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Despite a considerable increase in drug testing within the criminal justice system (CJS) through schemes such as the drug interventions programme, research is equivocal about its added value, as a recent series of reports from the UK Drug Policy Commission highlighted. The role of drug testing needs to be clarified and its cost‐effectiveness confirmed through studies with comparative regimes. Any further expansion of drug testing within the CJS should be undertaken with caution.

This paper aims to describe the impact of the COVID-19 containment measures on the provision of drug treatment and harm reduction services in European prisons in15 countries during the early phase of the pandemic (March –June 2020).

The paper is based on a mixed method research approach that triangulates different data sources, including the results of an on-line survey, the outcome of a focus group and four national case studies.

The emergence of COVID-19 led to a disruption in prison drug markets and resulted in a number of challenges for the drug services provision inside prison. Challenges for health services included the need to maintain the provision of drug-related interventions inside prison, while introducing a range of COVID-19 containment measures. To reduce contacts between people, many countries introduced measures for early release, resulted in around a 10% reduction of the prison population in Europe. Concerns were expressed around reduction of drug-related interventions, including group activities, services by external agencies, interventions in preparation for release and continuity of care.

Innovations aimed at improving drug service provision included telemedicine, better partnership between security and health staff and an approach to drug treatment more individualised. Future developments must be closely monitored.

The paper provides a unique and timely overview of the main issues, challenges and initial adaptations implemented for drug services in European prisons in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of game addiction based on loneliness, motivation and inter-personal competence using the samples of college students recruited from South Korea (n=251).

The authors examined the underlying mechanism of game addiction by testing a moderated mediation model, in which inter-personal competence moderated the mediation model of loneliness, regulatory focus and online game addiction. First, the authors clarified the relationship among loneliness, motivation and inter-personal competence, to understand the influences of loneliness on other variables in this study (mediation test). Second, the authors examined the underlying mechanism of game addiction by testing a moderated mediation model, in which inter-personal competence moderated the mediation model of loneliness, regulatory focus and online game addiction (moderated mediation).

Regulatory focus mediated the effect of loneliness on online game addiction. Moderated mediation analyses using PROCESS confirmed that inter-personal competence significantly buffered the indirect effect of loneliness (through regulatory focus) on online game addiction. The findings indicated that inter-personal competence accounted for significant differences in the mediation models.

This study bridges the gap in the online game addiction literature by explaining how loneliness is associated with online game addiction.

This study is designed to investigate a critical association between social media addiction and employee sleep while considering its implications for employee well-being and performance in the hospitality industry.

Based on adapted measures for the study variables, an electronic questionnaire was designed and used for the survey administered in the chain-restaurants of Pakistan. Through a non-probability convenient sampling survey, a total of 347 usable responses were obtained and analyzed for testing the hypothesized research model.

Results reveal negative associations between social media addiction, sleep quality, employee performance and well-being. The results have further shown sleep quality as an underlying mediating reason that explains the associations between social media addiction, employee performance and well-being.

The study addresses a gap in the literature by examining rarely explored factors such as social media addiction and sleep quality at the same time investigating its impact on performance and well-being of service employees. Significant implications for scholars and practitioners of the hospitality industry have been discussed while highlighting limitations and directions for future research.

Cyber-bullying is a form of cyber-crime that has been propagated through extensive use of social networking sites (SNS). Despite the implementation of sophisticated security measures and government compliances, privacy intrusion is petrifying. Therefore, the purpose of this paper attempts to explore as follows: why cases of bullying are still snowballing year after year? Is it possible that advances in security measures are making users more vulnerable? Or, is it a social media addiction, which is making users vulnerable to cyberbullying?

The proposed research framework is grounded in the technology threat avoidance theory (TTAT). An empirical survey of 365 social media users was analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) to understand the impact of security measures, voluntary self-disclosure (VSD) and addiction on perceived vulnerability (PV) to cyber-bullying.

