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The purpose of this study is to understand how perceived vulnerability reduces consumers’ willingness to utilize services offered by nonprofit organizations (NPOs).

Three online surveys were conducted across two research contexts to test the proposed model. Hayes’ PROCESS was used to analyze the data.

Perceived vulnerability decreases the perception of relational benefits, which in turn decrease consumers’ commitment to NPOs. Reduced commitment lessens consumers’ willingness to cooperate and acquiesce to organizations’ recommendations. Risk aversion and cognitive ability mediate the relationship between perceived vulnerability and perceived relational benefits.

The findings uncover mechanisms through which perceived vulnerability influences perceived relational benefits, contributing to the understanding of behaviors of consumers that perceive vulnerable. This paper does not manipulate consumers’ perceived vulnerability but only measures their perceived vulnerability, limiting the explanatory power of causal relationships between perceived vulnerability and perceived relational benefits.

This study can provide some insight for NPOs about how to better serve their target population. To increase willingness to utilize service offerings, NPOs should decrease their perceived risks of new services.

This paper clarifies why consumers that perceive vulnerability are not willing to deploy the NPOs’ services which could improve their situation by demonstrating that cognitive ability and risk aversion mediate the relationship between perceived vulnerability and perceived relational benefits.

This study examines how the different dimensions of a privacy policy separately influence perceived effectiveness of privacy policy, as well as the mediating mechanisms behind these effects (i.e. vulnerability, benevolence). In addition, this study considers privacy concern as a significant moderator in the research model, to examine if the relative influences of privacy policy content are contingent upon levels of users' privacy concern.

The survey experiment was conducted to empirically validate the model. Specifically, three survey experiments and six scenarios were designed to manipulate high and low levels of the three privacy policy dimensions (i.e. transparency, control and protection). The authors totally distributed 450 copies of the questionnaire, of which 407 were valid.

This paper found that (1) all the three privacy policy dimensions directly influence perceived effectiveness of privacy policy; (2) all the three privacy policy dimensions indirectly influence perceived effectiveness of privacy policy by enhancing perceived corporate benevolence, whereas control also affects perceived effectiveness of privacy policy by reducing perceived vulnerability; and (3) individuals with high-privacy concern are much more impacted by privacy policy contents than individuals with low-privacy concern.

The findings could provide website managers with guidelines on how to design privacy policy contents by reducing user perceptions of vulnerability and enhancing user perceptions of corporate benevolence. The managers need to focus on customers' perceived vulnerability and corporate benevolence when launching or updating privacy policies. Furthermore, the managers also need to attend to users' privacy concerns, especially for multinational companies or companies with specific consumer groups.

This study extends the current privacy policy literature by articulating the separate influences of the three privacy policy dimensions and their impact mechanisms on perceived effectiveness of privacy policy. It also uncovers privacy concerns as a boundary condition that influence the effects of privacy policy contents on users' privacy perceptions.

This research focuses on the construct of perceived vulnerability, which is based on the gap between perceived trust and perceived dependence in business relationships with suppliers and customers. The outcome of this study is generated from the empirical findings of a survey in the Swedish vehicle industry. These empirical findings indicate that there is to a large extent a significant association between companies' perceived trust and dependence in business relationships towards their suppliers and customers, i.e. that trust is important in lean business relationships. The contributions of this research are a generic conceptualisation of the vulnerability construct, a see‐saw model of perceived vulnerability and a typology of perceived vulnerability scenarios in business relationships.

The purpose of this paper, focusing on the visually impaired and legally blind consumer, is to explore the relationship between the perceived consumer vulnerability on customer satisfaction and the effect of satisfaction on the intention of repurchase and recommendation as the determinants of store loyalty in an apparel store context.

A survey was conducted on 216 visually impaired and legally blind consumers in the province of Manisa, Turkey, concerning their apparel shopping store experiences to examine how the perceived vulnerability influences visually impaired and legally blind consumers’ satisfaction, recommendation and repurchase intentions. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results of the study revealed that as the visually impaired and legally blind consumers perceive themselves more vulnerable, they become more satisfied with the store, and that the more they are satisfied with the store, the more their intention to recommend that store and purchase intention from that store increases. However, the authors’ investigation showed no significant differences between the consumers who were born blind and who became blind later in their life.

