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This study aims to investigate the impact of financial and behavioural factors on investment decisions in the cryptocurrency market within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The study uses the cross-sectional absolute deviation methodology developed by Chang et al. (2000) to determine the existence of herding behaviour during extreme conditions in the cryptocurrency market of four GCC countries: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE. In addition, a questionnaire survey was distributed to 322 investors from the GCC cryptocurrency markets to gather data on their investment decisions.

The study finds that the herding theory, prospect theory and heuristics theory account for 16.5% of the variance in investors' choices in the GCC cryptocurrency market. The regression analysis results show no multicollinearity problems, and a high F-statistic indicates the general model's acceptability in the results.

The study's findings suggest that behavioural and financial factors play a significant role in investors' choices in the GCC cryptocurrency market. The study's results can be used by investors to better understand the impact of these factors on their investment decisions and to develop more effective investment strategies. In addition, the study's findings can be used by policymakers to develop regulations that consider the impact of behavioural and financial factors on the GCC cryptocurrency market.

This study adds to the body of literature in two different ways. Initially, motivated by earlier research examining the impact of behaviour finance factors on investment decisions, the authors look at how the behaviour finance factors affect investment decisions of the GCC cryptocurrency market. To extend most of these studies, this study uses a regime-switching model that accounts for two different market states. Second, by considering the recent crisis and more recent periods involving more cryptocurrencies, the authors have contributed to several studies examining the impact of behavioural financial factors on investment decisions in cryptocurrency markets. In fact, very few studies have examined the impact of behavioural finance on cryptocurrency markets. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to investigate how behavioural finance factors influence investment decisions in the GCC cryptocurrency market. This allows to better illuminate the factors driving herd behaviour in the GCC cryptocurrency market.

Recent reviews of field experiments aiming to entice tourists to behave in more environmentally sustainable ways conclude that attitudes – while the primary target – do not perform as well as expected. The purpose of this study is to analyse in detail when attitudes have or have not been successful as behavioural change targets and propose a conceptual framework of possible explanations. In so doing, this study represents the first theoretical – rather than empirical – challenge to the currently dominant theoretical understanding of environmentally significant tourist behaviours and offers alternative theoretical constructs tourism researchers aiming to make tourists behave in more sustainable ways could investigate in future.

The authors investigate in detail experiments where attitude-based behavioural change approaches failed. Based on the insights from this analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework offering five potential explanations. This study also discusses alternative theoretical constructs that could be used for behavioural change interventions.

The authors derive five potential explanations for why attitudes often fail to trigger behavioural change in the context of environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour: tourists do not notice messages attempting to change their attitudes; tourists are unwilling to cognitively process behavioural change messages; tourists develop reactance to behavioural change requests; attempts to alter attitudes do not influence habits; and attempts to alter attitudes do not reduce the effort associated with displaying the desired behaviour.

This study broadens research attention to alternative theoretical constructs that may be more effective in making tourists behave in more sustainable ways and opens opportunities for new measures tourism businesses and destinations can implement to influence tourist behaviour.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first theoretical investigation of possible reasons why attitudes have performed poorly as targets of behavioural change interventions aiming to trigger environmentally sustainable tourist behaviours.

This article aims to systematically review the literature published in recognized journals focused on cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency. It also includes some of the research work on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance, and how this has grown substantially to become an established and particular subject of study in its own right. The study also aims to provide future direction to the researchers working in this field.

For doing research synthesis, a systematic literature review (SLR) approach was applied considering research studies published within the time period, i.e. 1970–2021. This study attempted to accomplish a critical review of 176 studies out of 256 studies identified, which were published in reputable journals to synthesize the existing literature in the behavioral finance domain-related explicitly to cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency as well as on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance.

This review reveals that investors often use cognitive heuristics to reduce the risk of losses in uncertain situations, but that leads to errors in judgment; as a result, investors make irrational decisions, which may cause the market to overreact or underreact – in both situations, the market becomes inefficient. Overall, the literature demonstrates that there is currently no consensus on the usefulness of cognitive heuristics in the context of investment management activities and market efficiency. Therefore, a lack of consensus about this topic suggests that further studies may bring relevant contributions to the literature. Based on the gaps analysis, three major categories of gaps, namely theoretical and methodological gaps, and contextual gaps, are found, where research is needed.

