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This study aims to examine whether consumers’ lay theories of emotion play a moderating role between self-threat and their choice of threat-coping strategies (direct resolution and escapism) and product preference.

The present research uses the methods of experimental design and surveys to collect data and verify the hypotheses we assumed.

Study 1 indicates that in self-threatening situations, people who perceive emotions as fleeting (lasting) are more likely to use a threat-coping strategy of direct resolution (escapism). Study 2 demonstrates that people who believe emotions are fleeting are more likely to choose problem-solving products; people who believe emotions are lasting are more likely to choose emotion-enhancing products. Study 3 further demonstrates that the direct resolution (escapism) strategy plays a mediating role between the interaction effect and consumer preference for problem-solving products (emotion-enhancing products). Study 4 replicates the results of Study 2 by incorporating the manipulation of lay theories of emotion transience in a product evaluation context.

A limitation of the present research is that this paper puts focus on exploring the effects of self-view threat (e.g. intelligence and competence) on consumer product preferences. Another issue for future research is the extent to which emotion-transience theories hold for specific emotions. Given that distinct emotions of the same valence differ in their antecedent appraisals and that specific emotion could lead to different subsequent behaviors (Lerner and Keltner, 2000), future research may need to explore the roles of specific negative emotions triggered by self-threat in consumers’ product choosing behaviors. One potential direction for future research is to examine whether the perceived locus of control affects consumers’ choice of threat-coping strategies and product preferences.

Marketers could use product tactics for motivating consumers to restore their self-perceptions on the threatened attributes and address the self-threat, such as product attributes, advertising copy or promotional appeals that insert people who are more motivated to directly resolve the threat. Marketers can nudge consumers toward a direct resolution strategy by posting prompts such as, “I can do it!” For example, the slogan of Nike – “Just do it” and the 2012 award-winning campaign by Nike Spain have told consumers: “If something is burning you up, burn it up by running” (Allard and White, 2015), which suggests that consumers experiencing self-threat may resolve the negative self-discrepancy through the acquisition of the products in the advertisement. Another important implication suggested by the findings is that product consumption can be a way of helping consumers escape from self-threats. For example, the slogan of Coca-Cola – “Taste the feeling” resonates with consumers and stimulates their basic hedonic needs.

First, this research extends previous research by demonstrating that lay theories of emotion serve as a motivator of the selection of threat-coping strategies. Second, this research is conducive for literature to examine how differences in lay theories of emotion affect consumers’ product-choosing behaviors to cope with self-discrepancies. Third, the present research extends the broad marketing literature by differentiating problem-solving products from emotion-enhancing products.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into psychosocial factors influencing sustainability professionals in their work to lead by influencing and improving pro-environmental decision-making in their organisations and to increase understanding of psychosocial factors that affect their effectiveness in achieving desired results.

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a framework, the study enquires into the lived experience of six research subjects. The participants are sustainability professionals and leaders from the UK and Canada. The primary data source is semi-structured interviews, analysed with micro-discourse analysis.

Key psychosocial factors involved in participants’ experience are identified, specifically psychological threat-coping strategies, psychological needs, motivation and vitality, finding complex interactions between them. Tensions and trade-offs between competency, relatedness and autonomy needs and coping strategies such as suppression of negative emotion and “deep green” identity are modelled in diagrams to show the dynamics. How these tensions are negotiated has implications for psychological well-being and effectiveness.

The concepts and models presented in this paper may be of practical use to sustainability professionals, environmentalists and organisation leaders, for example, in identifying interventions to develop inner resources, support authentic and effective action and disrupt maladaptive responses to ecological crisis.

The study contributes insight to understanding of underlying processes shaping environmental cognition and behaviour, particularly in relation to psychological threat-coping strategies and interacting factors. With a transdisciplinary approach, the methodology enables nuanced interpretation of complex phenomena to be generated.

Drawing upon protection motivation theory and service-dominant-logic, the authors develop a model, which examines the influence of perceived psychological risk and social media involvement (SMI) on customer-brand-engagement (CBE), brand co-creation and behavioral intention during COVID-19 outbreak in the tourism context. The current research also explores the mediating effect of CBE, and moderating role of tourism-based threat/coping appraisal in the proposed associations.

To investigate such issues, the authors deploy a sample of 320 tourism consumers by adopting partial least squares-structural equation modeling or (PLS-SEM).

PLS-SEM findings revealed that SMI positively impacts tourism-CBE. Secondly, results revealed the customer brand engagement's significant-positive effect on brand co-creation and behavioral intent. Third, results showed the social media's and psychological risk's indirect impact on co-creation and behavioral intent, as mediated through customer brand engagement. Fourth, results exposed a significant/negative moderating effect of threat appraisal and significant/positive moderating role of coping appraisal in projected relationships.

