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Drawing on human capital theory and sustainable career theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of undertaking an industrial placement on the “Great Eight” competencies as perceived by university students and line managers.

618 students and their line managers across three cohorts (pre-COVID-19) took part in a longitudinal quantitative study. Students completed a three-wave questionnaire at the placement's start, middle, and end. Line managers completed the questionnaire during waves two and three to offer 360-degree feedback. Descriptive statistics and repeated measures ANOVA were applied to the dataset.

The impacts of undertaking a placement were highly variable for different competencies at the sub-scale level, although at the eight-scale level, the nuance was less pronounced. However, students self-perceived that all eight competencies increased between the start and end of the placement. Surprisingly, line managers perceived students' competencies to be higher than perceived by the students.

The value of undertaking a placement is often poorly measured (e.g. satisfaction) rather than competency-based outcomes, which can lead to conclusions that are overly simplistic and difficult to use in practice. Theoretically, this study advances understanding of human capital theory and sustainable career theory by understanding the role placements can play in developing human capital and preparing university students for sustainable careers. Practically, the findings of this study can help to close the university–industry skills gap by informing curriculum and placement scheme design and supporting students to acquire personal resources and signal these to prospective employers as an antecedent to career sustainability.

Overcooking and overbuying are two main causes of food waste in households. Therefore, this study tests whether two interventions, aimed at cooking planning versus purchasing planning, can reduce food waste in households by using self-report direct measurements. Because measuring household food waste can impact how much food is wasted, the effects of the mere measurement of household food waste over time were assessed as well.

A sample of 80 households was distributed into three groups (control, purchasing planning and cooking planning) and their household food waste was weighed over a period of 166 days. After the first 91 days, behavioral interventions were delivered to purchasing planning and cooking planning groups. Repeated measures ANOVA, linear regression and a two-level mixed model were used for data analysis.

Results showed that the interventions were not effective in influencing the participants to reduce household food waste beyond the reduction in the control group. However, there is evidence of a mere measurement effect that caused household food waste reduction over time.

This study's experimental period is longer than most of the studies that tested behavioral interventions for household food waste reduction. This enabled the authors to assess the effects of repeated measurement and discover that measurement alone can bring behavioral change.

This study aims to discover how domain familiarity and language affect the cognitive load and the strategies applied for the evaluation of search engine results pages (SERP).

This study used an experimental research design. The pattern of the experiment was based upon repeated measures design. Each student was given four SERPs varying in two dimensions: language and content. The criteria of students to decide on the three best links within the SERP, the reasoning behind their selection, and their perceived cognitive load of the given task were the repeated measures collected from each participant.

The evaluation criteria changed according to the language and task type. The cognitive load was reported higher when the content was presented in English or when the content was academic. Regarding the search strategies, a majority of students trusted familiar sources or relied on keywords they found in the short description of the links. A qualitative analysis showed that students can be grouped into different types according to the reasons they stated for their choices. Source seeker, keyword seeker and specific information seeker were the most common types observed.

This study has an international scope with regard to data collection. Moreover, the tasks and findings contribute to the literature on information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of providing information on Chinese consumers' attitudes toward and willingness to pay (WTP) for cultured meat, and to further focus on the heterogeneous effect of prior awareness.

The data were collected by interviewing 1,004 consumers through a face-to-face survey conducted in 2019. Repeated measures ANOVA, ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood estimation were employed for data analysis.

Whether consumers have heard of cultured meat before is not an important determinant for their attitude, but whether they know it well is. Consumers' attitudes and WTP all improved after the provision of information, but knowledgeable consumers' attitudes were less influenced by information than those without prior knowledge. Unlike attitude, prior awareness does not affect the effect of information on WTP.

Despite extensive studies on the impact of information on the acceptance of cultured meat, few have analyzed the heterogeneous effect of prior awareness. In the research on prior awareness of cultured meat, firstly, no consistent conclusions about the effect of prior awareness on attitude; secondly, previous studies only considered heterogeneous effects of prior awareness on attitude toward cultured meat, while ignored WTP. This paper provides new insights in these areas. Further, this paper provides the first evidence on the heterogeneous impact of prior awareness in developing countries; most previous research has focused on consumers in developed countries.

This study aims to identify the irritating aspects in the mall environment that impact shoppers with disability and explore the opportunities to design inclusive mall environments.

A mixed-methods design was used in which data collected using a survey (n = 1,434 shoppers with and without disability) were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and repeated-measures two-way ANOVA. In addition, qualitative data were obtained from critical incident technique (CIT) stories (n = 521) from shoppers with and without disability.

Mall environmental irritants evoke feelings of irritation that mediate the impacts of “inconvenient ambient conditions,” “the annoying socialscape” and “overwhelming design and atmospherics” on decreased mall-visit frequency. Compared with shoppers without disability, shoppers with disability suffer more from these irritating aspects of the mall environment, as evidenced by significantly greater high-activation unpleasant emotions. The “poor access and accessibility” category of irritants mainly affects the mall experiences of shoppers with disability.

Based on the findings, this study offers spatial-, temporal-, social-, material- and virtual-oriented recommendations for the design of inclusive retail spaces. The authors suggest that people with disability have a unique “lived experience” perspective on retail environments and that solutions should be co-created based on ongoing consultations with shoppers and employees with disability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study offers the first systematic, comprehensive comparison of the impact of environmental irritants on shoppers with and without disability and extends the literature on irritating aspects of retail environments from individual stores to malls.

Young construction project management practitioners (CPMPs) have unique, complex, and notable occupational mental health problems. However, there were few studies about the intervention for occupational mental health of CPMPs, and traditional intervention modes often failed to achieve significant effects. Therefore, this study aims to propose a new and effective intervention method.

