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This paper studies early stages of actor mobilization for institutional change within Swedish esports.

The authors employ interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The authors’ findings explain how actors become motivated to act in critical reflections linked to conflicting legitimacy judgments and emotionally charged personal struggles. Moreover, the findings show how, as actors get activated in collective action, they identify efficacy lines around valid domains and experience emotionally charged collective endeavors. Furthermore, the findings explain how particularities in early experiences project legitimacy aspirations that orient collective action toward validity ends and particular values and ideals shaping actors' grassroots movements.

This study adds to legitimacy and institutional change theory through individual actors' perspectives, providing key insights into how they are motivated, activated, and oriented. This study is the first to investigate grassroots activists' personal stories in esports.

Foreign fighters (FFs) appeared in at least approximately one-fourth of conflicts over the past 200 years. This study aims to reveal the impact of FFs in conflicts, whether they resolve the conflict faster or they drag out the conflict, and investigate the single and simultaneous impacts of ethnic conflict (EC) and FFs on conflict duration (CD).

The data set consisting of 352 conflicts from 1818 to 2022 was collected from different sources. Logarithmic Linear Regression with Dummy Variables and the Cox Regression models were used to check the hypotheses.

One of the key findings of this analysis is that the use of FFs extends the duration of conflicts. Similarly, conflicts involving EC increase CD. Additionally, the simultaneous effect of FFs and EC together increases the CD much more, and it is noted CD significantly varies regionally.

As this study focused on the factors that affect the duration of the conflict in the hypotheses, the findings only can contribute to explaining the duration rather than factors such as the number of casualties and economic losses. The authors believe that policy and key decision-makers can benefit from the results and think twice before deciding to use FFs in conflicts.

This study offers a separate and simultaneous effect of EC and FFs on CD, which provides some empirical contributions to conflict management by filling the gap in this area.

All hypothesized relationships were significant. Specifically, H1 was supported as disconfirmation and surprising consumption were significantly correlated. Moreover, arousal (H2) and outrage (H4a) were functions of surprising consumption and negative affect (H3) and outrage (H4b) were functions of arousal. H4c was also supported as negative affect had a significant direct effect on consumer outrage. In addition, disconfirmation had negative direct effects on both negative affect (H5) and dissatisfaction (H6a) and dissatisfaction was a function of negative affect. Finally, both outrage (H7a) and dissatisfaction (H7b) had significant negative effects on behavioral intentions.

Respondents were recruited to participate in the data collection in a “college town” in the Southeastern United States. Respondents were provided a paper and pencil data collection instrument that include complete survey instructions and the balance of the research design. To adequately test all hypotheses, the researchers developed a unique scenario that described an extreme service failure that takes place during a hotel check-in. Each respondent was asked to read the scenario and then reflect upon it as they responded to items that assessed their feelings toward the hotel check-in experience.

The results provide additional evidence in support of the existence of the satisfaction-dissatisfaction continuum, as well as specifically identifying the affective nature of levels of satisfaction that fall surprisingly well-below the zone of tolerance. The authors feel that the present study is a necessary step to provide a more comprehensive view of the satisfaction-dissatisfaction continuum. Likewise, the authors posit initial evidence of the antecedents and consequences of consumer outrage. This research supports the prior assumptions of Westbrook (1987) about the vast detrimental effects of negative affective responses to service or product failures.

Future research needs to discover just how extremely deficient service has to be to elicit outrage. Is outrage a personal phenomenon with every consumer experiencing it to different degrees? As such, is outrage triggered at different points on the satisfaction-dissatisfaction continuum? The zone of tolerance seems to suggest this, but it would be interesting to discover if at some collective level of dissatisfaction consumers generally begin to show signs of outrage. Likewise, it would be interesting to understand how the level and pattern of outrage results in customers exiting the relationship but also results in loyal customers becoming enemies (e.g. Gregiore et al., 2009; Gregiore and Fisher, 2008).

The motivation for the current study is both pragmatic and theoretical. As alluded to above, it is evident that the level of service customers’ emotional responses to their service experiences are increasing in frequency and intensity. These negative emotions affect the efficacy of service workers and impede the financial performance of service providers. The popular mantra of “anti-woke” consumers, “Go Woke, Go Broke,” is indicative of the importance of negative emotion. Sometimes referred to as “brand activism” (Moorman, 2020; Sarkar and Kotlet, 2019), recent public stances on social and political issues have led to a boycott of Gillette razors, the burning of Nike shoes, and the canceling of Costco Memberships in what has been called “virtue signaling” (Vredenburg et al., 2020). While none of these actions are desirable, the importance of investigating the impact of strong negative emotions (i.e. outrage) is further demonstrated in reports that 65% of consumers expect companies to authentically support such issues (Barton et al., 2018; Edelman, 2018; Larcker and Tayan, 2018; Moorman, 2020).

Understanding which market to invest in for a well-diversified portfolio is fundamental in economies that are highly vulnerable to fluctuations in exchange rates. Extant literature that has considered phenomenon hardly juxtapose the markets. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of exchange rate volatility on the Stock and Real Estate market of South Africa. The essence is to determine whether the fluctuations in the exchange rate influence the markets prices differently.

The Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity [GARCH (1.1)] model was used in establishing the effect of exchange rate volatility on both markets. This study used monthly South African data between 2000 and 2020.

The results of this study showed that increased exchange rate volatility increases stock market volatility but decreases real-estate market volatility, both of which revealed weak influences from the exchange rates volatility.

This study has implication for policy in using the exchange rate as a policy tool to attract foreign portfolio investment. The weak volatility transmission from the exchange rate market to the stock and real estate market indicates that there is prospect for foreign investors to diversify their investments in these two markets.

This study investigated which of the assets market, stock or housing market do better in volatile exchange rate conditions in South Africa.

Design is an important construct in the retail environment literature. Yet, the measures used for design have not followed appropriate scale development procedures. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual definition and then develop a scale for retail environment design (RED).

Interviews with both consumers and marketing researchers are used to generate a potential list of items. Using four different studies, these items are refined, and the RED scale is offered.

This study develops and validates the four-dimensional RED scale to measure the design of retail environments. The dimensions are functional, aesthetic, lighting and signage.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailing researchers to measure lighting and signage qualities as part of retail design, measure design of retail environments more accurately and allow different studies to be compared.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailers to better understand customers’ perceptions of the four dimensions of design. Retailers spend significant time and money designing and redesigning retail environments. The RED scale will enable managers to ensure these significant investments create competitive advantages and an appropriate return on investment.

A scale to measure retail environment design is developed. The scale includes two dimensions (lighting and signage) that are not typically investigated.

This chapter discusses the steps taken to access and use the ACS five-year data. The format of the data is discussed pointing out the fact that there is no requirement that an ACS five-year variable holds data for the same field year to year. The development of a cross-reference table is discussed allowing the data to be accessed by a common label.

This chapter discusses the design of the LHS and the steps taken to ensure data privacy and security. Usage of the application programming interface (API) is discussed, paying attention to how an Electronic Health Record (EHR) provider would use the API. Finally, the clinician’s interaction with the system is discussed.