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Companion animals and social media are two important factors of social interaction and well-being among the older population. This study aims to compare social media use and/or having companion animals with respect to sociodemographic variables in conjunction with loneliness, social isolation, depression, satisfaction with life and satisfaction with social support.

This cross-sectional study involves a sample of 250 older community-dwelling adults. The questionnaire comprised sociodemographic, companion animals and social media questions and scales to assess social isolation, loneliness, satisfaction with life and social support and depression. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Four groups emerged: “companion animal/s, no social media” (37.6%); “none” (33.6%); “social media and companion animal/s” (14.4%); and “social media, no companion animal/s” (14.4%). Social media users (with or without companion animals) are the youngest and with higher levels of education; caregivers of companion animals (no social media use) are in-between in terms of age and level of education; and those without companion animals and no social media users are the oldest and with less formal education.

This research examines and compares two key influencers of older adults’ well-being and social interaction (social media and companion animals), that have been researched mostly separately. Findings underlined the cohort effect in the use of social media, suggesting that future older adult cohorts will use more social media whether they have or do not have companion animals.

While exploring the information experience within multispecies families, the subjective nature of humans and non-human entities, living beings and non-living objects becomes evident. This paper aims to reveal the underlying significance of information within socio-physical living environments shared among humans, cats and dogs as companions.

Gaining inspiration from the information experience approach and posthumanism, this is a phenomenological paper. Empirical material related to lived experiences of participating families were gathered through multispecies ethnography methods, followed by phenomenological reflections. The paper has been written based on excerpt-commentary-units and the inclusion of videos and images as an approach to convey the richness of the lived experiences and multiple perspectives.

Findings are organised into three main sections, each capturing lived experiences of information and its utilization from various frames. The paper shows how living beings, both human and animal, use their physical, sensual and moving bodies to acquire and convey information to and from each other. Moving beyond the living beings, the study discusses how non-living objects in the physical environment of a multispecies family also shape information. Material objects, spatial locations and even plants became sources of information for the family members. Lastly, the paper delves into the social environment of the family, where all members, human and animal, are actively shaped by information within their social interactions and companionship.

Considering information distributed across species and material objects in a shared, more-than-human environment, the article suggests implications for an information experience approach. It emphasizes how information shapes the in-between humans, animals and their environment, highlighting their reliance on each other for understanding and living a good shared life. There is a need for future research to explore the information experience within the internal subjective minds of members of multispecies families, bridging the gap in the understanding of these external information and their internal information processes.

Pet-friendly hotels are growing rapidly. The prevalence of pet adoption has largely resulted from the loneliness due to social distancing that happened during the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Many hotels around the world aim to become pet-friendly to satisfy the growing demand. Hoteliers believe that the popularity of pet-friendly hotels will continue, as pet owners often treat pets as their kids. This study aims to investigate how pet-friendly hotels need to design and manage pet-friendly services and policies.

Using grounded theory methodology, this research conducts interviews with 25 pet-friendly hotel managers from Hong Kong (HK). The study includes hotels from different hotel categories and classifications. It examines the conceptualization of pet-friendly service design, drawing on a service blueprint.

Building on the service marketing and service blueprint literature, this research provides a synthesis that reflects how pet-friendly hotels can serve both guests with and without pets. The findings reveal that pet-owner’s service expectations are formed on anthropomorphism, that is, an inclination of attributing human features to nonhuman entity. Hotel managers, and particular those who have pets personally understand better how pet-friendly service can be adapted to meet the expectations and requirements of pet owners while accommodating guests without pets. The market of pet-friendly hospitality is growing, with high profit potential from pet owners who are willing to spend generously.

Data were collected from selected pet-friendly hotels in HK through interviews with pet-friendly service providers. The research is qualitative and exploratory in nature. It aims to explore and examine the multilevel pet-friendly hospitality service design from a managerial perspective. This research enriches the literature on anthropomorphism theory, the design of pet-friendly services and the application of service blueprint.

The research offers explicit suggestions for the design of pet-friendly hospitality services. A pet-friendly hotel service blueprint is developed. This can help managers to develop essential pet-friendly policies and service collaborations between internal departments and with external specialist organizations, maximizing the value for all stakeholders.

