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COVID-19 vaccinations face a backdrop of widespread mistrust in their safety and effectiveness, specifically via social media platforms which constitute major barriers for the public health sector to manage COVID-19 (and future) pandemics. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the public's engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations.

Using Netnography, this study explores the public's interactions with vaccine communications by the WHO via Facebook. From WHO posts about the COVID-19 vaccination 23,726 public comments on Facebook were extracted and analyzed.

Building on crisis communication, health and engagement literature, this paper identifies and conceptualizes seven patterns of engagement behavior toward the COVID-19 vaccination and develops the first framework of relationships between these patterns and the extant vaccine attitudes: vaccine acceptance, hesitancy and refusal.

This paper helps policymakers identify and adapt interventions that increase vaccine confidence and tailor public health services communications accordingly.

This research offers the first typology of patterns of engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations and develops a framework of relationships between these patterns and the existing understanding in health literature. Finally, the study provides data-driven communication recommendations to public health service organizations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the determinants influencing low- and middle-income households in accepting the Islamic public-private housing co-operative model (IPHCM) as an alternative to contemporary affordable public housing models in Malaysia.

Using self-administrated questionnaires, data are collected from low- and middle-income households dwelling in Programme Perumahan Rakyat projects in Kuala Lumpur and the state of Selangor. The study used the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and used the partial least squares technique to examine the proposed hypothesised relationships.

The findings of this study suggest that subjective norm and perceived consumer religiosity is the most influential determinants affecting the behavioural intention of low- and middle-income households in accepting the IPHCM model. Attitude had a significantly positive relationship with households’ behavioural intentions towards accepting the IPHCM model.

The findings of this study can serve as a guideline for policymakers to understand the behavioural intention of low- and middle-income households in accepting newly developed models in affordable public housing space.

Behavioural aspects regarding the acceptance of affordable public housing models in Malaysia have yet to be profoundly explored in the literature. This study has extended the TPB by incorporating perceived consumer religiosity, in the affordable public housing domain, to analyse its effects on households’ acceptance of the IPHCM model.

Measuring and understanding the dynamics of democracy as well as democratic attitudes of people have become a big challenge for every democratic state. The study proposes the investigation of middle-class peoples’ attitudes towards democracy in Pakistan.

The study employs a deductive approach based on cross-sectional data from Pakistan’s middle-class people. The researchers use a survey questionnaire through a convenience sampling technique. Finally, the study utilizes 1854 samples to conclude the findings.

The evidence confirms that trust in public institutions and political engagement positively and significantly impact peoples’ democratic attitudes. In addition, the investigation witnessed the preference for democracy also supports understanding middle-class peoples’ democratic attitudes.

The study would provide an endorsement for politicians of Pakistan to perceive the inclination of middle-class people towards democracy. The study would guide the researchers and policymakers and intellectualize the middle-class peoples’ opinions and attitudes. Moreover the study would support reflecting the public confidence in decision making and ability to deliver. Finally the study findings would contribute to the literature of political science and democracy to understand democratic attitudes mainly focusing on middle-class populations.

This study empirically confirms the Pakistani middle-class peoples’ attitudes towards democracy.

To explore people’s attitudes towards bus service quality and bus use.

The study is a natural experiment that uses primary data collected from questionnaires, which were conducted to Maltese residents. The information was collected two months before the bus service reform and one year afterwards.

Results cast doubt on whether current policy measures regarding bus service quality are adequate to contribute to a modal shift from car to bus use.

Provides insight on whether current policy measures are sufficient in order to obtain an increase in bus patronage.

The case study of the Malta bus service reform provides an opportunity to study people’s attitudes in a quasi-experimental situation. Additionally, the research sheds light on the possible impact that bus service reforms have on people’s attitudes.

Islamic banking (IB) has resulted in abundant cross-border financial flows and diversified economic inter-linkages with over US$2tn in assets that have extended beyond Muslim countries to more established global financial centres and other emerging economies. Despite this remarkable diffusion, numerous developing and least-developed countries are yet to embrace IB. This study aims to examine the factors that determine public intention to adopt IB in Uganda.

