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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 present study aims to investigate the relationship between loneliness and psychological well-being and examine whether death anxiety mediates the association between loneliness and psychological well-being among community-dwelling elderly people in the Kerala state of India.

A total of 209 participants (125 males and 84 females) were selected for this study through the convenience sampling method. SPSS (version 22) was used to estimate descriptive and correlational indices. Mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes Process macro-Version 3.5 and 5,000 bootstrapped sample-based analysis.

Results indicate the significant indirect effect of loneliness on psychological well-being through the influence of death anxiety. It was thus concluded that lonely feelings among elderly people lower psychological well-being and death anxiety partially mediates the relationship of loneliness and psychological well-being.

The cross-sectional study with the use of questionnaires might not be adequate to establish causal links. All the participants were from community-dwelling. So it reduces the possibility of generalizing the findings to institutional settings. The study recommends the need and importance of mental health support for elderly people through community intervention programs to reduce their feeling of loneliness.

The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by substantiating the mediating role of death anxiety in the relationship between loneliness and the psychological well-being of elderly people staying at home.

Background: Quality of life is a core concern for cancer patients, which can be negatively affected by illness-related death anxiety; yet understanding of how to appropriately target psycho-oncological interventions remains lacking. We aimed to explore experiential acceptance in cancer patients, and whether acceptance – as an alternative to avoidant coping – was related to and predictive of better quality of life and death anxiety outcomes.

Methods: We used a longitudinal, quantitative design with a follow-up after three months. Seventy-two participants completed a questionnaire-battery measuring illness appraisals, acceptance and non-acceptance coping-styles, quality of life, and death anxiety; 31 participants repeated the battery after three months.

Results: Acceptance was an independent explanatory and predictive variable for quality of life and death anxiety, in the direction of psychological health. Acceptance had greater explanatory power for outcomes than either cancer appraisals or avoidant response styles. Avoidant response styles were associated with greater death anxiety and poorer quality of life.

Conclusions: The findings support the role of an accepting response-style in favourable psychological outcomes, identifying a possible target for future psychological intervention. Response styles that might be encouraged in other therapies, such as active coping, planning, and positive reframing, were not associated with beneficial outcomes.

This paper aims to understand the impact of emotional labour in specific health care settings and its potential effect on patient care.

Multi‐method qualitative ethnographic study undertaken in a large ICU in Sydney, Australia using observations from patient case studies, ward rounds and family conferences, open ended interviews with medical and nursing clinicians and managers and focus groups with nurses.

Clinician attitudes to death and dying and clinicians' capacity to engage with the human needs of patients influenced how emotional labour was experienced. Negative effects were not formally acknowledged in clinical workplaces and institutional mechanisms to support clinicians did not exist.

The potential effects of clinician attitudes on performance are hypothesised from clinician‐reported data; no evaluation was undertaken of patient care.

Health service providers must openly acknowledge the effect of emotional labour on the care of dying people. By sharing their experiences, multidisciplinary clinicians become aware of the personal, professional and organisational impact of emotional labour as a core element of health care so as to explicitly and practically respond to it.

The effect of care on clinicians, particularly care of dying people, not only affects the wellbeing of clinicians themselves, but also the quality of care that patients receive. The affective aspect of clinical work must be factored in as an essential element of quality and quality improvement.

During emergencies and times of widespread social fear, such as wars and epidemics, society witnesses many instances of consumer misbehaviour (e.g. panic buying). Therefore, this study aims to understand what drives consumers to enact socially irresponsible while shopping during emergencies.

This study employs a quantitative approach with 400 responses from consumers who shopped during the pandemic.

Results show a positive relationship between consumers' awareness of the negative social consequences of shopping misbehaviour and their ascription of responsibility, which is positively moderated by death-by-emergency-related anxiety. Ascription of responsibility, in turn, has a positive impact on socially responsible behaviour.

This research is the first to examine new applications of norm activation theory in retailing. Furthermore, this research is the first to extend the theory by examining psychological factors that may regulate socially irresponsible behaviour. The research demonstrates the significant role of anxiety and attachment in facilitating the impact of awareness of negative consequences and aspirations of responsibility in the retailing during emergencies.

This brief chapter explores my experiences with music and death throughout my cancer treatment. Though I constantly confronted my mortality throughout my cancer treatment, music also helped to distract me from unpleasant, lengthy or boring treatments, as well as helping me to process my feelings about my own mortality. It thus served two distinct purposes, both focusing my mind on death and pain and distancing me from it.

