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The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted everyday life, leading to a cascade of negative emotional responses such as death anxiety. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the buffering effect of brand attachment on death anxiety by exploring the roles of brand concepts and brand positioning on psychological compensation for security.

This multi-method paper features four studies and shows how brands can offer emotional support under high-risk circumstances.

Study 1 includes two surveys which offer preliminary evidence that death anxiety can enhance consumers’ brand attachment. Study 2 reveals a causal effect wherein consumers experiencing death anxiety are more likely to attach to brands with a self-transcendence (vs self-enhancement) concept. Study 3 examines the mediating role of need for security in the relationship between death anxiety and attachment to brands with a self-transcendence concept. Further, Study 4 indicates the moderating role of brand positioning: self-transcendence brands adopting local (vs global) positioning strategies are more likely to satisfy consumers’ need for security, thereby leading to strong brand attachment.

The findings of this paper contribute to the brand attachment literature and to the global branding literature regarding consumers’ emotional responses in the context of COVID-19. This paper innovatively frames brand concepts and brand positioning and provides actionable guidelines to help brands satisfy consumers’ needs amid a worldwide crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine criminal offenders’ dispositional empathy and relate it to perceived parenting characteristics of primary caregivers (measured as care and overprotection) and inmates’ internal working models of the self and others (measured as attachment anxiety and avoidance, respectively).

Compared to a group of 110 college students, the group of 102 inmates indicated lower levels of cognitive and emotional empathy (measured as perspective taking (PT) and empathic concern (EC), respectively). Among inmates, perceived parental care was related to PT; parental overprotection was related to EC.

The inmates’ data fit a model suggesting a mediational role of attachment anxiety in the relation between perceived parental overprotection and EC. Also, inmates’ attachment avoidance moderated the relation between attachment anxiety and EC, so that the relation only occurred when attachment avoidance was not high. The findings suggested potential protective roles of early parental bonding and positive views of social others in enhancing empathy for justice-involved populations.

The findings shed light on how inmates’ perception of parenting related to both aspects of empathy and how cognitive representations of the self and others potentially underlie the association between perceived parenting and their disposition for EC. To cultivate dispositional empathy as a means of preventing delinquency, it is important to advocate not only parenting characterized as caring and warm, but also cognitive interventions on framing positive working models of social others, particularly for those who perceive their primary caregivers as overprotective and are highly avoidant to social closeness.

This study aims to understand the association between the fear of missing out (FOMO) and its impact on psychological well-being (PWB). The mediating effect of anxiety and moderating effects of social media engagement (SME) and resilience on the association mentioned above are also examined.

The study used a mix of attachment theory and cognitive-motivational-relational theory to understand the hypothesized relationship using a diverse sample of international respondents from South Asia, South East Asia and the Middle East. The data from 612 respondents was collected using SurveyMonkey. The authors have used Hayes’ PROCESS Macro to test the hypothesised relationships.

The results revealed that anxiety acts as a mediator between FOMO and PWB, while SME and resilience act as moderators in reducing the impact of FOMO on anxiety and the impact of anxiety on PWB, respectively.

The work extends the existing theorization and points out the merits of using SME and resilience as moderators and anxiety as a mediator for understanding the association between FOMO and PWB.

The aim of this study is to investigate how corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) among employees in hotel industry. Corporate green brand should be built not only from the provision of green products or services but also from green behavior among employees in their daily activities. This study also seeks the understanding of the moderating effects of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and employees’ attachment styles on the relationship between CSR and OCBE.

The data for testing the study model were harvested from respondents in the hotel industry in Vietnam business context.

The research results unveiled the positive effect of CSR on OCBE and the roles of CE and employee attachment styles in moderating this effect.

Hospitality organizations should integrate CSR initiatives into their sustainable strategy to shape employee OCBE. Entrepreneurial values should also be cultivated among employees to drive them to further respond to CSR initiatives and engage in OCBE.

This study expands CSR and green research streams by identifying the effect of CSR on OCBE among hotel employees as well as moderation mechanisms of CE and employee attachment styles for such an effect.

Researchers have explored contextual antecedents influencing engagement at work; yet, theory and empirical evidence suggest some individuals are more or less engaged than others. Using a relational framework based on attachment theory, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that relational models influence engagement through their influence on psychological availability and psychological safety. Study 1 examined whether attachment influences variability in engagement. Study 2 examined whether these effects could be replicated, and whether attachment influences engagement via individuals’ psychological availability and safety.

Two field studies using online self-report surveys (Study 1 n=203; Study 2 n=709).

Attachment-avoidance and attachment-anxiety were independently associated with lower levels of engagement, and psychological conditions mediated these relationships.

Relational models explain predictable variability in engagement. Employees’ ability to engage may be constrained or facilitated by their stable relational models of attachment.

The study is one of the few examining individual differences in engagement.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance and gender on different forms of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

A total of 132 employees with different occupational backgrounds were surveyed by means of the “Scales to measure two dimensions of attachment insecurity” (Grau, 1999) and a German-speaking OCB questionnaire (Staufenbiel and Hartz 2000).

