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This study aims to explore whether religiosity influences consumer purchase behavior among Muslim consumers in Pakistan.

An in-depth, semi-structured interview protocol was developed and administered to a sample of 90 participants, both male and female, across eight metropolitan cities of Pakistan. Professionals, university students and housewives were part of the sample. NVivo Version 11 was used for data analysis to answer the research questions raised in this study. Moreover, the purposive sampling method has been used in this research.

The behavior of consumers was found to vary with the degree of involvement and the degree of religiosity. Study findings are divided into three themes. Firstly, a high level of religiosity makes Muslim consumers follow the Islamic principles of food consumption, by evaluating the product ingredients, spending moderately and verifying a halal logo at the time of purchase. Secondly, a major theme is the view that religiosity has no influence on food consumption; it is more about individuals’ needs and priorities. Finally, the consumers’ overall perception of quality, product value, purity and health consciousness over-powers the concept of religiosity.

Because of its qualitative and exploratory nature, the generalizability of this paper is limited. In addition to that, this research is just focused on one Muslim country.

This study suggests that western food exporters may use religiosity and other factors as probable segmentation variables to effectively position their brands. Religious images and other factors may be highlighted in product packaging and communication campaigns by marketers to gain recognition and usage of western food and consumption among religious, Pakistani Muslim consumers. The output of this research may support prospective entrants into the food business; those interested in exploring the Asian consumer market. Findings from this study may also be helpful for those in the west interested in exploring Pakistan as an emerging consumer market.

The presence of western imported food may improve the quality of life by having more opportunities and healthier options for the nation. Western food products can also bring cultural convergence whereby the underdeveloped nation feels upgraded and modern. Moreover, if the western food products are certified halal, the product has a fair chance of adoption and penetration in the society. Also, the food products coming from the western world induces mindfulness, people are more aware about innovative and useful ingredients that can satisfy their taste buds, improve their health, increase their life expectancy and contented approach toward life.

Thus far, limited research has analyzed religiosity of an overwhelmingly Muslim population and its impact on consumer behavior. This study is a preliminary effort to provide a basic understanding of the behavior of Pakistani Muslims, who have been insufficiently investigated by marketing and consumer researchers. The intriguing results are to remind marketers that there are several factors that govern religiosity and lead to a purchase decision.

The study aims to examine the role of consumer psychological attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control and pro-environmental self-identity on green food purchase intention. Also, it examines the effect of ecological conscious consumers' behavior (ECCB) on green intention and behavior.

The study has focused on the upper-middle-class segment of Karachi. The authors have used area sampling for collecting the data. Six recruited enumerators distributed 450 questionnaires in five areas of Karachi and received 423 filled-in questionnaires. The study has used the Smart PLS version for data analysis.

The study found that biospheric egoistic and hedonic values affect attitudes toward green products, and altruistic values have no effect on attitude. Also, the authors did not find any association between attitude and green purchase intention, but found that attitude stimulates ECCB. Subjective norms and perceived behavior control strongly affect green purchase intention and ECCB. The results also suggest that pro-environment self-identity and ECCB are significant predictors of green purchase intention. The authors also found that green purchase intention stimulates green food behavior.

The authors have taken a holistic approach by investigating 13relationships. The authors also examined the association between hedonic values and green purchase intentions, which in the past studies have contradictory results.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on schools and schoolchildren across the globe. There is still a dearth of studies that investigate this recent phenomenon in a developing country context, and this is true of Pakistan. Much of the population in Pakistan resides in rural settings and a lack of technology and of online provision of teaching for more than one year must have had huge negative impacts on students’ learning. The school dropout rate was already high in rural settings (Geven & Hasan, 2020) and, with school closures, this will likely have increased further, and cause some schoolchildren to lose interest in going back to school. However, no current data appear to exist to corroborate this. Due to the lack of available current quantitative and qualitative data, this study seeks to explore the impact of COVID-19 on schoolchildren’s education in Pakistan by examining recently published related studies. This study employs a literature review technique that gathers data to ascertain the potential overall impact on schoolchildren during the pandemic. The findings reveal that there remains a lack of detailed studies on this important topic and that urgent attention is needed from researchers to assess the scale of the impact. In addition, the review found that many children from rural communities had little to no school engagement due to technology poverty and their families being unable to support home-schooling, either due to family and/or work constraints or a lack of prior education and/or skills. Themes that emerged were that families, especially mothers, struggled to balance both caring and home-schooling duties, pupils from private schools had a better experience than those from public school backgrounds, and many of these reported that online provisions helped students develop new skills. This study may help to improve the understanding of the impact on the lost learning of schoolchildren during the pandemic by guiding practitioners as well as policymakers.

The present study aims to test the impact of workplace incivility and violence on doctors' turnover intentions. Besides, the present study also tested the mediating role of employees' burnout.

The population of the present study was doctors working in 20 public sector hospitals. Where 250 doctors working in emergency departments participated, the sample size was calculated through Krejcie and Morgan's table. The data analysis was conducted through SPSS and Smart-PLS.

Results of the present study supported all the relationships except the relationship between workplace violence and turnover intentions. More specifically, relationship between workplace incivility and turnover intentions was confirmed, and mediation effect of doctors' burnout was also confirmed.

This present study is novel in a way that this study framed the study model using conservative resource theory and social cognitive theory covering both employees cognitive and external factors. Further, the nexus “workplace incivility → workplace violence → job burnout → turnover intentions” was tested for the first time, hence making a valuable addition to the body of literature. Further this study is a contribution to healthcare literature in context of incivility, violence, burnout, and turnover. Burnout is first time explored as moderator with workplace incivility which is another contribution.