Given the study's focus on pandemic-based SMI, CBE and co-creation, the authors contribute to the existing tourism marketing literature, which also generates plentiful avenues for further research, as delineated.

This research facilitates tourism brand managers to better understand the drivers of CBE and paves the way for managers to develop CBE and threat/coping strategies during pandemic.

Despite the increasing understanding of social media, CBE and co-creation in tourism, limited remains identified regarding the association of these, and associated, factors during pandemic, as thereby explored in the current research.

This paper aims to examine how a stereotype threat, which entails being aware of a negative stereotype about one’s social group (e.g. gender), affects consumers’ price perceptions.

The authors conducted four studies to examine the effect of a stereotype threat on consumers’ perceptions of a product’s price–quality relationship.

This study found that being aware of a negative stereotype about one’s social group (i.e. gender here) led consumers to use price more as a quality indicator. This study also determined that reappraisal – an alternative way of coping with stereotype threats – reduced the impact of a stereotype threat and, subsequently, decreased reliance on price to infer quality.

This research contributes to the consumer decision-making literature by examining stereotype threat effect in in-store product purchasing contexts; provides theoretical contributions to the processing of price information by exploring the role of a stereotype threat in price perceptions and revealing that impairment of consumers’ working memory resources affects price perceptions; adds to the existing stereotype threat literature by investigating the effect of a stereotype threat on systematic versus heuristic information processing; and advances the stress and coping literature by suggesting that consumers adopting a reappraisal strategy cope better with a stereotype threat than when opting for a suppression strategy.

This research provides important implications for consumers. For example, the findings suggest that consumers who would like to avoid paying more for stereotype-associated products may adopt reappraisal to cope with a stereotype threat. Reappraisal may allow consumers to use fewer cognitive resources when coping with stereotype threats, thus minimizing the possibility that they might overpay for high-priced products.

This research uniquely examines the effect of a stereotype threat on consumers’ price perceptions and the role of reappraisal in this effect.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse how floods and droughts affect communities' livelihood in the middle Zambezi river basin and coping mechanisms which households apply to counter the impact of floods and droughts.

The method adopted was semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and semi-structured questionnaires.

Thematic analysis shows that the major issues affecting communities' livelihood in the middle Zambezi river basin are related to frequent floods and droughts. Floods are due to heavy seasonal rainfall which occurs at the peak of the rainfall season. As for droughts, the frequency of dry-spells of 20 days on average has been observed during the crop season. The impacts of floods and droughts in the district, notably in some wards such as Kanyemba, are the reduction of crop production, food shortages, reduction of agriculture derived income and erosion of social network. Households have responded to these impacts through a number of coping mechanisms including disposal of assets, labour migration, stream bank and floodplain cultivation, piecework, remittance, wild production and fishing. However, such coping mechanisms are short term and some of them are in conflict with the country's environmental laws.

This paper reports a study on the first such finding related to socioeconomic impact of floods and droughts on households located in the middle Zambezi valley which is 500 km from Harare with a specific focus on traditional coping strategies in the face of disasters.

Given their expense, the psycho-dynamic they induce among many viewers, and the lack of empirical evidence for their efficacy, studies to assess anti-child-abuse ad campaigns are warranted. As a preliminary foray into this research domain, this study explores a dual-process model for a single ad from the NSPCC's FULL STOP campaign. Specifically, it examines whether ad believability relates more strongly to an emotional or a cognitive response and which type of response is the strongest mediator on “willingness to act against child abuse”.

A convenience sample of 242 students enrolled in postgraduate business and management studies at a large university in the UK responded to a structured questionnaire posted online.

Except for H3, the hypothesised relationships are significant and in the expected direction. Specifically, ad believability relates negatively related to self-esteem (H1), self-esteem relates positively to “willingness to act against child abuse” (H2), and belief in child sexual abuse (CSA) myths relates negatively to “willingness to act against child abuse” (H4). However, ad believability does not relate negatively to belief in CSA myths (H3).

Findings based on student samples should be interpreted cautiously. For example, representations of child abuse across subpopulations should not be ignored, as findings by culture, ethnicity, or gender may differ. Only one ad was tested; responses to other ads may differ. Controls to boost internal validity, such as using a second group unexposed to the test ad, were not implemented. Although a mediation effect between self-esteem and CSA myths was not observed, a larger or alternative sample might reveal this effect.

