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This paper examines the understanding of various factors that influence consumer purchase intentions of renting products as a result of growth in the sharing economy. In addition, the study examines the notion of consumer minimalism, the mediating role of environmental consciousness and the moderating role of consumer scepticism to explain consumer rental consumption intention.

The research used a survey questionnaire to collect data from Indian consumers (N = 259). Data analysis involved using structural equation modelling with AMOS v25 and PROCESS macro. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the models involving mediation, moderation and moderated mediation.

The findings link consumer minimalism and the intention to rent products. This research contributed to the existing body of knowledge by incorporating the concepts of consumer minimalism and consumer scepticism into consumers' decisions regarding renting products. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that environmental consciousness enhances consumers' inclination to rent products, shedding light on the factors influencing this preference.

This research extends the existing literature on consumer purchase intentions for rented products by investigating how consumer minimalism, mediated by environmental consciousness and moderated by consumer scepticism, influences these intentions. The results offer valuable insights for both theoretical understanding and practical applications, guiding marketing developers and brands that cater to minimalist consumers interested in renting products. Additionally, it suggests future research avenues in this domain.

This study aims to investigate the moderating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitment in the relationships between antecedents and outcomes of consumer situational scepticism towards luxury brands.

The study used a questionnaire administered through a consumer panel, using established scales. A 2 (fictional, non-fictional) × 2 (low commitment, high commitment) factorial experimental design with four cells was implemented.

The results revealed that values-driven motives were associated with lower consumer situational scepticism, whereas egoistic-driven motives were linked to higher levels of consumer situational scepticism, regardless of the CSR commitment level of the luxury brand. However, the impact of strategic-driven motives and stakeholder-driven motives on consumer situational scepticism was only significant within the low commitment condition. Consumer situational scepticism was found to lead to lower brand resonance and resilience to negative information in both low and high commitment conditions.

This study contributes new knowledge by highlighting the crucial role of motives in shaping consumer perceptions, including scepticism, brand resonance and resilience to negative information, ultimately influencing consumer advocacy. The study further demonstrates that high commitment weakens the relationship between strategic-driven and stakeholder-driven motives and consumer scepticism. Moreover, high commitment also weakens the relationship between scepticism and the key outcomes examined in the study.

Scepticism about organizations has become an integral part of the field organizational theory. This article aspires to develop through historical analysis a taxonomy of organizational scepticism. Though scepticism of all types have generic traits, there are three distinct types of scepticism: premodern, modern and postmodern scepticism. Premodern scepticism attacks the modern organizational by stressing concepts grounded in nature and tradition. Modern sceptics attack the optimism of managerialism about organizations. Postmodern sceptics stress that technological developments, economic self interest, and irrationality will be the eventual undoing of modern organization. Organizational scepticism is now so pervasive that it should be treated as an integral part of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether accountability pressure and ignorance with regard to the preferences and views of the superior are necessary characteristics of the decision environment to effectively encourage pre-emptive self-criticism and elevate professional scepticism. Auditors continue to be called to account for a perceived lack of professional scepticism in the conduct of their audits. Pre-emptive self-criticism has been proposed as one means by which the level of professional scepticism exercised by auditors may be enhanced.

The role of accountability pressure and knowledge of the superior’s preferences in an experimental setting has been investigated, eliciting self-assessed measures of accountability pressure and manipulating whether the superior’s preferences were known or unknown. Judgements are made in the context of a preliminary analytical review setting.

It was found that greater application of pre-emptive self-criticism is associated with the presence of perceived accountability pressure, but only when the superior’s preferences are not known.

Prior research reports that the effectiveness of prompts to be self-critical is limited. Findings suggest that pre-emptive self-criticism may be more effective in elevating professional scepticism than the findings of these studies suggest, and that the absence of an effect may be the result of low levels of accountability pressure in previous research settings. The results of this study imply that future research investigating pre-emptive self-criticism as a means of elevating professional scepticism should incorporate, as is the case in actual audit environments, accountability pressure in the decision setting.

Qualified by the need for further research, our study guides audit firms in their efforts to meet the expectations of regulators, oversight bodies, standard setters and the public at large for an elevated level of professional scepticism. Our findings suggest that placing auditors under accountability pressure might assist audit firms in meeting these expectations. Our findings also encourage auditors to exercise caution when making their preferences known to subordinates.

Despite its potential to help auditors meet demands for an elevated level of professional scepticism, pre-emptive self-criticism has received very little attention in the audit literature. Moreover, the few studies that have examined pre-emptive self-criticism find that prompts to be self-critical elevate professional scepticism in only limited circumstances. We make an original contribution towards an explanation for these findings, and guide future research by showing that accountability pressure is an important characteristic of the decision environment that should be in place before attempting to elevate professional scepticism through the encouragement of pre-emptive self-criticism.

The purpose of this study is to examine how perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) motives may influence situational scepticism towards luxury brands and its effects on brand resonance, resilience to negative information and consumer advocacy of luxury brands. The moderating role of perceived fit towards luxury brand CSR initiatives is also investigated.

An experimental approach on a 2 × 2 matrix was used. Data are collected through a consumer panel.

Values-driven motives were found to lead to lower consumer situational scepticism and egoistic-driven motives would lead to higher levels of consumer situational scepticism. While higher consumer situational scepticism leads to lower brand resonance, there is no significant relationship between scepticism and resilience to negative information and consumer advocacy. The findings also suggest that perceived fit moderates the relationship between consumer situational scepticism to resilience to negative information and consumer situational scepticism to consumer advocacy.

