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This paper explores how the blockchain food traceability system (BFTS) affects consumers' affective brand commitment and subsequent willingness to pay premium prices.

From February 11 to May 23, 2023, this study collected data from 236 Chinese customers, who had purchased blockchain-traced food in Jingdong Mall within the past three months. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The main findings were as follows: (1) BFTS information transparency, information immutability and product diagnosticity are significant predictors of consumer-perceived trustworthiness; BFTS information transparency, product diagnosticity and product safety are significant predictors of consumer-perceived informativeness, (2) Perceived trustworthiness and perceived informativeness build consumers' affective brand commitment, (3) Affective brand commitment affects willingness to pay premiums and (4) Health consciousness positively moderates the relationship between consumers' affective brand commitment and willingness to pay premiums.

This paper complements the research on consumer behaviour in the BFTS, and the research results provide important enlightenment for guiding food enterprises to formulate reasonable and perfect marketing strategies of blockchain-traced food.

Based on the involvement and customer-delivered value theories, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework with which to examine the relationships between food traceability system, consumer perceived value and purchase intention. The study also investigates the moderating role of consumer expertise in the relationship between food traceability system and perceived value.

Survey approach is the primary data collection tool, through which a total of 238 useable responses were obtained. Structural equation modelling is employed to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables.

The findings show that the information quality, perceived reliability and product diagnosticity of food traceability system affect consumer perceived value, and the perceived value and purchase intention are positively associated, while consumer expertise acts as a moderator on the relationship between food traceability system and consumer perceived value.

This study sheds light on how consumer perceived value of food traceability system can enhance their intention to purchase traceable food. It contributes to the theory of customer-delivered value and involvement as well as traceable product marketing strategies. From a managerial perspective, guidelines are provided for traceable food producers and marketers to implement reasonable strategies to attract consumers to purchase and promote the sustainable development of food industry.

This paper explores the driving factors of parasocial relationship (PSR) in the virtual reality (VR) shopping environment, and how this relationship affects brand equity. The study also investigates the moderating role of the celebrity endorser dynamism (CED) in the relationship between PSR and its antecedents.

The primary data collection tool is a survey administered to Chinese consumers (n = 531) who have experienced the products of UNIQLO brand on Taobao Buy + platform, and who had a PSR with the endorser in their VR shopping process. Structural equation modeling is employed to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables.

The findings show that VR shopping factors (i.e. physical attractiveness, social presence and technology novelty) perceived by consumers to affect PSR, and this relationship and brand equity are positively associated, while CED moderates the relationship between PSR and its antecedents.

This study sheds light on how PSR in the VR shopping environment can improve brand equity. It contributes to the theory of PSR and persuasion as well as marketing strategies. From a managerial perspective, guidelines are provided for firms to implement value communication activities using VR, and to increase their brand equity.

Product discounts have been widely applied in digital commerce as a method to attract and retain customers to purchase in China. Given that digital channels differ in their attributes, customers may behave differently when they respond to the same discount across channels. However, little attention has been paid to explore the heterogeneity of customer responses to discounts across channels. This study aims to fill in the gap by exploring how customers’ purchase responses to price discounts differ across digital channels.

This study applies a Poisson regression to an unbalanced data set of purchasing history from Chinese footwear brands with 3,510 customers in a two-year time window across the three digital channels (i.e. personal computer [PC], app and mobile website), with a correction for endogeneity by using the Gaussian copula method.

This paper finds that price discounts have the strongest positive effect on consumers’ purchase volumes on the PC channel, followed by the app channel, while discounts show the weakest impact in the mobile website channel. By so, this paper demonstrates that customers respond differently to online and mobile channels, and they also respond differently within mobile channels when they purchase products with price discounts.

This study is original in analyzing the difference in customers’ discount responses across digital channels, offering valuable contributions to existing research on multichannel marketing as well as mobile marketing and providing helpful insights for multichannel merchants to design digital discount strategies.