Job crafting intervention was used to design an intervention experiment. A total of 72 CPMPs participated in a 10-week randomized controlled trial in China. Descriptive statistics and repeated measures analysis of variance were used to verify the effectiveness of job crafting intervention (JCI) on job crafting behaviors, job burnout, and work engagement with consideration of the impact of time.

Results showed that the intervention increased social resources, thus effectively reducing job burnout and promoting work engagement. Time also had a significant impact on cynicism, dedication, and social resources.

The authors should promote the habit of job crafting in CPMPs. Furthermore, in order to facilitate their job crafting, the authors should increase structural and social resources for them, and the authors can also encourage them to undertake challenging demands to increase their self-efficacy and the sense of achievement.

The authors bring into light a new psychological intervention approach among CPMPs, which integrates the advantages of the guidance in traditional organized intervention methods and the proactivity in individual spontaneous job crafting. The authors verify the efficacy of the JCI among CPMPs and help propose countermeasures and suggestions to improve the occupational mental health of CPMPs.

This paper aims to analyze the extent to which education for sustainable development (ESD) training enhances university teachers’ professional competence and whether it has the same effect in the digital as in the face-to-face format.

A training concept was developed based on the professional action competence model. Between 2018 and 2021, 19 training sessions were conducted with 183 university teachers: ten in face-to-face sessions and nine in the digital format. Questionnaires were administered before and after the training to determine its impact.

Overall, the training proved to be effective. There was a significant increase in professional knowledge and self-efficacy after the training, but there was no change in motivation. The face-to-face and digital formats proved to be equally effective.

The long-term effect of the training could not be determined.

There should be regular ESD training and coaching for university teachers.

There has been little research on the effectiveness of ESD teacher training, and no comparison between the face-to-face and digital approaches exists. It has been possible to train a relatively large number of university teachers from a wide range of subject areas, about two-thirds of whom have had no previous ESD experience.

The main purpose of this study is to experiment with interest-free microfinance (IFMF) products and investigate the factors affecting IFMF institutions.

This study uses both quantitative and qualitative data types that will be collected through questionnaires, secondary data, interviews and experimental tests to answer key questions. The collected data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis ANOVA. This study determines the factors affecting the default rate of Islamic microfinance (MF) products, and evaluates the repayment performance of IFMF products using field experiments.

The participants found that the repayment performance level is higher than that of Qard Al-Hassan, which shows that it is one of the best mechanisms to reduce the default rate among borrowers. It has been observed that women have higher repayment performance than men, and those with different income sources have higher repayment performance levels than those who do not. This study showed that the effects of age, marital status and educational status on the repayment performance level of the participants were not statistically significant. In addition, it was shown that the participants’ status of having or not having children did not have a significant effect on the level of repayment performance.

This study differs from other studies in two ways. First, in terms of field experimentation, this study focuses on the practical impact of IFMF products on customer reimbursement performance. Second, this study tested different demographic variables that could affect the reimbursement performance.

High levels of depression and anxiety in the family caregivers of a patient with cancer affect their quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a mindful self-compassion (MSC) training program on self-compassion in the family caregivers of patients with cancer.

In 2020, this quasi-experimental study used convenience sampling to select 92 family caregivers of patients with cancer presenting to the oncology ward of Seyed-Al-Shohada Hospital, Isfahan, Iran. The subjects randomly assigned to two groups participated in an online MSC program for 1.5 months. All the participants completed a self-compassion scale (Neff) before, immediately after and one month after the intervention. The data were analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U test, the Chi-squared test, the LSD test, the t-test and repeated measures ANOVA.

The total mean score of self-compassion, respectively, obtained as 64.64 ± 8.23 and 64.44 ± 4.94 in the experimental and control groups before the intervention significantly increased to 81.15 ± 7.94 and 64.06 ± 5.22 immediately after and 78.94 ± 8.22 and 64.22 ± 4.85 one month after the intervention (P < 0.001).

Given the potential for negative psychological impacts for patients, caregivers and clinicians in cancer care, the online MSC program can be recommended to support and reduce psychological distress in them.

This paper examined the effect of the online MSC program on self-compassion in the family caregivers of patients with cancer and can contribute to our understanding of the value of integrating mental health of caregivers and care of patients with cancer.

This study contributes to the participative budgeting and budget misrepresentation literature by exploring: (1) whether managers’ judgments of fair behaviors are malleable and context-dependent and (2) if these judgments of fair behavior impact cost reporting misrepresentations. Two experiments investigate these questions. Experiment 1 (n = 42) tests whether the behavior that managers judge to be “fair” differs based on the decision context (i.e., initial economic position [IEP]). Experiment 2 (n = 130) investigates: (1) how managers’ deployment of fairness beliefs influences their reporting misrepresentations and (2) how decision aids that reduce task complexity impact managers’ deployment of fairness beliefs in their misreporting decisions. The study found that managers deploy fairness beliefs (i.e., honesty or equality) consistent with maximizing their context-relevant income. Hence, fairness beliefs constrain misrepresentations in predictable ways. In addition, we find more accounting information is not always beneficial. The presence of decision aids actually increases misrepresentations when managers are initially advantaged (i.e., start with more resources than others). The implications from these findings are relevant to the honesty and budgeting literature and provide novel findings of how managers’ preferences for fairness constrain managers from maximizing their income. The chapter demonstrates that contextual factors can influence the deployment of managers’ fairness beliefs which, in turn, differentially impact their reporting misrepresentation. Another contribution is that providing decision aids, which reduce task complexity, may not always benefit companies, since such aids may increase misrepresentation under certain conditions.