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We show political divisions in perceptions of police officers even before the divisive political and social events of 2016. We do so using respondents' interpretations of surprising and ambiguous headlines involving police officers (e.g., assumptions about what happened or who was involved).

We use affect control theory's ABO event structure and derivations of this structure to construct a set of headlines that describe ostensibly good people (A) doing bad things (B) to other good people (O) or are ambiguous on one or more of these components. We present 517 MTurk respondents with a set of seven headlines and collect quantitative and qualitative data on their reactions to, and interpretations of, these headline events.

Police headlines generate interest among readers. When interpreting events, respondents are less likely to modify or redefine police officers compared to other actors. However, assumptions related to ambiguous events involving police differ by political orientation. Liberals view police more negatively than conservatives, in part because they imagine them doing worse things to slightly better people. Qualitative analyses support and shed light on the mechanisms underlying this and other partisan effects.

The research was designed to examine interest in headline structure, not specific actors. Thus, the patterns unique to police and political differences were not an original focus. We believe these inductive results are informative, but a study expressly designed to test hypotheses regarding perceptions of events with police officers is recommended for future work.

Understanding the political divide in perceptions of police and the potential of media coverage for exacerbating these effects is essential and related to ACTs growing interest in meaning divergence.

This study was designed to assess the predictors of citizens' trust in public leaders in Ghana. Specifically, it assesses the effect of eight trust variables—competence/ability, integrity, communication, benevolence, political/quality of governance, rational/economic, risk-taking and socio-demographic characteristics—on citizens' trust in public leaders—the president, members of parliament (MPs) and metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs)—in Ghana from 2016 to 2018.

Summary statistics, bivariate correlation and binary logistic regression were employed to analyze 2,400 responses of Ghanaians obtained from the Afro-Barometer round seven surveys on Ghana (2016–2018).

The results reveal that competence/ability, that is to say, the performance of the president, MPs and MMDCEs, influence citizens' trust in these leaders. Furthermore, communication, benevolence, rationality, risk-taking and socio-demographic variables were significant predictors of citizens' trust in the president. Likewise, competence/ability, communication, politics, benevolence and socio-demographic variables were predictors of citizens' trust in MPs. Additionally, competence/ability, communication, integrity, politics, benevolence and socio-demographic variables influence citizens' trust in MMDCEs. In short, the rationality and risk-taking variables only influence trust in the president, while the political variables influence trust in MPs and MMDCEs. However, integrity influences trust in MMDCEs. Future studies can investigate the factors that account for these differences to augment the current literature.

This article is unique because it examines and compares citizens' trust in three categories of public leaders—the president, MPs and MMDCEs—in Ghana using nationally representative data.

The paper explores the beliefs and perceptions of microfinance institution (MFI) managers about environmental threats and the role that green microfinance can play in mitigating them, to assess their influence on these institutions' engagement in green activities.

Drawing on protection motivation theory, the study follows a qualitative case study approach, focusing on the MFIs of the developing country of Cabo Verde.

Findings indicate that MFI managers understand and are aware of the environmental threats and identify their customers as the most vulnerable to them. They seem motivated to increase their green activity in the future as it is generally seen as effective in mitigating the problems. However, their response capacity is hindered by limitations such as a lack of financial conditions and technical environmental knowledge.

MFIs play an important role in promoting self-employment and breaking the poverty cycle, but their funds are also often used to develop environmentally damaging practices. Green microfinance can contribute to targeting a triple bottom line; considering together people, profit and the planet, provided implementation challenges are addressed.

Although the environmental behaviour of MFIs has been previously studied, the understanding of the core beliefs of MFI managers that can support their environmental actions is still limited. Thus, the study contributes to advancing the knowledge of green microfinance by considering individual-level factors in understanding organisational greening.

