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Prosocial advertisers widely use assertive messages to encourage prosocial attitudes and behaviors, but ironically, assertive messages may cause reactance. By applying cultural theories and the reciprocity principle, this study aims to observe whether consumers’ responses to assertive messages hold across culturally different audiences (Americans vs South Koreans) and different consumption situations (price discount vs no discount).

American and Korean participants take part in three experimental studies examining the interactions of nationality, price discounts and assertive messaging for influencing consumer responses, first to a prosocial ad encouraging recycling (Study 1), the second for a campaign requesting donations for disadvantaged children (Study 2) and the third to prosocial messages encouraging water conservation (Study 3).

The three experiments strongly support the moderating role of price discounts and cultural backgrounds in the persuasiveness of assertive prosocial messages. American consumers generally dislike assertive messages, but feel reciprocal obligations if marketers include price discounts, whereas South Korean consumers accept both assertive and nonassertive messages without resistance, and discounts have no effects on persuasion.

The findings make two key contributions to the literature and to prosocial advertising practices. First, although many corporations have adopted philanthropic strategies, few researchers have examined how specific consumption contexts determine the effectiveness of prosocial persuasion. The findings show how price discounts and message framing potentially alter the effectiveness of prosocial messages across Eastern and Western cultures. Second, assertive language evokes reactance, but the findings suggest that reactive responses to prosocial advertising are culture-specific.

International nonprofit organizations and brands using philanthropic strategies might use the guidelines of this study for tailoring strategic, practical prosocial messages that will appeal to consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds. In particular, pro-environmental and charity campaigns targeting North American or Western European populations may consider bundling discounts into promotions to evoke reciprocity.

Findings provide novel implications for social marketers regarding on how to couple message assertiveness and price discounts to maximize the success of prosocial messages in different cultures.

The authors aim to examine how emojis interact with assertiveness in social media posts to encourage social media engagement and cooperation in environmental campaigns.

Two experiments were used to test three hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that when assertive Twitter messages include the smiley-face emoji, study participants indicate stronger social media engagement and behavioral intentions to recycle used jeans. In Study 2, participants indicate stronger social media engagement and behavioral intentions to sign a petition for reducing plastic pollution when (non) assertive Facebook messages (do not) include emojis.

The current research advances our understanding about how emojis interact with assertive and nonassertive message tonality in environmental social media campaigns. This research also provides new insights showing that positive emotion is the psychological mechanism underlying matching effects of emoji and message assertiveness.

The medium negotiators choose for communication will influence both process and outcome. To understand how medium influences power expression, this paper aims to compare value claiming by asymmetrically powerful negotiators, using face-to-face and computer-mediated messaging across two studies. Following up on long-standing conjectures from prominent coalition researchers, the authors also directly tested the role of the apex negotiator's personality in coalition formation and value expropriation.

The authors conducted two laboratory experiments which manipulated communication medium (computer-mediated vs face-to-face) in three- and four-person bargaining. They also varied asymmetry of power so the apex negotiator either could not be left out of a winning coalition (Study 1) or could be (Study 2). The authors measured trait assertiveness along with multiple indicators of hard bargaining behavior.

Communicating using instant messages via a computer interface facilitated value claiming for powerful negotiators across both studies. Trait assertiveness correlated with hard bargaining behavior in both studies. An index of hard bargaining behavior mediated the effect of assertiveness on value expropriation but only in the context where the powerful negotiator held a genuine monopoly over coalitions.

The authors contribute to the literature on multiparty negotiations by demonstrating persistent media effects on power utilization and by finally confirming the conjectures of prominent coalition researchers regarding personality. Though personality traits generate consistent effects on behavior, their influence on negotiation outcomes depends on the power structure. Negotiation theory needs to incorporate structural and situational factors in modelling effects of enduring traits. Negotiation research should move beyond a rigid focus on dyads.

Children can play an active and valuable role to minimise disaster risks and vulnerabilities. Yet, peer-reviewed literature on child participation in Disaster Resilience Education (DRE) is lacking. This knowledge gap is larger in low- and middle-income countries, especially related to vulnerable communities. The current study explores how child participation in developing and delivering a DRE intervention is associated with their mental well-being and resilience.

