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Travel decreased dramatically during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to return rapidly to prepandemic levels once the degree of fear toward the virus began to diminish among potential travelers. This USA-based 16-month repeated-measure cross-sectional survey study aims to explore the degree to which fear of COVID affected people’s decisions to stay home rather than to travel during the pandemic.

The research used survey data. An extensive data set, composed of over 9,500 respondents, collected through Mechanical Turk over a 16-month time period, was used to compare respondent fear of the pandemic both with their attitudes toward future travel and with Smith Travel Research data reflecting actual pandemic travel patterns.

The results demonstrate how fear of COVID was closely and negatively linked to both travel intentions and travel behavior.

Data were collected from US respondents only.

The findings significantly extend earlier studies and provide guidance for those studying travel consumer behavior regarding trends that should be monitored in the case of a future pandemic or other fear-inducing crisis. For hospitality and tourism managers and marketers, understanding fear as a leading indicator of future travel behavior can result in more timely promotional efforts and staffing and training decisions.

Measuring and understanding consumer fear levels as this relates to travel decisions can help in the future to adjust the message that is sent to the public, perhaps reducing the amount of travel taken during periods when this is unwise and or unsafe.

This paper extends previous work that had been based upon cross-sectional reviews, providing a broader and more valuable study of an important and timely consumer behavior travel topic.

Many entrepreneurs often struggle with the fear of failure, which can be detrimental to both their business and personal well-being. To better understand the factors that contribute to this fear, the authors conducted research on the impact of various obstacles, such as limited financial resources, risk aversion, stress and hard work avoidance, and prior business failures. Additionally, the authors explored the effects of social capital in mitigating these obstacles and their relationship to fear of failure in entrepreneurship.

The authors conducted a survey with 440 young Iraqi entrepreneurs using non-probabilistic and purposive methods. The survey instrument included multiple measuring scales, which were provided in both English and Arabic. The authors analysed valid responses using structural equation modelling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS).

The findings show that the fear of failure in entrepreneurship is negatively influenced by factors such as limited financial access, risk aversion, and past business failures. However, aversion to stress and hard work did not have a significant impact. The findings also show that social capital could potentially mitigate these negative factors.

The theoretical and practical implications of this study manifest in revealing the difficulties entrepreneurs encounter in developing countries like Iraq, where entrepreneurship is vital for economic growth. The study's limitations stem from its focus on one country and the use of a single survey method. Future research could use varied methods across multiple countries for a more comprehensive view.

This study sheds light on the factors that are obstacles for entrepreneurs to starting a business in emerging economies like Iraq.

This research aimed to examine entrepreneurial fear of failure and entrepreneurial well-being from the perspectives of incubated and nonincubated startups during crises.

Data were collected by distributing online questionnaires to 152 respondents comprising 43 incubated and 109 nonincubated startups in Indonesia. A multivariate discriminant analysis procedure was used to examine the interrelationships between both groups at the discovery, validation, customer creation and construction stages.

The result showed a significant difference between these startups at various stages, which was analyzed to provide insights into the relevant dimensions of fear of failure for startups. The essence of entrepreneurial well-being during crises is in accordance with the role of business incubators in an emerging market economy.

Startups need to innovate in order to grow while considering other factors such as work-life balance and financial resource availability. This is important to ensure they have sufficient motivating dosage of fear of failure.

The present study evaluates incubated and nonincubated startups in an emerging market economy by using both the entrepreneurial fear of failure and well-being to capture possible differences between groups. The context of pandemic crises helps us formulate appropriate approaches taken by incubators and startups in the future crises.

Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this study examines how safety measures, related assistance and tangible benefits affect consumers' emotional and cognitive states, leading to behavioural responses in an uncertain store environment.

The proposed model was tested with the survey data collected from grocery shoppers in Japan and Croatia (n = 314 in each country) and analysed using structural equation modelling.

Safety measures and related assistance decreased perceived threat in Croatia, enhanced arousal in both countries and caused fear in Japan. Tangible benefits reduced fear in Japan and increased arousal in Croatia. In a crisis, perceived threats push unplanned buying and motivate consumers to protect themselves. Arousal drives unplanned buying but diverts consumers from health-focussed behaviour. Loyalty can be gained if fear is controlled.

