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This research aims to examine the use of emotional and rational advertising appeal regarding service options that differ in terms of their experience and credence properties and exploring the moderating role of individual difference in affect intensity on the consumers’ varying reliance on rational vs emotional appeals.

Study 1 is a 2 (service type: restaurant vs dentist) × 2 (advertising appeal: emotional vs rational) between-subjects design. In total, 137 undergraduate students took part in this study. Study 2 is a 2 (service type: airline vs hospital) × 2 (advertising appeal: emotional vs rational) between-subjects design. In total, 84 MBA students were randomly assigned to each of the experimental conditions. Study 3 is a 2 (service type: airline vs hospital) × 2 (advertising appeal: rational vs emotional appeal) × 2 (affect intensity: high vs low) between-subjects design. The sample size was 170 undergraduates.

The results of the first two studies provided support that an emotional advertising appeal led to a higher purchase intention in the experience service condition, while a rational message generated higher purchase intention in the credence service condition. Study 3 showed the moderating role of individual difference in affect intensity. High affect intensity individuals reported higher levels of brand favorability than did their low affect intensity counterparts when exposed to ads using emotional appeal. Conversely, subjects showed no significant differences in the intensity of their emotional responses when exposed to rational appeals.

Our results suggest a strong need to tailor ads to fit different service categories. An emotional appeal would be more effective for experience services, and a rational appeal would be more effective for credence services. Besides, individual traits may also need to be considered when matching the appeal to the service type.

This study makes an important contribution to the limited existing research by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between advertising appeal and the type of service across different sub-categories, themes, individual trait and effectiveness measures. Specifically, the present research seeks to illuminate the relative effectiveness of emotional vs rational appeals in services advertising. In addition, the current research reveals new knowledge about the role that affect intensity plays in determining consumer responses to advertising.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether users’ perceived moral affect explains the effect of perceived intensity of emotional distress on responsibility judgment of a perpetrator and company, respectively, in an ill and good intention breach.

Participants completed a questionnaire containing items measuring their perceived intensity of emotional distress, perceived moral affect and responsibility judgment of a perpetrator and company, respectively.

The results support the mediating hypothesis on responsibility judgment of a perpetrator regardless of intention. The mediating hypothesis is also supported in an ill intention breach in responsibility judgment of a company. However, the mediating effect is not observed in a good intention breach when users assess a company’s responsibility.

The findings support the notion that users use the consequentialism approach when assessing a perpetrator’s responsibility because they focus on the victims’ emotional distress and discount a perpetrator’s intent, resulting in similar mediating effect of perceived moral affect in an ill and good intention breach. The results also indicate that perceived moral affect increases the negative effect of perceived intensity of emotional distress on responsibility judgment of a company, suggesting that users may exhibit empathetic feelings toward a company and perceive it as a victim of an ill intention breach. The lack of mediating effect in responsibility judgment of a company in a good intention breach may be attributed to the diminished effect of a perpetrator’s feelings of regret, sorrow, guilt and shame for causing emotional distress to the victims.

Moral intensity is the degree of feeling we have about the consequences of moral choices, similar, for example, to those perceived for crimes, from petty larceny to murder. Moral intensity is thought to increase moral sensitivity and judgment. Because the accounting professions require members to respond to accounting fraud with more sensitivity and intensity, we examine this response in 220 professional accountants (mostly Certified Public Accountants) under a controlled experiment using two different cases. We examine the first three parts of the Rest (1986) model including ethical evaluation, judgment, and intention to act. We measure moral intensity in the accountant’s perception of overall harm and societal pressure. As in prior research, we find that the degree of moral intensity may be contextual. We find that the ethical evaluations may become affected by perceived overall harm, and whistleblowing intentions by perceived societal pressure. However, in both cases, the professional’s judgments are most affected by moral intensity. Consistent with prior research, whistleblowing intentions may involve many other mitigating variables, such as audit reporting or non-audit reporting limited by codes of conduct. These findings relate to the increasing attention paid by the SEC to finding accounting fraud.

This manuscript makes three important contributions to the existing literature. First, there are few studies in this area and Jones (1991) identifies that moral intensity is issue contingent; therefore, replication studies using different scenarios are needed. Second, Bailey, Scott, and Thoma (2010) have suggested that accounting ethics research has focused too narrowly on Component II of Rest’s Four-Component Model. None of the previous studies looked at all three steps in Rest’s Model; therefore, our manuscript provides an important contribution over the other previous studies. Third, our sample uses professionals and not students as surrogates for professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly around the world and Portugal is no exception. Positive and negative effects are extremely important in individual's life experiences and in particular in the context of the quarantine, in which it is important to maintain the balance between favorable and unfavorable situations. The purpose of this paper is to study in depth the intensity of the affect during the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal and to validate a scale of positive and negative affect in the context of quarantine and confinement.

The methodology used is of a quantitative nature, based on a questionnaire survey to measure the intensity of the affects and to analyze some sociodemographic variables. The sample consists of 726 individuals of age 18 years or older, who were in Portugal during the quarantine of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results show that respondents were concerned, anxious, well-disposed and impatient. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis applied to affects produced a latent structure with two factors: negative affect and positive affect. The affect scale has adequate convergent and discriminant validity and good internal consistency, with negative affect being experienced by individuals with greater intensity compared to positive affect.