This qualitative study is part of a larger project where a DRE intervention was co-developed and delivered by children in the informal settlements in Chennai, India, using a participatory approach. This project used qualitative methods including interviews and focus group discussions with children who co-developed the intervention, their parents and staff members of the collaborating Non-Government Organisation (NGO) to understand their experiences and inform its processes.

The children involved in the development and delivery of the intervention reported that not only did they learn the skills necessary to prepare for hazards in the future, it also increased their confidence, self-worth and self-efficacy. This was also observed by parents and staff members of the collaborating NGO. They expressed pride towards the children and applauded their ability to communicate key Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) messages with assertiveness.

There is a dearth of empirical papers on child participation in DRR activities, and this study fills some of that gap by reporting the perceived impact of children's participation on their mental well-being and resilience. Furthermore, this study can act as a roadmap for researchers aiming to do action research with children.

DRR is more effective when all stakeholders, especially the affected and at-risk children, and communities are closely involved in structuring, planning, developing and delivering key disaster preparedness messages. This study serves to show that children's participation in DRR activities not only impacts their preparedness but that it helps children in disaster recovery as well, in addition to building their resilience and overall improvement in their mental well-being.

Given the participatory nature of this study, it involves children closely in the development and delivery of DRE intervention. The communities involved in this study had complex vulnerabilities including poverty, marginalisation and based in a low-and-middle income country, India. Oftentimes, these communities are not represented in scientific literature, and this study attempts to bridge that gap.

This study presents a multi-stakeholder perspective on child participation in its potential impact on children's mental well-being and resilience. The DRE intervention was co-developed and delivered by children in the community making it unique in its development process as well as the context it was developed in – informal settlements in Chennai, India.

This study aims to investigate which messaging strategies employed in personalised newsletters could be used for improving the propensity of individuals to save or invest and secure their financial well-being.

The authors conducted a field experiment with 4,782 clients at an Estonian retail bank. For three months (after measuring baseline levels for a month), the participants received personalised monthly newsletters with either a praising or a scolding message based on comparing their recent investment decisions to their past decisions.

Their results suggest that newsletters could serve as an encouragement for those who already invest significant amounts each month and a reminder for those who have stopped regular investing for a month. The newsletters robustly increased investments in securities accounts for these groups.

The authors contribute to the marketing literature by examining praise and scolding messaging strategies within the same channel and company, focussing on the individual's past behaviour. They raise several hypotheses to be tested in future randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

The authors’ results show the importance of investor behaviour analysis as the effectiveness of the newsletter intervention largely depended on the type of customer it was served to. This highlights the importance of personalisation.

The results show that a given message tends to influence only specific groups of investors. Identifying these groups is valuable information for messaging strategies.

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of sustainability communication on social media. More specifically, the effects of message appeal (sensual vs guilt) and message source (hotel vs social media influencer [SMI]) on perceived environmental corporate social responsibility and the intention to stay at the eco-friendly hotel were examined.

Three studies using the experimental design were carried out. Study 1 examined the relationship between message appeal (sensual vs guilt), perceived environmental social corporate responsibility and the intention to stay at the eco-friendly hotel when the hotel posts sustainability messages on social media. Study 2 replicated Study 1 findings when the SMI posts sustainability messages. Study 3 examined the moderating role of message source (hotel vs influencer) in the effects of message appeal (sensual vs guilt) on behavioral intentions.

Sustainability messages with the sensual (vs guilt) appeal are more persuasive when the eco-friendly hotel (vs SMI) posts it on social media. Furthermore, the traveler’s perception of the hotel’s environmental corporate social responsibility mediates this relationship.

This study extends the literature on sustainability communication by demonstrating the role of message source and message appeal in influencing the traveler’s perceptions and intentions toward eco-friendly hotels.

According to the study findings, eco-friendly hotels can motivate travelers to make pro-sustainable choices by accurately matching the message appeal with the message source in the sustainability communication on social media.

This study is one of the earliest studies that examine the congruency effect of message appeal and message source for sustainability communication on social media in the hospitality realm. The findings offer novel insights for eco-friendly hotels to develop effective sustainability communication on social media.

The purpose of this article is to show how work-teams are represented and work in non-profit organizations. From a theoretical point of view, the concepts of macro-team and micro-team, as well as their dynamics rooted in the entrepreneurial world have been discussed.

Seven socially enterprising organizations have been studied through semi-structured individual and collective interviews with managers, technicians with and without supervisory functions and workers. Data discussed here underwent an inductive analysis based on the procedures of grounded theory.

