes the existing literature on intergenerational support for housing to identify trends and possible areas for future research.

The methodology employed in this paper is a systematic literature review. A total of 32 articles were chosen for assessment. Upon thorough review, summary and synthesis, general trends and three specific themes were identified.

The review of 32 papers found that intergenerational support is a crucial strategy to help younger generations achieve homeownership. However, it also highlights the potential for social inequity resulting from unequal distribution of housing resources within families, especially regarding housing. Several potential gaps in the current research are identified, including the need for explicit attention to the provider's intention, exploration into the size and form of financial support for housing, understanding how parental housing resources differ in their transfer behaviors, and examining how parental motivations influence them to provide housing support.

This paper provides recommendations for further research on the topic, while also adding perspective to understand the micro-social mechanisms behind the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic inequality, especially in the housing market.

This study aimed to investigate changes in food consumption during the COVID-19 lockdown period in a sample of female college students in China. The study employed a dual processing approach that simultaneously investigates the effects of students' beliefs about the importance of healthy eating and the effect of emotional eating due to anxiety induced by the pandemic.

Data were collected from 645 female college students in China using a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis.

Beliefs about the importance of healthy eating have a greater impact on changes in food consumption than anxiety. Emotional eating was positively associated with changes in vegetable consumption. The findings reveal that a shift from “food as health” to “food as well-being” in the role of food in the food-related life of Chinese consumers is underway. “Food as health” remains important in food-related decision-making in China during the pandemic. Concurrently, a well-being centered or a more holistic perspective, including the psychological and emotional aspects of food, should be included in food-related research and health promotion in China.

This study contributes to the literature on reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic by simultaneously investigating both the cognitive impact of beliefs regarding the importance of healthy eating and the affective impact of anxiety on changes in food consumption due to COVID-19.

This study aims to understand the utility of personas and illustrate, through a case study, how a persona-building exercise in a Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) training of community leaders elicited important insights that complemented findings from ongoing formative research on vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic/Latino population in the USA during COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory concurrent parallel qualitative study design compared three personas created by community-based organization members (n = 37) to transcripts from five formative research focus groups (n = 30) from the same project. All participants in this study were recruited by the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network as part of their capacity-building and formative research activities. Grounded theory guided the content analysis.

This study found personas and focus groups to be complementary. A high degree of co-occurrence was observed when investigating the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine under the categories of barriers, culture and communication. Between the two methods, the authors found strong associations between fear, disruption to the value system, work-related barriers, inaccessibility to health care and information sources and misinformation. Areas of divergence were negligible.

While personas provided background information about the population and sharing “how” to reach the priority population, focus groups provided the “why” behind the behavior, followed by “how”.

A community-driven persona-building process built on cultural community knowledge and existing data can build community capacity, provide rich information to assist in the creation of tailored messages, strategies and overall interventions during a public health crisis and provide user-centered, evidence-based information about a priority population while researchers and practitioners wait on the results from formative research.

This case study provided a unique opportunity to analyze the complementary effectiveness of two methods acting in tandem to understand the priority population: stakeholder-informed persona-building and participant-informed focus group interviews. Understanding their complementary nature addresses a time gap that often exists between researchers and practitioners during times of crises and builds on recommendations associated with bringing rigor into practice, promoting academic contribution to real-world issues and building collaborative partnerships. Finally, it supports the utility of a nimble tool that improves social marketers’ ability to know more about their audience for intervention design when time is of the essence and formative research is ongoing.

This systematic literature review aims to identify the main areas of study related to co-creation and innovation in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), as well as the main external and internal stakeholders with whom co-creation is made.

The empirical approach is based on 258 articles selected from the Web of Science (WoS), Clarivate Analytics and Scopus, Elsevier databases, with analysis of titles, abstracts and keywords following a research protocol. VOS viewer and CitNetExplorer software were used, with the twin aim of identifying publications with a higher number of citations and designing maps of reference word co-occurrence.

The analysis led to three clusters being identified: Cluster 1. Management and transfer of knowledge from HEIs to companies; Cluster 2. Co-creation and innovation in HEIs through cooperation between universities and companies; and Cluster 3. Universities’ third mission and their role in developing entrepreneurship education. The results of the literature clusters analysis led to proposing a conceptual model of analysis.

Despite only employing two databases and the content analysis criteria, the three found clusters are linked, recognising the interplay between co-creation and innovation in HEIs, knowledge transfer to enterprises and the influence on HEIs' third goal.

This systematic literature review highlights and gives a picture of the state-of-the-art in co-creation and innovation in HEIs, as well as presenting a model of co-creation and innovation in HEIs that can contribute to reinforcing the University-Industry-Community ties.

This study can lead to a better knowledge of the issue of co-creation and innovation at HEIs, as well as a deeper analysis of the sorts of relationships between HEIs and their stakeholders, as well as its impact on surrounding areas and influence.