The purpose of this study is to identify the accelerators of sharing economy that lead to sustainability by adopting green consumption. Nostalgia is studied as a mediator along with social connectedness and past orientation. Specifically, the study is based upon a framework to explore the outcomes of sharing economy through an individual's green consumption behavior from the perspective of mortality anxiety.

Quantitative research technique was employed by collecting data from 537 households through snowball sampling. The model was tested using partial least squares (SEM-VB). The validity of the theoretical and measurement model was assessed.

The results revealed that nostalgia positively influences social connectedness and past orientation, whereas social connectedness and past orientation accelerate green consumption. However, it was confirmed that nostalgia decreases green consumption.

The drivers of sharing economy lead toward environmentally friendly consumer behavior by providing opportunities for different agents to increase the usage of shared consumption. The model can be improved by introducing other mediating variables to enrich understanding.

The study may provide opportunities for practitioners and the government to identify the key factors in a sharing economy, specifically with reference to green consumption and social connectedness. It is predicted that it will help reduce environmental deterioration.

This study identifies the role of mortality anxiety and nostalgia toward green consumption, predominantly in the context of a sharing economy. It is a forward to collaborative consumption.

The purpose of this study is to draw on terror management theory (TMT) to explore the impact of pervasive mortality cues on consumer behaviour as a result of residing in a community ravaged by escalating violence.

A qualitative analysis of 27 in-depth interviews of consumers living in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico during the height of the Mexican drug war provides insight into their coping strategies and consumption.

Living under such conditions results in unrelenting mortality salience (MS), as well as the adoption of consumption-related coping strategies that can conflict with cultural worldviews and threaten self-esteem. The normalization of coping strategies severely strains worldviews. Consumers manage their ensuing intrapersonal evaluative tension by developing consumption safe havens and through identity fragmentation. Moreover, permanent proximal defences result from persistent MS.

Although cross-sectional and idiosyncratic to the Mexican culture, the findings broaden TMT by suggesting that consumers facing relentless MS experience altered brand meanings and social interactions, as they were reluctant to acquire prestige brands, while indicating an increase in the value placed on relationships over possessions.

Marketers can help consumers alleviate their death-related anxiety by eliminating telemarketing campaigns, promoting online shopping, using unique customer identification numbers and investing in visible security measures such as gates, security cameras, and guards.

This exploratory study provides a preliminary theoretical framework for consumers’ reactions to persistent MS.

This study aims to investigate specific green-brand affect in terms of commitment and connection through the morality–mortality determinants of consumer social responsibility and the assumptions of terror management theory in the proposed three-layered framework. Religiosity serves as a moderator within the framework.

Data are collected in Taipei, Taiwan, while quota sampling is applied, and 420 valid questionnaires are collected. The partial least squares technique is applied for data analysis.

With the contingent role of religiosity, consumer social responsibility influences socially conscious consumption, which in turn drives the commitment and connection of green-brand affect. The death anxiety and self-esteem outlined in terror management theory influence materialism, which then drives green-brand commitment; however, contrary to expectations, they do not drive green-brand connection.

By considering green brands beyond their cognitive aspects and into their affective counterparts, morality–mortality drivers of green-brand commitment and green-grand connection are explored to provide unique contributions so as to better understand socially responsible consumption.

Research on death and dying in Western culture holds that individuals engage in a denial and repression of thoughts about death. However, this paper aims to propose that some individuals actively make attempts to exercise control over their eventual demise by engaging in decision-making to achieve an “appropriate death.” A framework is introduced that provides the basis for exploring aspects of decision-making for end of life.

Depth interviews were conducted with 18 consumers about their dispositions toward death and their decision-making regarding their own funerals.

An analysis of the consumer narratives suggests that individuals make efforts to prepare for end of life by reducing conflict and finishing business, enlisting identity management strategies and coming to terms with death itself. Unique consumption experiences and decisions accompany each of these efforts.

This research provides understanding regarding how individuals cope with death by attempting to enlist control over a situation in which they have very little control. In doing so, these individuals make efforts to achieve an “appropriate death” by making explicit decisions for end of life.

Instead of actively engaging in defense mechanisms to deny and repress thoughts of death, this research demonstrates that individuals may recognize the inevitability of death as fulfillment of life. In doing so, they may subscribe to positive illusions regarding end of life and make attempts to exercise control over the event.