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The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic seriously jeopardized small businesses. To survive, many small businesses turned to their networks by launching crowdfunding “rescue” campaigns, which were very successful in eliciting both funding and community support. This study aims to explain this success from the backers' perspective by addressing support intentions in uncertain times. The authors examine backers' paradoxical behavior by investigating the influence of ambiguity aversion (individual uncertainty), business-level uncertainty and environmental uncertainty on backers' intentions to support small businesses and the interaction of uncertainty with backers' well-being.

Survey data from 230 backers of small business rescue campaigns were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that ambiguity aversion negatively dominates backers' support intentions. However, under the mediating effect of well-being, business-level and environmental uncertainties positively impact backers' intentions, whereas ambiguity aversion becomes non-significant.

Uncertainties are supposed to have a negative influence on individual well-being. By contrast, this study shows that backers' well-being is influenced by the context of the crowdfunding campaign. Uncertain conditions can provide value in addition to the benefits gained by backers from supporting crowdfunding campaigns.

Despite the critical contribution of serial backers in advancing crowdfunding volumes, few studies have addressed the phenomenon of serial backing. Research on the motivations of backers suggests that cognitive antecedents influence pledging in crowdfunding projects according to the theory of planned behavior. However, intrinsic factors associated with different dimensions of well-being may also explain crowdfunding support. This study seeks to advance the understanding of drivers of serial backing by combining the theory of planned behavior and the theory of well-being.

The study draws on survey data from 336 serial backers, complemented by objective data on the number of campaigns and amounts invested by backers from Headstart, the largest crowdfunding platform in Israel. The research model is tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that the well-being of serial backers mediates the impact of attitude, subjective norms and social norms on their loyalty. However, while loyalty can be explained by elements of both theories, it does not translate into actual serial backing behavior.

This study is the first to systematically explore serial backers' motivations in crowdfunding and the influence of these motivations on their actual behavior. It combines two previously separate theories, the theory of planned behavior and the theory of well-being.

This article explores consumers' attitudes to the trend of gourmet burgers, notably the gourmet burgers' combination of highbrow food (gourmet) and lowbrow food (fast food). The authors use the case of the NOMA cheeseburger from the iconic New Nordic restaurant NOMA.

The data set consists of interviews (n = 20) with urban Danish consumers attending the NOMA burger pop-up.

The analysis highlights an acceptance among informants of “gourmetfied” burgers. This signals a change in the culinary status of burgers in Danish food culture. The authors also discovered some ambivalence in relation to the highbrow-lowbrow negotiations: while all informants celebrate the casualization of NOMA during the burger pop-up, half of the informants found the burger underwhelming: it did not live up to the edginess of the NOMA brand.

The authors believe this research can inform people working with culinary highbrow-lowbrow mix in their food designs, notably in relation to developing and matching the relation between symbolic and material aspects of the food design.

The authors argue that the concept of transgression can help us theorize how consumers accept, refuse, and negotiate boundaries in relation to gourmet burgers, and more generally between food consumption mixing highbrow and lowbrow elements. More particularly, the authors propose to distinguish between symbolic, social, and material transgressions. This perspective might also be interesting for practitioners in the field.

This study compared different types of full-time caregiver (e.g., children, older adults, COVID-19 patients) and subgroups (e.g., disability, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic for potentially meaningful distinctions.

Data from the 9,854 full-time caregivers identified in Phase 3.2 (July 21–October 11, 2021) of the US Census Household Pulse Survey (HPS) were analyzed in this study using multinomial logistic regression to examine relationships between caregiver types, marginalized subgroups, generation, and vaccination status.

The prevalence of caregiving was low, but the type of full-time caregiving performed varied by demographic group (i.e., disability, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, generation, and vaccination status). The relative risk of being a COVID-19 caregiver remained significant for being a member of each of the marginalized groups examined after all adjustments.

To date, the HPS has not been analyzed to predict the type of full-time informal caregiving performed during the COVID-19 pandemic or their characteristics. Research limitations of this analysis include the cross-sectional, experimental dataset employed, as well as some variable measurement issues.

Prior informal caregiver research has often focused on the experiences of those caring for older adults or children with special healthcare needs. It may be instructive to learn whether and how informal caregivers excluded from paid employment during infectious disease outbreaks vary in meaningful ways from those engaged in other full-time caregiving. Because COVID-19 magnified equity concerns, examining demographic differences may also facilitate customization of pathways to post-caregiving workforce integration.

Entrepreneurial communication describes the communication activities of entrepreneurs and is an essential tool for entrepreneurs to build relationships. However, there is a lack of research regarding how entrepreneurs adapt their communication styles in times of crisis. Nevertheless, entrepreneurial communication during a crisis is essential because entrepreneurs must continue communicating with their stakeholders and be visible. In this regard, communication has the central aim of preventing the startup from suffering any damage that may result from the crisis. Thus, the present paper explores potential shifts in the communication styles of entrepreneurs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors examined the digital footprints of 780 entrepreneurs based in the USA on the social network Twitter. This study used a longitudinal dataset with the software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze 110,283 tweets sent pre-crisis and during the first wave of COVID-19.

The results of the exploratory analysis revealed a connection between crisis and both analytical thinking and emotional responses. In the case of emotions, the results also suggest that entrepreneurs who had already received funding from venture capital investors remained emotionally robust during the crisis, as evidenced by the expression of more positive emotions compared to entrepreneurs without funding.

