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The purpose of this research paper is to study attitudinal responses to the tone of a voluntary disclosure. It is known that tone can affect market response. Existing literature assumes that investors' attitudes mediate these effects, but these attitudinal mediators have not been directly measured. The authors are especially interested in cases where a firm is reporting poor financial results. The purpose is to trace the mechanism and conditions under which tone affects the credibility of a voluntary disclosure.

The authors conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects study that manipulates financial performance (good/bad) and tone (positive/negative). The attitudinal dependent variable is the credibility of the management discussion, with persuasive intent as a mediator of the effects of tone on credibility.

In the case of bad financial results, a positive tone has a negative effect on credibility as the authors predict. This effect is fully mediated by perceived “persuasive intent”. In the case of good financial performance, credibility is higher when management adopts a positive tone, even though there, too, subjects perceive the persuasive intent.

The research paper establishes a bridge between the communications and finance literature on the effect of tone in voluntary disclosures. The empirical findings provide initial evidence and new detail regarding an attitudinal response (credibility) that the finance literature often assumes is responsible for mediating market responses to voluntary disclosures. One unexpected finding with interesting implications is that positive tone increases credibility in the case of good news. The implication is that a firm may indulge in taking a victory lap to celebrate good news, without harming the credibility of their corporate communications. Additional research is warranted that combines theory and methods from communications and finance, to further elaborate the attitudinal mechanisms behind the market effects of tone in voluntary disclosures.

At the most general level, the original contribution is the creation of a theoretical and methodological bridge between the communications and finance literature, regarding the effect of tone in voluntary disclosures. This research proposes an integrated theoretical framework, in which the concept of incentives shapes the relationships between the firm's financial situation, a disclosure's tone and its credibility. Methodologically, the authors employ an experimental method, which is more typical in the communications literature, to illuminate the attitudinal effects of tone that are frequently mentioned and assumed in the finance literature.

Food waste is a big problem where millions of pounds of produce are discarded every year because they are imperfect or unattractive. Despite the societal implications of selling unattractive produce, limited research has been directed toward understanding the effect of imperfect produce on consumers’ evaluations of the produce and retailer outcomes. This paper aims to investigate why consumers tend to discard imperfect produce and how retailer interventions (i.e. anthropomorphized signage and packaging) can alleviate these negative effects.

Three experiments were conducted to examine the postulations. Study 1 highlights the role of consumers’ embarrassment in the purchase decision of imperfect produce and retailer patronage intention. Studies 2 and 3 provide managerially relevant boundary conditions of anthropomorphic signage and opaque packaging.

Convergent results across three studies (n = 882) indicate that imperfect produce increases purchase embarrassment and reduces purchase intention and retailer patronage intention. Retailer interventions (i.e. anthropomorphic signage and opaque packaging) can allay this feeling of embarrassment and lead to an increased retailer patronage intention and higher service satisfaction.

This research provides guidance to retailers for effectively promoting imperfect produce.

Retailers’ actions can benefit the well-being of farmers, suppliers, customers and the overall environment.

This research adds to the literature on unattractive produce by identifying new moderators, namely, anthropomorphic signages and opaque packaging. The research also shows that purchase embarrassment is a key process mechanism.

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of in-group social presence on the relationship between face concern and hotel customers’ behavioral responses to service failures.

Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: in-group presence vs control group. They read a scenario describing a hotel check-in service failure and answered questions regarding their behavioral intention after the failure and level of face concern.

The results indicate that face concern is positively associated with the intention to voice a complaint, to spread negative word-of-mouth and to post negative online reviews. While the impact of face concern on complaint intention became insignificant in the presence of an in-group, its effect on posting negative online reviews was enhanced when surrounded by an in-group.

It addresses the long-lasting debate about the association between face concern and various types of behavioral responses to service failure. Practically, extra attention should be paid to the process quality when serving face concerned customers, particularly when they are accompanied by important others.

This study enriches the literature on cultural effects by identifying the situational effect of face concern on customers’ service failure responses. A model that describes the situational effect of face concern on different types of behavioral intention has been built.

The cost of compliance is an essential variable to consider when administering a tax system. One recent study estimates that the yearly federal tax compliance burden in the US exceeds $431 billion dollars, and this cost does not include the potential greatest cost of all – changes in taxpayer behavior that reduces economic efficiency (Laffer, Winegarden, & Childs, 2011). One example of such behavior is the renunciation of US citizenship due to the impact of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) reporting requirements. Using this context, our study examines how FATCA compliance costs can affect taxpayer behavior in a manner that reduces economic efficiency. We collected responses from 197 experienced US taxpayers living in the US. Our study finds that when tax compliance costs are high, taxpayers may be more likely to renounce their citizenship to avoid FATCA reporting requirements. We further learn that tax compliance costs may increase the likelihood of citizenship renunciation even in the presence of a minimal US tax burden. Supplemental mediation analysis demonstrates that one's perceived fairness of compliance does not mediate the effect of high compliance costs on a taxpayer's renunciation decision; however, one's perceived fairness of compliance and fear of sanctions, collectively, partially explain the effect of tax burden on the renunciation decision. In addition, we find that ethics, the perceived probability of detection, and average income level affect the decision to renounce citizenship. Our findings suggest broader impacts of tax policy and provide a foundation for future research to further explore domestic and foreign tax compliance behaviors.

