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While consumers are increasingly concerned about the environment and commit themselves to environmental protection, they are still reluctant to act. This phenomenon, to date, has remained a puzzle and gained much attention from practitioners and researchers. As a contribution to the understanding of the phenomenon, this study aims to examine the role of downward social comparison as an explanation for the inconsistency of the relationships between two types of pro-environmental attitudes, namely attitudes toward the environment and attitudes toward sustainable consumption, and two sustainable consumption behaviors including electricity-saving behavior and unneeded consumption reduction.

Hierarchical multiple regressions were employed to test the hypotheses with survey data from 381 consumers in a large city in a Southeast Asian country.

The regression results support our expectation that downward social comparison negatively moderates the relationships between the two attitude variables and the two sustainable consumption behaviors.

Our findings provide some insights into the complexity of the attitude-behavior relationship and offer some practical recommendations for governments and policymakers in designing more effective behavioral interventions for the sustainability of human society.

Residents' supportive attitudes are essential for the successful development of ecotourism. Although existing literature has heavily relied on social exchange theory to explain residents' attitudes, this study explores a new theoretical direction by focusing on the cognitive process of residents' attitude formation. This study adopts the knowledge theory of attitude–behavior consistency that emphasizes the amount, relevance and complexity of ecotourism knowledge in shaping residents' positive attitudes toward tourism development in the regional community.

Based on a survey of 394 residents of Otavalo, Ecuador, this study confirmed the reliability and validity of measurements, used PLS-SEM for statistical analysis, and evaluated the effect of ecotourism knowledge on residents' attitudes toward ecotourism.

Under the control of community attachment and fair distribution of economic benefits supported by existing literature, this study finds that ecotourism knowledge has a positive and significant effect on residents' supportive attitudes toward tourism development.

By elucidating the cognitive process of residents' attitude formation and change, this paper shows the applicability of a knowledge-based theory to residents' attitudes toward tourism development, and offers practical implications for ecotourism policymakers and educational program developers.

This study adopts the knowledge theory of attitude–behavior consistency and shows the positive influence of ecotourism knowledge on residents' attitudes.

Purpose: The goal of the chapter is to define customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality (TTH) and to analyse their most significant characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach: The book chapter develops a conceptual framework of attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality, based on critical analysis of relevant publications.

Findings: The chapter provides a definition and discussion of the characteristics of customer attitudes towards robots in TTH. It elaborates the structural elements of attitudes towards robots, and the links and interactions between the elements.

Research limitations: Research limitations stem from the small number of studies on customer attitudes towards robots in TTH.

Practical implications: The theoretical analysis can be used as a starting point for empirical studies of customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality.

Social implication: Combined services, based on human employee-service robot collaboration, are the optimal decision for forming favourable customer attitudes towards robotisation and automation in tourism and hospitality. In that way clients’ needs of high technological convenience, interpersonal communication and socialisation are met simultaneously.

Originality/value: This research is among the few publications that study customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality. The authors develop a matrix of users’ attitudes and behaviours when using robots in travel, tourism and hospitality.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the critical factors associated with growing fertilizer usage culminating in contamination of soil/water in agriculturally intensive regions of Uttar Pradesh, India. The agriculture sector is seen as one of the major contributors in ensuring food security, however adoption of sustainable agriculture to protect water resources from contamination due to fertilizers and pesticides is becoming pressing to achieve long term environmental security.

A two staged study aimed at monitoring the soil quality status followed by stakeholder survey has been attempted. Attitude-behavior framework based on the theory of reasoned action has been tried to explain the fertilizer use behavior in the study. The results are analyzed through Analysis of variance.

Soil monitoring data showed nitrate and total nitrogen loadings beyond the permissible limit in the identified regions. A questionnaire aimed at determining farmer’s attitude toward fertilizer usage showed a significant influence of factors like net farm income, overall farm yield, extension services, farmer characteristics on one hand and risks associated with changing farming practices, costs of substitutes available, market-based instruments like subsidies and loans on the other. Divergent responses were observed with respect to farmer’s perceived risks from adopting to organic substitutes, linkages of fertilizer application with environmental degradation and the level of adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.

The study can be scaled up to study the inter-regional differences by benchmarking regional responses. It would be interesting to extend the work to find solutions from the farmers as alternative fertility management strategies. The items used in questionnaire are self-made; hence there is still a possibility of enhancing the robustness of scale by applying advanced statistical techniques.

Results of the study indicate excessive nitrogen loadings in farm soils which is an indicator of potential future nitrate contaminated zones or vulnerable zones emerging in agricultural intensive regions. Findings reinforce the role of education, knowledge transfer and awareness for long-term agricultural sustainability. The paper highlights the urgency for reorientation of the support system by the government and policymakers.

The paper attempts to understand the linkage between the agricultural productivity and the environmental implications followed by the reasons culminating in the agri-environmental imbalance. On-site monitoring study followed by assessment of reasons culminating in this scenario has not been attempted earlier and this paper contributes to understanding at dual level. This paper emphasizes on the insights of stakeholder which is instrumental in ensuring agricultural sustainability or otherwise. It takes the position that the farmer’s farm management behavior is strongly influenced by factors like food security and income, keeping environmental quality at second place. It also identifies the barriers for organic farming and other alternative systems as well as explores the economic, social, and philosophical aspects of sustainable agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically validate a multidimensional scale for measuring healthcare service quality (HCSQ), based on modified Brady and Cronin's hierarchical service quality model. The study also investigated HCSQ and its ability to predict important service outcomes through two different models. In the first model, direct effects of service quality dimensions, namely physical environment quality (comprising ambient condition, social factor and tangibles), interaction quality (comprising attitude and behaviour, expertise and process quality) and outcome quality (comprising waiting time, patient satisfaction and loyalty) on image are measured. In the second model, direct effects of physical environment quality (comprising ambient condition, social factor and tangibles), interaction quality (comprising attitude and behaviour, expertise and process quality) on service quality through outcome quality (comprising waiting time, patient satisfaction and loyalty) are measured.