This study aims to assess mental health literacy (MHL) in the general population using six case vignettes related to depression, mania, psychosis, conversion disorder (CD), obsessive compulsion disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Each vignette had nine items related to MHL. The sample comprised 4,590 young adults conveniently selected from twin cities in Pakistan. Participants’ responses were converted into percentages and percentiles to find MHL levels.

The men had moderate MHL in depression and inadequate MHL in the remaining five illnesses. The women had adequate MHL in depression and moderate MHL in mania, psychosis, OCD and PTSD while inadequate in CD. Comparing item-wise understanding, the participants had an adequate understanding of identifying the illness, who could suffer and whether the illness was treatable. However, they struggled with naming the illness, knowing about it and how to treat and identify the person who can treat it.

The findings of this study are helpful for mental health professionals, policymakers and individuals who identify the target areas for engagement and improving MHL in the general population.

This study provides data about MHL related to six mental illnesses, unlike previous studies focusing on a few illnesses. This study recommends awareness sessions, community workshops and engaging social and electronic media for improving MHL and seeking help from relevant health professionals for mental illnesses instead of spiritual healers and witchcraft.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of green technology innovation on sustainability performance with the moderating effect of innovation capabilities in the Malaysian manufacturing listed companies.

This was a quantitative study and carried out by applying a research survey. The questionnaire was used to collect the data from 204 Malaysian manufacturing companies of the “consumer products and services” sector listed at Bursa Malaysia, incorporating a five-point Likert scale. All the hypothesized relationships were tested by using the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The empirical results showed that the comprehensive adoption of green technology innovation significantly promotes sustainability performance including economic, environmental and social performance. In addition, innovation capabilities significantly and positively moderate the relationship between green technology innovation and sustainability performance.

The scope of this study is specifically confined to the Malaysian manufacturing listed companies, operating within the consumer products and services sector listed at Bursa Malaysia. Consequently, the findings of this study may not be generalized to manufacturing companies of the different geographical contexts.

The findings of this study may help the top management and policymakers of the Malaysian manufacturing listed companies to scrutinize green technology innovation and innovation capabilities to achieve higher sustainability performance.

This study magnifies and provides new insights into the extant literature by developing a comprehensive research model that concurrently tests the direct and moderation effects between green technology innovation, innovation capabilities and sustainability performance. Additionally, this is the first study to examine the influence of green technology innovation on sustainability performance with the moderating effect of innovation capabilities in the Malaysian manufacturing listed companies. This distinct approach significantly bolsters the originality of this study.

The usage and preference of western imported food in a Muslim-majority state signifies its importance and relevance in a specific culture. However, the inclination and preference toward imported food products must be backed by a strong motivation, when the religion of Islam does not permit overspending yet the amount spent on such imported food products is overwhelming. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the motivation behind this behavior.

This is a qualitative study, and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants comprising professionals, housewives and university students from eight cities in Pakistan, which represented different regions and demographic variables. These were Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and Larkana. The technique used to analyze the qualitative interview findings was thematic content analysis. To confirm the results, Leximancer software Version 4.5 was used to reanalyze and validate them. Moreover, the purposive sampling method has been used in this research.

The findings from the qualitative-focused interviews revealed that the product attributes of packaging with attractive colors, design, size, overall quality material, taste and labeling with maximum product information influenced their purchase behavior. The vast majority reported that food products coming from the west needed to be halal, and this is an important deciding factor for purchase. Also, the level of religiosity related to western imported food buying behavior varies from city to city, which itself an interesting finding from a Muslim-majority population. Brand trust, loyalty, satisfaction, subjective norms were influential factors for Muslim consumers’ purchase behavior.

This paper is qualitative in nature, and therefore, the generalizability of the study results is limited. Also, this study only focused on Muslim consumer buying behavior from a Muslim-dominated country.

This study is instrumental for western food producers and exporters, providing valuable information about the motives behind the purchase of western imported food products in Pakistan, and by extension, potentially in Muslim countries in general. The study’s findings would add value to the field of consumer behavior, in which little research has been conducted on the relationship between consumer motives in context with Muslims’ consumer behavior toward western imported food products.

The presence of western imported food products may give better options for consumers so that they can pick a quality product for their own and family usage. The placement of the halal logo and extra care of halal ingredients also assures the religious and cultural requirements, enabling the western imported food products to penetrate quickly.

The findings of the qualitative-focused interviews revealed that the level of religiosity varies from city to city. Even though the core religion is Islam, the level of religious commitment varies in different cities when it comes to the purchase of western imported food products. The interview findings discovered some reasons behind this behavior such as consumer demographic profile, cultural background, income level, education, lifestyle, family background and social class. This means that demographic variation plays an important role in religious commitment and especially across cites that possess different cultural and behavioral patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of trade openness on the cost of financial intermediation and bank performance. Developed and developing countries are currently pursuing trade openness to achieve higher bank performance with less intermediation costs.

In attaining the study's objectives, several regression methodologies were employed (i.e. system generalized method of moments (GMM), fixed effect, pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and vector error correction model (VECM)). The authors tested the hypothesis on data of 885 banks from BRICS countries, which span 18 years (2000–2017).

The results from this robust study showed that embedding higher trade openness reduces financial intermediation costs and improves banks' performance. The results remain robust following the use of different estimation methods and alternative variables as proxies. In addition, results were still valid upon considering bank level, industry level and country level as control variables. It was also observed that the relation pattern holds its rigidity during “good” and “bad” times (i.e. the global financial crisis).

The results provide better references for bank regulators, academics and policymakers to take advantage of the low financial intermediation costs resulting from trade openness.