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The purpose of this study is to identify the various traditional foods available in two towns in Ghana and to assess consumer perception about these traditional foods. Traditional foods provide nutritional and health benefits, but their consumption keeps declining, such that some are becoming extinct.

The level of knowledge of consumers and their attitude toward the consumption of traditional foods were determined. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Sekondi and four areas in Kumasi, with a sample size of 200 in each of the two towns. The data obtained were analyzed using Pearson correlation and Chi-square test for independence.

While consumers had very good general knowledge of the traditional foods, most of them had little knowledge on nutrient compositions of the foods. About 95.5 per cent of respondents in Sekondi consumed traditional foods relative to those in Kumasi (62.5 per cent). There was no linear relationship existing between respondents’ knowledge, attitude and consumption of traditional foods (r < 0.50). More so, respondents’ attitude, knowledge and consumption of traditional foods, mostly, did not depend on the demographic factors (age and education). Other factors such as convenience, economic status of respondents and safety of traditional foods may be contributory factors to the low patronage and consumption of traditional foods.

Most researches on traditional foods in Ghana have mostly focused on food ingredients; therefore, there is little or no available information on consumer perception of prepared traditional foods. Because consumer opinions change over time, there is a need to consistently gather data to help food industries and food service operators meet consumer needs and expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the PRIME for Life risk reduction program in reducing alcohol consumption and improving knowledge and attitudes towards alcohol use in male Swedish military conscripts, aged 18 to 22 years.

A quasi‐experimental design was used in which 1,371 military conscripts from ten regimens were assigned to either a control or program intervention group. Changes in alcohol consumption, knowledge and attitudes towards alcohol use were assessed with self‐report questionnaires at baseline, and again 5 months and 20 months after the program.

Pre to post program reductions in total alcohol consumption and “high risk” consumption were reported in both the control and intervention group. There were no statistically significant group interactions over time, indicating that factors beyond the intervention alone were responsible for the reductions in alcohol consumption. Attitudes towards consumption improved significantly in both groups at five months before returning to baseline levels at 20 month follow‐up.

PRIME for Life is one of the most widely used alcohol and drug risk reduction programs in the United States and has recently been implemented in parts of Sweden to reduce alcohol consumption and related harm. To our knowledge, this is the first peer‐reviewed evaluation of the effectiveness of the PRIME for Life program.

The latest developments in Data Science and in advanced Scientometrics set a very challenging context for the analysis and the understanding of human behavior toward the design of value adding library services and sophisticated information systems. The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative research that integrates the creation and the consumption of scientific knowledge across regions. From a human behavior point of view, this is significant since it provides an advanced decision-making layer for bringing together researchers from all over the world.

More specific in this paper, the authors analyze the production and consumption of scientific knowledge across the regions in an important field of sustainable and renewable energy – using publications and citations data indexed in Scopus. As a case study, the authors select the USA a major producer of scientific publications in the field. At first, the authors identify the topics produced by the USA. Further topics produced by the scientific communities outside the USA that consume the knowledge produced by the USA are identified. The authors generate topics by employing the proposed topic model with distance matrix – an extension of classic latent Dirichlet allocation model.

The results show that research topics produced by the USA are consumed in different international contexts, interestingly. Consuming the knowledge produced by the USA, Chinese scientific community heavily produces topics related to biomass – to produce renewable energy. In contrast, Japanese scientific community produces topics related to fuel cell – used for the production of hybrid and electronic vehicles. Whereas the Taiwanese scientific community shows remarkable competency in solar cells. Among the European nations, while the German scientific community produces topics related to photovoltaic, the French scientific community covers topics related to Energy Storage and Green Chemistry. The authors believe that such analyses may be helpful in establishing more effective multi-national research collaborations by understating the actual consumption of produced knowledge.

Overall, the study provides a new dimension to comprehensively understand production and consumption of knowledge using scientific literature. From a human behavior analysis view in the context of sophisticated library systems, this is a significant contribution.

The use of advanced Data Mining and computing methods for deriving critical insights for the use of scientific knowledge is a bold action toward the global knowledge society vision.