The findings indicate that security measures play a significant role in propelling users to disclose their personal information voluntarily, which, in turn, results in social media addiction, which further exposes users to cyberbullying. Moreover, the study unravels gender differences in perceived vulnerabilities to cyberbullying.

The findings of the current research contribute to a better understanding of gender differences in the awareness of security measures, addiction intensities, level of self-disclosures and propensity to cyberbullying victimization. Additionally, prevention and intervention efforts may benefit from using a more targeted approach to identify potential male and female victims that experience different forms of bullying on SNS.

In addition to other constructs, the current research investigates the role of user security measures (USM) and website security measures (WSM) on the PV to cyberbullying, typically, the role of these measures is to prevent the users from becoming the victims, whereas the research unravels that they could be the possible reasons for the increased number of cases in India. To the best of the knowledge, such conflicting roles of security measures have not been discussed earlier.

This study seeks to synthesize theories from communication, psychology and criminology to examine the factors that influence the two most popular topics in industry – internet abuse and addiction at the workplace.

The survey results of 351 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses and research model using structural equation modeling. Data were collected in Southern Science Park in Taiwan.

It was found that personality factors such as locus of control and self‐esteem significantly influence employees' internet addictions; and internet addiction significantly impacts employees' internet abuse at the workplace.

Employers should pay special attention to employees' personalities because they play important roles in internet addiction and internet abuse. Also a good internet policy will be useful especially to a panoptic working environment, which is becoming popular.

This study provides a comprehensive theoretical foundation to better understand the two controversial issues in industry. The empirical study validates the important theories of locus of control, self‐esteem, use and gratification, control, and containment in workplace surveillance and deviant behavior research.

In the literature, work addiction is proposed to be considered a construct that requires an extensive approach for understanding it; consequently, it should be analyzed as the interaction between personal and situational factors. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the mediating role work motivation plays in the relationship between perceived demanding organizational conditions and employee work addiction.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on a convenience sample of 669 workers from different organizations in Lithuania. Data were collected using online self-administered questionnaire. To test a mediation model, a structural equation modeling path analysis was performed.

Demanding organizational conditions (i.e. work addiction of a manager, the workload, a work role conflict, a competitive organizational climate and the family-unsupportive organizational environment) were related to increased work addiction through higher extrinsic motivation. The mediator of intrinsic motivation yielded different results: the indirect relationship between demanding organizational conditions and work addiction was significant only at lower levels of intrinsic motivation. Even having controlled work motivation as a mediator, the proposed direct links remained significant in most cases.

The study gives a profound understanding of work addiction and explains the mechanism activated by an organization that is of great importance for its development and maintenance.

This study seeks to explore the impact of “fear of missing out” (FOMO) and “psychological enhancement” (PE) on addiction to social media applications, subsequently influencing users' life satisfaction and continuous usage intention.

This research involved the administration of two sets of questionnaires during distinct periods: December 15 to December 30, 2022 and August 26 to September 2, 2023. The participants were college students from three universities in China, and the data collection utilized the “Questionnaire Star” platform. Only responses deemed valid and consistent were included in the subsequent statistical analysis. A total of 1,108 valid samples were used for the final analysis. Analyses including reliability, validity, path analysis, structural equation modeling, mediation effects and moderation effects were conducted using SPSS and AMOS software.

The study revealed that both FOMO and PE exerted positive influences on users' addiction to social media applications. Furthermore, this addiction was found to have a negative effect on users' life satisfaction while simultaneously contributing positively to their intention to continue using these platforms. The mediating effect of social media application addiction and the moderating impact of self-regulation were also substantiated through the analysis.

