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Employee reward is central to contemporary debates about work and employment relations; and in the context of ongoing wage stagnation, benefits represent a growing proportion of total reward value. Past studies have shown that when employees perceive benefits as unfair, this has a negative impact on engagement, performance and retention. Yet no previous studies have explored the components of a benefits system that influence employees’ fairness concerns. Using organisational justice as a theoretical lens, the purpose of this paper is to examine how dimensions of an employee benefits system influence the fairness perceptions of employees.

This paper reports on a qualitative, inductive case study of the benefits system in a large finance and insurance company, drawing on three data sources: interviews with the company’s benefits managers, organisational documents and open-text responses from a benefits survey.

Three dimensions of the benefits system strongly influenced fairness perceptions – constraints on accessing and utilising benefits; prosocial perceptions about the fairness of benefits to third parties; and the transparency of employee benefits.

The study informs organisations and benefits managers about the important role of supervisors in perceived benefits usability, and how benefits may be managed and communicated to enhance employee fairness perceptions.

This study makes a conceptual contribution to the benefits literature through a detailed exploration of the type of organisational justice judgements that employees make about benefits; and identifying for the first time prosocial fairness concerns about the impact of benefits on third parties.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the perception of total quality management (TQM) benefits, practices and obstacles in Kuwaiti industrial organizations certified against ISO 9001:2000 (or later) and following a TQM approach. A discrepancy in perception between project managers (PMs) and quality management representatives (QMRs) of organizations in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries has already been identified (Jaeger and Adair, 2013), and this study compares the perception of these two groups in more depth.

Extensive representatives of both groups have been individually interviewed, a classification system for TQM benefits, practices and obstacles has been developed, and interview responses have been analyzed against this classification system.

It emerges that all responses matched one of the benefits, obstacles and practices of the classification system. Comparing the total group of PMs with the total group of QMRs, it was found that both groups agree on their perception of the most important practice (i.e. an implemented management system) and, the biggest obstacle (i.e. lack of employee involvement). However, they disagree on their perception of the most important TQM benefit (i.e. PMs prefer quality of products and services, and QMRs prefer productivity).

The results of the total groups and sub-groups give new insights regarding the different perceptions of PMs and QMRs. Also, the results enable practitioners of these two functions to discuss the differences and align their perceptions. This should increase the effectiveness of the TQM approach in their organizations. Finally, the results allow management consultants to focus on areas with high potential for improvements.

In the context of service exchanges, the purpose of this paper is to examine the form of the link from under-benefitting (customers receive less than they invest) vs over-benefitting (customers receive more than they invest) perceptions to customer service evaluations. The authors assess three competing hypotheses: maximization, fairness, and the asymmetric hypotheses.

Linear and nonlinear relationships between under-over benefitting perceptions and service evaluations are examined following a test-retest approach. These relationships are investigated in four samples from two survey studies: hotels (Time 1, n=591; Time 2, n=512) and restaurants (Time 1, n=536; Time 2, n=473).

Results confirmed the existence of asymmetrical curvilinear relationships. Service evaluations improve sharply when perceptions move from under-benefitting perceptions to balanced situations. However, service evaluations do not improve in high over-benefitting situations.

The design of employee tasks and services should avoid both under-benefitting perceptions and a disproportionate maximization of customer benefits.

Previous research studies have investigated these types of relationships by computing linear relationships or comparing different groups of customers. The current research tests the link from under-over benefitting perceptions to customer service evaluations by also considering nonlinear relationships. This approach supports an asymmetrical curvilinear relationship that captures the complexity of service exchanges.

To test a social-psychological model of public acceptance of highway infrastructure projects in the Chinese architecture/engineering/construction industry.

Through a comprehensive literature review, we established a social-psychological model of public acceptance related to benefit perception, risk perception and public trust. We empirically validated our model by using structural equation model analysis based on a questionnaire survey in the S35 Yongjin Highway Infrastructure Project in Yunnan Province, China.

Benefit, trust and risk perception had a significant influence on local residents' public acceptance of highway infrastructure projects; benefit perception and trust perception had a greater influence than risk perception. Public acceptance among local male residents over the age of 35 or those with higher education levels was more likely to be determined by the relative dominance of risk and benefit perceived.

This study contributes empirical evidence to the theoretical literature related to locally unwanted land use (LULU) siting and stakeholders in the field of project management from the public perspective. This study also suggests valuable practical implications to authorities, project managers and the public in decision-making and risk communication.

Although previous studies addressed factors affecting public acceptance towards potentially hazardous facilities, understanding of the implications of these social-psychological factors and their effects are still far from sufficient. This study bridges this gap by exploring the determinants of public acceptance towards highway infrastructure projects based on a selected case in China.

This study examines the influence that the positive valence intensity of online consumer reviews (OCRs) has on the benefits that individuals perceive they have derived from consumption. A distinction is made based on whether the performance obtained during the consumption was high or low, that is, whether the product/service met the objectives set by the consumer.

The study is a between-subjects experiment with two manipulations: the positive valence intensity of OCRs (highly positive vs neutral-indifferent) and the performance obtained by the consumer (high vs low). The manipulations were measured on 11-point Likert-type scales, the lowest perception being scored at 0 (strongly disagree) and the highest at 10 (strongly agree). A total of 249 useable questionnaires were returned.

