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This study investigates the observed resurgence in religious beliefs seen across many societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the economic theory of religious clubs, the author models religious participation during the pandemic as a mechanism for alleviating the financial distress associated with the health distress from the pandemic.

Using data from the COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) in Nigeria, the author investigates the economic motivation for religious intensity during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address endogeneity concerns, the author exploits geographic variables of temperature and longitudes as sources of COVID-19 risk.

Overall, health distress stimulates religious intensity. Consistent with the economic theory of religious clubs, adverse health shocks stimulate financial distress, and the effect is stronger among religious participants. Similarly, people see God and not the government as a source of protection against COVID-19.

The study’s model sees religious organizations as public goods providers, especially when governments and markets are inefficient.

The study’s recommendations support an expanded role for religious networks in healthcare delivery and more public funding to attenuate the post-pandemic resurgence of social violence in economically distressed regions.

Despite the research interest in the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term implications, many of which relate to social behavior adjustments that cause individuals to identify more closely with their social group, need greater understanding. Suppose religious intensity is linked to economic distress. In that case, this is a major source of worry for countries whose economies are subject to higher fluctuations and where the governments and markets are inefficiently organized. These regions may be more susceptible to a resurgence in religious fundamentalism associated with the economic shocks from the pandemic. Consequently, these regions would require more public funding to attenuate the potential for costly activities like organized violence, suicide attacks and terrorist activities in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Prompted by the observation of the increase in religious identity through religious intensity during the pandemic, the author contributes by developing theoretically-based hypotheses that are incentive-compatible to provide a rational justification for the observation. The author empirically validates the hypothesis by taking advantage of the COVID-19 National Survey in Nigeria by specifically using survey rounds 4 and 7 which have more comprehensive religious items included.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0719

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal role in fostering economic development by cultivating skilled workforce and generating knowledge and innovation. However, HEIs may pose a potential risk to sustainable economic development due to the generation of food waste inside their campus canteens. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of attitude, subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), religiosity and pro-social behavior among State Islamic Religious College (SIRC) students on their intention to avoid food waste behavior. This study also focused on the mediating role of the three original theory of planned behavior (TPB) variables and pro-social behavior in the relationship between religiosity and the intention to reduce food waste.

Questionnaires were used to collect data from 443 students at SIRC. The collected data were processed and analyzed using structural equation modelling to test direct, indirect and mediating effects.

The empirical results indicated that the eagerness of students at SIRC to reduce their behavior of leaving food behind can be driven by their negative attitudes or views toward food waste, the practice of religious teachings in their lives, the belief that they can avoid food waste and their concern for the environment. The empirical results reveal that even though religiosity influences SN, it is unable to strengthen the relationship between religiosity and the desire to be anti-food waste.

In addition to contributing to the food waste literature in the context of eating behavior, the results of this study have theoretical and practical implications.

To assess SIRC students’ behavioral intentions to avoid food waste behavior, this study used a contemporary setting to measure attitude, SN, PBC, religiosity and pro-social behavior, so strengthening the TPB’s empirical underpinning.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the religiosity of the chief executive officer (CEO) on Indonesian banks’ performance.

The research method used was a review of the annual reports of banking companies in Indonesia from 2015 to 2019 and a web-based search to determine the religiosity of the CEOs. This study comprised 88 banking companies in Indonesia that come under the supervision of the Financial Services Authority.

The results of this study show that banks led by religious CEOs had better financial performance, as measured by their ROA and ROE, than those led by not very spiritual CEOs. These results indicate the importance of religiosity in organizations, especially at the top management level, for achieving better bank performance.

This research results show that religiosity plays an essential role in the banking business sector. This research adds to the literature on CEOs’ characteristics based on their religiosity and the concomitant effect on banking performance.

This study shows how individual religious beliefs influence the corporate behavior of top management, particularly the CEOs, and why this is crucial for organizational decision-making. This study measures an individual's religiosity (i.e. a CEO) based on that individual's actions in their workplace environment.

This research aims to investigate the impact of fear and perceived knowledge (PK) of Covid-19 on the sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB) of Muslim consumers and to test the mediating role of (intrinsic) religiosity.

