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The purpose of this paper was to investigate the prevalence rates of stress, depression and anxiety and their sociodemographic factors linked with the Indian population following the second round of COVID-19 in India.

A cross-sectional study was carried out using an online questionnaire. In total, 505 individuals participated through convenience sampling. To measure anxiety, depression and stress, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), a 21-statement self-reported questionnaire, was used.

Multiple regression analyses were performed to evaluate the sociodemographic characteristics associated with depression, stress and anxiety. Results indicated salary/allowances reduction and alcohol consumption were associated with depression. Multiple regression also indicated that salary/allowances reduction, smoking status and alcohol consumption were associated with stress. In addition, this research also showed that chronic disease, salary/allowances reduction, smoking status and alcohol consumption were associated with anxiety.

During the second COVID-19 wave in India, various individuals were affected. Anxiety, depression and stress were common among Indians after the second wave of COVID-19. Along with other actions to restrict the development of COVID-19, the Indian Government and mental health specialists must pay close attention to the inhabitants' mental health. More large-scale studies on various occupations should be conducted, and new mental health factors should be included.

This study provides empirical insights related the sociodemographic factors and stress, anxiety and depression.

The marketing of immersive and competitive online gaming products has proliferated in recent times. Consumption has also shown a substantial increase, especially among children. Such elevated levels of gaming have adversely affected children’s overall well-being. This paper aims to examine the role of parental attachment variables in enhancing children’s self-control behavior in counteracting the adverse effects of excessive gaming. The role of gender in excessive gaming is also studied.

A conceptual framework is tested that examines the direct relationship of features of parental attachment with excessive online gaming behavior and an indirect effect through the mediation of a child’s self-control construct using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that parental attachment through self-control can play a significant role in limiting excessive gaming behavior among vulnerable young gamers. Excessive gaming behavior was more pronounced for boys than girls. Alienation explained excessive gaming behavior among girls, while communication was significant for boys, but in a reversed direction.

All possible antecedent variables from the literature, like parental rearing style, that may further contribute to developing a comprehensive theoretical framework could not be studied.

The study suggests that the priming of children achieved through parental attachment relationships may help prevent excessive gaming behavior among vulnerable young gamers.

This study addresses the gap in the understanding of parental attachment features related to excessive gaming among different genders. It also establishes the role of the intervening mechanism of a child’s self-control in regulating behavior in relation to excessive gaming in the Indian context.

Almost every study undertaken by academicians or practitioners on the Internet of Things (IoT) has mainly highlighted the privacy concerns and information security issues with the IoT products. On the contrary, this paper aims to explore the motivators that could encourage customers of an IoT product to share their IoT product’s data with a third-party aggregator system to facilitate computer-generated product reviews which are defined as electronic Word of Thing (eWOT) in this paper.

An experiment was conducted with customized e-commerce prototypes of eWOT. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted to test the measurement model by using confirmatory factor analysis and thereafter a structural model to test the relationships amongst the latent variables.

This paper found that five consumer motivators (personal innovativeness, enjoyment of helping, anticipated extrinsic rewards, moral obligations and venting negative feelings) contribute to eWOT intention.

This research advances the understanding of human interaction with computer-generated product reviews and opens up avenues for future studies in online consumer behavior in the IoT context.

This paper presents motivators for eWOT intention to share IoT product data. This is done through a novel concept of an experimental IoT-based prototype, namely, eWOT. These eWOT reviews can be generated from the IoT products data by applying analytics and using natural language generation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study has been conducted on this subject.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of television viewing duration of a household on its annual category-level conspicuous consumption and also the enhanced level of this relationship for the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) households.

Hypotheses formulation was guided by cultivation theory and the concept of compensatory consumption. The hypotheses were later examined by using ordinary least square (OLS) regression on the data from the large nationally representative India Human Development Survey, 2011 (IHDS-II) database.

Television viewing duration of the household exerts a positive effect on its annual category-level conspicuous consumption expenditure. The nature of this relationship is enhanced for the BoP households. The annual category-level conspicuous consumption for the BoP households increases by close to four percent for every hour increase in their television viewing duration while such increase for other households is close to one and a half percent only.