The research highlights the interaction between HEIs and their stakeholders on a basis of value co-creation and innovation, providing mutual benefits for all involved, as well as greater development and recognition of HEIs and their surrounding regions’ image andreputation. A future research agenda is also presented on the topic of co-creation and innovation in HEIs.

Source credibility is a key influencing factor across both commercial and social marketing. It is perhaps even more important for the latter given that the issues under consideration generally have substantial implications for both individual and societal health and well-being. The Act-Belong-Commit campaign is a world-first population-wide application of social marketing in the area of positive mental health promotion. This study aims to focus on the perceived credibility of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign as a source of information about mental health as a predictor of three types of behavioural responses to the campaign: adopting mental health enhancing behaviours; seeking information about mental health and mental health problems; and seeking help for a mental health problem.

A state-wide survey was undertaken of the adult population in an Australian state where the Act-Belong-Commit campaign originated. The survey included measures of the above three behavioural responses to the campaign and measures of respondents’ perceptions of Act-Belong-Commit’s source credibility. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine whether the three behavioural responses can be predicted based on perceived source credibility. The predictive performance of the model was examined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis.

Greater perceived source credibility was significantly associated with having done something for their mental health and for having sought information, and an increased likelihood, but not significantly so, of having sought help for a mental health problem.

Despite the acknowledged importance of source credibility, there has been little published research that the authors are aware of that has looked at the impact of such on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published study of the association between source credibility and behavioural response to a social marketing campaign.

Storytelling is increasingly becoming a popular tool for promoting local fairs, festivals, culture and heritage. It is also being used to boost regional economies and revitalise them. Storytelling involves recounting past events and emphasising their relevance to the current situation. It is a powerful way to communicate shared experiences and values from one generation to the next. By engaging in storytelling, local or regional fairs or festivals are able to subsidise the regeneration of their economy. Furthermore, storytelling can help to bridge the gap between the past, present and future, providing a sense of permanency and belonging. Transmedia storytelling, often called transmedia narrative, is a technique for integrating current digital technology to present a tale or story experience across several platforms and formats.

Rajasthan is a vibrant, colourful and lively region of India. It comes out on top regarding holidays, traditions and culture. It sparkles brighter when its festivals are taking place. Due to its festive atmosphere, they have played a significant role in Rajasthani culture. The state of Rajasthan is known for its warm hospitality.

The current study's objective is to investigate various regional festivals in Rajasthan that have helped to develop regional identity through transmedia and to understand the connection between regional festivals' storytelling and tourism. Our findings indicated a positive relationship between regional or local festival narrative and travellers' inclination to visit or return. Additionally, the local community develops a positive sense of itself due to these festivals.

Although previous studies have examined the influence of celebrity involvement in behavioural intentions, the role of celebrity dimensions such as attraction, self-expression and centrality in influencing tourists’ intention in the context of developing countries such as Tanzania remains largely unaddressed. This study, therefore, examined the relationship between celebrity involvement and domestic tourists' intentions to visit tourist attractions, attitude being the mediating variable.

A questionnaire was self-administered on a convenient sample of 279 domestic tourists in the Tanzania’s four largest regions, namely, Dar es Salaam, Mbeya, Arusha and Mwanza. Employing a quantitative research approach, structural equation modelling was performed to test the cause-and-effect relationships between celebrity involvement and tourists’ intentions before testing the mediating role of attitude in such a relationship. Confirmatory factor analysis was also performed to test the measurement models.

Attraction emerged to be the main determinant of the celebrity dimension that significantly influenced domestic tourists’ travel intentions, whereas attitude partially mediates such a relationship. Moreover, Bongo Fleva musicians, particularly Diamond Platnumz, one of the leading celebrities in this genre, were found to influence most of the respondents’ travel intentions – he posted a picture on his Instagram account of him touring the Serengeti National Park.

The study focused on domestic tourists residing in four of the Mainland Tanzania’s largest regions, hence excluding those residing on the islands of Unguja and Pemba. Due to cultural differences, including the islands not only could unleash new perspectives on celebrity involvement dimensions but also could have introduced new determinants of travel intentions.

This study offers guidance to tourism businesses on designing their marketing campaigns that they should harness celebrity’s attractive qualities effectively. The focus should be directed not only towards linking destinations with celebrities but also on stimulating positive perception of those destinations, aligning with the attitudes of their followers.

The study has set out a new perspective for researchers, practitioners and tourism businesses to refine their promotional strategies and for academicians to gain a deeper understanding of visitor behavioural intention dynamics.

This study has proposed and verified that attraction is a dominant determinant compared to self-expression and centrality in explaining tourists’ travel intentions and attitudes, which play a significant role in explaining such a relationship. Although the study employed a modified theory of planned behaviour in a celebrity involvement study, the findings have broadened the understanding and its applicability in the context of a developing country.