This interpretive ethnographic research explores the relationship between leadership and masculinities in an entrepreneurial team context. The team is situated in a higher education (HE) environment in the northeast of England, where its members develop startups while studying for a degree in entrepreneurial business management. The chapter contributes to entrepreneurship and leadership literature with a conceptual basis for understanding the links between gender and leadership in an entrepreneurial team in a way that transcends binaries, by focusing on masculinities as plural and nuanced, and on leadership as shared and mutual. The 13 young male entrepreneurs’ performances of gender and leadership are captured through nine audio-recorded observations. The thematic analysis of the data using a Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) framework reveals that young male entrepreneurs lead and relate to each other in assertive, supportive, and participative ways with assertive leadership behaviors linked to hegemonic masculinities and the latter two ways to inclusive masculinities. Those gender and leadership constructions are embodied, nuanced, plural, and shared in the situated entrepreneurial community. We recommend that new educational programs, developing leadership and/or entrepreneurship, need to be sensitive to local contexts, and should take account of plurality and nuances of doing gender and leadership in particular localities.

This chapter examines the bamboo-based livelihoods of the tribal artisans of Tripura and studies entrepreneurship, through the perspective of innovative small and medium enterprises, as a way to achieve sustainable development. Under a cluster-based approach of the Tripura Bamboo Mission, this chapter intends to understand how tribal entrepreneur’s belief in sustainability motivates them to develop and enhance livelihood opportunities. It is in addressing this basic question of an entrepreneur’s ‘drive’ in achieving sustainable livelihood that the development goals are met.

Although engineering doctoral students are at the forefront of discovery and innovation and have great potential for establishing partnerships to address engineering challenges crossing national borders, there are few studies of their intercultural competency. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that are associated with intercultural competency – the ability to work effectively in multicultural environments.

The intercultural competency levels of 390 engineering doctoral students were measured by using the Miville–Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale-Short Form (MGUDS-S). Data were analyzed using ordinary linear squares regression. Results are considered descriptive, rather than causal.

Results show that female engineering doctoral students are more likely to score higher on the MGUDS-S than male engineering doctoral students. Proficiency in multiple languages and previous work- or volunteer-related travel experiences are positively associated with doctoral students’ intercultural competency.

As internationalization of engineering research and innovation continues to expand, findings suggest that providing students with more opportunities and support for work- or volunteer-related travel and opportunities for learning new languages may help facilitate the development of intercultural competency and students’ willingness to engage in long-term international professional opportunities and research partnerships.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.

The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and its extensions are often used to explain intentions to perform sustainable behaviours. Emotions can provide the impetus for action and should be considered in high-involvement situations, such as sustainable food purchase decisions. Therefore, the aim of this research work was to investigate whether the addition of different types of emotions (self-related, social and pro-active) to the TPB main constructs – attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) – improves the explanation of intention to make two sustainable food purchase choices: purchase Fairtrade (FT) products and purchase through solidarity purchasing groups (SPGs).

The present investigation was conducted by two studies using online questionnaires and focussing on purchasing FT food products (Study 1) and purchasing food through SPGs (Study 2). Stepwise regression models were run to explain the intention to purchase FT products (Study 1; N = 240) and the intention to purchase through SPGs (Study 2; N = 209).

Results show that emotions increase the predictive validity of the TPB model. The study also highlights the importance to distinguish between different types of emotions. Amongst those considered in both studies, only pro-active emotions play a significant role in predicting food purchasing intention. Results encourage further investigation of the role of emotions in TPB-based models for predicting sustainable food purchase choices.

The measurement of the three classical antecedents of the TPB model (ATT, SNs and PBC) performed by single items can be considered the main limitation of this work. In future research, instruments made up of more items measuring these three theoretical dimensions should be used. In addition, it would be important to conduct an analysis of the beliefs that determine ATTs, norms and perceived control.

Different from previous studies that considered emotions in extension of the TPB model to explain sustainable behaviours, the present work separately analysed the role of three different kinds of emotions (self-related, social and pro-active) in explaining sustainable food behaviours.