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This paper aims to theorize that millennials' counterfeit buying behavior is partly driven by perceived peer counterfeit consumption – the perception that counterfeit luxury consumption is a norm within members of their own generation.

The research is based on two survey-based studies: Study 1 investigates the phenomenon on young millennials (n = 438) and Gen X (n = 374) using moderation analyses in PROCESS Macro; and Study 2 is based on young millennials (n = 643) and runs a partial least squares structural equation modeling model.

The findings reveal that perceived counterfeit consumption within own (vs other) generation leads to greater counterfeit purchase intention and this effect is stronger for young millennials (vs Gen X). Counterfeiting values (materialism, counterconformity and morality) strengthen the impact of perceived peer counterfeit consumption on the counterfeit purchase intention of young millennials, thereby establishing counterfeit luxury consumption as a salient norm.

To modify perceptions about peer counterfeiting norms, normative messages must communicate counterfeit avoidance among millennials through social media influencers. Luxury brand managers must focus on the experiential value of luxury and pursue unconventional luxury inspired by a sense of rebelliousness and independence.

This work demonstrates that millennials engage in counterfeit luxury consumption when they perceive it as a salient consumption norm among members of their own generation. It adds a novel construct of perceived counterfeit consumption and demonstrates the role of generation as a normative referent. The article provides a values-based motivational account of conformity to peer counterfeiting norms.

Because unethical behaviour pervades in organisations, how to inhibit the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour has become increasingly important. This study aims to integrate the deontic justice theory and affective events theory to examine the relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning by highlighting the mediating effect of peers’ moral anger and the moderating effect of task interdependence on this relationship.

Data were collected in two waves from 254 employees of a large manufacturing company in the People’s Republic of China.

The hypothesised moderated mediation model was supported. Specifically, as expected, peers’ moral anger mediated the negative relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and peers’ vicarious learning. Task interdependence moderated the direct relationship between the individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ moral anger and the indirect relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning via the peers’ moral anger such that these relationships were stronger when the level of task interdependence was higher.

This study argues that the deontic justice theory is a supplement for the social learning theory in explaining the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour. Drawing on the deontic justice theory, this study demonstrates that an individual’s unethical behaviours are unlikely to be rewarded or accepted, and by integrating the theories of deontic justice and affective events, offers a rationale for the emotional mechanism that underlies the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour.

This study seeks to identify the role that peer team members' behaviors and superiors' preferences play in influencing the likelihood that staff auditors engage in dysfunctional audit behavior (DAB).

This study uses an experiment that manipulates peer team member behavior (DAB present or DAB absent) and superior preference (efficiency or effectiveness). Students enrolled in a graduate accounting course, proxying for inexperienced staff auditors, receive an internal control sample selection task. Participants assess the likelihood that a typical staff auditor would engage in DAB or non-DAB.

First, staff auditors with a peer team member who engages in DAB are more likely to engage in DAB. Second, staff auditors who have a superior with a preference toward efficiency are more likely to engage in DAB. Finally, when considered simultaneously, the effect of the superior's preference on the likelihood of staff auditors engaging in DAB is not different for staff auditors, subject to a peer engaging in DAB versus those subject to a peer who engaged in a non-DAB.

This study uses a hypothetical audit team, a written script of team member communication, and students proxying for inexperienced staff auditors. As such, future studies might consider improving the realism of the team setting, the manner in which a message is portrayed, and implications at higher levels within the audit team hierarchy.

Team interactions contribute to the prevalence of DAB within the profession. Specifically, inexperienced auditors are influenced by the behavior of peer and superior team members and this may be one cause of the prevalence of DAB within the profession. As such, future firm considerations could include well-structured mentorship programs and rewards structures.

This study adds to the audit team literature by investigating the influence of audit team dynamics on staff auditors' behaviors. This paper extends the current audit team literature, that is mostly focused on supervisor–subordinate relationships, by investigating social influences from peers and superiors. This study's findings inform public accounting firms of areas in which personnel may negatively affect audit quality through intra-team interactions.

Recent studies indicate that exposure to physical punishment is associated with both aggressive behavior and peer victimization at school. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bidirectional relationship between aggressive behavior and peer victimization as outcomes of physical punishment, as well as the role of depressive symptoms.

A sample of 2,424 Finnish upper primary school pupils (1,282 girls, 1,148 boys, mean age=14.2, SD=1.0) completed an online survey during class. Two conditional process models were applied using a macro for SPSS developed by Hayes (2012).

Exposure to physical punishment was found to be associated with both aggressive behavior and peer victimization at school. The effect on victimization was partially mediated by aggressive behavior and depressive symptoms, whereas the effect on aggressive behavior was partially mediated by peer victimization experiences but not by depressive symptoms. The relationship between physical punishment and peer victimization was somewhat stronger for girls than for boys, but this effect was not accounted for by gender differences in depressive symptoms or aggressive behavior.

Few studies to date have addressed the connection between aggressive behavior and peer victimization as outcomes of physical punishment. In addition, the study expands on the concept of “victim personality” by examining the mediating role of depressive symptoms. Methodologically, the study is an example of how the statistical software SPSS can be used for multiple mediation and conditional process analysis as an alternative to SEM analyses.

