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This study examined how parental divorce during emerging adulthood gives meaning to emerging adults’ developmental stage and interpersonal relationships.

The participant sample consisted of 15 females from the Southeastern United States who were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 21.5). Qualitative methods were utilized, with a transcendental phenomenological research methodology specifically applied. Interviews were conducted focusing on perceptions of the divorce experience in relation to important aspects of emerging adulthood, namely developmental experiences and interpersonal relationships, primarily intimate partner and dating experiences. NVivo was used to allow a “bottom-up” design, emergent design, and interpretive inquiry for data analysis.

Two major themes emerged from the data: (1) developmental stage facilitates insight into the divorce process and (2) parental divorce leads to contemplating and reconceptualizing perceptions of self and interpersonal relationships.

Results are relevant to researchers, parents, and practitioners as divorce is examined with a developmental lens. Findings suggest that the meaning and impact of parental divorce are distinct for emerging adult children, characterized by awareness and personal reflection. Implications for parenting and practice are provided.

Prior researchers have documented significant effects of family violence on adult children’s own risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet, few studies have examined whether exposure to family violence while growing up as well as emerging adults’ reports of their current peers’ behaviors and attitudes influenced self-reports of intimate partner violence perpetration. The current study based on interviews with a large, heterogeneous sample of men and women assessed the degree to which current peers’ attitudes and behaviors contributed to risk of intimate partner violence perpetration, net of family violence.

Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) (n = 928), we examined associations between family violence indicators, peers’ behaviors and attitudes, and self-reports of intimate violence perpetration among adults ages 22–29. We used ordinary least squares regression and controlled for other known correlates of IPV.

For men and women, we found a significant relationship between witnessing parental violence during adolescence and IPV perpetration in emerging adulthood, and a positive relationship between current peers’ IPV experiences and attitudes and respondents’ perpetration. We also found that for respondents who reported higher, compared with lower, peer involvement in partner violence, the effects of parental violence were stronger.

We provided a more comprehensive assessment of peers’ IPV to this body of research, which tends to focus on family violence. Studies have examined peers’ attitudes and behavior during adolescence, but we extended this work by examining both peer and familial influences into emerging adulthood.

The majority of emerging adults in the United States spend time in cohabiting unions. Prior research has suggested that higher levels of sexual non-exclusivity may exist among those in cohabiting relationships compared to marital unions. Although these basic patterns have been explored in prior work, research examining the potential reasons why levels of sexual non-exclusivity differ by union status has been limited. Drawing on a relational perspective and using the fifth wave of data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), the present study found that higher levels of sexual non-exclusivity in cohabiting relationships were explained by intimate relationship characteristics and sexual histories rather than sociodemographic factors, partner heterogamy, or partner- and couple-level drug use. These findings highlighted that understanding the higher rates of sexually non-exclusive experiences in cohabiting relationships, compared to marital relationships, requires attention to specific dynamics of the intimate partnership and prior relational experiences of both partners. The study concluded that cohabitation has a unique place in emerging adults’ relationship landscape and may set the groundwork for future relationship functioning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of peer pressure on joint consumption decisions among emerging adults. Building on prospect theory and characteristics of emerging adulthood, the authors propose that influence from peers (i.e. informational and normative influence) serves as a channel to understand how peer pressure shapes joint consumer behaviors at different levels of social capital.

An online survey is distributed to the emerging adults, aged 18 to 25, in the south, west, east and middle of the USA. Construct validity and reliability are tested by using confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modeling is used to test the mediating and moderating effects.

The results show that social capital moderates the relationship between peer pressure and group-oriented consumer decisions, such that the relationship is positive in groups with high-level social capital but negative in groups with low-level social capital. Furthermore, such effects tend to be achieved via peer influence. And peer influence is stronger in groups with high-level social capital than those with low-level social capital.

The current literature has shown contradictory results: it is usually believed that emerging adults may conform to pressure and engage in group-oriented decisions; however, some research has reported the opposite result. To better understand this relationship, the authors aim at a group-level factor – perceived social capital – as a boundary condition. This research contributes to the young consumer decision-making literature by involving the interplay among peer pressure, perceived social capital and peer informational and normative influence.

The purpose of the paper is to build on current discussions about the need for and role of guidance in learning and teaching, as well as to theoretically develop its specifics to further advance our scholarly understanding of how to structure and enhance entrepreneurship education.

The paper takes a synthesizing conceptual approach, built on developmental psychology, instructional science, expertise research as well as the pedagogy–andragogy discussion and the role of guidance in contemporary entrepreneurship education research. In addition, a new term, odigogy, is developed.

Odigogy, from the Greek word odigós (to guide), addresses how to navigate student entrepreneurs in higher education. The term seeks to correspond both to the specifics of entrepreneurship as a subject and the characteristics of students in the classroom who are in a transitional phase between adolescence and adulthood.

The paper contributes to current entrepreneurship education discussions by offering a more balanced terminology positioned between how to teach (pedagogy) and how adults learn (andragogy). The paper provides insights for teachers when developing teaching methods and learning activities in higher education.

By introducing the term odigogy the paper seeks to contribute an enhanced understanding of the entrepreneurial learning process in higher education, which does not match pedagogical assumptions on how to teach children or adolescents, nor andragogical assumptions on how adults learn, or how to engage students in self-directed learning as presented in heutagogy.

