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This study proposes that reciprocity appeal may influence consumers helping behavior. The authors suggest that this influence depends on the target of reciprocity (direct vs. indirect), consumer–brand social distance (close vs. distant) and frequency of exposure to the appeal over time.

This research was conducted through three experimental studies. They were carried out both through online experiment (Study 1) and in laboratory (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 consisted of an experiment combined with longitudinal growth models, supporting the hypothesis that repetitive periods decrease reciprocity over time.

The results demonstrate that consumers close to a brand become more prosocial toward the company when the reciprocity appeal is perceived as direct (vs. indirect). In contrast, the indirect reciprocity appeal influences consumers distant from the company. Furthermore, reciprocity appeal decreases consumer helping behavior over time, but indirect reciprocity appeal attenuates this negative effect only to close customers.

This research contributes to theory by showing that direct reciprocal appeals increase the helping behavior of close customers when company appeals are infrequently made.

This research is the first to empirically investigate the efficiency of voucher campaigns. Furthermore, it innovates by exploring a situation of direct consumer reciprocity in which the consumer decides to help a company with an expectation, but no explicit requirement, that the company will reciprocate.

The purpose of this theoretical chapter is to rework a promising but limited theory of the foundations of reciprocity. Reciprocity is often attributed to an “internalized norm of reciprocity” – a deeply felt moral obligation to help those who have helped us in the past. Leifer's theory of local action develops a radically different and compelling foundation for reciprocity – one in which the impetus for reciprocity is a thinly veiled battle for status. We rework the theory to offer a new one that addresses its limitations. The key idea is that the impetus for reciprocity is the desire to signal that one intends to create joint value rather than to capture it from the counterparty.

Our analytical approach rests on close examination of a puzzling and underrecognized feature of social exchange: people who initiate social exchange routinely deny giving anything of value (“it was nothing”) while the receiver inflates their indebtedness to the giver (“this is too much!”). We refer to this negotiation strategy as reverse bargaining and use it as a window into the logic of social exchange.

We develop a more general theory of how people manage the threat of opportunism in social exchange that subsumes local action theory. The key insight is that people who initiate social exchange and seek reciprocity must balance two competing objectives: to ensure that the person receiving a benefit recognizes a debt she must repay; and to mitigate the receiver's suspicion that the giver's ulterior motive is to capture value from the receiver.

Introduction: The current study examines the relationship of reciprocity and the knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) with the mediating role of organizational commitment.

Aim: The purpose of this chapter is to examine linkages between reciprocity and KSB in Pakistani Pharmaceutical industry basing on social exchange theory (SET) (Blau, 1964). Employees’ affective and normative organizational commitments were proposed as mediator to explain these relationships.

Method: Data were collected using Survey Questionnaires from a sample of 287 managers and staff of sales department of different pharmaceutical firms in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. This is an explanatory study with a quantitative approach. KSB model was developed and tested using a two-stage analysis. Initially, path analysis using AMOS was carried out followed by mediation through process analysis.

Findings: Affective and normative commitment was found to be mediating between reciprocity and KSB using SET.

Originality of the Study: Few empirical studies have analyzed the effects of reciprocity on KSB, especially in context of pharmaceutical industry. Mediation of employee’s commitment could provide new insights to management practitioners in fostering KSB.

Implications: The finding will allow organizations in general and pharmaceutical firms in particular, to focus more on commitment toward their employee as a reciprocal benefit for improving knowledge sharing culture in their organizations.

Purpose – Uses Kenneth Boulding's concept of “serial reciprocity” in conjunction with information about the evolution of emotions and social exchange processes to identify possible mechanisms that can help explain the rise of early Christianity.

Design/methodology/approach – Using the concept of serial reciprocity as a central organizing principle, a theoretical account is developed that integrates ideas from evolutionary sociology, the sociology of emotions, and exchange theory in order to extend Rodney Stark's analysis of social forces responsible for the success of early Christianity as a social movement.

Findings – Patterns of serial reciprocity may develop when evolved emotions such as gratitude, sympathy, and empathy are activated by recipients of altruism who, in turn, become motivated to repay their benefactor by transmitting a benefit to a third-party recipient. Historical evidence reviewed by Stark is consistent with the claim that serial reciprocity may have conferred benefits to victims suffering from plagues that swept the Roman Empire during the early history of Christianity. Similar processes may be operating today in regions of the world in which aid workers provide assistance to victims of natural and man-made disasters.

Originality/value – This analysis demonstrates the value of integrating conventional sociological analysis and evolutionary theory to gain new explanatory insights about social processes such as serial reciprocity that have received relatively little prior attention by sociological researchers.