Consumers support local businesses as an ethical choice. However, consumer ethics researchers have not paid much attention to local consumption, limiting the understanding of why consumers believe local consumption is ethical. To address this research gap, this study aims to develop and test the theoretical model for local consumption decisions by integrating moral foundations theory and local–global identity literature.

An online survey of US adult consumers (n = 362) was conducted to test the theoretical model. A correlational structural equation model was used to analyze the data.

The results confirmed that consumers’ moral obligations to engage in local consumption are driven partially by pro-group moral foundations, and that this identity-based motivation is an intuitive predictor of local consumption behaviors. The findings of this study demonstrate that traditional ethical consumption frameworks that assume knowledge-based decision-making are not enough to explain local consumption, and provide arguments for the need to consider both moral intuitions and moral reasoning.

This study synthesizes two isolated streams of literature and presents an integrated model to holistically explain consumer motivations for local business support. Local consumption was rarely investigated and its unique characteristics were not fully understood in the context of ethical consumption. This study specifically focuses on local consumption, advancing our knowledge of this understudied consumer behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the lifestyle determinants motivating wine consumption and the amount spent on it, as sales and profits depend largely on a sound knowledge of them.

Data were gathered by means of a postal paper‐and‐pencil survey sent out to randomly chosen addresses from the telephone book covering the German‐speaking part of Switzerland, resulting in a final sample size of 874.

Lifestyle determinants proved successful in explaining a great deal of the variance in the data. For wine consumption, knowledge about wine, drinking wine to relax, and sociability were the strongest determinants; for spending on wine, they were looking for bargains, visiting wine events, and regarding wine as a healthy beverage.

The research was limited by being conducted for a specific geographic area, using explorative methodology.

The identified determinants are of practical use to wine marketers, who can use them to target potentially profitable consumers. They can also create marketing campaigns focused directly on a specific determinant and thus increase consumption, spending or both.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to analyze a broad range of lifestyle variables to predict wine consumption and spending on wine.

The purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge gap hypothesis in the context of smartphone use for news to understand whether mobile news consumption could bridge or widen the knowledge gap between people of higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES).

The authors examine how smartphone news consumption is associated with the knowledge gap hypothesis by analyzing a survey dataset from Hong Kong. This study focuses specifically on a moderated mediation model in which the indirect effect of mobile news consumption on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity is contingent on level of education.

Smartphone use for news/information was positively associated with level of discussion network heterogeneity. The indirect effect of smartphone news use on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity was stronger for those with lower levels of education.

This study advances the understanding of the role of smartphone use in contributing to the functioning of deliberative democracy as this use enhances discussion network heterogeneity and general levels of political knowledge. Moreover, our study contributes to the literature on the knowledge gap by not only examining the relationship between smartphone use, discussion heterogeneity, and political knowledge but also taking into consideration individual levels of education.

The adverse environmental impacts of menstrual products are a significant concern because of their widespread use and non-biodegradability. With various global and regional initiatives on sustainability, there is now greater public awareness about environmental protection. This heightened awareness has resulted in the exploration of alternative methods to reduce waste, such as the development and use of sustainable menstrual products. This study aims to examine the factors that influence Indian women’s purchasing intention in relation to sustainable menstrual products. The study uses the Stimulus–Organism–Behavior–Consequence (SOBC) theory as the appropriate grounded theory to explain these determinants.

Cross-sectional data were collected from 720 women who have been using sustainable menstrual products. For analysing the model, the study performed structural equation modelling using AMOS.

The study’s results indicated that health consciousness, sustainability knowledge and environmental responsibility are positively associated with self-identity and mindfulness. Additionally, the study found that organism states have a positive impact on the purchase intention of sustainable menstrual products. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship observed between purchase intention and mindful consumption. The study also discovered significant positive relationships between satisfaction and key associations.

This study may be considered pioneering, as it establishes a connection between the usage of sustainable menstrual products and concepts such as mindfulness and mindful consumption.