The skillful understanding and knowledge of the cognitive heuristic-driven biases will help the investors, financial institutions and policymakers to overcome the adverse effect of these behavioral biases in the stock market. This article provides a detailed explanation of cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their influence on investment management activities and market efficiency, which could be very useful for finance practitioners, such as an investor who plays at the stock exchange, a portfolio manager, a financial strategist/advisor in an investment firm, a financial planner, an investment banker, a trader/broker at the stock exchange or a financial analyst. But most importantly, the term also includes all those persons who manage corporate entities and are responsible for making their financial management strategies.

Currently, no recent study exists, which reviews and evaluates the empirical research on cognitive heuristic-driven biases displayed by investors. The current study is original in discussing the role of cognitive heuristic-driven biases in investment management activities and market efficiency as well as the history and foundations of behavioral finance by means of research synthesis. This paper is useful to researchers, academicians, policymakers and those working in the area of behavioral finance in understanding the role that cognitive heuristic plays in investment management activities and market efficiency.

Although service researchers have long suggested that customer mistreatment adversely impacts service employees' outcomes, statistical integration of current empirical findings has been lacking. This meta-analysis aims to review and statistically synthesize the state of research on the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.

The authors included 221 effect sizes of 135 independent samples from 119 primary studies (N = 47,964). The authors used a meta-analytic approach to quantitatively review the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-analysis structural equation modeling was used to explore the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-regression was applied to explore the impact of contextual-level moderators (i.e. service provider type and service delivery mode) on these relationships. Furthermore, we compared the effects of customer mistreatment with the effects of other organizational-related factors on some commonly measured employee outcomes.

The results show that customer mistreatment has a significant negative impact on service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. negative emotions), attitudinal outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work engagement and turnover intention) and behavioral outcomes (i.e. job performance, surface acting and emotional labor). Additionally, service employees' negative emotions mediate the association between customer mistreatment and employees' job satisfaction, turnover intention, surface acting and emotional labor. Furthermore, the relationships between customer mistreatment and service employees' negative emotions and job performance are influenced by a contextual-level moderator (i.e. service delivery mode).

The authors contribute to the literature by providing robust meta-analytic estimates of the effects of customer mistreatment on a variety of service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, as well as the different magnitudes of the effect sizes between customer mistreatment and other job-related and personality-related factors by quantifying the true variability of the effect sizes. The authors draw on current theories underpinning customer mistreatment to test a theoretical model of the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. service employees' negative emotions) on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The authors explore the effects of two contextual-level factors (i.e. service provider types and service delivery mode) related to the service delivery context that may account for the variability of effect sizes across empirical studies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the behaviour of retail investors while making an investment decision and how it gets affected by the behavioural biases of the investors using a moderated-mediation framework.

A mixed method approach has been used to fulfil the objectives of the study. In the first study, a qualitative analysis of the interviews with 15 retail investors was conducted. As part of the quantitative study, a total of 201 responses from Indian retail investors were collected using systematic sampling and analysed using structural equation modelling and Process Macro.

The results indicate that anchoring bias, availability bias, herding bias, switching cost, sunk cost, regret avoidance and perceived threat have a significant effect on retail investors’ investing intention. The attitude of the investors towards investing decisions mediates the effects of behavioural bias and the status quo on investment intention. The results of the moderated-mediation analysis indicate that mediating effect of attitude varied at the low and high-risk aversion of investors.

The findings of this study will help regulators and retail investors to understand the critical behavioural biases which affect the investors’ investing intention.

The paper contributes to the literature on investors’ behaviour, status quo bias theory (SQB) and behavioural bias. This study uniquely proposes a moderated-mediation framework to understand the effects of biases on retail investors’ investment intention.

Professional touching behavior (PTB), defined as intentional touching behavior that occurs between organizational members and that falls within the boundaries of appropriateness and professionalism in the workplace, is prevalent in organizations. Scholars from multiple disciplines, including human resources researchers, have acknowledged the importance of physical contact for facilitating interpersonal communication and relationship-building. However, PTB may not only elicit positive reactions from those who receive it but also negative reactions as well, with implications for social dynamics in organizations. PTB can, on the one hand, fulfill employees’ desires for interpersonal connection; at the same time, such physical contact at work can represent a threat to employees’ health. To explain the nature and implications of these divergent effects of receiving PTB, the authors draw upon sociometer theory and behavioral immune system (BIS) theory to model the emotional, cognitive, and physiological processes via which, and the conditions under which, receiving such behavior will result in socially functional responses and prompt subsequent prosocial behavior, and when PTB will be perceived as a health risk and prompt withdrawal behavior. The theoretical framework of this chapter expands our conceptual understanding of the consequences of interpersonal physical contact at work and has important human resources management (HRM) implications for organizational managers.