The purpose of the study is to examine the experiences of emerging adults transitioning from college to career and the implications of this transition on clothing choice and identity formation.

This study utilized a phenomenological approach to address how appearances are used by emerging adults during the transition from college to the workplace and how those appearances help form identity.

The study found that participants have a desire for high-status consumption, primarily fueled by social comparison and the desire to keep up with colleagues, a desire to express identity through clothing, even if they are working from home, and the tendency to convey maturity during this transitory time by dressing the part.

The main limitation of this study is the homogenous nature of participants. Most are white females in their 20s who work in the fashion industry. It would be fruitful to consider a more representative population of emerging adults to examine the role of clothing choice on identity formation during this critical time.

This study highlights the need for change in the retail sector, regarding which garments create a professional wardrobe. Since the pandemic, many companies have shifted to a casual dress code, thus rendering the historically professional wardrobe of business attire obsolete.

Examining what it means to be an emerging adult joining the workforce in today's post-pandemic world is a complex and ongoing process. This study provides insight into how this experience is navigated via clothing and how identities are shaped during this transition in a person's life.

This study aims to test Lamberton and Rose’s (2012) commercial sharing utility model of access-based consumption use in three different contexts: car-sharing, room-sharing and household goods purchases. More importantly, this research extends the model by examining the effects of emerging adulthood as a life-stage on perceived value of social applications that facilitate and promote transaction utility, called shareaids.

A questionnaire designed to evaluate the effects of emerging adulthood and sharing utilities on intention to use sharing services was developed and administered to 345 respondents at a Midwestern US university. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Results indicate that flexibility utility had the strongest direct impact on intention to use sharing consumption while also having indirect effects in all contexts examined. The emerging adulthood life-stage was found to affect transaction utility and shareaids as predicted, and shareaids positively influenced consumers’ perception of the social utility value of access-based consumption.

The generalizability of this study is limited by its use of a student sample. Also, the study suffers from inherent limitations linked to self-reported survey research.

Sharing services that have a strong social component could use shareaids to gain a competitive advantage. Examples of shareaid application include split bills for multiple payments to split fares among friends and social media transaction tools. Shareaid applications can enhance consumers’ perception of social value and the overall shareability value of the sharing service.

This is the first known study to test the effects of emerging adulthood as a life-stage on perceived value of social applications that facilitate and promote transaction utility, called shareaids.

Race and ethnicity, BMI and other factors can affect ratings of one’s experiences in school, work and other settings. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of BMI, race and ethnicity and body satisfaction on the experiences of victimization in a work or academic setting. Additionally, experiences of weight/appearance-based perpetration were explored within the context of prior victimization, perpetration, BMI, race and ethnicity and body satisfaction.

A diverse sample of 1,161 female undergraduates completed a series of questionnaires online. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the association between body satisfaction, BMI and race and ethnicity and weight/appearance-based teasing perpetration and victimization.

Results indicated that lower body satisfaction was significantly related to an increase in weight/appearance-based victimization. Additional analyses examining the perpetration of weight/appearance-based teasing were conducted. Participants who reported experiencing victimization were also more likely to perpetrate weight/appearance-based teasing, although BMI was not associated with perpetration.

Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed. In particular, academic settings provide a landscape for reducing and preventing victimization because of the resources available for students in addition to policies and procedures that can be implemented.

The findings of this study provide evidence that various identities and beliefs, such as race and ethnicity, BMI and body satisfaction, play a role in victimization and perpetration. This study used a novel, emerging adulthood population.

As emerging adults on college campuses, undergraduates are at a key stage of developing their identities and deciding the role that intimacy and sexuality will play in relationships for the rest of their lives. Experimentation through casual sex, which modern researchers have dubbed the hookup culture, plays a part in this development. While hooking up has been linked with sexual gratification and value clarification, there are negative aspects of the culture as well, including a lack of communication leading to regret, shame, and sexual assault. This chapter proposes looking to the bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) community as experts in the field of sexual communication and consent, and utilizing skills developed by this community to fill in the gaps where hookup culture has failed emerging adults. Through the use of a novel intervention called the Hookup Card, emerging adults could be empowered to increase their communication skills and see more positive outcomes as they navigate their sexual and identity development.

This paper is determined to examine the role of body image and materialism in predicting the identity exploration of university students when conspicuous consumption is a mediator variable.

The study used a quantitative method. Data were collected from students of three federal universities in Nigeria. The sample size was 331. A self-report questionnaire was used to collect data and analysis was performed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Findings reveal that materialism has a negative association in predicting the identity exploration of students. At the same time, there was a significant full and partial mediating effect of conspicuous consumption on the relationship between body image and materialism on identity exploration, respectively.

The study provides valuable information for parents in understanding how conspicuous consumption may influence their children’s identity formation. The findings can also be helpful for educators in the design of discussions and interventions for students on the social-psychological antecedents of conspicuous consumption and identity exploration. Government and regulatory agencies can use the study’s findings to shape student financial literacy and consumer protection policies.

This study makes both theoretical and methodological contributions to the existing literature. It provided concrete empirical evidence establishing a subtle connection between the symbolic self-completion theory and the identity status paradigm. It is also amongst the first single research conducted within the scope of these two theories in the Nigerian higher education context.