The paper contributes to the literature by extending the understanding of visually impaired and legally blind consumers’ perceived vulnerability in the brick-and-mortar stores and demonstrates how it is related to satisfaction as a major driver of post-purchase intentions like recommendation and repurchase. It also exhibits the fact that blind consumers – both congenitally blind and subsequently blind – cope with this vulnerability through their own solutions to go on their lives, and they do not perceive themselves as vulnerable, as it is perceived by the able-bodied.

The social transformation of “disadvantaged segments of society” requires an in-depth understanding of their behavioural reactions in different social contexts. To this end, the present study focuses on individuals who become vulnerable owing to their functional illiteracy in an “English”-dominant marketplace. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand the sources of stress as perceived by functionally illiterate individuals and the mechanisms adopted by them to manage such stress when making “high-involvement” product purchases. Insights gained from the study would be beneficial for developing efficacious support programs for vulnerable populations.

In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 bottom-of-the-pyramid individuals living in slums and housing schemes located in and around Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka.

Two sources of perceived stress and five coping strategies were derived from the thematic analysis of the data. Participants highlighted the sources of their perceived stress as possible loss of resources and possible loss of self-esteem. Further, the participants were found to adopt several mechanisms to cope with the state of their stress and vulnerability experienced within English-dominant shopping environments, namely, seeking help from salespeople, continuing to shop at the same store, shopping with companions, “convenience purchasing” and buying only well-known brands.

These insights into the vulnerability, stress and coping mechanisms as experienced by functionally illiterate consumers will allow for the design of efficacious interventions to empower vulnerable populations.

The purpose of this study is to integrate the theory of planned behavior and the protection motivation theory to propose a theoretical framework for examining the influence of attitude, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms on international tourists’ intentions to select restaurants with contactless dining services (CDSs) as a protective behavior against COVID-19. This study further tested the moderation effects of subjective norms on attitude and perceived behavioral control links with intention.

In all, 344 international tourists completed questionnaires via QR-coded Google forms in Phuket Old Town and Patong Beach in Thailand. Data analysis was conducted by SPSS and Smart-PLS (partial least square).

Intention to select a restaurant with CDSs was influenced by attitude, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms. Subjective norms had a significant negative moderating effect on attitude and intention links. However, the moderation effect of tourists’ subjective norms on the connection between their perceived behavioral control and intention toward restaurant dining was not proved.

Providing CDSs could be a quick solution to decrease the devastating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the restaurant industry.

This study incorporated CDSs to expand the application of the integrated model of theory of planned behavior and protection motivation theory as a theoretical basis in the restaurant industry to explain how international tourists’ behavioral choices may change during the pandemic in Thailand. This study also contributes to the travel risk literature by highlighting the influence of attitude anchored on risk and efficacy beliefs (perceived vulnerability, severity and response efficacy) in predicting protective behavioral intention.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the tourism service experience of consumers with vulnerabilities. Moreover, this research analyses the pre-core service encounter in the tourism services sector, which is one of the most important phases in the service experience. The objective is to understand how vulnerability might influence risk perceptions when people travel. To this end, this study focusses on individuals with coeliac disease (CD) and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) as a specific group to test the hypotheses. For the millions of individuals with CD or NCGS, food is one of the most critical elements of a trip and the reason for vulnerability perception. The research also proposes measures suggested by survey respondents to improve the information search process of vulnerable travellers before a trip.

A mixed-method was used based on a survey of 813 responses from people diagnosed with CD and NCGS. The individuals were placed in three groups according to their perception of how strongly their disease impacts their trips: low impact, medium impact and high impact.

The results confirm that people with a high-risk perception due to their vulnerability spend more time searching for information prior to the trip than people without this perception. In this sense, individuals that feel more vulnerable, tend to use more personal information sources and also make greater use of online information sources. The participants affected by CD and NCGS proposed measures to reduce their perceived vulnerability. These proposals are based on information about the disease, specific information from the tourist industry at the destination and various online, as well as offline information channels.