Findings can be further strengthened by using time-lagged dependent variable taken at monthly intervals, as well as survey data linking household television viewing duration with desirability of conspicuous goods.

Managers can rely on television for reaching BoP consumers while being cognizant of the negative effects of promoting conspicuous consumption among them. They need to adopt a responsible marketing approach. Besides regulating television, policymakers need to work toward increased provisioning of educational and financial services for BoP households. They can leverage television for promoting beneficial behavior in BoP households.

The study empirically establishes the external validity of cultivation theory at the household level in an emerging economy by using a large nationally representative database. It also establishes the higher vulnerability of BoP households to increase category-level conspicuous consumption in response to television viewing. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically examine the effect of television viewing duration of household on its annual category level conspicuous consumption.

This study aims to evaluate the mediating role of work engagement (WE) in the relationship between four independent variables, such as procedural justice (PJ), distributive justice (DJ), interactional justice (INTJ) and informational justice (INFJ), along with an outcome variable, i.e. proactive customer service performance (PCSP) within the hospitality industry.

We used 432 frontline supervisor–subordinate dyads. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, we obtained data for 47 supervisors and 432 subordinates from the hotel industry. Notably, we used two distinct questionnaires to capture data from each pair in order to avoid common method bias.

Broadly, the findings show that there is a significant and positive relationship between DJ, PJ, INTJ and INFJ vis-à-vis WE. Besides, WE is also significantly and positively associated with PCSP. Additionally, the results indicate that WE acts as a mediator between the four independent variables (DJ, PJ, INTJ and INFJ) and one outcome variable, PCSP.

Based on our findings, whereby different forms of justice (DJ, PJ, INTJ and INFJ) have a positive impact on WE, and PCSP has practical ramifications, organizations would need to set priorities and implement OJ strategies within the work environment. In turn, this would enable the employees to be more engaged in their work, resulting in improved performance and greater job satisfaction.

This study offers unique theoretical and practical learnings for the hospitality industry with the usage of supervisor–subordinate dyads.

Employee well-being is increasingly relevant and crucial for organizational success. As work engagement and employee well-being affect employee performance, this area is the focus of increasing attention both from scholars and industry professionals. The main objective of the present research study is to investigate the mediating role of work engagement on the relationship between mindfulness at work, organizational justice and employee well-being.

The study was conducted on information technology (IT) employees in India, and 331 complete responses were collected for the data analysis. The cross-sectional data were collected through purposive sampling. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to evaluate the proposed research hypotheses.

The findings support the convergent and discriminant validities of mindfulness, organizational justice, work engagement and employee well-being. The results indicate that mindfulness and organizational justice have an indirect relationship with employee well-being. In addition, the study demonstrates that work engagement significantly mediates the relationship between mindfulness and employee well-being as well as between organizational justice and employee well-being.

The findings will help organizations and human resources (HR) departments to understand the importance of work engagement and employee well-being in the workplace.

The mediating effect of work engagement between the workplace mindfulness–organizational justice relationship on employee well-being is addressed by drawing on conservation of resources (COR) and job demand–resource (JD–R) theories. Prior research has exclusively studied the relationship of employee well-being with either mindfulness or organizational justice. This research provides empirical insights regarding the fact that both mindfulness and organizational justice simultaneously have a relationship with employee well-being.

This study aims to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and proactive customer service performance (PCSP) in the airline industry, considering self-efficacy and emotional intelligence as mediators.

Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was used for formulating hypotheses. Data were gathered from 500 frontline employees and 30 supervisors to create subordinate dyads, resulting in a final sample size of 370 participants. Structural equation modeling was employed for the purpose of data analysis.

The results indicated that supervisors’ transformational leadership impacted the self-efficacy and emotional intelligence of service and frontline employees, thereby influencing PCSP. Self-efficacy and emotional intelligence of frontline employees were positively correlated with PCSP. These findings add to the existing literature by providing empirical proof of a positive association between transformational leadership and perceived customer service performance. Furthermore, this study supported the mediating roles of self-efficacy and emotional intelligence of frontline employees as mediators, showing their importance in translating transformational leadership behaviors into enhanced customer service performance.

