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This study aims to investigate specific green-brand affect in terms of commitment and connection through the morality–mortality determinants of consumer social responsibility and the assumptions of terror management theory in the proposed three-layered framework. Religiosity serves as a moderator within the framework.

Data are collected in Taipei, Taiwan, while quota sampling is applied, and 420 valid questionnaires are collected. The partial least squares technique is applied for data analysis.

With the contingent role of religiosity, consumer social responsibility influences socially conscious consumption, which in turn drives the commitment and connection of green-brand affect. The death anxiety and self-esteem outlined in terror management theory influence materialism, which then drives green-brand commitment; however, contrary to expectations, they do not drive green-brand connection.

By considering green brands beyond their cognitive aspects and into their affective counterparts, morality–mortality drivers of green-brand commitment and green-grand connection are explored to provide unique contributions so as to better understand socially responsible consumption.

A dark side of global mobility is that many immigrants have negative work outcomes. Studies have analyzed the antecedents to poor work outcomes from the immigrants’ point of view or from that of host country nationals. The purpose of this paper is to propose a relational model, which applies terror management theory to address how the economic mobility beliefs of immigrants and host country nationals interact and how these different combinations of beliefs affect the self-esteem of immigrants.

This theoretical model considers the impact of the social interactions between immigrants and host country nationals when immigrants’ mortality is salient.

In hostile environments that make immigrants’ mortality salient, lack of confirmation of immigrants’ beliefs about economic mobility from host country nationals can lead to a decrease in immigrants’ self-esteem and therefore to negative work outcomes.

As the number of immigrants grows, so do concerns about their ability to contribute to the economy. Lack of confirmation of their beliefs in a context in which their mortality is salient, is likely to lead to lower self-esteem and perhaps other negative outcomes.

This paper is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to use terror management theory to advance our understanding of the outcome of a lack of confirmation from host country nationals of immigrants’ beliefs on economic mobility under conditions of mortality salience.

With a basis in conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of championing behaviour in the relationship between employees’ fear of terror and their job performance, as well as the buffering role of their passion for work, as a personal resource, in this process.

The tests of the hypotheses rely on three-wave, time-lagged data collected from employees and their supervisors in Pakistan.

An important reason that concerns about terrorist attacks diminish performance is that employees refrain from championing their own entrepreneurial ideas. This mediating role of idea championing is less salient, however, to the extent that employees feel a strong passion for their work.

For human resource managers, this study pinpoints a key mechanism – a reluctance to mobilize active support for entrepreneurial ideas – by which fears about terrorism attacks can spill over into the workplace and undermine employees’ ability to meet their performance requirements. It also reveals how this mechanism can be better contained by the presence of adequate personal resources.

This study adds to burgeoning research on the interplay between terrorism and organizational life by specifying how and when employees’ ruminations about terrorism threats might escalate into diminished performance outcomes at work.

Paedophilic individuals are a highly misunderstood and stigmatised group, with the general public tending to equate paedophilia with child sexual abuse. Given that paedophilia is often conflated as a psychiatric/mental health disorder and an extreme violent offence, the current study examined whether the stigma towards paedophilic individuals is related to negative associations with severe mental illness and extreme violence. The authors also used the terror management theory (TMT) to provide further insights into why paedophilia is so highly stigmatised.

A sample of 126 participants was split into one of six conditions and provided punitive and moral character judgements, as well as salience of death thoughts. Conditions were divided into three main stigma conditions (paedophilia vs schizophrenia vs homicidal ideation), which were further divided into two conditions (offending vs non-offending).

Results showed that judgements were harsher in the offending conditions than the non-offending conditions. Results also showed that the stigmatisation of paedophilic and schizophrenic individuals may be mediated by terror management processes. These findings suggest that paedophilia is believed to be associated with severe forms of mental illness where an individual is not able to control their own state of mind.