The novelty of this research is mainly found in the study in the study of how consumers with vulnerabilities behave during the information process before travelling. From a holistic approach and based on both, marketing service theory and the risk perception perspectives, this research is focussed on vulnerable individuals affected by CD and NCGS to find answers to the problems they face during the pre-core service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of perceived price fairness through satisfaction and loyalty on price acceptance. The antecedents of price fairness, including price perception and tourist vulnerability, will also be examined.

The authors collected 674 questionnaires from international tourists who purchased Islamic-Iranian art products and analyzed simultaneous relations with a structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that perceived price awareness and perceived vulnerability positively and significantly affect perceived price fairness. Additionally, perceived price fairness has a significant influence on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Moreover, customer satisfaction and loyalty were found to have a positive impact on price acceptance.

Based on the findings, the results are expected to create a useful perspective for the researchers so they can present a broader model in future studies. The results of this research can help managers develop better pricing strategies and effective pricing mechanism design and, through recognition of factors influencing customer perception of the price, instigate better pricing.

Although prior research focused on the relationships among the variables of perception of price, perceived vulnerability, perceived price fairness, satisfaction and loyalty and price acceptance, the current study considers the effect of these variables as a general compound model and in the context of Islamic-Iranian art tourism products.

In women, having a history of sexual victimization has been linked to certain personality traits (e.g. low levels of assertiveness) and nonverbal behaviors (e.g. fewer head movements). The majority of research in this area, however, has considered how self-reported personality traits and gait relate to victimization. As such, the present study aims to examine how observers’ perceptions of personality impact judgments of targets’ vulnerability to sexual and violent victimization, and how the nonverbal behaviors used when making these judgments may vary depending on perceived personality traits.

A total of 309 participants watched eight audio-less videos of a woman speaking. Following each video, participants rated each woman on varying personality and emotionality traits, as well as their perception of how vulnerable the woman was to future victimization, and how they came to their decision according to a number of predetermined nonverbal cues.

Consistent with previous research, observers’ perceptions of sexual vulnerability were negatively related to perceptions of targets’ self-esteem and confidence, and positively related to anxiety. While violent vulnerability displayed a similar pattern of results, the nonverbal behaviors cited during the vulnerability appraisal process varied between personality traits. Though few results emerged within the latter query, anxiety exhibited the majority of all significant relationships, including being positively associated with facial expressions and upper and lower body movements.

Results suggest that different behavioral and personality interventions (e.g. increasing self-esteem) may serve to increase self-efficacy, autonomy and confidence, as well as help women feel more in control of their destiny and interpersonal communications.

COVID 19 has had a profound effect on peoples’ activities and the use of public spaces. Before the COVID 19 pandemic urban parks, as healthy places, were of the most favorable places for urban citizens, but nowadays no vitality is found in urban parks due to the absence of people. The perceived risk seems to affect peoples’ decision-making for the visit to urban parks. This study aims to examine the impact of COVID 19 perceived severity and vulnerability on peoples’ visit to the urban parks and further exercise avoidance. It is expected that the result of this study would shed light on the people’s perception of healthy urban parks to exercise during COVID 19.

The participants were recruited from a neighborhood with the greenest and largest parks in Iran that were selected for the study. It was to assure that participants have access to the urban parks within their walkable distance. The mixed-method approach was applied to achieving the research goals. A total of 404 participants attended the survey. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the strategies that reduce peoples’ worries about using urban parks during the COVID 19. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS.

The study hypothesized that peoples’ awareness of COVID 19 affects their perceived risk and disease prevention efficiency. Besides, it was hypothesized that perceived risk and efficacy effects outdoor activities worries exercise avoidance and behavioral avoidance in the urban parks. The result of the study supported the research hypothesis. The more knowledge people acquire of COVID 19 and the lack of efficacy of treatments, the higher they will avoid outdoor activities and exercise. The means of knowledge and perceived risk were higher than previously reported studies.

The result of this study is very important, as it statistically proves that peoples’ priorities and factors that affect their willingness to use public spaces are very much affected by their perception of a healthy environment. It also canonizes the role of facility managers in bringing peoples’ trust in the use of public spaces and more specifically urban parks during pandemic disease distributions.