Diffusion studies investigate the propagation of behavior, attitudes, or beliefs across a networked population. Some behavior is binary, e.g., whether or not to install solar panels, while other behavior is continuous, e.g., wastefulness with plastic. Similarly, attitudes and beliefs often allow nuance, but can become practically binary in polarized environments. We argue that this property of behavior and attitudes – whether they are binary or continuous – should critically affect whether a population becomes homogenous in its adoption of that behavior. Models show that only continuous behavior converges across a network. Specifically, binary behavior allows local convergence, as multiple states can be local majorities. Continuous behavior becomes uniform across the network through a logic of communicating vessels. We present a model comparing the diffusion of both types of behavior and report on a laboratory experiment that tests it. In the model, actors have to distribute an investment over two options, while a majority receives information that points to the optimal option and a minority receives misguided information that points toward the other option. We predict that when adjacent persons receive misguided information this can hinder convergence toward optimal investment behavior in small networked groups, especially when subjects cannot split their investment, i.e., binary choice. Results falsify our theoretical predictions: Although investment decisions are significantly negatively affected by local majorities only in the binary condition, this difference with the continuous condition is not itself significant. Binary and continuous behavior therefore achieve comparable incidences of optimal investment in the experiment. The failure of the theoretical predictions appears due to a substantial level of error in decision-making, which prevents local majorities from locking in on a suboptimal behavior.

This chapter provides personal – autoethnographic – reflections on an understanding of authenticity in line with Charmaz's concept of social constructivism. The author reflects on her thinking in pursuit of what is true, authentic and genuine, to develop a new concept of ‘authentic power channelling of the self’. ‘Authentic power channelling of the self’ explains how different identities can constitute a unified entity to achieve a consensus and balance. Schaefler calls for research to explore authenticity from the perspective of a leader rather than an external perspective based on employees' perceptions, conjecturing that understanding mechanisms of the self can help leaders to be authentic.

Fashion products such as clothes, accessories, bags and footwear created using 3D printed technology are referred to as 3D printed fashion (3DPF) products. This study investigates consumers' motivation to purchase 3DPF products. In particular, this study adopts a multi-dimensional approach to explore the effects of personality-related traits such as innate, domain-specific and actualized innovativeness, as well as examine the effects of perceptions toward 3D printing technology (3DPT) (i.e. perceived security risk, performance expectancy). Based on the concepts of consumer innovativeness and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), the authors expect the effects of consumers' innovativeness and perception of 3DPT and confirm its significant effects on a positive attitude toward 3DPF products and future purchase intention of 3DPF products.

A quantitative research design (i.e. survey) is utilized to examine the suggested relationships and application of existing theory in this study. All measurement items are adapted from previous literature and use a Likert-scale. The authors examined a total of 326 responses using a series of statistical analyses, including descriptive statistics, structural equation modeling and conditional process modeling.

The results of this study confirmed that innate and domain-specific innovativeness are critical antecedents of creating a positive attitude toward using 3DPF products through perceptions toward 3DPT. In addition, 3DPF innovativeness, as actualized innovativeness, was validated to strengthen the relationship between personal innovativeness and attitude, providing evidence that innovation-related traits can predict behaviors. Interestingly, technological innovativeness was not found to be a predictor of perceived security risk. It may be due that 3DPF products are still novel to consumers.

The study participants were people who were interested in technology, not consumers who had prior experience with using 3DPF products. Future studies are encouraged to include consumers who have actually purchased or used 3DPF products.

The findings of this study indicate that consumers' use of new technology is determined by personality and interest in specific product categories. Practitioners may use this information to segment/target consumer groups to introduce a new/unfamiliar product.

The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature on consumer adoption of innovation by combining two approaches, the hierarchy of consumer innovativeness and the UTAUT, in the context of advanced technology adoption behavior.

Previous studies have confirmed the potential benefits of participating in theatrical improvisation, including improved mental health, well-being, skills and strategy development. This study aims to explore the experiences of improv (a subset of theatrical improvisation) for autistic, non-autistic, yet neurodivergent and neurotypical people. In particular, it explores whether participants believe that there have been any benefits from participating in improv.

Twenty adult participants were recruited using snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and qualitative content analysis (QCA). IPA explored the autistic lived experience during improv participation, while QCA sought to identify the benefits gained.

Implementing IPA allowed for the benefits of improv to be embedded into autistic lived experience. This was aggregated into two themes: “life beyond improv” and “social worlds negative impact”. Findings from QCA found five themes: “creativity and opportunities: the arts and workplace”; “acceptance, cognitive flexibility and rolling with it”; “interpersonal, social and communication skills and human connection”; “gains in mental health, quality of life and wellbeing”; and for just autistic participants, “‘I've gone full autistic’ (and can learn why neurotypicals are like they are)”.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a novel study area that has not been investigated previously.