The spread of genetically modified (GM) foodstuffs is related to consumer scepticism in Europe, and particularly in Italy. Consumer scepticism in turn depends on the low level of public knowledge about the health consequences, in terms of risks and benefits, of consuming these GM foods. This paper aims, first and foremost, to investigate the phenomenon of GM foodstuffs consumption in Italy and, then, to construct a statistical model for analysing the Italian habits regarding this consumption. Furthermore, this model allows us to formalize the origins of behaviour regarding GM foodstuffs consumption and to detect the drivers of their purchase.

From January 2009 to May 2009, 1,061 public high school students in 25 randomly selected schools of a metropolitan area (Naples, South Italy) were questioned. More precisely, each student was given a questionnaire regarding, in the first part, school cultural characteristics and, then, awareness and GM food consumption. A Likert scale was used to answer the questions. After collecting data, the authors chose to apply structural equation modelling, as it is one of the general and powerful multivariate analysis technique useful to simultaneously analyse and evaluate multivariate hypotheses.

The findings showed that GM food consumption by Italian students depended on the knowledge of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and on the impact of this organisms both on human health and the environment. Therefore, in order to help consumers to choose whether or not to eat GM foods, a standardized evaluation system of human health and environmental consequences produced by GMO and GM foods should be created. In particular, the authors introduced a general framework that could help researchers/users to select and assess a hierarchy of the influence of factors on Italian habits regarding the consumption of GM foodstuffs.

In this research, the authors propose a structural equation model – full formative measurement model – that allows to define the origins of behaviour towards GM food consumption and to detect the drivers of their purchase. Particularly, the authors showed that GM food consumption depended on the knowledge of GMOs and on the impact of the GMOs on human health and the environment.

The purpose of this research paper is to report about an investigation on the relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation to find out whether knowledge acquisition can predict knowledge creation. The study measures the concept of knowledge acquisition through the faculty use of knowledge acquisition tools and reading knowledge sources while measuring the concept of knowledge creation through the faculty use of knowledge creation tools and publishing knowledge sources.

The population of the study is faculty members in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The sample of the population consisted of 300 faculty members affiliated with 26 universities and colleges. Data was collected from the sample through questionnaire instrument. Stated hypotheses and Mathew’s theory of knowledge consumption–production correlation are tested and verified through correlation matrix and regression analysis.

Findings of the study revealed that the use of knowledge acquisition tools by faculty members has a positive effect on the use of knowledge creation tools and on publishing knowledge sources. Likewise, reading knowledge sources appeared to have a positive impact on the use of knowledge creation tools and publishing knowledge sources. Accordingly, the study confirmed the stated four hypotheses. Moreover, the results of the study supported the theory of knowledge consumption–production correlation and strongly confirmed the prediction of knowledge creation through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools for knowledge acquisition and reading knowledge sources.

Findings of the study appeal to the decision-makers and stakeholders of academic institutions to make effective investment in ICT facilities and knowledge sources to improve knowledge creation among faculty members.

Not many studies have investigated how knowledge acquisition can predict knowledge creation in the academic environment. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation in academic settings. Findings of the study can be an important reference for providing and improving knowledge sources, knowledge acquisition tools and knowledge creation tools in the academic environment.

Drawing on a representative survey, this paper aims to identify the determinants of functional food consumption in Croatia. The objective is to introduce and test a conceptual model that four sets of factors (food choice motivations, demographic and socio-economic characteristics, knowledge of functional food and health status) underpin variations in functional food consumption.

Data were collected via face-to-face interviews conducted in respondents' homes. Consumption of functional foods is modelled as a bootstrapped ordered probit model.

Results confirm the significant influence of all four sets of factors for explaining variations in functional food consumption. Heavier users of functional food are those that place a greater weighting on health and convenience in food choice. In contrast, the salience of familiarity in food choice is negatively related with functional food consumption. Females and those with higher levels of educational attainment are heavier consumers of functional food. While perceived health status appears not to have any significant relationship with functional food consumption, there is a link with body mass index. Functional foods appeal most to those concerned about their health and desire convenient, “quick fixes”. Such “quick fixes” may however be employed at the expense of more fundamental adjustments to diet and fitness, which may provide the basis for superior overall disease prevention/health promotion.

The study represents one of the first assessments of functional food consumption in Central and Eastern Europe, introducing and testing a comprehensive conceptual model.