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The Millennial generation accounts for 27 per cent of the world’s population. These numbers highlight the current and future impact of Millennials on world economies, and they are arguably the most powerful consumer group. Interestingly, Millennials are also the least religious generation. Hence, there is a need to investigate further how they view the world from an ethical and religious perspective and whether their beliefs evolve over time. Therefore, the purpose of this study is, first, to compare and contrast any changes in ethical beliefs across time. Second, the study will compare and contrast any changes in religiousness across time, and finally, it explores the effects of consumers’ religiousness on ethical beliefs across time.

Using paper-based survey, the data collection took place in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016, resulting in 1,702 young respondents in total.

The results show that consumer ethics remain constant across time. Therefore, without intervention, individuals’ ethical behavior will remain unchanged. The results also indicate that Millennials understand the boundary between legal and illegal behavior. However, when the boundary becomes unclear, such as in situations in which they see no harm, downloading pirated software and recycling, Millennials were unsure and their religiousness affected their subsequent behavior. The study makes several contributions to consumer ethics and the impact of religiousness on ethical beliefs.

This study makes several contributions to consumer ethics research, especially whether young consumers’ ethical beliefs change or remain constant across time.

This paper aims to provide insight into the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance.

A survey of 4,984 participants from the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain and France was conducted.

This paper shows that religiousness is a (negative) predictor of avoidance of advertisements in traditional and digital media and that advertisement trustworthiness mediates this effect. Higher perceived trustworthiness of advertising among the more religious people leads to less advertisement avoidance. Less religious people trust advertising less and, consequently, show higher advertisement avoidance. The role of religiousness is explained by a positive relationship between religiousness and perceived advertisement trustworthiness because of religious people’s general conformity to authority and because of religion’s emphasis on the good of fellow human beings.

One limitation is that response bias may have occurred because of the self-reported data on advertisement avoidance in different media. Another limitation is that though the use of existing panels has advantages, it also has disadvantages. Two such disadvantages of the sampling procedure are the considerable non-responses and the impossibility of a non-response analysis for our study. Although all the respondents had Internet access and responded fairly quickly to the survey, we do not know whether they are special in any systematic way.

The implication of the current paper is that advertisers might also benefit from more closely examining religion and religiousness as a key variable for segmentation. Religiousness constitutes a relatively stable society grouping, and media vehicles also are available for targeting people with different religions within societies (e.g. Websites, social media, magazines, television channels).

This paper is the first to examine the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance from an international perspective. This is important because religiousness may have an impact on marketing communication efforts.

The purpose of this paper is: to explore the impact of religiousness (i.e. intrinsic religiousness, extrinsic religiousness) on purchase intention of luxury brands, affective attitude, and self-presentation; and, to explore the mediating effect of affective and self-presentation attitudes towards luxury brand purchase intention.

Data were derived using convenience sampling at three large universities (i.e. one public and two private universities) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Researchers hand-delivered approximately 600 questionnaires to students in classrooms and public spaces (e.g. canteens and lounge rooms) of the universities. However, of the 525 questionnaires returned, only 491 were usable thereby offering an overall response rate of 81 per cent.

The study found that intrinsic religiousness was related positively to affective attitudes towards luxury brands while extrinsic religiousness was positively related to self-presentation attitudes. Affective attitude and self-presentation were positively related to consumer intention to purchase luxury brands.

The result of the present study shows that religious consumers are not necessarily anti materialism and often opt for luxury brands over purely utilitarian possession. This finding has important implications. First, it may create future ethical problems as materialism has been found to correlate with unethical behaviours such as the purchase of counterfeits. Second, materialism has been linked to insecurity. When religious consumers view worldly possessions as symbols of achievement or success, sources of happiness, and representations of luxury, they may use possessions rather than religious text to hinder insecurity and shape the self.

This is one of the few studies exploring the impact of religiousness on luxury brands possession in Indonesia, a country with the largest Muslim population in the world and home to a highly religious society.

This study aims to examine how religiosity influences brand loyalty toward religiously positioned brands (Chick-fil-A, Forever 21, etc.) when these brands engage in morally controversial actions.

Study 1 investigates how religiosity affects brand loyalty when religiously positioned brands engage in religiousness-related vs nonreligiousness-related morally controversial actions. Study 2 examines several psychological processes (reactance, forgiveness and moral decoupling) as mediators of the effects of intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity on brand loyalty for controversial religious brands.

Study 1 demonstrates that religiosity leads to positive brand loyalty for religiously positioned brands in the case of both religiousness-related and nonreligiousness-related controversies. Study 2 reveals that intrinsic religiosity (extrinsic religiosity) leads to brand loyalty through moral decoupling and forgiveness, but not through reactance, when religious brands engage in religiousness-related (nonreligiousness-related) controversies.

This research focuses on the effects of religiosity on brand loyalty for morally controversial religious brands but does not examine the effects of religious affiliation (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.). The samples include only US residents.

Religious positioning of brands can engender brand loyalty for consumers with high levels of intrinsic religiosity and/or extrinsic religiosity, even when these brands engage in morally controversial actions.

This research shows that religiosity affects brand loyalty for morally controversial religious brands and demonstrates that psychological processes used by consumers to justify support for morally controversial religious brands depend on type of religiosity (intrinsic vs extrinsic) and type of controversy (religiousness-related and nonreligiousness-related).