A dual-process model of viewers' responses to anti-child-abuse ads, which assumes viewers consider the information embedded in these ads and their emotional responses to these ads, should outperform a purely cognitive or emotive model. Here, a simple model with emotional and cognitive factors as antecedents of “willingness to act against child abuse” is tested. Although a more comprehensive model might explain additional variation, the goal was to develop and test a preliminary model that could disconfirm a dual cognitive-emotive process. Furthermore, testing the effect of FULL STOP ads on viewers' self-esteem is an important first step to assessing the efficacy and ethicality of these ads.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate understanding of how to mitigate the privacy concerns of users who have experienced privacy invasions.

Drawing on the communication privacy management theory, the authors developed a model suggesting that privacy concerns form through a cognitive process involving threat-coping appraisals, institutional privacy assurances and privacy experiences. The model was tested using data from an empirical survey with 913 randomly selected social media users.

Privacy concerns are jointly determined by perceived privacy risks and privacy self-efficacy. The perceived effectiveness of institutional privacy assurances in terms of established privacy policies and privacy protection technology influences the perceptions of privacy risks and privacy self-efficacy. More specifically, privacy invasion experiences are negatively associated with the perceived effectiveness of institutional privacy assurances.

Privacy concerns are conceptualized as general concerns that reflect an individual’s worry about the possible loss of private information. The specific types of private information were not differentiated.

This paper is among the first to clarify the specific mechanisms through which privacy invasion experiences influence privacy concerns. Privacy concerns have long been viewed as resulting from individual actions. The study contributes to literature by linking privacy concerns with institutional privacy practice.

Medical tourism has grown to become a formidable multinational industry to generate revenue. This phenomenon has also increased impact on the healthcare sector as well as strategies development opportunities. The present study emphases on the international tourists' behavioural intention for medical tourism in Malaysia. A research framework is derived from the exceptional component of fear appeal in protection motivation theory (PMT).

Data were collected with a sample of 501 respondents and analysed via structural equation modelling approach. Both measurement model and structural model were assessed to generate the result.

The outcomes have shown a good backing on the use of adapted PMT theoretical model. There is a higher predictive power on health coping than health threats. Coping alternatives can be served as the linkage between the PMT appraisals and behavioural intention.

The study confirmed the effectiveness of using a theoretical framework in predicting international tourists' behavioural intention for medical tourism. It is suggesting that risk adaptive behaviour does offer a valuable proposition in contributing to the reception of medical tourism.

The present study argues the need for greater clarity in understanding the emergent implications for health policy and healthcare delivery for future medical tourism development.

The fundamental theories and current literature do not incorporate the component of fear appeal in explaining decision making. The study findings demonstrate that protection motivation theory has provide another promising theoretical model in explaining international tourists' behaviour intention for medical tourism.

The Service User Network (SUN) follows the ethos of the therapeutic community and draws upon coping theory and psychoanalytic understanding of personality disorder to provide a supportive group-based resource to adults struggling to cope. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The original SUN Project has been successfully replicated, with the further addition and integration of psychoanalytically – derived approaches to the treatment of personality disorder within that replication. The most notable theoretical additions come from the mentalization-based therapy model and the Independent School of Psychoanalysis. In this paper, the author expands the original description of the model to include these theoretical additions, together with a fuller account of the original tenets of the treatment paradigm than previously described.

This provides an outline of a network-based therapy (NETBT) as a first stage in manualizing the model, as well as extending its use to support adolescents.

Network-based therapy is a new, evolving group treatment for adolescents and adults struggling to cope.

The purpose of this research was to utilize protection motivation theory, which states that individuals will take actions to protect themselves from threats when they have both knowledge of actions that will protect them from the threat and the motivation to do so, to develop a better way of training adolescents to be safe on the Internet.

This study utilized an experimental approach in a high school environment to test its hypotheses. Participants were split into two groups: a group who received a tutorial about how to stay safe on the Internet (an enactive mastery tutorial that allowed students to actually try out the skills they were learning) and a group who did not receive the training. Participants were then asked about their intentions to engage in protective behaviors, their perceived ability to do so, and the likelihood that these protective behaviors would help them to stay safer on the Internet.

The findings indicated that an enactive mastery training program increased intentions to engage in safe online behavior in the future, offering a foundation for the development of future theory-based online safety interventions.

This study was conducted in a small geographic region in schools that agreed to utilize a class period to test the enactive mastery tutorial, which limits its external validity. Furthermore, this study only measured intentions to engage in protective behaviors, not actual behaviors.

This research provides a guideline for an effective way of increasing the likelihood that adolescents will engage in protective behaviors online, which has great practical applications for teachers, administrators, PSA advertisers, etc.

This chapter provides a framework for creating programs to help adolescents engage in safer behavior. Furthermore, it introduces the idea of involvement to the protection motivation theory literature, which is a valuable variable to consider when determining how to create an effective campaign to change behavior.