Past research has demonstrated a health halo for food product labels (e.g. organic), resulting in inflated perceptions of a product’s healthfulness (e.g. low fat). While past studies have focused on labeling and related health claims, the health halo of brand names has scarcely been investigated. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the health halo of brand names featuring morality- and purity-signifiers.

The current research uses two experiments to examine the health halo of morality- and purity-signifying brand names on perceptions of nutritional and contaminant attributes. Mediation analysis is performed to investigate perceived naturalness as the mechanism for the brand name effects while moderated mediation analysis examines this mechanism across product types (healthy vs unhealthy).

The findings reveal that both the morality- and purity-signifying brand names produce a health halo on nutritional and contaminant attributes, regardless of product healthiness. Further, mediation and moderated mediation analysis provide evidence for perceived naturalness as the underlying mechanism driving these effects.

This research highlights unwarranted consumer inferences made based upon food brand names and, thus has implications for consumers, public policy and marketing managers.

While much health halo research has focused on labeling, this research examines the health halo of two brand name types which symbolically convey either morality or purity. This research provides additional contributions by investigating perceived naturalness as the underlying mechanism for the effects and is one of the few studies to investigate the health halo for both healthy and unhealthy products.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some common pitfalls in experimental research in the field of hospitality and tourism. It aims to offer recommendations on how to avoid such problems to enhance theory development.

This paper highlights some common pitfalls in hospitality research regarding manipulations, samples and data analyses. The challenges imposed by the global pandemic are also discussed.

Researchers in hospitality are recommended to refine their experimental designs, to recruit appropriate and sufficient samples and to avoid the abuse of “researcher degrees of freedom” in data analysis.

This is the first study to review common mistakes in experimental research in hospitality research and to recommend some remedies. The findings of this study can contribute to stronger theory development.

This paper aims to examine how incentive framing format and language congruency interactively influence readers’ post-reading responses to hotel-related email advertisements.

A 2 (incentive framing format: amount-off versus percentage-off) × 2 (language congruency: use of readers’ native language versus use of readers’ foreign language) between-subject experiment was conducted with 233 bilingual speakers from China.

The findings unveil that readers are more likely to be enticed to search for more information about the promoted hotel restaurant, click the call-to-action button and share the promotional message with friends and families if an email advertisement presents the incentive of a price promotion in the form of amount-off (versus percentage-off). The indirect impact of language congruency is also verified. Specifically, the impact of incentive framing format on readers’ post-reading response is more salient when information is communicated using readers’ native (versus non-native) language.

The findings provide actionable clues for hoteliers to optimize their email marketing campaigns. If hotels want to publicize a price promotion for their high-priced service (e.g. hotel restaurant dining) via email advertisements, marketers should present the incentive in the form of amount-off. Hotels should also personalize the language used in the email advertisements according to readers’ native language.

This study enriches the literature on email marketing by explicating how hoteliers can improve the efficacy of email marketing via personalizing the incentive framing format and language used in the email advertisement according to the readers’ preferences.

I use a controlled experiment to examine, in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) crises, whether investors' investment judgments are influenced by a firm's CSR reputation and CSR crisis response strategy. I find that for good CSR reputation firms, the use of a rebuild or deny crisis response strategy does not lead to improvements in investment judgments. However, for bad CSR reputation firms, the use of a deny response strategy leads to improvements in investment judgments while the use of a rebuild strategy does not.

This study aims to investigate the differences in consumers’ perceptions of trust, performance expectancy and intention to hire between human financial advisors with high/low expertise and robo-advisors.

Three experiments were conducted. The respondents were randomly assigned to human advisors with high/low expertise or a robo-advisor. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA.

The results suggest that consumers prefer human financial advisors with high expertise to robo-advisors. There are no significant differences between robo-advisors and novice financial advisors regarding performance expectancy and intention to hire.

This pioneering study extends the self-service technology adoption theory to examine adoption of robo-advisors vs human financial advisors with different expertise levels. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first studies to address multi-dimensionality of trust in the context of artificial intelligence-based self-service technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effect that anthropomorphic framing (i.e. robot vs automatic machine) has on consumers’ responses in case of service failure. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that consumers hold an unconscious association between the word “robot” and agency and that the higher agency attributed to self-service machines framed as robots (vs automatic machines) leads, in turn, to a more positive service evaluation in case of service failure.

The authors have conducted four experimental studies to test the framework presented in this paper. In Studies 1a and 1b, the authors used an Implicit Association Test to test for the unconscious association held by consumers about robots as being intelligent machines (i.e. agency). In Studies 2 and 3, the authors tested the effect that framing technology as robots (vs automatic machines) has on consumers’ responses to service failure using two online experiments across different consumption contexts (hotel, restaurant) and using different dependent variables (service evaluation, satisfaction and word-of-mouth).

The authors show that consumers evaluate more positively a service failure involving a self-service technology framed as a robot rather than one framed as an automatic machine. They provide evidence that this effect is driven by higher perceptions of agency and that the association between technology and agency held by consumers is an unconscious one.

This paper investigates a novel driver of consumers’ perception of agency of technology, namely, how the technology is framed. Moreover, this study sheds light on consumers’ responses to technology’s service failure.