Thus, addressing perceptions of dangerousness towards individuals with severe mental illness is a crucial step towards developing effective strategies to help reduce such stigma.

As one of the first studies to use TMT in this way, the current study provided much-needed insight into an important and under-researched area using available methods for such a sensitive topic.

This study aims to investigate the impact of fear of terror (FOT) on employee organizational commitment (OC) working in terror-induced areas through examining the role of rumination as a mediator and perceived organization support (POS) as a moderator.

The authors develop a model in which the mediating role of rumination in the FOT relationship is conditional to the values of OC. Using a sample size of 268 respondents, questionnaires were used to collect data from Pakistan during a period when terrorist attacks were at a peak. Results from the hierarchical regression analyses provided support for the developed model.

Overall, the statistical model is significant (p < 0.05); the authors found negative relationships between FOT and OC. The authors found that FOT positively led to rumination, which then negatively led to OC. It was also found that POS significantly moderated FOT and OC.

This study revealed that FOT is a deterring factor that changed employees’ OC. It further revealed that organizations providing support to employees working in terrorist-ridden areas showed positive commitment. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

This paper provides an examination of the relationship between FOT and employee OC. It expands our knowledge of the stress theory and terror management theory for employees working in discontinuous areas.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the potential predictors of anxiety about digital security, terrorist threats and support for high-tech counter measures.

In Study 1, 195 participants indicated their anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites. In Study 2, 107 participants indicated their anxiety about domestic terrorism, international terrorism and extremist groups. In Study 3, 261 participants indicated their support for high-tech counter-terrorism measures.

Study 1 suggests that whereas anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites was positively predicted by right-wing authoritarianism, anxiety about social networking was also negatively predicted by time spent online. Study 2 shows that time spent online was a negative predictor of anxiety about domestic terrorism. Study 3 indicates that the strongest positive predictor of support for all the measures was right-wing authoritarianism, followed by national identity.

The findings show the relevance of terror management theory to digital security and counter-terrorism.

It appears that right-wing authoritarianism and national identity may serve as mechanisms for people to subjectively counter the presented threats. This notion may inform relevant policy and practice aimed at making communities safer and potentially helps introduce counter-terror measures with less public backlash.

When designing counter-terror measures, policy makers should consider compound national identities (e.g. Catalan or Basque people).

The paper makes contribution to under-explored areas of terrorism anxiety and support for counter-terror measures.

The argument that terror perception and individual time perspectives can affect behaviors has become increasingly relevant. This study analyzed the association of terror perception with financial risk and developed an integrated framework of the interaction between terror perception (mortality salience) and time perspective to determine risky investment. People with different time perspectives have different acknowledgments of risk. Two studies of terror perception leading to more or less risky investment choices supported this framework to demonstrate that individuals exhibit more (less) risky investment behavior when terror perception is salient and they have a high (low) present hedonic time perspective.

Two experiments were performed. Study 1 tested whether TP moderates the effects of terror priming (aging) on risky financial investment. Study 2 tested the effects of terror priming on risky financial investment decisions and the role of gender and the present hedonic TP (PH) in moderating these effects. The following hypotheses were then developed: H1: Participants with high PH primed with the aging condition will select riskier financial investments than those with low PH will (Study 1). H2: Male participants with higher PH primed in the death condition will select riskier financial investments than those in the control condition will (Study 2).

Because people with different TPs acknowledge risk differently, this article developed a new framework modeling MS on TP in risky investment selection. Two studies representative of MS affecting risky investment decision-making were conducted to test the framework. The results of the two studies indicated that individuals engaged in risky investment behavior more (less) when mortality was salient and the individual had high (low) PH. Moreover, gender influences these results. As anticipated, male participants with higher PH in the death-primed condition selected riskier financial investment than those in the control condition did. Additional research from a broader perspective is warranted.

