Search results

This paper aims to assess the willingness of individuals living in coastal communities affected by climate change to financially support mitigation policies towards the preservation of marine ecosystems and fish resources and to identify the key drivers of their behaviour.

A survey was carried out involving 994 people living in three main Italian coastal communities. To investigate the main factors affecting Italian coastal communities’ willingness to pay (WTP) to support climate change mitigation measures to protect the marine ecosystem and fishery resources, a Tobit regression model was implemented.

The results show that these communities are likely to pay to safeguard fish resources and the marine ecosystem, owing to their social and economic importance for these communities. In particular, this study’s findings highlight that the individuals’ attitudes towards climate change, social pressures and their perception of the phenomenon play a significant role on their intention to support mitigation policies. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that the communities most threatened by the negative effects of climate change are more willing to contribute financially to protect fish resources and the marine ecosystem.

A limitation is related to the adopted methodology. In particular individuals’ intention to adopt pro-environmental behaviours does not always translate into real WTP through additional taxes.

The value of the research stems from its unique collective cross-communal comparison of attitudes and intentions, its parallel identification of behavioural drivers at the individual level and its prescriptive conclusions of both scholarly and practical worth.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify distinct organisational models in a sample of firms operating in the wine industry; and second, to identify the main internal resources that characterise those firms most motivated towards the adoption of social media (SM) tools and those that perceive SM investment as more effective.

The empirical investigation was carried out by administering an online questionnaire to a sample of 82 Sicilian wineries. The principal component analysis was used to identify latent factors that drive managers to invest in SM technologies and to measure the impact perceived by managers. Subsequently, a cluster analysis was performed to identify similar organisational models.

The findings show that large wineries with a high number of employees possessing knowledge and skills in regard to SM tools and social network (SN) management are highly motivated towards the adoption of SM and perceive their SM investment as more effective.

The main limitation of the paper lies in the limited sample size, which does not allow the results to be generalised.

The findings provide support for managers, who could use these results to better focus their investment on infrastructure that facilitates the development of specific skills needed to manage SM tools and SNs, as well as customer relations.

To date, very few empirical studies have focussed on providing evidence on the role and impact of SM integration into the marketing communication plan of a strategic industry, such as the wine industry.

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether the companies most involved in communicating their responsible behaviour externally are those most active on the social media (SM) platform, with a philanthropic purpose rather than strictly aimed at economic aspects.

The authors, first, assess firms’ efforts on the SM platform using the model proposed by Chung et al. (2014), and, second, the authors analyze the content of messages in order to verify what dimensions of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) they contain. A multivariate modelling has been performed in order to verify whether the wineries that take most care to communicate their responsible behaviour are those that are more involved in the management of Social Network. The wineries’ effort in SM platform was analyzed using the model proposed by Chung et al. (2014), which consider three dimensions named intensity, richness and responsiveness. In order to verify the relationship between the SM effort and their engagement in CSR initiatives, the Probit model has been utilized taking into consideration four CSR dimension (Green CSR, Ethical CSR, Community CSR and Cultural CSR).

The findings show that wineries most involved in corporate social responsibility initiatives and in the active communication of these initiatives on SM platforms are those that are most active on SM and in particular those that interact most with their web users, triggering in them some reactions that lead to the sharing of content and, therefore, having a significant impact on the dissemination of information through SM.

The main limitations of this study are related to the limited sample size, the time period considered.

This study provides insight and hints into wine entrepreneurs interested in improving the effectiveness of their CSR communication via SM showing the importance of the interactive dimension of SM, in order to reduce scepticism and gain greater credibility on the market.

This study uses four dimensions of the companies’ SM efforts’ built on the basis of a number of variables that are more explicative of the SM engagement.

A model on the cognitive elements of engagement is adopted and content analysis, along with sentiment analysis, has been used to explore the post characteristics and the levels of stakeholders' interactions in controversial and non-controversial European industries through three Poisson regressions. At last, an ANOVA test has been used to check the level of interaction regarding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related aspects.

The intrinsic characteristics of controversial industries cause the stakeholders’ skepticism about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. This results in the need to elaborate proper involvement strategies to approach industries' stakeholders. Such need has assumed relevance during the COVID-19 crisis and has traced a certain border between the companies that are more sensitive to the social side of the surrounding environment and the ones that are less involved in risky sectors. The present paper aims to understand the role of social media in stakeholder engagement, and social media's characteristics, and tries to elaborate on companies' CSR communication readiness to the challenges shown by the pandemic.

The study reveals how the success of stakeholder engagement in CSR communication is affected by both controversial sector membership and the characteristics of the posts such as the inclusion of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). In addition, the study emerges how the European companies have focused on social aspects in companies' communication, revealing a certain readiness for the COVID-19 challenges.

Building on a model of cognitive elements of engagement, the present study provides useful insights for companies' next engagement strategies on social media. Moreover, the thematic analysis provides a benchmark for the improvement of current corporations' communication strategies in light of the pandemic effects.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the role of Twitter as a stakeholder engagement tool and identifies the drivers for an effective Twitter content strategy. Moreover, the paper provides a useful proxy for current and future research on the COVID-19-related CSR communication.

The purpose of this study is to segment Lebanese wine customers based on their level of involvement with wine. It also profiles them on the basis of wine drinking motivations, wine attributes and information sources, wine consumption and purchasing behaviour and socio-demographic characteristics.

The data in the study was collected from the main supermarkets, hypermarkets and special liquor outlets as well as upscale restaurants serving alcohol in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, through a structured questionnaire. Out of 700 people approached, only 498 surveys were collected. After splitting consumers into three different segments: high, moderate and low involvement, the study clearly profiles the groups by employing principal component analysis, ANOVA and chi-square analysis.

After splitting consumers into three different groups based on involvement with wine; high, moderate and low, the study clearly identified the differences between groups regarding wine attributes, information sources, purchasing and consumption and socio-demographic characteristics.

Although there are plenty of studies on the examination of wine consumers in the literature from diverse countries, this is the first study investigating wine consumers based on wine involvement in a Middle Eastern country, Lebanon.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the brand communication on social media (SM) made by two- and three-starred restaurants and the customer reaction in terms of engagement effects during a crisis. The research highlights the connections between brand communication and engagement dynamics on Instagram by looking for differences in the strategies of two and three-starred restaurants and by highlighting the changes in the background engagement drivers.

Using data collected from 5,666 Instagram posts by 34 Italian Michelin-starred restaurants, the authors analysed the crisis-driven changes in online communication and customer engagement comparing three phases of the COVID-19 pandemic by applying a linear regression model with fixed effects.

Michelin-starred restaurants changed their strategies of brand communication to overcome the effects of the crisis. The findings highlight the importance of SM as a tool to stay in touch with consumers and the pivotal role of customers in engagement, especially during a pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to investigate the changes in brand communication and the effects on customer engagement during a pandemic, with a focus on Instagram. It contributes to understanding the role of platform and the main drivers of engagement on Instagram, as well as suggesting how managers can improve brand value using SM.