To retain consumers, retailers should secure a safe shopping environment that reduces fear and provides enough benefits to outweigh the threat.

Using the S-O-R framework, this study enriches the literature on consumer behaviour in a pandemic by contributing new insights into (1) the impact of safety measures and tangible benefits as stimuli, (2) the organismic response through affective and cognitive states, (3) health-focussed behaviour as a novel outcome and (4) comparing the effects in the two countries.

This study aims to examine the relative effectiveness of functional and financial remedies in influencing customers' negative coping responses in the event of a data breach. It also uncovers the different mediating roles played by customers' feelings of anger and fear in the process of data breach recovery. This study thus differs from the literature, which has primarily focused on the impact of financial compensation and apologies for service failures in face-to-face environments.

Two scenario-based experiments were conducted to empirically validate the model. The authors received 302 copies of the questionnaire, of which 269 were valid.

This study finds that functional remedies are more effective than financial remedies when sensitive information has been compromised, but there is no significant difference between the effectiveness of the two remedies when nonsensitive information has been compromised. In addition, functional remedies influence negative coping behaviors directly and indirectly; the indirect effect is achieved through the reduction of fear and anger. Contrary to the authors' expectation, financial remedies do not have a direct effect on negative coping behaviors; they can indirectly affect negative coping behaviors by reducing anger but do not affect negative coping behaviors by reducing fear.

This study provides key insights into how to manage customer reactions in the event of a data breach, suggesting the use of carefully designed recovery strategies. Companies must attend to customers' specific emotional responses to manage their negative coping behaviors.

This study extends the limited literature on data breach recovery actions by investigating the different effectiveness of functional and financial remedies in the event of a data breach. It also uncovers how functional and financial recovery strategies affect customers' negative coping behaviors by revealing the different mediating effects of fear and anger.

This paper aims to understand the emotional patterns of senior citizens when they digitally transact online and how the personality trait of neuroticism can be a vital part of being susceptible to fraud. The authors identify with the cognitive aspect of fear as a vista of neuroscience and behavioural finance in digital banking in today’s banking 5.0 where consumer centricity stands as one of the pillars of the Digital Payment Index of RBI.

This study is empirical and investigative in nature. Primary data has been collected through online questionnaires (via Google Forms) and the interview method to understand the phenomenology of fear and incidents related to becoming victims of fraud and its propensity.

The results exhibit that fear and emotional patterns do affect vulnerability and have a long-lasting psychological impact and susceptivity towards digital frauds.

Fear as an emotion is used to understand the emotional expressive patterns of senior citizens as consumers of digital banking. The OCEAN model is one of the widely used personality models at the global level. This research study helps in highlighting the nuances linked to the behavioural and cognitive part of fear in digital crime.

This research will be beneficial to reduce the susceptibility towards fraud from a behavioural perspective in the usage of digital banking and evaluate solutions for senior citizens to mitigate and cope up with the pressures and perils associated with digital frauds.

The purpose is to understand how farmers in rural American communities perceive crime, safety and policing.

An online survey, adapted from a version used in Victoria, Australia (Harkness, 2017), was modified and administered through social media and farming organizations throughout three US states. The survey covers topics relating to crime and victimization, feelings of safety or fear in rural areas, policing practices and trust in police in their areas and any crime prevention practices that respondents use.

With nearly 1,200 respondents and four scales investigated, results indicate that those respondents with more favorable views of law enforcement and the criminal justice system had the highest fear of crime, those who had been prior victims of crime had a higher fear of crime than those who did not, those with higher community involvement had higher fear of crime, and those from Nebraska compared to Colorado had higher fear of crime.

A better understanding of the agricultural community’s perceptions of crime, safety and policing will aid law enforcement in community policing efforts and in farm crime investigation and prevention. Limitations of the study, including the distribution method will be discussed.

Farm- and agriculture-related crimes have serious financial and emotional consequences for producers and local economies. Stereotypes about rural areas being “safe with no crime” are still prevalent. Rural American farmers’ perceptions of crime, safety and police are largely absent from the literature and are important for improving farm crime prevention.