This study contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial communication and adds the context of an exogenous shock to this research stream. Furthermore, this study highlights the effects of venture funding on the digital communication style of entrepreneurs, especially in the context of expressed emotions, and suggests emotional robustness for these entrepreneurs.

To achieve the UN’s 2030 agenda, consumers will need to behave more responsibly and make less environmentally harmful purchases. This study aims to investigate the antecedents of consumers’ pro-environmental purchase intentions based on a range of motivating (i.e. attitudes, locus of control) and inhibiting factors (i.e. apathy and myopia) for a low-involvement product. It also tests the moderating effect of the greenness of a low-involvement product (green vs nongreen) on the consumer’s pro-environmental purchase intentions.

An online panel survey of 679 Turkish consumers was used. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results suggest that while inhibiting factors (i.e. apathy and myopia) may not directly impede such purchase intentions, they could prevent consumers from considering the environmental characteristics of low-involvement products.

The insights are expected to assist marketers and policymakers to understand consumer psychological mechanisms when encouraging and promoting pro-environmental behavior in the context of low-involvement purchases, enhancing consumers contributing to the 2030 objectives.

This study examines the role of inhibiting factors behind the purchase of low-involvement goods. It also tests the moderating effect of the greenness of a low-involvement product on pro-environmental purchase intentions.

The purpose of this review paper is to address the substantial challenges of the outdated exoskeletons used for rehabilitation and further study the current advancements in this field. The shortcomings and technological developments in sensing the input signals to enable the desired motions, actuation, control and training methods are explained for further improvements in exoskeleton research.

Search platforms such as Web of Science, IEEE, Scopus and PubMed were used to collect the literature. The total number of recent articles referred to in this review paper with relevant keywords is filtered to 143.

Exoskeletons are getting smarter often with the integration of various modern tools to enhance the effectiveness of rehabilitation. The recent applications of bio signal sensing for rehabilitation to perform user-desired actions promote the development of independent exoskeleton systems. The modern concepts of artificial intelligence and machine learning enable the implementation of brain–computer interfacing (BCI) and hybrid BCIs in exoskeletons. Likewise, novel actuation techniques are necessary to overcome the significant challenges seen in conventional exoskeletons, such as the high-power requirements, poor back drivability, bulkiness and low energy efficiency. Implementation of suitable controller algorithms facilitates the instantaneous correction of actuation signals for all joints to obtain the desired motion. Furthermore, applying the traditional rehabilitation training methods is monotonous and exhausting for the user and the trainer. The incorporation of games, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies in exoskeletons has made rehabilitation training far more effective in recent times. The combination of electroencephalogram and electromyography-based hybrid BCI is desirable for signal sensing and controlling the exoskeletons based on user intentions. The challenges faced with actuation can be resolved by developing advanced power sources with minimal size and weight, easy portability, lower cost and good energy storage capacity. Implementation of novel smart materials enables a colossal scope for actuation in future exoskeleton developments. Improved versions of sliding mode control reported in the literature are suitable for robust control of nonlinear exoskeleton models. Optimizing the controller parameters with the help of evolutionary algorithms is also an effective method for exoskeleton control. The experiments using VR/AR and games for rehabilitation training yielded promising results as the performance of patients improved substantially.

Robotic exoskeleton-based rehabilitation will help to reduce the fatigue of physiotherapists. Repeated and intention-based exercise will improve the recovery of the affected part at a faster pace. Improved rehabilitation training methods like VR/AR-based technologies help in motivating the subject.

The paper describes the recent methods for signal sensing, actuation, control and rehabilitation training approaches used in developing exoskeletons. All these areas are key elements in an exoskeleton where the review papers are published very limitedly. Therefore, this paper will stand as a guide for the researchers working in this domain.

The aim of this research is to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the academic literature indexed in the Core Collection of the Web of Science (WoS) on happiness management in companies during the period between 2000 and 2022. In particular, the variables used to keep the scientific production under study are as follows: (1) time evolution, (2) publication format, (3) categories, (4) authors, (5) institutions, (6) journals, (7) publishers and (8) countries.

To carry out the analysis, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology is followed, using the WoS database for data collection and VosViewer to create the network maps.

The results show, among other aspects, the accelerated growth rate of the scientific production studied since 2017, the use of publications in articles as the main format for disseminating research results, the relevance of the business category as the area of study in which most of the scientific production examined falls as well as the predominant role of the publishers Emerald, Springer and Elsevier in the publication of scientific documents on the subject under analysis.

There are different reasons that justify the originality of the study. First, the research advances the understanding of the academic literature on happiness management at the corporate level. Second, to the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no previous bibliometric studies that have addressed this topic. Third, the research analyses the literature under analysis from the first record to the year 2022, assuming an update of the previous narrative and systematic reviews carried out on the subject studied.

This study aims to provide a systematic review of consumer privacy literature in the context of smartphones and undertake a comprehensive analysis of academic research on this evolving research area.

This review synthesises antecedents, consequences and mediators reported in consumer privacy literature and presents these factors in a conceptual framework to demonstrate the consumer privacy phenomenon.

Based on the synthesis of constructs reported in the existing literature, a conceptual framework is proposed highlighting antecedents, mediators and outcomes of experiential marketing efforts. Finally, this study deciphers overlooked areas of consumer privacy in the context of smartphone research and provides insightful directions to advance research in this domain in terms of theory development, context, characteristics and methodology.

This study significantly contributes to consumer behaviour literature, specifically consumer privacy literature.