Firstly, it is important to note that the research population of this study is limited to college students, which may limit its generalizability and representativeness. Although college students are a group known for their familiarity with and frequent use of smartphones and social media apps, the findings may not fully capture the behaviors of social media app users in other age groups. To enhance the understanding of social media app addiction across different age groups, future studies should consider expanding the research population and conducting multi-group difference analyses. Secondly, while focusing on specific users within a particular region can minimize unexplained variance in model estimation, it may also restrict the broader applicability of the study results. Therefore, future studies should consider testing the research model with diverse groups from different regions and cultural backgrounds. This approach will provide valuable insights into how social media app addiction may vary across various contexts, thereby enriching our understanding of this phenomenon.

Our findings reveal that in the “attention economy” environment shaped by addiction, social media app managers should leverage technology to swiftly and accurately target audiences, attract them to their platforms and cultivate long-term relationships. Encouraging users to develop new beneficial habits through app-specific functions and precise services will foster continuous usage and unlock revenue and marketing opportunities for app companies.

Despite the extensive scholarly discourse on social media application addiction, there is a lack of a well-defined framework delineating how addictive user behaviors can be leveraged in the marketing strategies of social media application platforms. The present study seeks to address these gaps, contributing to a better understanding of the formation mechanisms and knowledge systems related to social media application addiction. By investigating the causes and consequences of such addiction, this research offers valuable insights and recommendations for the innovative development of these apps, given their widespread popularity. Concurrently, the study establishes a theoretical basis for the concept that users can mitigate the negative effects of social media addiction by exercising their own self-regulation.

As the functionalities and features of social media apps converge, their individual uniqueness starts to diminish, intensifying the competition among social media companies. This escalating rivalry places higher demands on these companies. This study aims to aid social media app companies in comprehending and analyzing the diverse psychological needs of users. By enriching their platform features and services, leading users towards addiction and gaining an edge in the “Attention Economy” competition. Understanding and catering to users' needs will be instrumental in thriving within this dynamic and evolving attention economy landscape.

It is argued that addicts, as people in general, are forward-looking and that they try to make the best of what they have got. However, this does not imply that they are fully rational. Cognitive defects, instabilities in preferences, and irrationalities in the form of wishful thinking and dynamical inconsistency play an important role in addictive behaviours. These “imperfections” in people's rationality may not have very large consequences in the case of ordinary goods, but their effect can be dramatic in relation to addictive goods. In the first part of the paper, the rational addiction theory and the empirical evidence that have been presented in support of the theory is reviewed. Regarding the conventional tests of the theory by econometric methods, it is argued that the tests are misguided, both theoretically and methodologically. Furthermore, it is claimed that the definition of addiction implicit in the rational addiction theory is unrealistic, and that the theory makes unrealistic assumptions about human nature. Some empirical evidence for these claims is reviewed. It is concluded that although the theory has its virtues, it faces serious problems and must be rejected in its original form. Secondly, the socio-cultural embeddedness of addictive behaviours, and the social roots of individual preferences, are discussed. These issues are more or less ignored in rational addiction theory. It is argued that we cannot expect to obtain a proper understanding of many addictive phenomena, unless they are seen in their proper socio-cultural context.

This study aims to fill various gaps detected in the literature on mass prestige (hereafter referred to as masstige) theory. The originality of the work stems from the multidimensional application of Paul’s (2015) model, the introduction of brand addiction as a construct from the consumer-brand relationship (CBR) theory within the context of wines and the exploration of a new and less studied sector in masstige strategies.

A structured questionnaire was distributed to collect data from masstige wine brand buyers in Portugal, of whom 166 completed the questionnaire correctly. A conceptual model was developed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings include that only two dimensions of Paul’s (2015) masstige scale affect brand addiction: brand knowledge and excitement and status. Brand addiction has a positive effect on brand loyalty and electronic word of mouth (eWOM), and brand loyalty has a positive impact on eWOM. Theoretical and managerial implications were explored.

This research added a CBR perspective to masstige theory and applied masstige theory to wine brands for the first time. These three distinctive aspects collectively contribute to the novelty and significance of the research, opening up exciting possibilities for future investigations and providing a valuable contribution to the academic community and the wine industry alike.