This paper focuses on the strategic inclusion of reciprocity clauses in the licensing commitments disclosed by firms claiming standard essential patents (SEPs) in the telecom industry. We highlight the main cost and benefit of using these clauses for SEPs holders, namely, a possible deterrence effect for potential standard users on the one hand, and a legal instrument to prevent holdup and negotiate cross-licenses with other SEPs owners on the other hand.

We formulate general hypotheses explaining firms’ disclosure strategies with respect to reciprocity clauses, and use an original dataset of 19,601 patent disclosures in 12 different ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) projects (including UMTS, GSM, 3GPP, or GPRS) to test them empirically.

Our econometric results first confirm our predictions that reciprocity clauses are used as an insurance mechanism in technologically complex environments. They are more frequently included in patent disclosures when the ownership of SEPs at the project level is more fragmented. We also find that firms do not claim reciprocity clauses before having already declared a significant number of non-reciprocal SEPs in the same project, which suggests a deterrence effect on standard users that must be balanced by a strong patent position.

Our findings highlight a trade-off for the SEPs holder to insert a reciprocity clause. There is both a cost and a benefit of adding this clause to the patent licensing commitment. Contrary to the usual literature on the subject, we do not analyze the general patenting strategies but the conducts on the licensing terms.

What are the performance implications of peer monitoring in a multiple-supplier context? Grounded in agency and social exchange theories, this study aims to examine how, when, and why peer monitoring works as a crucial control mechanism to reduce opportunism among suppliers.

A conceptual model and research hypotheses are tested using survey data from 246 respondents in 82 supplier groups.

Results suggest that peer monitoring is related positively to perceived deterrence (as mediator) and negatively to opportunism, whereas the mediated relationship is moderated negatively by generalized reciprocity and positively by balanced reciprocity and negative reciprocity.

This study introduces the application of peer monitoring into business-to-business research and shows how it reduces opportunism. Its findings have implications for manufacturers on how to use peer monitoring to control opportunism among multiple suppliers.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the data sharing habits of psychologists with respect to academic reciprocity.

A research model was developed based on Ostrom’s (2003) theory of collective action to map psychologists’ underlying motivations for data sharing. The model was validated by data from a survey of 427 psychologists, primarily from the psychological sciences and related disciplines.

This study found that data sharing among psychologists is driven primarily by their perceptions of community benefits, academic reciprocity and the norms of data sharing. This study also found that academic reciprocity is significantly influenced by psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits, academic reputation and the norms of data sharing. Both academic reputation and academic reciprocity are affected by psychologists’ prior experiences with data reuse. Additionally, psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits and the norms of data sharing are significantly affected by the perception of their academic reputation.

This study suggests that Ostrom’s (2003) theory of collective action can provide a new theoretical lens in understanding psychologists’ data sharing behaviours.

This study suggests several practical implications for the design and promotion of data sharing in the research community of psychology.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the initial studies that applied the theory of collective action to the mechanisms of reputation, community benefits, norms and reciprocity in psychologists’ data sharing behaviour. This research demonstrates that perceived community benefits, academic reputation and the norms of data sharing can all encourage academic reciprocity, and psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits, academic reciprocity and data sharing norms all facilitate their data sharing intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of two typical relationship management approaches (trust relationship with suppliers and reciprocity) on manufacturer resilience in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, this paper aims to deepen the understanding of environmental uncertainty's moderating effect on the association between the trust relationship with suppliers (TRS) and reciprocity.

Structural equation modeling has been used to test the hypotheses on 361 Chinese manufacturing firms' managers and independent directors during the COVID-19 crisis.

The results reveal that reciprocity positively enhances three dimensions of manufacturer resilience, namely, preparedness, responsiveness and recovery capability. Reciprocity positively mediates the relationships between TRS and preparedness, responsiveness and recovery capability. Moreover, environmental uncertainty moderates the association between TRS and reciprocity.

This study highlights the critical role of reciprocity, the relational governance approach, in enhancing manufacturer resilience in practice. This paper suggests that during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, managers should adopt trust and reciprocity in supplier relationship governance to strengthen the resilience of manufacturing companies and adapt effective strategies according to the environment.

This study is unique in developing new scales of manufacturer resilience through interviews and surveys with Chinese manufacturers and theoretical research. Based on the social capital theory and social exchange theory, this study shed light on the role of trust and reciprocity. It also bridges relational governance theory with the literature on manufacturing firm resilience literature to help manufacturers better understand the transdisciplinary links between relationship management and resilient operations in emergencies.

