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Western consumers are able to take shopping for granted, their major restriction being financial. This study aims to understand motivations to buy fashion items online in the culturally restrictive environment of Saudi Arabia, which imposes considerable fashion and behavioural restrictions, particularly on women.

Qualitative research was conducted with a sample of 34 Saudi women in their home country providing a deep insight into the restrictions that women face when shopping and how they react to these restrictions. Two theoretical lenses, psychological reactance and system justification theories are invoked to understand and explain consumer behaviour.

Motives for online shopping are quite different in a restrictive society. The definition of utilitarian motivations in online shopping is developed to reflect the drivers to overcome cultural restrictions or to align one’s shopping behaviour with them. Similarly, hedonic reasons for online purchases are expanded to incorporate nuances found only in such societies, where hedonic motivations include enjoying the breaking of societal restrictions.

This study is conducted is focussed on a country in which little academic marketing research has taken place due to considerable restrictions on movement and access. Western texts on consumer behaviour are not fully appropriate for understanding such a society.

This research aims to understand the determinants of consumers' behaviour and motivations to buy taboo items online. Two theoretical lenses, theories of psychological reactance and system justification, are invoked to frame the role of online shopping in shaping consumer behaviour in taboo markets.

A naturalistic inquiry paradigm was used to test a sample of 34 Saudi women who were buying taboo products online.

The determinant of such behaviour is based on differences in understanding the ritual restrictions between people, their society and their country. The four principal attitudes towards restrictions are justifying, accepting, rejecting and reacting. These attitudes frame five motivations: satisfying the restriction, to be unique, but aligned with social norms; breaking social norms; aligning one's self-image to liberal societies; and joy in challenging legal restrictions. The motives for online shopping are justification/utilitarian, to accommodate other restrictions in going to local markets; and reactance hedonic, to break restrictions. These motivations create seven different patterns of online shopping behaviour.

This research contributes to the literature by presenting an alternative perspective on online shopping motivations for taboo products. Furthermore, this research calls for a new socio-psychological theory for understanding the role of technology in influencing consumer behaviour in restrictive societies.

The historian can provide quite a different explanation, other than the currently held views, for the emergence of the Red Terror in 1918.

The new, Spice Girl‐less millennium, “offers an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to abandon concepts, models and formulations once thought liberatory now considered incarceratory; to start afresh on the other side of the year 2000”. Foremost among the concepts to be updated is gender identity. In a postmodern society, traditional notions of femininity and masculinity come across as antiquated and illusory. The consumption ethic has deconstructed the historical male‐female mind‐body producer‐consumer dichotomy and made identity construction a consuming pastime. It has also turned gender into a pastiche of possibilities. Yet in the utopian cyber future that awaits us, what will become of gender identity? In the ethereality of the Internet, where existence is ephemeral, is gender identity a meaningful and necessary concept? This paper reviews the historical (modern) significance of gender identity to marketing, explores the postmodern consumer condition, and prophesies a paradisal vision of gender identity in the consumer society to come.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of cultural conditions on the relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure.

The authors used meta-analysis technique to examine 100 effect sizes from 43 studies published between 1982 and 2023 to integrate the existing results and to detect causes contributing to variability of results across studies.

There is a significant positive relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure. Further, the authors found that cultures with long-term orientation positively moderated the relationship, whereas cultures with high uncertainty avoidance and indulgence negatively moderated it.

This study did not account for the problem of endogeneity between environmental performance and environmental disclosure because most of the already published studies included in the authors’ meta-analysis did not address this issue.

This research provides regulators and policymakers insights on the influence of cultural factors on environmental disclosure and performance, critical information to consider when adopting, or revising social and environmental policy and regulations within a country.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis study examining different cultural dimensions influencing the relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure and contributes new knowledge to the literature on determinants of environmental disclosure.

The idea of a Library Advisory Council does not loom up suddenly within the orbit of librarians' thought from nowhere. Its emergence as a practical and desirable modus operandi for the solution of present difficulties and the shaping of future library ends, is the result of much heartsearching and mature reflection, represents the fruits of bitter experience. It is at one and the same time an admission of past failure and an augury for future success. The failure being the inability of public library services to meet fully the actual requirements of modern society within the restrictive bounds of their present financial and administrative framework; the augury for future success being the acceptance by the central government of the thesis that the undeveloped potential of libraries as educative factors is worthy of consideration and that a real necessity arises to constitute an advisory body for the encouragement and extension of such services.

The purpose of this paper is to describe service users’ perspectives on the difference between high secure long-stay forensic psychiatric services in the Netherlands and high secure forensic psychiatric care in England. These perspectives are relevant in considering the benefits of a similar long-stay service in England.

A current in-patient detained in a high secure hospital in England and other mental health service users and carers with experience in forensic-psychiatric settings were asked to watch a documentary on a Dutch high secure long-stay service. Then they were invited to make comparisons between this service and high secure care in England. These perspectives were gained in the context of their membership of the Service User Reference Group of an externally funded study on long-stay in forensic-psychiatric settings in England.

The small group of participants highlighted the importance of relational security, meaningful occupation, autonomy, positive therapeutic relationships with staff and a homely environment for those with lengthy admissions and perceived these to be better met in the Dutch service. These factors might contribute to improved quality of life that services should strive to achieve, especially for those with prolonged admissions.

Perspectives of service users with lived experience of long-stay in forensic settings are important in informing service developments. Lessons can be learnt from initiatives to improve the quality of life in long-stay services in other countries and consideration be given on how to best manage this unique group.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the first study asking service users about their view on forensic services in other countries. The findings suggest that service users have valuable contributions to make to aid service developments and should be involved in similar such exercises in the future.

A consumer model of environmentally responsible purchase behaviour was tested using covariance structural analysis. The model successfully predicted the purchase of environmentally responsible and non‐responsible product alternatives. A hierarchial relationship from values to product specific attitudes to purchase intention to purchase behaviour was confirmed. Individual consequences, which take the personal implications of consumption into account, were found to be just as important in predicting intention as the environmental consequences of a product. The study empirically tested a values typology as a basis to explain attitude formation.

The connection between women’s empowerment and health has been a growing concern among demographers and other social scientists, who theorize that empowering women – or enhancing their ability to define and make strategic life choices – will improve their reproductive health (Kabeer, 1999). The importance of empowering women became a central theme at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994. The Cairo policy document codified the notion that women must be empowered in order for them and societies as a whole reach their reproductive health goals, including lowering fertility and population growth, stemming the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS, and ensuring healthy pregnancy and delivery (Hodgson & Watkins, 1997; Sen & Batliwala, 2000).