Many psychological factors of risky decision-making have been discussed, such as motivational systems or situational motivation, self-framing, control orientation, sensation seeking, dishonesty, and ambiguity (Sekścińska et al., 2016). However, few studies have examined temporal framing, also known as time perspective (TP), the psychological concept of a person's relationship with time. This study mainly discusses the effects of terror perception on risky financial decisions by using a theoretical framework based on TP, which influences the effects of MS on risky financial decision-making. When mortality is made salient, individuals with present hedonic TP have behaviors characterized by risk perception. Those with present hedonic TP are more likely to make risky financial investments because they prefer present pleasure and risk over future outcomes (Zimbardo and Boyd, 2015).

The advent of extreme automation from new technologies such as artificial intelligence portends a massive increase in unemployment. The psychological impact of this threat on the workforce is critically important. This paper aims to examine the functioning of individuals' anxiety buffers in response to this threat.

A two-stage mixed-methods design is used. In stage 1, qualitative data are gathered through semi-structured interviews. In stage 2, quantitative data are collected through two experiments to assess the psychological impact of exposure to the threat.

Exposure to the threat of extreme automation reduces self-esteem, faith in the worldview and attachment security. When self-esteem and attachment security are under attack, they are ineffective as anxiety buffers, and anxiety levels increase. Additionally, there is a distal effect such that during a period of distraction, the threatened anxiety buffers are reinforced and return to their normal levels.

This study is limited to a homogenous culture in which work is highly salient. Future research should include other cultures, other methods of exposure and further examine the distal effects.

The study examines the previously underexplored issue of individuals' psychological response to the impending changes in the workforce because of technological advancements.

This paper aims to discuss the dilemma of terrorism as a political phenomenon that many political scientists care about; however, they find themselves incapable of explaining some of its aspects and they resort to other disciplines. The second part of the dilemma is related to the incapability of well-established disciplines to provide political scientists with much help. This raises the following question: Will political scientists be able to enhance their knowledge of terrorism with the help of scholars from consolidated and well-established disciplines or with the help of scholars from interdisciplinary fields?

This research depends on the main theories of psychology and of social psychology and adopts a comparative approach to assess the effectiveness of both disciplines in providing political scientists with the knowledge they lack.

In spite of being a well-established and consolidated discipline, psychology is not the perfect discipline that can help political scientists know who a terrorist is. Social psychological theories of aggression provide political scientists with greater ability to understand what psychological and sociological factors motivate a person to turn to aggression and terrorism. Moreover, social psychology developed the “terror management theory” which clarifies various aspects of the phenomenon.

This research paper calls the attention of scholars of terrorism to the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to understand the various aspects of a complex phenomenon such as terrorism. The interdisciplinary field adopted will differ according to the research question that a researcher needs to answer.

Amidst the exponential spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore the evolving dynamics underlying consumers' narratives about luxury-brands over social media. While visualizing these Online Luxury-Brand Self-Narratives (OLBSNs) as a decision-making situation, the authors question the “rational-being” assumption of the Net Valence Model (NVM) during a pandemic situation. Specifically, the authors draw upon Terror Management Theory (TMT) to explicate the role of pandemic-induced mortality salience in rendering the idealistic assumptions of NVM unattainable. The authors uncover evidence of risk-taking behavior among luxury consumers while using OLBSNs as a potential meaning-providing structure during the pandemic.

This study employed a cross-sectional survey method. The authors conducted a structured Qualtrics survey to collect data from 588 respondents. The authors examined the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling.

In contrast to the conventional wisdom of NVM, the results suggest a positive influence of not only perceived benefits but also perceived risks on intention to engage in OLBSN and brand advocacy during the ongoing pandemic.

This study explains the emerging dynamics of pandemic-induced mortality salience in OLBSN decision-making and has implications for luxury-brand marketers in designing brand communication strategies over social media.

This study makes an original endeavor to extend NVM beyond rational decision-making context by integrating the theoretical tenets of TMT within NVM while also delineating the decision-making mechanism of OLBSNs during the pandemic.