Results suggest that employees high in anxiety show higher ratings in OCB-conscientiousness, whereas employees high in avoidance show higher ratings in OCB-civic virtue. Moreover, we found highly avoidant individuals to be less likely to engage in OCB-altruism. Finally, besides an overall gender effect for OCB-loyalty, results reveal significant interaction effects of anxiety and gender on OCB-conscientiousness as well as of avoidance and gender on OCB-civic virtue.

Considering the increase in flexible employment relationships and in team work, we think of attachment orientations as a concept of practical relevance because adjustment to such work environments can be assumed to be highly dependent on attachment security.

The research at hand is the first that analyzes unique and joint contributions of attachment orientations and gender to the prediction of different OCBs. Thereby, it provides evidence for the neglected applicability of attachment theory to the understanding of workplace behaviors in general and of OCBs in particular. Furthermore, the present study expands existing knowledge on the relationship between gender and OCB and implies that the influence of attachment orientations on some OCB-dimensions is stronger in the absence of gender stereotypes.

Extant research evidence demonstrates that customer satisfaction in a service encounter is influenced by other customer perception (OCP). However, scholarly research on the impact of OCP on brand love and the moderating influence of customers’ attachment styles in the context of hospitality industry is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature.

The data were collected from customers of five and three-star hotels in India. Regression-based process analysis (Hayes, 2013) was used to test the proposed set of hypotheses.

The data analysis shows that OCP predicts brand love through the mediation of satisfaction. Individual’s anxious attachment style positively moderates “other customer perception-satisfaction” relationship, and avoidant attachment style negatively moderates the same relationship. Thus the effect of OCP is positively moderated by anxious attachment style, and negatively moderated by avoidant attachment style.

The value of this study lies in quantitatively investigating the roles played by OCP and individual attachment styles in shaping brand love in hospitality industry. In contrast to findings from previous research, the findings from this study suggest that anxious attachment style positively influences brand satisfaction and formation of brand love.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between brand attachment and consumers’ positive and negative behaviours. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effects of attachment styles on these relationships.

The study is based on a survey of 432 respondents, and the data are analysed using the structural equation modelling approach.

This study empirically supports that brand attachment and attachment styles (i.e. anxiety attachment and avoidance attachment) are distinct. Brand attachment influences consumers’ not only positive behaviour (i.e. brand loyalty) but also negative behaviours, such as trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions. The findings of the study suggest that only avoidance attachment style moderates the relationships between brand attachment and these consumer behaviours. The link between brand attachment and brand loyalty is attenuated for high-attachment-avoidance consumers. In contrast, the links between brand attachment and trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions are strengthened.

This study assists marketing managers in understanding that a strong brand attachment may result in negative behaviours that can harm a company’s brand image. Thus, building a strong relationship with consumers will not always be beneficial. Companies should be aware of the consequences of building relationships with consumers who have a high level of attachment anxiety and/or avoidance.

This paper highlights that brand attachment not only influences brand loyalty behaviour but also three negative behaviours: trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions. Moreover, the links between brand attachment and negative behaviours are strengthened when consumers have a high level of attachment avoidance.

This paper aims to examine how individuals' attachment dispositions relate to interactional justice perceptions, how work stressors moderate this association, and how together they associate with attitudes (satisfaction, turnover intention, commitment) and citizenship behaviors at work.

Survey data were used in an observed variable path analysis examining mediation by interactional justice and moderation by stressors on the associations between attachment dimensions and work outcomes.

Attachment avoidance was negatively related to interactional justice perceptions and attachment anxiety was also negatively related to interactional justice perceptions, but only under conditions of higher work stressors. Interactional justice mediated the associations between attachment avoidance and work outcomes, and between the interaction of attachment anxiety and work stressors on work outcomes.

These findings are particularly relevant to multiple aspects of HR practice, including performance feedback, managing stressors, building resilience, reward allocation and recognition, designing wellness programs and other aspects of human resource management.

This research goes beyond contextual predictors of justice perceptions and demonstrates that jointly considering attachment dimensions and work stressors uniquely contributes to understanding the formation of justice perceptions and their combined influence on work attitudes and behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to apply trust perspective and attachment theory and determined that relational embeddedness, anxiety attachment, and avoidance attachment are major factors influencing the trust of tenants in owners/developers of shopping centers. The authors also examined whether tenants transfer this trust to new shopping center developers and the consequent effect on relational performance.

This research was empirically based on primary data collected from new shopping center developers and the consequent effect on relational performance. Structure equation modeling was employed to verify and validate the research model.

Data collected from 250 shopping center tenants were analyzed, and the findings indicate that relational embeddedness, anxiety attachment, and avoidance attachment positively affect the trust of store tenants in the owners or developers of shopping centers. Furthermore, the authors determined that trust in existing shopping center developers was transferred to new shopping center developers, which consequently enhanced relational performance.

The findings contribute to trust transfer research and provide actionable guidelines to organizations intending to provide intermediary business services.