Data were collected from 400 indoor patients of five departments', namely general medicine, surgery, pediatrics, orthopedics and gynecology and ENT of a tertiary public hospital of North India using stratified sampling.

The study supports both the models for measuring HCSQ. Structural equational modelling is used to test the hypotheses relating to direct and indirect effects in the two models.

The major limitations of the study include selection of only inpatients and use of non‐financial performance measures.

The paper contributes to the development of multiple dimensional holistical service quality models in the healthcare sector.

Drawing from tripartite theory of attitude, this study examined whether interaction effect of psychological ownership (cognitive component) changes the nature of the relationship between job satisfaction (affect component) and job performance (behavioral component) toward a higher or weaker relationship. Furthermore, the study draws from psychological ownership theory to find support whether job satisfaction is nurtured by the feeling of psychological ownership.

Longitudinal data from 211 academic and non-academic employees was randomly collected and partial least square-structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis through SmartPLS version 3.3.2.

The study found a positive interaction effect of psychological ownership on the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Furthermore, the study found that feeling of psychological ownership nurtures employees' satisfaction with their job.

The findings of the study explicate to human resource managers and practitioners the mechanism through which job satisfaction affects job performance and how feelings of psychological ownership nurtures employees' satisfaction with their job.

The study provides new insight into the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance by drawing on the tripartite theory of attitude perspective, and concluded that job performance as overall employee attitude toward the organization is predicted by the interaction and interplay of job satisfaction, psychological ownership and job performance as components of attitude. To the authors’ best knowledge, none of the previous literatures on job satisfaction–job performance relationship draws its conclusions from the perspective of tripartite theory of attitude. Furthermore, the study found empirical evidences that psychological ownership nurtures employees' job satisfaction.

Using the basic framework of the service profit chain, this study aims to develop an integrated model that explains the relationships among role overload (RO), customer orientation (CO), service interaction quality (IQ), customer satisfaction (CS) and sales performance.

A large-scale survey of 872 customers and 530 frontline employees across 50 branches of a major retail bank in New Zealand serves as the study setting.

The results indicate that RO has a significant negative effect on IQ. Nevertheless, CO mitigates the negative outcome of RO on IQ. IQ fully mediates the relationship between RO and CS. Additionally, the effect of IQ on branch sales is fully mediated by CS.

The cross-sectional nature of the current survey does not permit causal inferences. Thus, future studies should adopt longitudinal designs. Also, future studies should explore the roles of other variables (e.g. job crafting, work-related self-efficacy) as possible moderators.

Results suggest that service managers should create a balance between the role requirements and organizational resources to mitigate the adverse effects of employee RO. To enhance IQ and CS, bank managers should coach employees about work overload and train them in CO while prioritizing the tasks.

Empirical research pertaining to employee–customer interaction through a nested framework accommodating data from customers, employees and firm performance is scarce. This study fills in the void.

In a pursuit of excellence, it is increasingly important to identify customer values and demands. Service quality has been identified as one such demand. The purpose of this paper is to develop the model for service quality in higher education.

The proposed model is based on a current conceptualization of service quality, which suggests that service quality is a multidimensional and hierarchical construct.

In the proposed model, service quality consists of two primary dimensions which are defined by several corresponding sub‐dimensions: program quality: curriculum, industry interaction, input quality, academic facilities; and quality of life: non‐academic processes, support facilities, campus and interaction quality.

The paper has value for the institutes seeking to improve the quality of services they provide.

Successfully fostering employee ecological behaviors can reduce the environmental impacts of an organization while boosting performance. This paper aims to investigate the factors and organizational strategies for employees to engage in ecological behaviors.

The study uses a qualitative method. Academicians from four top-ranked research universities from Malaysia participated in semi-structured interviews.

The in-depth analysis of the interviews identified several factors (environmental attitude, feedback, green self-efficacy, leadership role, organizational culture and employee empowerment) and strategies (incentives; top management support; creating environmental knowledge and awareness; rules and regulations; and sustainability advocates) for promoting ecological behavior in the workplace.

This study was limited to Malaysian public research universities. Future research could investigate additional variables that might influence employee ecological behavior. Implications include policymaking, which emphasizes boosting environmental factors among academicians.

Research studies on employee ecological behavior are minimal. This research contributes to the literature by discussing how different stimuli and strategies are used in the top four-ranked green universities of Malaysia for ecological behavior in the workplace.

Global mobile communication is one of the most dynamic and important service markets. Several researchers suggest using a theoretical approach to develop a much deeper insight into key marketing constructs such as service quality, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, perceived switching costs, corporate image, and customer loyalty is of vital importance to the mobile communications market. This study aims to develop and test a comprehensive hierarchical model of these six important constructs. The model also incorporates the retailing function of a major mobile communication provider.

The research sample of 516 was drawn from customers of one of the largest mobile communications service providers in China. The data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The results of the study support using a hierarchical and multidimensional approach for conceptualising and measuring customers' perceptions of service quality in the mobile communications market. In addition, the findings illustrate that service quality is an important determinant of customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, corporate image, and perceived switching costs. Customer perceived value is also an antecedent of customer satisfaction. Corporate image, customer satisfaction, and perceived switching costs are three key drivers of customer loyalty. However, the findings also indicate that corporate image is not an important determinant of customer satisfaction and that customer perceived value is not a key driver of customer loyalty.

This is the first paper that has developed and tested a comprehensive hierarchical model of the mobile communications market.