It is hoped that this study contributes to an increase in the scientific knowledge in the field of the affects in the context of delicate situations such as the pandemic COVID-19 so that health professionals can intervene to improve individual’s well-being. This is an important way to provide better health policy that considers in more depth individual wellbeing and emotions during times of crisis. Limitations and suggestions for future research are also stated that highlight the importance of understanding emotional states of individuals during crisis events.

Managing the growing word-of-mouth (WOM) of brand fans has become a new challenge for companies in the fan economy era. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of language intensity of brand fan WOM on customers' willingness to adopt WOM based on psychological resistance theory and to reveal the underlying mechanism of this process.

A research model was developed to test the proposed hypotheses. Two experiments were conducted on an online platform using data from 708 participants. The independent samples t-test and analysis of variance were used to analyze the data.

The results show that, in the context of WOM among brand fans, high-intensity language leads to a lower willingness to adopt than low-intensity language and threats to freedom mediate this effect. Moreover, the restoration postscript moderates the effect of language intensity on threats to freedom and customers' willingness to adopt WOM.

Unlike previous studies that focused on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) language content, this paper focuses on language intensity to reveal the psychological process of customers' willingness to adopt brand fan WOM. The findings not only enrich the research related to the language effect in eWOM, but also deepen the understanding of the influence effect on brand fan WOM, providing effective guidance for brands to manage fan WOM.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the factors affecting open innovation (OI) intensity, in terms of three components of cooperative innovation, resource search and external research and development (R&D), as well as the impact of OI intensity on commercialization performance in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The data obtained from the distributed questionnaire among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Isfahan Science and Technology Town (ISTT) in Iran, was analyzed using inferential and parametric statistics to examine the research hypotheses. In this analysis, structural equation tests were used to confirm or reject the research hypotheses using Smart PLS software.

The results indicate that all three OI components influence commercialization in technology-based firms of ISTT, while the most important one is cooperative innovation. Among the factors affecting OI components, innovative incentives are the most effective one that increases both external R&D and cooperative innovation. Facilitators and limitations of open innovation are also affecting OI intensity, with lower priorities.

Science park managers and policymakers should lay the ground for enhancing the cooperation intensity among firms. Cooperation intensity is the most effective open innovation component to improve commercialization performance.

Open innovation antecedents and its consequence on commercialization performance have been investigated for the same time in SMEs of a science park.

This study aims to investigate innovation intensity by exploring the roles of internally focused and externally focused information technology (IT) use intensity and innovation culture on innovation intensity and organizational performance.

A model exploring the effects of internally and externally focused IT use, plus two key dimensions of innovation culture – collaborative and entrepreneurial – on innovation intensity and organizational performance is tested via a structural equation model using partial least squares with data collected from 395 top executives.

The results indicate that intense use of internally and externally focused IT and the collaborative dimension of culture positively affect innovation intensity, which, in turn, increases operational and financial performance.

Innovation is an important driver of performance, for both internal efficiency and competitiveness. The role of IT in the innovation process is key: it allows information, knowledge and idea sharing. Top managers should make a wide array of IT tools available to increase internal and external information exchanges. They should also develop an organizational context that stimulates innovativeness and promotes collaboration.

IT helps employees acquire and use the knowledge needed to innovate within and outside organizational boundaries. To be innovative, employees need to work in an organization with a strong innovation culture, a primary determinant of innovation intensity. This study is one of the first to examine the effects of an organization’s innovation culture and its use of IT on innovation intensity and organizational performance. In addition, constructs of innovation intensity and internally and externally focused IT use are developed and tested.

To reconcile theoretical discrepancies between discrete emotion, dimensional emotion (positive vs. negative affect), and the circumplex model, we propose the bifurcation model of affect structure (BMAS). Based on complexity theory, this model explores how emotion as an adaptive complex system reacts to affective events through negative and positive feedback loops, resulting in self-organizing oscillation and transformations between three states: equilibrium emotion, discrete positive and negative emotion in the near-equilibrium state, and chaotic emotion. We argue that the BMAS is superior to the extant models in revealing the dynamic connections between emotions and the intensity of affective events in organizational settings.

The study is an attempt to analyze the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on research and development (R&D) behavior of incumbent firms’, both domestic and foreign, operating in Indian manufacturing sector. FDI inflows into the host country escalates the level of competition compelling domestic as well as existing foreign firms to adjust their spending on R&D. The purpose of this paper is to propose that response of domestic and existing foreign firms to the FDI entry vary, with domestic firms increasing their spending on R&D whereas foreign firms reducing it.

Using a rich firm level data set from Indian manufacturing for the period 2000-2012, the study utilizes Heckman’s two- step estimation strategy to estimate the impact of FDI entry on R&D behavior of incumbents.

FDI entry significantly increases the tendency of domestic and foreign firms to invest in R&D; however, the impact on R&D intensity for both domestic and foreign firms appears to be minimal.

The study contributes to the existing literature on two fronts. One, unlike other studies, it examines the impact of FDI entry not only on R&D behavior of domestic firms but also on the R&D behavior of existing foreign firms. Second, it addresses the problem of selection bias that has been largely ignored by majority of empirical studies on R&D.