This study undertook a quantitative approach where the theory of reasoned action (TRA) was used as a theoretical framework and structural equation modelling technique was applied to determine the relationship between attitude, subjective norm and public intention to adopt IB. Thus, a sample of 300 bank customers was surveyed using a questionnaire.

Initially, the measurement model did not fit the data well. So, the model was modified by removing an indicator with a lower loading. Finally, the structural model under maximum likelihood estimate analysis confirmed a good model fit for the data. Key findings were as follows: attitude positively influenced intention to adopt IB, whereas subjective norm influence to intention is mediated by attitude. Furthermore, public intention to adopt IB in Uganda can be predicted by attitude (R² = 0.89) which also mediates the prediction of subjective norm to intention (R² = 0.58).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has used the TRA on the feasibility and adoption of IB. Thus, the present study is relevant in extending the theoretical body of knowledge by validating the TRA in a new field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that may influence support of public-private partnerships (PPPs) by government employees potentially involved in designing and implementing cross-sectoral collaborations.

Based on an original survey of government employees in the USA, this study explores the impact of individual, organizational and environmental factors on their support for PPPs by employing ordinary least squares regression.

Among the individual factors, involvement in PPPs and concerns for efficiency have been identified as factors having positive impact on government employees’ support for PPPs. Male government employees seem to be less supportive of PPPs than female government employees. Environmental factors such as public opinion and appointed agency heads positively influence government employees’ views of PPPs. No evidence for the significant impact of organizational factors on government employee perceptions of PPPs was found.

Factors influencing government employees’ attitudes may also have an effect on employees’ behaviors when involved in PPPs. Further studies may clarify how attitudes are translated into behaviors and how they influence the performance of PPPs. Investigations into government employees’ views of PPPs before and after their actual involvement in partnerships may allow for identifying changes in employees’ support for PPPs and their possible causes.

This study investigates the impacts of individual, organizational and environmental factors on government employees’ support for partnerships with the private sector that remain under-researched in the literature.

The marketing of alcohol and tobacco products and their related public policy implications have become controversial issues worldwide, due mainly to health‐related issues. Uses a telephone survey methodology to compare attitudes toward Olympic sponsorship by a leading US brewer with general attitudes toward the use of sports sponsorship to promote tobacco products. Results suggest that respondents have significantly different attitudes towards the two product categories and their use of sponsorship, accepting more readily the use of the Olympics to promote beer. Respondents’ self‐interest is also found to significantly affect the level of acceptance for the use of sport to promote alcohol or tobacco products, although in slightly different ways. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research, along with their managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain public preferences for different public procurement practices. The paper looks into public support for cost-effectiveness, discriminatory procurement in favour of domestic suppliers and sustainable procurement.

This study uses Eurobarometer public opinion data on 26.836 EU citizens from 27 EU countries.

This paper shows that EU citizens want public authorities to evaluate multiple aspects of any procurement offer in their public procurement decisions. It also found that, although cost-effectiveness and domestic favouritism are still important to EU citizens, citizens are most supportive of the objectives of sustainable procurement. Some associations between citizens’ procurement preferences and their social characteristics and political attitudes were found, but these only explain citizen procurement preferences to a limited extent. Country of residence has the strongest association with citizens’ acceptance of the objectives of sustainable procurement.

Even though the data contain information on the procurement preferences of a large number of EU citizens, it is a topic of inquiry that is sensitive to social desirability bias.

This paper contributes to the empirical understanding of public attitudes towards public procurement. It is one of few studies on citizen attitudes towards different public procurement practices.

This paper discusses the contribution psychographics can make to the public relations process. While marketers and advertisers rely on building up groups through individuals' consumer purchasing behaviour, public relations practitioners have traditionally assessed different groups' public opinion to provide guidance in developing communication. Psychographics offers practitioners a dimension between the individual and the group choices that takes into consideration the individuality of the marketing/advertising approach and the group mentality of the public opinion process. Correctly researched, psychographics can also add attitudinal and behavioural information to traditional demographic categories, allowing practitioners to tailor communication to match the attitudes and perceptions of their target publics. The key, of course, to making effective use of psychographics is carefully constructing the research to generate the genuine responses that accurately reflect target publics' feelings, motivations and values.