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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between determinants and primary antecedents of advertising and attitudes to advertising in the context of European Union accession countries.

Drawing on data from consumer surveys conducted in the major urban areas of Bulgaria and Romania the study conceptualises an extended version of Pollay and Mittal's model of beliefs and attitudes toward advertising. It tests a comprehensive range of attitudes toward the institution of advertising and its instruments in each country to identify similarities and differences in consumer perceptions.

Findings confirm that consumers in the two countries are more positive about advertising as an institution than the instruments used to promote advertising. While product information acquisition is the main personal use of advertising which influences general attitudes to advertising in Bulgaria, the entertaining value of advertising was found the strongest personal use in Romania. No significant differences were found in the attitudes toward the institution and instruments of advertising in the two countries.

As data used in this study come from major urban areas in Bulgaria and Romania this might account for small research bias if the overall population of the two countries is considered. Interview bias were reduced by eliminating the verbal or non‐verbal cues to the respondents. The diverse composition of the two samples and the random selection of respondents have limited the research bias which is often a problem with other studies in Central and Eastern Europe that use predominantly convenience student samples.

The paper suggests that managers should focus on and exploit the overall positive general attitudes toward advertising in Romania and Bulgaria. Marketers should prioritise the informative power of advertising and use it cautiously in view of its perceived manipulative role especially to children. Advertisers need to devote more specific attention to re‐enforce the credibility of the institution of advertising in both countries.

The paper is a result of an original research that has extended theoretical concepts and compared their applicability to comparable EU accession contexts. Its findings suggest that advertising should be adapted to the personal uses and attitudes to advertising in the researched contexts by putting more emphasis on image building in order to increase its persuasive power and raise public trust in the institution and instruments of advertising.

Internet2 research will lead to new technologies that will launch the Internet into another wave of unprecedented growth with enhanced interactivity and greater amounts of information delivered via richer communication. As a result, Web‐based retailers must begin to rethink the design of their sites, the amount of information to provide, and the degree of media richness to deliver. Based on a large sample of managers, this study examines media richness theory in the context of simple and complex products. The findings suggest that, overall, Internet users have more positive attitudes and higher levels of satisfaction with regard to rich sites than to lean sites, although the results for simple product sites were inconclusive. The study discusses the impact of the results for both simple and complex products and details the development of a new experimental instrument to measure user attitudes and satisfaction.

Given the increased interest in the practical significance of the general attitude towards religious advertising, the purpose of this paper is to examine what influences consumers’ general attitude towards religious advertising in Malaysia.

An analytical research design was used to examine the impact of five factors (attitude towards the purpose/goal of the religious advertising [attitude institution], the quality of the message [attitude instrument], the information presented in the religious advertising about the product [product information], the social image associated with the advertised product [social image] and the hedonic pleasure owing to the advertisement of the product or service [hedonic pleasure]) on the general attitude towards religious advertising. Data were collected using an online survey (n = 210) and were analysed using structural equation modelling method.

The research found that the attitude towards the institution of advertising and the hedonic pleasure significantly influence the general attitude towards religious advertising. However, the quality of the advertisement, social image and product information were found to be insignificant predictors. Overall, this is a surprising result, where consumers place their trust in the reputation of the provider of the product or service and act based on the stimulus of good feeling the advertisement converse to them.

This paper fills the gap in the research, as there are very few studies done on religious advertising. This paper has presented ways to improve practices of religious advertising.

Theoretical constructs serve important roles in facilitating information and knowledge flows among, between and within information systems researchers and practitioners. In order for the benefits of constructs to be fully exploited, they must be appropriately applied and operationalized. Describes a controlled field study, examining users′ satisfaction with a decision support system, undertaken to point out the dangers of misapplying constructs and their measurement scales. Particular consideration is given to the risks associated with the use of general instruments in situations where more narrowly focused and context‐specific instruments are preferred.

Education for Sustainable Development (EDS) has highlighted the need to generate instruments to assess the sustainability competencies of different populations. In this regard, Physical Education (PE) has been recognized as a subject with unique characteristics that allow students to develop competencies that favor sustainability. However, in previous literature, there are no specific instruments to assess the competencies of future Physical Education teachers (PETs). Therefore, this research aims to design and validate an instrument to assess sustainable competencies in future PETs.

This paper shows the validation process of a questionnaire designed ad hoc to measure the future teacher's sustainable competencies. In total, 341 students completed the Physical Education Scale for Sustainable Development in Future Teachers (PESD-FT) questionnaire consisting of 20 items and an eight-point Likert scale. To ensure the relationship of the instrument's items with the sustainable development, the specific targets that compose the 17 Sustainable Development Goals were considered.

The results showed that the instrument had very high reliability (0.949), excellently fulfilling the validity criteria (0.929). Furthermore, the principal component factor analysis results showed that the PESD-FT comprises three factors, which coincide with the three dimensions of sustainability.

It is concluded that PESD-FT is an instrument that reliably assesses the sustainable competencies of prospective PET and expands the possibilities of PE as a valuable instrument to promote sustainable competencies in an integrated way with PE learning objectives. As such, it can be a robust and valuable measurement tool for proposing effective education for sustainable development policies and programs in initial teacher education for PET.

The use of technology in education is still seen as a symbol of modernity in Indonesia. Without adequate technological infrastructural support from institutions, teachers develop ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the affective domain in learning mathematics with technology across genders and across two student groups, where in one group the students shared learning devices, while the other group of students used individual devices.