The higher-level aim of this study is to investigate the impact of health information needs satisfaction on the fear of COVID-19 for the general population. The investigation is theoretically grounded on Wilsons’ model of information seeking in the context of inquesting the reasons for seeking health information as well as the information sources the general population deploy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This cross-sectional survey examines the correlations between health information seeking behavior and the COVID-19 generated fear in the general population through the application of a specially designed structured questionnaire which was distributed online. The questionnaire comprised four main distinct research dimensions (i.e. information needs, information sources, obstacles when seeking information and COVID-19 generated fear) that present significant validity levels.

Individuals were motivated to seek COVID-related health information to cope with the pandemic generated uncertainty. Information needs satisfaction as well as digital health literacy levels is associated with the COVID-19 generated fear in the general population. Finally, a conceptual framework based on Wilsons’ macro-model for information seeking behavior was developed to illustrate information needs satisfaction during the pandemic period. These results indicate the need for incentives to enhance health information needs satisfaction appropriately.

The COVID-19 generated fear in the general population is studied through the information seeking behavior lenses. A well-studied theoretical model for information seeking behavior is adopted for health-related information seeking during pandemic. Finally, digital health information literacy levels are also associated with the fear of COVID-19 reported in the authors’ survey.

Compulsive social media use has the potential to reduce well-being. In this study, the authors propose that there are two main paths to compulsive social media consumption. One is behavioral and based on habit; the other is motivational and rooted in the fear of missing out. This study aims to test the antecedents of these two drivers as well as their consequences for the tendency to engage in compulsive social media consumption.

The authors applied a quantitative research design and collected data through a survey of 600 respondents from a representative sample. The authors used structural equation modeling to test their conceptual model and hypotheses. Gender and age were included as moderators to investigate the model’s boundary conditions.

The authors found support for all the suggested relationships in the conceptual model. The findings indicate two main manifestations of compulsive social media use – always being logged in (i.e. the frequency of social media consumption) and excessive use (the intensity of consumption) – that in turn spurred a reinforcer of compulsivity: disconnection anxiety. The findings also indicate two main paths to compulsive social media consumption. One path is behavioral, based on habit, and the other is motivational, based on fear of missing out. Moreover, the authors identified the key antecedents of both paths. Habit formation was observed to be a function of situational cues (technological nudges in the online sphere) and consumer engagement. Fear of missing out was shaped by both injunctive norms (a consumer norm to be online) and descriptive norms (social proof).

Although the antecedents of compulsive social media consumption suggested in this study have a strong and significant effect, the explained variance in the dependent variables being always logged in and excessive social media use indicates that there might be other drivers as well. These should be explored along with moderators other than gender and age to identify the potential boundary conditions of the model.

The main implications of the present work point to the “ease” with which typical or normal social media use may spiral out of control and become compulsive, with adverse implications for consumer health and well-being.

The behavioral and motivational paths to compulsive social media consumption have been less explored and have not yet been studied in conjunction, nor have their antecedents and consequences. Thus, this is a novel approach to understanding how social media use can potentially lead to reduced control and well-being.

Integrating appraisal theories of discrete emotions with the emotion regulation literature, this study aims to explore the relationships between exploitative leadership and certain types of counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). Besides, this study seeks to examine the mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal within the proposed relationships.

Based on time-lagged survey data from 440 Chinese employees, this study conducted hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that exploitative leadership was positively related to approach-oriented CWB and avoidance-oriented CWB. In addition, this study found that anger mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and approach-oriented CWB, whereas fear mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and avoidance-oriented CWB. Further, cognitive reappraisal buffered the positive effects of exploitative leadership on anger and fear and the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on approach-oriented CWB (via anger) and avoidance-oriented CWB (via fear).

Managers should reduce leaders' exploitation and enhance employees' skills on emotional management and cognitive reappraisal.

First, by verifying the effects of exploitative leadership on both approach-oriented and avoidance-oriented CWB, this study adds to the literature on exploitive leadership and provides a more complete understating of the relationship between exploitative leadership and workplace deviance. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the process through which exploitative leadership affects employees by demonstrating the novel mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) through the lens of appraisal theories of discrete emotions. Third, by verifying the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal, this study provides insights into the boundary conditions of the influences of exploitive leadership.