The study explores a rapidly emerging market and scrutinizes its specific design requirements. It extends theoretical insights by enriching the anthropomorphism theory and broadening the conceptualizations of service blueprint based on anthropomorphism theory.

Whilst a growing body of support exists for the use of prison animal programmes (PAPs), research within UK prisons is sparse. Opportunity to add to this body of literature is also limited due to the practical barriers around safely embedding animals within forensic settings. This study aims to capitalise on an opportunity to explore a visitation model of a prison-based dog programme (PBDP), recently implemented within a UK prison. The intervention requires staff members to volunteer to bring their pets into the prison on a weekly basis and to accompany them as they complete their normal day-to-day prison roles.

Data was collected within a Category B adult prison for males convicted of a sexual offence. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six prisoners who had spent time with the visitation dogs and six staff members who had been part of those interactions. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, and three themes were developed that focused specifically on the value of this model of PBDP (staff members bringing their pets into the prison).

Three themes (reconnecting men to their outside lives; legitimising pro-social narrative; and “a safe space for them to open up”) were developed from participants’ lived experience of the intervention and its perceived value.

The potential for a low-level PAP to contribute to a rehabilitative prison culture was supported.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to explore the value of this particular model of PBDP within a UK prison.

This paper aims to assess retail shopping avenues for young consumers based on the type of guidance and assistance they pursue (social media vs professional service provider) in purchasing situations judged to be important. Young consumers consider themselves pet parents and pets represent an extension of self. Thus, pet-related products, by their importance, represent an excellent area of analysis for this inquiry.

Data collection was completed in a way that is contextually relevant and gives the results ecological validity with the assistance of a major supplier of pet food. A total of 470 Gen Z owners of small companion animals were obtained. The partial least squares structural equation modeling testing method is considered appropriate for the model analysis due to the structure and homogeneity of the sample and due to the precision of the method.

Results indicate that, in accordance with social media engagement (SME) theory, high SME elevated social commerce purchase intentions while professional advice seekers reported increased brick-and-mortar shopping. Thus, context-dependent, young consumers may purchase from brick-and-mortar sites.

This paper draws on SME and Advice Response Theory and proposes an original model explaining channel selection preferences for young consumers based on the type of advice sought for important purchasing decisions. The model represents a steppingstone to investigate the mechanism that translates information search sources into buying through different channels.

This study aims to assess the nature and scope of dog-based programmes in prisons, assessing critically the potential opportunities, benefits, challenges and risks of developing innovative dog-based programmes for older prisoners in England and Wales. This paper outlines the potential benefits and challenges of developing dog-based programmes for older prisoners and sets out next steps for future research and practice.

This study is based on a scoping review of published research literature on prison dog programmes (PDPs) in the USA, the UK and other countries, with particular reference to older people in prison, followed by semi-structured interviews with six members of an expert advisory group. The literature review and data from the qualitative interviews were analysed thematically.

There is a substantial body of published research literature which supports PDPs as having identifiable positive impacts for people and also dogs, and also published research which highlights the benefits to older people of dog ownership or participation in dog-based activities. However, much of this research is small-scale and qualitative, and it has been argued that there is a lack of a quantitative evidence base. This research concludes that findings from the literature review and the semi-structured interviews support further research and the creation of pilot projects to develop dog-based projects for older people in prison.

This study was small-scale, and the findings need to be approached with caution. The literature review searched a small number of databases and filtered out articles published in languages other than English, and the review of the grey literature focused on reports from the UK. The number of experts interviewed was small and there was no direct consultation with older people in prison nor with older people with recent personal lived experience of imprisonment and community resettlement. A more extensive future study would benefit from a more extensive literature review, a larger group of participants and the inclusion of service users, prison managers and government policymakers, subject to the appropriate ethical and security approvals. At the time the research took place, ongoing COVID-19 restrictions on prison research meant that research with current prisoners and prison managers would not have been approved by the HMPPS NRC.

This research provides a research-based justification for future dog projects for older prisoners, leading potentially to improved well-being for older people in prison.

This study brings together the published research literature on PDPs with the research literature on the needs and experiences of older people in prison for the first time, and identifies potential directions for future research.