The study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods and is based on data collected from five secondary schools in Indonesia.

The findings reveal attitudinal differences are associated with technology usage in mathematics classrooms. Quantitative measurements across four attitudinal subscales—mathematics motivation, attitudes to the use of technology in mathematics, technological confidence and mathematics confidence—indicate that affordances in technologies influence boys and girls attitudes; while qualitative data share further insights on gender perspectives related to attitudinal differences.

Appropriate pedagogical approaches with equitable access to technologies are important for engaging students in learning mathematics with technology.

This empirical study reveals aspects related to student participation with technologies in classrooms, which has important implications for student development.

The study contributes to literature on mathematics education related to the use of learning technologies in secondary schools of a developing country.

The main purpose of the study was to assess the entrepreneurial orientation based on personality and attitude of female aspirant human resources in India.

For collecting primary data, the scale on entrepreneurial attitude orientation developed by Robinson et al. (1991) was used. Statistical tools such as correlations, analysis of variance, means, grand means, standard deviations and percentages were used for the analysis of the primary data gathered from 500 female respondents.

The results showed the highest score of the female respondents on the achievement motivation as compared to other three personality descriptors and lowest but positive score on the self-esteem dimension. Among attitude components, the cognition had emerged as highest. MBAs showed comparatively less entrepreneurial orientation than other categories of female aspirants. Results indicated that lower age, lower educational qualifications and high socioeconomic status supported the entrepreneurship.

The study was limited to only four personality traits and three attitude components. Another limitation of the study was that the data were collected from North India that could have been collected from the wider area.

The study will be helpful to the female aspirant participants to decide whether to choose managerial or entrepreneurial careers. By taking cues from this study, educators can build curriculum and develop programs to encourage and empower future female entrepreneurs.

Inclusion of Indian female aspirants of different backgrounds will definitely add value to the existing knowledge, management theory and practice.

Financial literacy has been recognized as a key competency. However, there are some gaps such as the relationship with other behavioral factors. Thus, this paper aims to develop a model that would be able to identify the integrate effect of financial literacy on the behavioral factors: materialism, compulsive buying and propensity to indebtedness.

The study investigated 2,487 individuals in Brazil. For an analysis, the authors used confirmatory factorial analysis and structural equations modeling and six research hypotheses.

The main findings showed that the impact of financial literacy on compulsive buying behavior was the greatest of the direct relationships proposed, as well as the total effects of financial literacy on behavioral aspects.

The outcomes of this study are important for the development of public policies and to other interested agents, as financial literacy goes beyond the fact that it impacts on the individuals’ financial health only and also helps those who suffer from other psychosocial behaviors.

This study is unique and innovative, to the extent that it measures the actual direct and indirect impact of financial literacy on other behavioral factors, which have been so far analyzed in separate. It concluded that financial literacy has much more significant impacts than other academic studies have shown, because under the academic point of view, the central focus up to now has been identifying only its impact on other behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to explore how three experiential factors – perceived social support from host-country nationals (HCNs), adaptation difficulties, and attitude towards assimilating into the host culture and society – influence the generation of worthwhile feelings and the intention to pursue expatriate career opportunities in the host country among short-term studying abroad (STSA) students.

This study used data from a survey of 297 Thai students who studied in Chinese universities between 2015 and 2019. A bivariate probit model was applied due to its ability to account for the potential correlation of errors between the two binary outcome variables: worthwhileness and aspiration for expatriate careers.

Adaptation difficulties reported by students negatively impacted their willingness to work in the host country, but did not diminish their perception of the sojourn as worthwhile. Satisfaction with social support from HCNs was found to not only enhance the worthwhileness of the sojourn but also inspire students' expatriate career intentions in the host country. The study also found that while willingness to assimilate into the host culture and society primarily enhanced the worthwhileness of the trip, its effect on students' willingness to consider working in the host country was relatively weak, compared with the effect of social support from HCNs.

The generalizability of the findings from this study may be limited to country pairs that are geographically and culturally similar.

Although it is commonly believed that STSA programs help inspire students to develop aspirations for international careers or lifestyles, the specific roles of various factors in their experiences abroad have not been sufficiently studied. This study aims to clarify the different effects between social support received, adaptation difficulties experienced, and inner acculturation attitudes on both the evaluation of the trip itself and the long-term life goals of students participating in STSA programs.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a process evaluation of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) intervention study that tested the effectiveness of classroom- and simulation-based crew resource management courses, alone and in combination, and identifies organisational barriers and facilitators to implementation of team training programmes in healthcare.

The RCT design consisted of a before and after study with a team training intervention. Quantitative data were gathered on utility and affective reactions to training, and on teamwork knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours of the learners. A sample of participants was interviewed at the conclusion of the study. Interview responses were analysed, alongside qualitative elements of the classroom course critique, to search for evidence, context, and facilitation clues to the implementation process.

The RCT method provided scientifically robust data that supported the benefits of classroom training. Qualitative data identified a number of facilitators to implementation of team training, and shed light on some of the ways that learning was diffused throughout the organisation. Barriers to successful implementation were also identified, including hospital time and resource constraints and poor organisational communication.

Quantitative randomised methods have intermittently been used to evaluate team training interventions in healthcare. Despite two decades of team training trials, however, the authors do not know as well as the authors would like what goes on inside the “black box” of such RCTs. While results are usually centred on outcomes, this study also provides insight into the context and mechanisms associated with those outcomes and identifies barriers and facilitators to successful intervention implementation.