A total of 417 responses were collected during Covid-19 lockdown through an online structured survey using the snowball technique. A two-step research approach was adopted. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was performed on the SCB measurement scale through SPSS. In Study 2, hypothesised associations were analysed using SmartPLS-SEM.

PK of Covid-19 pandemic directly motivates SCB in Muslim consumers, whereas fear has no direct effect on any factor of SCB. Religiosity is found to be a significant driver of SCB. Indirect effects also depict that religiosity positively mediates the association between fear and SCB as well as PK and SCB.

The study may guide policymakers and marketers in using the current pandemic as a tool to inspire sustainable consumption. Religious values, teachings and knowledge about the pandemics can be publicised to create awareness and induce desired behaviour to cope with adverse events and adopt sustainable consumption patterns and lifestyles among Muslim consumers.

The article is the pioneer of its kind to present survey research about Covid-19 fear and PK’s impact on SCB through religiosity. It adds to the Islamic marketing literature about religiosity, coping theory, PK and fear of pandemics and their role in transitioning Muslim consumers towards SCB. Moreover, the use of partial least squares structural equation modelling in the context of Covid-19 research was extended.

This study aims to examine how religion affects corporate innovation in developing countries.

Firm- and country-level indicators are used to evaluate the relationship. The study's final sample consists of manufacturing firms from 41 developing countries across different world regions from 2014 to 2018.

This paper finds that firms operating in more religiously diverse countries with lower religious restrictions are likely to be more innovative. Furthermore, secularization stimulates corporate innovation in contrast to traditional religious societies. Interestingly, results also indicate that religion hinders corporate innovation by restraining its followers’ involvement in innovative activities under risk, which downgrades corporate innovation culture.

This study used data from nonfinancial firms from developing countries; therefore, the study's findings could be generalized to other developing economies with caution, as economies operating at different stages of development can have different outcomes from the proposed relationship. The study findings are important for innovative firms, as they can take advantage by segmenting the population based on religious and atheist groups. Results also have some implications for developing countries to foster firm-level innovation through constructing effective policies and ensuring the development of diverse and free religious societies because such societal traits increase corporate innovation and are fruitful for national competitiveness and growth.

This study contributes to institutional economics and corporate innovation by exploring the link between religion and economic development through the innovation channel and analyzing the latest cross-country evidence. It is a pioneering work in empirical comparison of influence on innovations of different religions.

Prior research shows that religiosity affects the degree of managers' risk aversion. As a result, religious firms are less likely to invest in R&D activities. Moreover, US GAAP treats these investments as expenses. For this reason, religious firms have fewer expenses in their earnings and are less likely to be in financial distress.

Data are collected from Worldscope and the Churches and Church Membership files of the American Religion Data Archive website from 1985 to 2018. With 18,199 observations in US context, the authors used the marginal effect to test the mediating effect of R&D accounting treatment.

The authors find that the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with US GAAP is higher than the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with capitalization of R&D costs, which means that accounting treatment can explain the relation between religiosity and financial distress in the US context.

The authors used linear interpolation and linear extrapolation data to be able to conduct this research over a period of 1985–2018. For future researches, the authors propose to test other factors which can explain the relationship between religiosity and financial distress based on the ethics element.

These results should be of interest to regulators because treating R&D activities as expenses can destroy the accounting performance of firms that prefer investing in risky projects. This favoritism prevents the comparison between two firms in the same industry with different risk-taking behaviors. This problem is more prevalent if the authors have two firms with different ratios of religiosity. This paper suffers from a major limitation related to data availability.

This may be the first study that investigates why religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress. This paper notes that religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress because their conservative behavior towards R&D activities coincides with the conservative R&D accounting treatment. In fact, the mismatch between expenses and revenues from R&D activities can cause financial distress.

Religious tourism is one of the oldest and fastest-growing segments. This study analyzes religious tourism through the pilgrimage of Muslims to the holy city of Mecca and has the following objectives: (1) establish the motivational dimensions of religious tourism; (2) identify the motivational dimensions that predict the satisfaction of religious tourism and (3) determine the motivational dimensions that predict return, recommend and say positive things about religious tourism applied to the pilgrimage to a sacred city.