This paper aims to study the role of self-concept in consumer relationships with anthropomorphised conversational artificially intelligent (AI) agents. First, the authors investigate how the self-congruence between consumer self-concept and AI and the integration of the conversational AI agent into consumer self-concept might influence such relationships. Second, the authors examine whether these links with self-concept have implications for mental well-being.

This study conducted in-depth interviews with 20 consumers who regularly use popular conversational AI agents for functional or emotional tasks. Based on a thematic analysis and an ideal-type analysis, this study derived a taxonomy of consumer–AI relationships, with self-congruence and self–AI integration as the two axes.

The findings unveil four different relationships that consumers forge with their conversational AI agents, which differ in self-congruence and self–AI integration. Both dimensions are prominent in replacement and committed relationships, where consumers rely on conversational AI agents for companionship and emotional tasks such as personal growth or as a means for overcoming past traumas. These two relationships carry well-being risks in terms of changing expectations that consumers seek to fulfil in human-to-human relationships. Conversely, in the functional relationship, the conversational AI agents are viewed as an important part of one’s professional performance; however, consumers maintain a low sense of self-congruence and distinguish themselves from the agent, also because of the fear of losing their sense of uniqueness and autonomy. Consumers in aspiring relationships rely on their agents for companionship to remedy social exclusion and loneliness, but feel this is prevented because of the agents’ technical limitations.

Although this study provides insights into the dynamics of consumer relationships with conversational AI agents, it comes with limitations. The sample of this study included users of conversational AI agents such as Siri, Google Assistant and Replika. However, future studies should also investigate other agents, such as ChatGPT. Moreover, the self-related processes studied here could be compared across public and private contexts. There is also a need to examine such complex relationships with longitudinal studies. Moreover, future research should explore how consumers’ self-concept could be negatively affected if the support provided by AI is withdrawn. Finally, this study reveals that in some cases, consumers are changing their expectations related to human-to-human relationships based on their interactions with conversational AI agents.

This study enables practitioners to identify specific anthropomorphic cues that can support the development of different types of consumer–AI relationships and to consider their consequences across a range of well-being aspects.

This research equips marketing scholars with a novel understanding of the role of self-concept in the relationships that consumers forge with popular conversational AI agents and the associated well-being implications.

This article aims to help educators provide a holistic view of the LGBTQ community by highlighting children’s books that include non-parental LGBTQ characters.

The author selected over 80 children’s books honored by the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List. Twenty-two books were analyzed that contain examples of LGBTQ adults existing beyond the homonormative nuclear family, e.g. two same-sex parents raising children.

The author discusses various ways of living represented in these books, such as chosen families, extended families, romantic partnerships and singlehood.

With the increased number of high-quality LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books published in the past decade, this study provides the foundation for educators to select various texts that reveal diverse representations of LGBTQ individuals.

This paper aims to explore and review the potential of robotic rehabilitation as a treatment approach for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and its impact on the health and quality of life of AD patients.

The present discourse endeavors to provide a comprehensive overview of extant scholarly inquiries that have examined the salience of inhibitory mechanisms vis-à-vis robotic interventions and their impact on patients with AD. Specifically, this review aims to explicate the contemporary state of affairs in this realm by furnishing a detailed explication of ongoing research endeavors. With the objective of elucidating the significance of inhibitory processes in robotic therapies for individuals with AD, this analysis offers a critical appraisal of extant literature that probes the intersection of cognitive mechanisms and assistive technologies. Through a meticulous analysis of diverse scholarly contributions, this review advances a nuanced understanding of the intricate interplay between inhibitory processes and robotic interventions in the context of AD.

According to the review papers, it appears that implementing robot-assisted rehabilitation can serve as a pragmatic and effective solution for enhancing the well-being and overall quality of life of patients and families engaged with AD. Besides, this new feature in the robotic area is anticipated to have a critical role in the success of this innovative approach.

Due to the nascent nature of this cutting-edge technology and the constrained configuration of the mechanized entity in question, further protracted analysis is imperative to ascertain the advantages and drawbacks of robotic rehabilitation vis-à-vis individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s ailment.

The potential for robots to serve as indispensable assets in the provision of care for individuals afflicted with AD is significant; however, their efficacy and appropriateness for utilization by caregivers of AD patients must be subjected to further rigorous scrutiny.

This paper reviews the current robotic method and compares the current state of the art for the AD patient.