The results demonstrated that the influence of positive OCRs on the consumer's perception of consumption benefits follows concave curvilinear functional forms for low performance (inverted U-shaped) and convex for high performance (U-shaped). Thus, highly positive OCRs not corroborated by performance lead to negative perceptions, whereas neutral-indifferent OCRs verified by performance create positive perceptions.

This study goes beyond the immediate influence of positive OCRs on purchases and argues that their influence remains important for the individual's final perception of the consumption benefits that she/he, in the event, received. In addition, the results of the present study show that OCRs are important reference points from which individuals make social judgments and comparisons during consumption. Finally, this study provides theoretical and empirical support to explain the U-shaped functional forms associated with the influence of OCRs.

Public perception of health benefits derived from organic foods is often misaligned with scientific evidence. This study aims to examine the factors affecting public perception of scientific information about organic foods.

The authors conducted multinominal and multiple linear regression analyses to examine associations between public perception of scientific information about organic foods and 19 factors using data from a descriptive survey (N = 763).

Perceived benefits of organic foods, trust in scientists, communicator credibility, preexisting beliefs and events related to science (e.g. COVID-19) were significant predictors of public perception of scientific information about organic foods.

Cognitive dissonance and recreancy theoretical frameworks help describe relationships between beliefs, science, trust and risk. These theories intersect when purchasing credence goods (i.e. organic foods) whose qualities cannot be observed during or after purchase. Hence, public trust of scientific information about perceived health benefits of organic foods may conflict with strongly held beliefs that contradict scientific findings.

Scientists can more effectively share research findings after trust is established through the listening, asking and sharing values process. Therefore, by following the path of listening, asking and sharing the endogenous/exogenous factors in this study, scientists and the public can have meaningful conversations about perceived health benefits and nutritional values of organically and conventionally grown foods.

Current research on perception factors about organic foods often examined consumers' perceptions and purchase intentions but rarely considered perceptions of scientific information about organic foods. This study examined relationships between public perception of scientific information about organic foods and endogenous/exogenous factors.

Many business‐to‐business buyers are building closer relationships with fewer sellers. When faced with the choice of which sellers to partner with, buyers often develop such close relationships with sellers who have made transaction‐specific investments (TSIs). TSIs are assets (both tangible and intangible) that have very little value outside a particular relationship. Sellers thinking of making these TSIs need to be able to assess the buyer′s probable response to such investments to help determine whether such investments would be advisable for the seller. Develops and tests a model of buyer‐seller relationships to assess the impact of a TSI on buyer′s perceptions of the benefits to the seller′s TSI. Using previous literature and managerial evidence, the model hypothesizes two paths within the TSI Benefits Model which represent the benefits that the buyer perceives to be outcomes of the TSI. Identifying the one benefit path that the buyer values more will allow the seller to stress those corresponding benefits that lead to the development of a closer relationship with the buyer.

In this study, the authors clarified the differences in consumers' benefit–risk perceptions based on changes (description order and amount) in the benefit–risk information after an assessment of the health impact of foods.

The authors set the following four benefit–risk information groups relating to fatty fish consumption—Group 1: benefit/simple–risk/detail; Group 2: risk/detail–benefit/simple; Group 3: benefit/detail–risk/detail; Group 4: risk/detail–benefit/detail. The authors conducted a randomized controlled study on June, 2022, involving 7,200 Japanese consumers aged over 18 years.

There were no significant differences in the risk and benefit perceptions. Furthermore, the logistic regression analysis identified women and benefit perception as significant influencing factors of “no-risk acceptance.”

This study found that all four message formats were acceptable to consumers due to high-benefit/low-risk perceptions. However, despite the difference in message types used in benefit–risk communication, there was no effect on risk acceptance among consumers. Public agencies should design their communication with considerations toward women and benefit perceptions.

The self‐interest and relational models of organizational justice were tested to explain the relationship between benefit plan type and organizational justice. Benefit plan types considered were flexible and traditional plans. In support of the self‐interest model employees in flexible benefit plans had significantly higher perceptions of procedural justice than employees in traditional benefit plans. There were no significant differences in perceptions of distributive justice between the plan types.

Online dating services have been growing rapidly in recent years. However, adopting these services may involve high risk and trust issues among potential users toward both online dating services and the daters they introduce to users. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived benefits vs risks, and trust vs distrust affect user adoption vs non-adoption intentions toward using this rather controversial information and communications technology in the context of online dating.

Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the research model using data from a survey of 451 single individuals.

The results indicated that perceived benefits play more essential roles in adoption, while perceived risks affect non-adoption more. Individuals' trust in online dating service predicts a major portion of the variation in user benefit perceptions, while distrust in online dating service and in daters that users might select significantly influence perceived risks. Moreover, benefit and risk perceptions can mediate the impacts of trust and distrust on both adoption and non-adoption decisions.

This study extends theories of decision-making in the use of controversial information technologies such as in the case of online dating. It investigates the coexistence of various trust and distrust beliefs as well as benefit and risk perceptions, and their different impacts on adoption and non-adoption in online dating services.