Referring to “behavioural finance” and “normative model” theories, this study explores the relative significance of behavioural heuristic biases in the investment decisions of real estate investment trusts (REITs) when compared with the conventional normative decision factors, with an ultimate aim to identify the significant behavioural factors that should be avoided to ensure rational asset acquisitions and market efficiency.

A triangulation approach was adopted. Qualitative multiple case studies were conducted, with four cases selected from Australian and New Zealand REITs across the industry, to identify what normative and behavioural finance factors are involved in investment decisions. This formed the basis for the subsequent expert review survey to explore how significant the behavioural factors were manifested in the judgement when compared with the normative factors.

Three out of four theoretical behavioural factors manifested themselves in the investment decisions: investor sentiment, anchoring factors and overconfidence. The overall impact of these three behavioural factors was that they were as significant as normative factors in investment decisions. The heuristic availability of information was found to have no significant effect on experienced REIT fund managers.

The findings were based on four multiple cases and an expert review survey of six frontline fund managers, which form a baseline upon which further research can be conducted to widen the scope of research to cover all REITs in Australasia so that the results can become more robust to benefit the entire market in the region.

As behavioural factors are significant in the decision-making process, REIT fund managers should raise awareness to avoid the significant behavioural factors identified, in particular investor sentiment, which was found to be the most significant one.

This study confirms the relative significance of behavioural factors in property investment decisions within the context of Australasian REITs and alerts fund managers to the ways they should follow to ensure rational investments and market efficiency. It also extends the scale of existing studies to cover not only Australia but also New Zealand for the benefit of the entire Australasian market.

Different age groups display different shopping patterns in terms of how and where consumers buy products. During times of crisis, such behavioural differences become even more striking yet remain under-researched with respect to elderly consumers. This paper investigates the impact of age on retail-related behavioural changes and behavioural stability of elderly shoppers (in comparison to younger consumers) during a crisis.

The authors surveyed 643 Austrian consumers to assess the impact of perceived threat on behavioural change and the moderating effect of age groups. Based on findings from this survey, they subsequently conducted 51 semi-structured interviews to understand the causes of behavioural change and behavioural stability during a crisis.

Elderly shoppers display more stable shopping behaviour during a crisis compared to younger consumers, which is influenced by perceived threat related to the crisis. Such findings indicate that elderly shoppers reinforce their learnt and embedded shopping patterns. The causes of change and stability in behaviour include environmental and inter-personal factors.

Through the lens of social cognitive theory, protection motivation theory and dual process theory, this research contributes to an improved understanding of changes in shopping behaviour of elderly consumers, its antecedents and consequences during a time of crisis. The authors reveal reasons that lead to behavioural stability, hence the absence of change, in terms of shopping during a crisis. They further outline implications for retailers that might wish to better respond to shopping behaviours of the elderly.

Microfinance programs across the countries are designed on the self-help and peer pressure model, aim at microentrepreneurship development. Despite of significant studies on microfinance-supported microentrepreneurship (MSM), not a single literature examines it from the systems thinking. In addition to that, the extant literature did not look MSM from the behavioral perspectives. To address the above gaps, the present study aims to examine self-help group (SHG)-based microfinance programs from the systems approach using the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

Information gathered from 786 women SHG members from four states of India through a structured interview schedule. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were conducted to process data. Additional statistical tests were performed to test the reliability and validity.

It was found that the “positive stimulus” (social intermediation, financial intermediation and business development services) positively impacted; and “negative stimulus” (intermediation accountability, and intermediation assumption) negatively impact, to “motive” (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) for micro-entrepreneurship in the SHG-based microfinance. Further, “motive” positively predicted “behavioral intention”; the “behavioral intention” positively determined “consequences” of micro-entrepreneurship. Intermediation as stimuli acted as “input”; the motive and behavioral intention acted as the “process”, and the consequence acted as the “output” in the SHG-based microentrepreneurship system.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first one to examine the behavioral systems of microentrepreneurship programs through the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0801

The purpose of this paper is to establish the theory of the fraud star and the formulation of its microeconomic model, based on the behavioural sciences.

The methodology is a practical exploration, first in the convergence of the economics of fraud and the behavioural sciences, based on these tools, formulating the new theory of the star of fraud and formulating its microeconomic model.

The paper concludes with a new model of the fraud star theory and its microeconomic modelling. Take into account the new theory of the fraud star of this article.

There are no limitations in the model.

The practical implications are to apply the new fraud star theory and calculate your income, in different scenarios.

The social implication is to know the income for the crime of fraud, according to the level of regulations, control and effective punishment.

The present work is original; there is no new theory of the fraud star, nor its microeconomic model, and it does not exist in the academic field, only in this work.