The sample consisted of Muslim pilgrims who had visited Mecca. The sample was collected in Bahrain, a country located on the Persian Gulf, where most of its population is Muslim. A total of 380 valid questionnaires were obtained online. For the data analysis, factorial analysis and the multiple regression method enter were performed.

The results show that religious motivations are more important when visiting a sacred city than secular ones. Three motivational dimensions were found: religious, social and cultural and shopping. The three dimensions found have a significant relationship with satisfaction and loyalty. Likewise, it was found that the religious motivational dimension is the factor that most predicts satisfaction and loyalty in the behavior of religious visits to a sacred city.

The main limitation of the present study was the temporality in which the sample was taken because the demand may vary at another time of the year and therefore vary its results.

The authors of the study recommend that holy cities increase the religious motivations of these travelers by periodically researching their needs and organizing services to suit their desired spiritual experience. Also, to improve the social and cultural part, travel agencies and tourist companies to Mecca should promote social and cultural motivation among travelers in an appropriate way by providing service packages that involve visits to cultural and social sites such as museums and cultural centers.

This research will serve as a management guide for public institutions and private companies to develop more efficient planning in religious destinations and sacred cities.

This study is the first to analyze the construct of motivations in the pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, to then establish what the main motivations are that predict satisfaction and loyalty in a religious city. Thus, its results provide important information for tourist destination managers and tourism service providers.

The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may better understand these trends.

This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015 Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better understand these trends.

The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.

The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and growing the church's membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342

The relationship between ethnicity, religion and entrepreneurship is an emerging field, and an extremely important topic, considering the influence of these drivers on people’s lives and on entrepreneurs’ performance, in particular. This study aims to explore and contribute to a more robust understanding of this relationship.

The main trends were disclosed using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis and VOSviewer. The set of articles cover the annual period from 1973 to 2022. The coupling analysis founded links to produce a framework outlining an integrative state of the art intersecting ethnicity and religion and entrepreneurship spectrum study.

The analysis identified integrative relationships between the concepts of ethnicity, religion and entrepreneurship, which describe the direction of literature, resulting in five main categories.

This study offers a novel framework and in-depth understanding to delve into this interrelationship research agenda. Guided by the gaps in the literature, a set of outstanding avenues for future research are proposed.

This paper aims to identify the antecedents of giving charitable donations (Sadaqah) during the pandemic in a majority-Muslim country. This paper proposes and tests a theoretical framework in which attitude toward giving donations mediates the effects of perceived behavioral control, subjective norms and past behavior on giving charitable donations (Sadaqah). The authors also investigate the mediating effect of attitude toward giving donations and the moderating effect of Islamic religiosity in an emerging nation characterized by the dominance of the Islamic doctrine. Gender, age and income have been examined as control variables.

Survey data from a sample of 377 respondents from Morocco were analyzed to test the hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that past behavior, subjective norms, attitude toward giving donations and intention to donate are key predictors of giving charitable donation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper also confirms the mediating effect of attitude toward giving donations, e.g. subjective norms trigger positive attitude toward giving donations, which increases respondents’ donation frequency. The results also suggest a significant moderating effect of Islamic religiosity, e.g. individuals who feel themselves as highly religious are more likely to develop a favorable attitude toward giving donations and are therefore more likely to donate during the pandemic.

The findings suggest practical and social implications for both academics and practitioners. As attitude, subjective norm, past behavior and intention are found to significantly influence giving charitable donations (Sadaqah), fundraising organizations should give serious attention on these factors to improve individuals’ charitable giving (Sadaqah). Such organizations should also consider the use of faith-based messages and religious morals when planning their advertising campaigns in majority-Muslim markets.

Although preliminary studies have already attempted to provide knowledge about the factors influencing giving donations among both Muslims and nonMuslims, potential antecedents of giving donations (Sadaqah) during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been considered and are yet to be empirically investigated. This paper provides new perceptions on factors influencing giving donations on a majority-Muslim majority country where no zakat institution operates. Such findings can be useful for both academicians, fundraising organizations and policymakers in Morocco to promote charitable actions and boost its socio-economic affects.