The airline sector will benefit significantly from the findings of this research. It highlights the significance of transformational leadership in improving PCSP. Organizations should emphasize the creation and growth of transformational leaders capable of inspiring and motivating staff to provide excellent customer service. In addition, the research highlights the significance of self-efficacy and emotional intelligence as factors that mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and PCSP. Organizations may foster PCSP by investing in training and development programs that seek to improve workers’ self-efficacy and emotional intelligence. These programs may help participants gain confidence in their ability to deliver excellent customer service as well as improve their knowledge.

This research paper presents novel theoretical and practical developments in the airline industry. This research paper collected data in two phases from supervisor–subordinate dyads.

The study aims to look at deep eWOM providing behaviour in m-commerce and attempts to explore its antecedents. Personalisation is proposed as an indirect antecedent of deep eWOM providing behaviour mediated by hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions and personal identification.

Based on social-exchange theory, the conceptual model links the study antecedents to deep eWOM providing behaviour. The conceptual model was validated through a multi-country study. A large sample of m-commerce users in the UK (n = 505), India (n = 422) and Vietnam (n = 618) were contacted to collect the data. Data were analysed through structural equations modelling procedure with invariance analysis conducted to ensure that the results from the three samples could be compared. The authors also conducted post-hoc analysis to explore the mediation paths between variables.

The study finds support to the conceptual model across the samples from the three countries. Personalisation is found to increase value perceptions – both utilitarian and hedonic – and personal identification which leads to “deep” eWOM providing behaviour across all the three countries. The serial mediation also provides comparable results across the three countries.

The study contributes to the understanding of deep eWOM providing behaviour – a construct with high practical relevance which has however not been explored sufficiently in current literature. The study also contributes to the literature that analyses the consequences of personalisation in m-commerce.

Workplace spirituality is presently a prominent research topic and is gaining recognition and importance among industry professionals and academicians. Workplace spirituality is defined as a sense of community, meaningful work and organizational values. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the relationship between workplace spirituality and mental health, wherein employee engagement is considered as a mediator. Furthermore, this study examines the mediating role of employee engagement in the relationship between organizational justice and mental health.

Data were gathered from 344 information technology professionals working in India. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model fit of workplace spirituality and its relationship to employee engagement, organizational justice and mental health.

The results revealed that workplace spirituality and organizational justice significantly and positively predict employee engagement, which is significantly related to employee mental health. The results also revealed that employee engagement significantly partially mediates the relationship between workplace spirituality and mental health as well as the relationship between organizational justice and mental health.

Results of research guide HR professionals, employee mental health concerns can be addressed by promoting workplace spirituality, improving employee engagement strategies and implementing organizational justice policies that are perceived to be fair. This study makes a significant contribution to the extant literature regarding mental health issues in the IT sector.

Findings of this research contribute to the area of human resource management and employee engagement. The current study fills a gap in the extant literature by investigating employee engagement intervening mechanism between organizational justice, workplace spirituality and mental health.

The key research issue addressed in this paper is whether individuals perceive advertisements featuring themes from their own religion more positively, and advertisements featuring religious themes from other religions less positively, than neutral ads. In the process, this paper aims to test whether the in-group bias theory (IGBT) and the polarized appraisal theory (PAT) apply in a religious context.

Respondents in a large Indian University were shown advertisements featuring Hindu and Muslim themes as well as a neutral advertisement in the context of pet adoption. Cognitive and affective response measures were used for evaluation.

Respondents did not evaluate advertisements with their own religion’s symbols any more positively than neutral advertisements but did evaluate advertisements with themes from other religions more negatively than neutral ads. In sum, religious advertisements did not have any positive effect on in-group respondents, but rather worked in antagonizing out-group respondents.

Both IGBT and PAT did not work as predicted when tested on in-group respondents but worked as expected on out-group respondents.

In the Indian market, using religious themes has largely negative consequences in terms of alienating out-group members, with no commensurate advantage on in-group members. Firms are better off not using religious advertising, and this decision would likely have a positive impact on a firm’s bottom line.

Though, the general topic of religious advertising has been much researched, but this paper deals with the role of religious symbols in advertising in the Indian context, which is done for the first time in a multi-religious context. Further, the applicability of IGBT and PAT is also tested for the first time in religious advertisement context.