Search results

This study aims to examine the influence of social media usage (SMU) on minimalist consumption and how the fear of missing out (FoMO) underlies this effect.

Four preregistered correlational/experimental studies (n = 1,763) are used. A pilot study (n = 436) examines the correlations between SMU, FoMO and minimalism. Studies 1 (n = 409), 2 (n = 415) and 3 (n = 503) further investigate the influence of SMU on minimalist consumption intentions, including mindful purchase, forgoing free products and decluttering, and test for evidence of mediation via FoMO by measuring or manipulating FoMO.

The results show that a high SMU makes consumers susceptible to FoMO, leading to impulsive purchases and careless product acquisition. However, when campaigners promote minimalism as a social media movement, they can activate FoMO, persuading consumers to practice decluttering.

Future research might examine how subjective age affects FoMO and minimalist consumption tendencies. Could campaigners use young social cues to make older consumers more susceptible to FoMO appeals? Could old social cues cause younger consumers to perceive greater social responsibility and to embrace minimalist consumption?

Minimalist lifestyles can promote sustainable consumption. This research provides insights into how SMU is a double-edged sword – it can cause FoMO users to disdain minimalism. However, it can promote minimalism if a minimalist campaign is strategically positioned as a social media movement using a FoMO-laden appeal.

Extant consumer behavior research on minimalism has just begun to investigate the antecedents of minimalist consumption. FoMO is conceptually related to minimalism, but the relationship between FoMO and minimalist consumption has not yet been empirically tested. This research fills these gaps by examining SMU and the associated FoMO as antecedents of minimalist consumption. Empirical evidence for the impact of SMU on various minimalist consumption behaviors and the mediating role of FoMO is provided.

The purpose of this study is to develop and assess the effects of unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT 2) constructs – effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI) and hedonic motivation (HM) – on behavioural intention (BI), as well as the impact of innovation resistance theory (IRT) constructs – usage barrier (UB) and tradition barrier (TB) – on innovation resistance (IR) behavior in the context of digital zakat payment in Aceh. In addition, this study also examines how knowledge of fiqh zakat influences both BI and IR.

This was a quantitative study including 350 Acehnese persons who paid zakat online. This research used a Likert scale, and the sampling technique was purposive sampling applied for the Acehnese people. The research respondents were civil servants, private employees, BUMN employees (employees of State-Owned Enterprises), merchants, restaurant owners, professionals and other occupations who had paid professional zakat through a digital system mechanism. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This research found that the constructs built through the theory of UTAUT 2 explained the position of the EE variable, which had a significant effect on BI. On the other hand, the variable of SI and HM did not significantly affect BI in digital zakat payment. This finding demonstrated that BI significantly influenced actual usage (AU). UB and TB had no impact on IR, according to the theoretical framework developed by IRT. Yet, the knowledge about the fiqh zakat (KFZ) significantly affected the AU. In terms of the moderation role, the KFZ variable moderated the relationship between BI and AU. However, the KFZ variable did not moderate the relationship between IR and AU.

This research had limitations and could still be investigated further by involving a larger sample. This study does not include all UTAUT 2 and IRT constructs, but only involves UTAUT 2 and IRT constructs based on the phenomenon of digital zakat paying behavior in the people of Aceh.

This research had a managerial contribution and an evaluation of the use of digital zakat collection services in Aceh and zakat management institutions in various countries. The existence of significant EE should be a reference for zakat institutions to produce continuous payment applications with a higher level of convenience in the future. In addition, the government should encourage more organised fiqh zakat education in society to plan a more optimal zakat collection. The reason for this is that KFZ has been shown to moderate zakat intentions towards actual digital zakat payment behaviour.

The results of this study were then accommodated by the government to design a digital zakat collection system so that it resulted in optimising the collected zakat funds. The greater the zakat funds collected, the greater the economic impact and social resilience of the community was in the midst of the post-covid and global crisis.

This research provided an essential value in the aspect of collecting zakat funds, especially in the study of the behaviour of paying zakat digitally. The theory of planned behaviour predominated in earlier studies that investigated zakat-paying behaviour. Yet, this research was even more focused as it used the constructs of UTAUT 2 and IRT theory and applied the involvement of a moderator variable like fiqh zakat knowledge that was barely discussed.

There are many safety hazards in construction workplaces, and inattention to the hazards is the main reason why construction workers failed to identify the hazards. Reasonably allocating attention during hazard identification is critical for construction workers’ safety. However, adverse working environments in job sites may undermine workers’ attention. Previous studies failed to investigate the impacts of environmental factors on attention allocation, which hinders taking appropriate measures to eliminate safety incidents when encountering adverse working environments. This study aims to examine the effects of workplace noise and heat exposure on workers’ attention allocation during construction hazard identification to fill the research gap.

This study applied an experimental study where a within-subject experiment was designed. Fifteen construction workers were invited to perform hazard identification tasks in panoramic virtual reality. They were exposed to three noise levels (60, 85 and 100 dBA) in four thermal conditions (26°C, 50% RH; 33°C, 50% RH; 30°C, 70% RH; 33°C, 70% RH). Their eye movements were recorded to indicate their attention allocation under each condition.

The results show that noise exposure reduced workers’ attention to hazardous areas and the impacts increased with the noise level. Heat exposure also reduced the attention, but it did not increase with the heat stress but with subjects’ thermal discomfort. The attention was impacted more by noise than heat exposure. Noise exposure in the hot climate should be more noteworthy because lower levels of noise would lead to significant changes. These visual characteristics led to poorer identification accuracy.

This study could extend the understanding of the relationship between adverse environmental factors and construction safety. Understanding the intrinsic reasons for workers' failed identification may also provide insights for the industry to enhance construction safety under adverse environments.

This study aims to investigate whether social reputation via corporate social responsibility (CSR) awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt and whether governance mechanisms moderate this relationship.

The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2021, during which CSR award data were available in the Thomson Reuters Eikon/Refinitiv database. The empirical models are based on country, industry and year fixed-effects regression.

While the main findings produced an insignificant result for access to debt, they indicated strong evidence for the positive relationship between CSR awarding and the cost of debt. Moreover, the moderating effect highlights that while the sustainability committee helps CSR-awarded companies access debt more easily, independent directors help firms decrease the cost of debt via CSR awarding. Furthermore, the results differ between the US and the non-US samples, earlier and recent periods, high- and low-leverage firms and large and small firms.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors assess whether social reputation via CSR awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt in an international and cross-industry sample. Little is known about the effect of social reputation on loan contracting, although social reputation conveys broader information that goes beyond the firm’s internal (performance) and external (reporting) CSR practices. The authors also draw attention to the differing roles of distinct governance mechanisms in leveraging social reputation for loan contracting.