Reciprocity has traditionally been overlooked in social exchange models of inter-firm relationships. Therefore, this research integrates reciprocity and its antecedents into a social exchange model of inter-firm relationships.

The authors collected primary data from a sample of firms in the Republic of Korea using a questionnaire. They also used covariance-based structural equations modeling to fit the model given the proposed conceptualization.

Both conceptually and empirically, adding reciprocity and its antecedents to the social exchange model produce results that differ from previously published papers. Specifically, reciprocity affects information exchanged indirectly through both credibility and benevolence trust. In addition, the effect of information exchange mediates the effect of trust on calculative and affective commitment.

The foundation of long-term inter-firm relationships is quality information exchange, which is based on the development of credibility and benevolence trust, which in turn is based on reciprocity. Thus, reciprocity is a key variable in relationship development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first to combine reciprocity and its antecedents into a social exchange model that contains trust and commitment. This model provides a bigger picture of how firms develop long-term relationships with their partner firms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand e-loyalty in the travel industry. Specifically, this paper aims to examine the curvilinear relationship between predictors and e-loyalty.

An empirical study was conducted using an online survey with one of the largest travel companies in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the models, and pair-wise nested F-tests were used to compare the models.

Results show that the curvilinear model has greater explanatory power of loyalty than traditional linear models. The results of pair-wise nested F-tests show that the loyalty model exhibits statistically significant R2 improvement compared to the linear model. However, the R2 improvement in the integrated model is not statistically different from that in the linear model. Confirmation and satisfaction are found to be salient factors influencing loyalty.

This study makes important contributions to the online community literature by understanding the drivers of loyalty in the travel industry. However, there are limitations. First, this study addressed member loyalty of an online travel community with data collected from one company. Thus, generalizability is limited. Online communities and firms may have different characteristics, resulting in different factors influencing consumer loyalty. The authors plan in the future to collect data from other online travel companies and examine their model with different samples so as to check the generalizability of the current findings. Second, the authors collected a snapshot view on loyalty. Both researchers and managers note that small changes in loyalty and retention can yield disproportionately large changes in profitability (Reichheld et al., 2000). Consumer loyalty may change over time, so to maintain and increase profits, it is important to monitor such change. In the future, the authors plan to conduct a longitudinal study of community members to evaluate their loyalty over time.

As China seeks to gain additional market share in the global tourism market, travel companies should make use of websites as a marketing tool to attract and retain customers. These actions enable a travel company to enhance its competitiveness. More and more people use the internet for tour deals, bookings and finding tour-related information. Effective use of websites can affect the competitiveness of ecommerce companies. E-vendors could assess and adopt the dimensions recommended in this paper to help better understand areas for improvement. It is common today for consumers to buy travel products online instead of going through a travel agent. Considering the importance of reciprocity in formulating consumer satisfaction and loyalty in the virtual environment, companies should monitor reciprocal behavior on the virtual community. With advancement in technologies, consumer behaviors have changed and more consumers prefer social interactions in the virtual world. Companies can analyze posts in the virtual environment to assess reciprocity and may design a mechanism to foster reciprocal behaviors. By leveraging reciprocity, firms can better connect satisfaction with loyalty. More than 70 per cent of executives surveyed by McKinsey (2012) said that they regularly generate value through their Web communities. In addition, to pay attention to consumer to consumer reciprocity in the virtual world, companies should listen to what customers say in their online community, as this attention is an indication of reciprocity between consumers and companies. The ideas and opinions expressed in the online community tell the company customers’ perception of the value of its products and customers’ needs. Such attention to the voices in the online community will help companies to better tailor products/services to meet customers’ needs. Furthermore, the voices expressed in the virtual community are also effective in developing and maintaining new internet marketing opportunities such as email marketing, giveaways, search engine optimization, pay per click and shopping comparison marketing. Companies interested in retaining and attracting customers should leverage their established virtual communities and pay close attention to online posts and evaluate members’ satisfaction. Such effort will provide tangible benefits. As shown in Ye et al.’s study, traveler reviews produce a significant impact on online sales (Ye et al., 2011), with a 10 per cent increase in traveler review ratings, boosting online bookings by more than 5 per cent. This finding suggests that businesses should link online user-generated reviews to business performance in tourism. Finding incentives for users to share might be one way to improve interactivity and further create stickiness on the part of the website.

This paper is one of the first studies to address the need to move beyond linear models of e-loyalty and to additionally examine potential curvilinear and interactive effects. This study also identifies key variables such as reciprocity and satisfaction as determinants of e-loyalty in the Chinese online travel and tourism industry.