The key originality of the study is that it provides empirical insights into situational scepticism of CSR initiatives and its influence in consumer and management outcomes in luxury brands.

This study aims to examine whether accountability and culture have an impact on auditors’ professional scepticism. It also examines whether culture moderates the effect of accountability on auditors’ professional scepticism.

Three of the Big 4 firms in Australia and Egypt participated in an audit judgement experiment, which required them to indicate their beliefs about the risk of fraud and error at the planning stage of a hypothetical audit and evaluate the truthfulness of explanations provided by the client management. The authors examined whether their professional scepticism was influenced by accountability.

The results indicate professional scepticism differs significantly between cultures in some situations. The fact that culture influences scepticism suggests that even when auditors use the same standards (such as ISA 240 and ISA 600), they are likely to be applied inconsistently, even within the same firm. The authors, therefore, recommend that international bodies issue additional guidance on cultural values and consider these cultural differences when designing or adopting auditing standards.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines whether culture moderates the impact of accountability on auditors’ professional scepticism using Egyptian and Australian (Middle Eastern and Western) auditors. Prior literature suggests that individuals subject to accountability pressure increase their cognitive effort and vigilance to detect fraud and error. As the authors find evidence that culture moderates accountability pressure and as accountability affects scepticism, they add to the literature suggesting that culture can influence professional scepticism.

Cause-related marketing – linking product sales with donations to a cause – are popular with consumers because they produce warm-glow feelings (the positive route). But when they involve large donations, they may trigger consumer scepticism, reducing the warm glow (the negative route). Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether large donations in cause-related marketing can produce consumer scepticism and reduce the warm-glow effect and positive attitude towards the retailer.

An experiment varying the donation size (large, medium, small) in a cause-related marketing offer run by an office equipment retailer is set up. Hypotheses are tested using bootstrapping regression analyses.

The negative route has the greater effect: scepticism towards the offer mediates the relationship between donation size and the warm glow. Furthermore, scepticism towards a large donation is higher (lower) for respondents scoring low (high) on altruism and high (low) on familiarity with cause-related marketing.

When using cause-related marketing, retailers should choose their features and target audience carefully in order to reduce scepticism, e.g., small donations should be offered in promotions targeting consumers who are familiar with cause-related marketing and show low altruism.

This study contributes to the recent research examining the negative effects of cause-related marketing by explicitly conceptualising and measuring scepticism towards cause-related marketing. The findings are also valuable because they indicate the importance of a shift in focus, away from the conventional question of cause-related marketing effectiveness to the more specific and under-investigated problem of the appropriate core target consumers.

This study aims to empirically test the influence of pull factors on the intention to engage in Muslim-friendly travel. This study proposes a distinct path between Islamic attributes and emotional value and scepticism, along with destination image and its functional value. This study also proposes the role of halal awareness in moderating the relationship between Islamic attributes and scepticism.

This study used a quantitative approach using an online survey. The authors purposively selected younger individuals who had travelled inside the country at least three times during the past five years. With a total of 416 valid responses, this study used variance-based partial least squares to test the hypotheses.

The results show that intention to engage in Muslim-friendly travel is positively influenced by emotional and functional values, but negatively by scepticism. Emotional value and scepticism are influenced by Islamic attributes, whereas functional value is influenced by destination image. More specifically, halal awareness is proven to moderate the relationship between Islamic attributes and scepticism, in which individuals with a higher level of halal awareness tend to be less sceptical about halal offerings.

This study supports a previous study in which emotional and functional values are considered differently by consumers. Furthermore, the dual role of Islamic attributes, as pull factors, is confirmed, providing a deeper understanding of its influence on emotional value and scepticism. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first to investigate the role of halal awareness in increasing the level of scepticism among Muslim consumers.

This study aims to examine the moderating role of principle-based entity (PBE) of luxury brands and its effect on perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) motives, consumer situational scepticism and brand resonance.

Structural equation modelling using multigroup analysis was used. Data were collected through a consumer panel.

Values-driven motives lowered consumer situational scepticism (CSS) significantly more in PBE than non-PBE. However, egoistic-driven motives increased CSS significantly more in PBE than non-PBE. Stakeholder-driven motives and strategic-driven motives did not elicit CSS, contrary to prior studies in non-luxury brands. PBE status also weakens the relationship between CSS and brand resonance more than non-PBE status.

This study is the first to provide empirical insights into PBE status and its effects on perceived motives, CSS of CSR initiatives and its influence in consumer and management outcomes in luxury brands.

The aims of the study are: to compare the environmental concern and scepticism levels of the participants and whether or not they display green purchase behaviour; to investigate the influence of environmental concern and scepticism on green purchase behaviour by utilizing the Theory of Planned Behaviour.

The data were collected from participant and non‐participant customers of the e‐invoicing program of Turk Telecom. Customers were clustered into four groups according to their environmental concerns and scepticism levels.

Research results show that those customers who have a high level of environmental concern and less sceptical reflect a positive attitude, have a high positive subjective norm and perceived behavioural control that motivates them to have stronger intentions to become e‐invoice subscribers in the near future.

The results found in the paper provide clear evidence supporting the Theory of Planned Behaviour in Turkey. Moreover, while most previous studies have employed undergraduate samples which are not representative of common customers, the present study employed a large and real customer sample which strongly represents customers in general.