When reporting wrongdoing internally, whistleblowers are confronted with the dilemma of weighing up their loyalty toward the organization (e.g., ethical standards) and their co-workers (e.g., the social norm of not snitching on peers). However, the role played by peers in the whistleblowing decision process and in the aftermath has rarely been addressed in existing reviews. We therefore perform a systematic review that identifies seven thematic clusters of peer factors, offering researchers an informative overview of (a) the peer factors that have been examined to influence the whistleblowing decision, and (b) the extent to which the whistleblower experiences adverse consequences from peers in the aftermath of whistleblowing. As peer factors seem to be important to explain and predict internal whistleblowing, researchers are encouraged to address in future works the research gaps our review unraveled.

The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.

Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.

This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.

This study aims to examine whether peer victimization predicted disordered eating behaviors during emerging adulthood, and if this relationship was mediated by perceived stress.

Participants included undergraduate females from a diverse university in the Southwestern USA who reported on their experiences of peer victimization, perceived stress and eating behaviors.

Mediation analysis revealed that perceived stress partially mediated the association between peer victimization and perceived stress. Peer victimization significantly predicted eating behaviors even after controlling for perceived stress. An exploratory analysis of the EAT-26 subscales was also conducted.

The present study adds to the literature on peer victimization, eating behaviors and stress by allowing researchers to understand the complexity of these relationships within an emerging adulthood population. The present results can assist individuals working with this population in interventions to prevent instances of victimization, reduce stress and provide psychoeducation for eating disorders.

The present study adds to the literature on peer victimization, eating behaviors and stress by allowing researchers to understand the complexity of these relationships within a college population.

While the peer effects of technology adoption are well established, few studies have considered the variation in peer effects resulting from the mutual proximity between leaders and followers and the heterogeneity of farmers' learning technology. This study addresses the gap in the literature by analyzing the peer effects of technology adoption among Chinese farmers.

Drawing on a government-led soil testing and formulated fertilization program, this study uses survey data of farmers from three Chinese provinces to examine the peer effects of technology adoption. This study uses a probit model to examine how mutual proximity influences peer effects and their heterogeneity. Accordingly, farmers were divided into two groups, namely small- and large-scale farmers, and then into leaders or followers depending on whether they were selected by the government as model farmers.

Both small- and large-scale farmers are more likely to use formula fertilizer if their peers do so. However, a large-scale farmer is more likely to adopt formula fertilizer if the average adoption behavior of other large-scale model (leader) farmers is higher, while a small-scale farmer is more likely to adopt formula fertilizer if other small-scale non-model (follower) farmers have higher average adoption behavior. Moreover, the peer effect was weakened by geographic distance among small-scale farmers and by economic distance among large-scale farmers.

This study elucidates the means of optimizing social learning and technology adoption among farmers.

Users' knowledge contribution behaviors are critical for online Q&A communities to thrive. Well-organized question threads in online Q&A communities enable users to clearly read existing answers and their evaluations before contributing. Based on the social comparison and peer influence literature, the authors examine peer influence on the informativeness of knowledge contributions in competitive settings. The authors also consider three levels of moderating factors concerning individuals' perception of competitiveness: question level, thread level and contributor level.

The authors collected data from one of the largest online Q&A communities in China. The hypotheses were validated using hierarchical linear models with cross-classified random effects. The generalized propensity score weighting method was employed for the robustness check.

The authors demonstrate the peer influence due to social comparison concerns among knowledge contribution behaviors in the same question thread. If more prior knowledge contributors choose to contribute long answers in the question thread, the subsequent contributions are more informative. This peer influence is stronger for factual questions and questions with higher popularity of answering but weaker in recommendation-type and well-answered questions and for contributors with higher social status.

This research provides a new cue of peer influence on online UGC contributions in competitive settings initiated by social comparison concerns. Additionally, the authors identify three levels of moderating factors (question level, thread level and contributor level) that are specific to online Q&A settings and are related to a contributor's perception of competitiveness, which affect the direct effect of peer influence on knowledge contributions. Rather than focus on motivation and quality evaluation, the authors concentrate on the specific content of online knowledge contributions. Peer influence here is not based on an actual acquaintance or a following relationship but on answering the same question. The authors also illustrate the competitive peer influence in subjective and personalized behaviors in online UGC communities.

The use of digital technology in firms has drawn attention of innovation management scholars and policy-makers, especially the imitation of digital technology and competition among peer firms. Drawing on dynamic competition theory, this paper examines how firms react to their peers' digital innovation behavior and the effect of external environment mechanisms on the magnitude of peer effects.

This paper utilizes a text mining method to construct a baseline model with a Tobit estimator using data obtained for Chinese listed firms.

The findings suggest that peer effects on digital innovation behavior are robust and significant positive in China. Moreover, peer effects on digital innovation participation are positively magnified by firms' strong social network and high Fintech development. However, peer effects are relatively higher in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), low-profitability and high R&D firms.

The authors' findings contribute to the digital management literature by showing that firms need digital technological imitation and diffusion of innovations in the digital era.

Managers should provide insights into firms' imitation of their peers' acts to preserve competitive parity. Besides, firms should integrate employees within the organization and communicate digital innovation concepts and behaviors to external peer firms.

First, this paper contributes to explaining how firms change their digital innovation strategy through the influence of peers' digital innovation behavior. Second, this paper fills the literature gaps related to the moderating effects of external environment factors in peer effects of digital innovation behavior.