Data analysis supported the outlining of the interviewees’ representations of their belonging to the macro-team and of the working of micro-teams. There seem to be no significant differences between the way teams work in these organizations and in profit-making organizations. However, in the organizations we have analyzed, autonomous planning of activities as a mechanism of work organization and assertiveness as a fundamental communication tool between members stand out.

This research did not include the systematic observation of work teams in the field. As such, reliability may be somehow compromised due to the use of the individual and group interview as the single data collection technique.

The outline of representations that we have designed points to a set of dimensions that shows, with some reliability, how to build a sense of belonging to the macro-team among the workers of this type of organization. It also clarifies the difference between behaviors that foster effective and ineffective micro-teams. This allows action over the latter to potentiate the first and eventually eliminate the second.

Considering the scarce research about team-work in non-profit organizations, this study offers a groundbreaking reflection. Further ahead, one may establish a set of differences and similarities between effective macro and micro-teams in different economic sectors. This way, this study may contribute to more encompassing organizational theories focused on the representations about and the functioning of macro and micro-teams.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast two lay theories of how consumers draw affective inferences about their online bidding experiences. The active-bidder theory (smart-bidder theory) predicts that after winning a bid, highly (minimally) participative bidders would be more satisfied than minimally (highly) participative bidders.

Four experiments test two competing hypotheses, the active-bidder hypothesis and the smart-bidder hypothesis (Study 1), identify a condition that mitigates the observed effects (Study 2), identify when the mitigation is effective or ineffective (Study 3) and replicate the findings in a scenario-based study where participants are allowed to make actual bidding decisions (Studies 4A and 4B).

The findings support the smart-bidder hypothesis across three different product categories; however, this heuristic-driven effect is absent when bidders have concrete shopping goals. The effect was sufficiently robust to be observed even when the bids are made at will.

The present research does not incorporate the widely adopted procedure of second-price auction (also known as proxy bidding in the eBay setting), a system that allows the highest bidder to win the auction but pay the amount of the second-highest bid.

Online consumers should be mindful that entering the minimum number of bids not only helps consumers avoid overbidding but also elevates their joy in winning after the auction ends.

Prior research on bidding behavior on online auction sites has yet to examine how different bidding dynamics affect consumers’ post-auction satisfaction. This research sheds light on the psychological process underlying the robust phenomenon: online auction consumers rely heavily on proxy signals. Bidders appear to use the efficiency heuristic in constructing their affective judgments of their buying experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine recent patterns and developments in the literature on cross‐cultural advertising research.

Citation analysis was performed for cross‐cultural advertising articles published in major marketing and business journals from 1995 to 2006.

Cultural values were the most studied topic area in cross‐cultural advertising research. Content analysis was the most widely employed methodology, followed by surveys. North America and the original European Union (EU) member states were the most frequently investigated, whereas there appears to exist a paucity of research in newer EU countries, and in Latin American, Middle Eastern, and African markets.

Based on findings from the citation analysis, the authors outline future directions for the advancement of cross‐cultural advertising research in theoretical foundations, methodological issues, and countries to be explored.

This paper aims to identify and classify consumers’ goals associated with the consumption of environmentally sustainable products. The applicability of such goals to the positioning of environmental products is also tested.

Study 1 used 62 laddering interviews to identify a hierarchical map of adoption related goals. Study 2 used a survey design (N = 152 students) to test the effects of construal-goal fit on evaluations of environmental product attributes of a hybrid car. Study 3 involved an online experiment (N = 125 consumer panellists) to test the effects of construal-goal fit on consumers’ willingness to pay a price premium (WTPP) for energy-efficient light bulbs.

A hierarchical goal map displays consumption goals attainable through environmentally sustainable products. Consumers with a chronic, high-level construal placed more importance on product attributes associated with abstract goals than those with chronic, low-level construal. This effect was stronger for males than for females. Additionally, construal-goal fit increased WTPP.

The results suggest that marketers consider construal-goal fit to communicate the value of environmentally sustainable products. The results, however, should be replicated in other product categories and across diverse cultural settings.

This paper identifies and classifies the goals related to consumption of environmentally sustainable products. Additionally, it tests the effects of construal-goal fit on evaluations of environmental products, providing insights for marketers seeking to improve their promotional efforts and for public policymakers as they institute demarketing campaigns.