Online digital piracy continues to rise globally. The issue is worsening among young people especially in the context of emerging markets due to lack of laws and regulations. Interestingly, emerging markets are also home to some of the highest religious followers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of young consumer’s religiousness on their attitude and intention towards digital piracy which should negate their tendency to pirate.

Data were collected from Indonesia (N = 715) by means of questionnaires distributed to business students at two major (one public and one private) Indonesian universities. The sample consists of 289 (40.4 per cent) males and 426 females (59.6 per cent). The student sample contained a majority of people who were aged 18 to 24 years (94.1 per cent).

The current study shows that intrinsic religiousness is a strong predictor of attitude towards digital piracy, intention to commit digital piracy, perceived benefits of digital piracy, perceived likelihood of punishment and fear of legal consequences. Extrinsic (social) religiousness was found to have a negative impact on perceived likelihood of punishment and fear of legal consequences. The results of this study will have several important implications for managers and especially religious leaders on how to combat digital piracy.

This is one of the first few studies exploring the impact of religiosity among young consumers in Indonesia.

Risk preference theory posits that females are more religious than males because they are more risk averse and are thus more motivated by the threat of afterlife punishment. We evaluate the theory formally and empirically. Formally, we show that the rational choice reasoning implied by the theory leads to unexpected conclusions if one considers belief in eternal rewards as well as eternal punishment. Empirically, we examine cross-cultural data and find that, across many populations, sex differences in religiosity are no smaller among those who do not believe in hell. We conclude by arguing that psychological characteristics are almost certainly crucial to understanding the difference, just not risk preference.

This study aims to assess the effect of religiosity on the job satisfaction of nurses in response to the paucity of studies that have investigated this relationship in a health care setting. The authors also tested the moderation impact of materialism on the religiosity–satisfaction nexus.

The quantitative (correlational) research technique was applied to test hypotheses of interest. The simple random sampling method was used to select a representative sample of 458 nurses. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the factor structures of relevant constructs and to test hypotheses. The study’s ultimate CFA model produced a good fit at 5 per cent significance level [Chi-square (χ²) = 19.121; p = 0.454].

Religiosity was found to make a positive effect on job satisfaction and a negative effect on materialism. Materialism makes a negative effect on job satisfaction. Religiosity and materialism makes a significant negative interaction effect on nurses’ satisfaction after controlling for job income.

It is therefore concluded that religiosity is a positive behaviour that contributes to the satisfaction of nurses, but materialism must be avoided or at least reduced to maximise this impact.

In this study, the authors demonstrate that the positive effect of religiousness on job satisfaction can be negatively moderated by materialism so that religiousness makes less impact on satisfaction owing to the negative influence of materialism on job satisfaction.

Despite the importance of sustainability, some conservative religious groups do not believe and support climate change. There is a continuous debate on the role of religion on people’s attitudes toward the environment. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to (1) explore the impact of consumers’ religious orientation on motivation and commitment toward recycling; (2) examine the impact of economic motivation, commitment and love for nature toward intention to recycle; (3) investigate the mediating effect of motivation, commitment and love for nature on the relationship between consumer religiosity and their intention to recycle; and (4) examine the impact of consumers’ intention toward its subsequent behavior.

Using convenience sampling methods, participants were recruited through an online survey platform (MTurk). The total completed respondents are 827 participants.

The results show consumers’ religiousness influence their motivation, commitment and love for nature. This study shows that consumers with high intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness are more likely to be motivated by economic motivation. Being religious does not make consumers more environmentally friendly.

This study did not separate religion and between religious and non-religious consumers. Each religion may perceive environments differently. Future research may investigate each religion separately.

This paper has several contributions: (1) it contributes to the debate on the impact of religiousness on consumers’ attitudes toward sustainable-related behavior such as recycling. Does it matter? (2) the results show the most effective way to increase people’s intention to recycle; and (3) the results of this study will have implications for government, religious institutions on how to increase positive attitude toward the environment especially among religious consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to measure how three components of social representations (SRs) of new foods, Adherence to technology, Adherence to natural food, and Food as enjoyment, relate to Finnish and Italian university students’ religiousness, country of origin, sex, and field of study.

Italian and Finnish university students (n=564) completed a 27-item scale of SRs of new foods. A series of analysis of covariance was used to test the hypotheses.

As expected, technology students scored higher on Adherence to technology than social science students, and women and religious persons scored higher on Adherence to natural food than men and non-religious persons. Unexpectedly, Finns scored higher on Food as an enjoyment than Italians.

This study illustrates the usefulness of SR theory for studying food-related thinking, and throws more light on how religiousness, professional field, and sex are connected to the three components of SR of new foods in two European countries and food cultures.

Departing from the job demands resources model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether religion, defined as strength of religious faith, can be viewed as resource or as demand. More specifically, the authors addressed the question as to how job insecurity and religion interact in predicting burnout and change-oriented behavior.

The authors conducted moderated structural equation modeling on survey data from a sample of 238 employees confronted with organizational change.

Results were largely consistent with the “religion as a demand” hypothesis: religion exacerbated rather than buffered the negative effects of job insecurity, so that the adverse impact of job insecurity was stronger for highly religious employees than for employees with low levels of religiousness. Religious employees appear to experience more strain when faced with the possibility of job loss.

The results of this study challenge and extend existing knowledge on the role of religion in coping with life stressors. The dominant view has been that religion is beneficial in coping with major stressors. The results of this study, however, suggest otherwise: religion had an exacerbating rather than a buffering effect on the relationship between job insecurity and outcomes.