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Distance learning has proliferated significantly in the last 20 years. This chapter considers some of the issues and implications when teaching and learning moves from an in-person to a distance mode. It begins with a brief history of distance learning, considering both the technologies used and the dominant pedagogical approaches employed. This is followed by a survey of the impact of Michael Moore's theory of transactional distance, which considered the consequences of separating the learner from peers and instructor. Contemporary work on Moore's contribution includes transaction and participation, activity theory, and transactional presence. A second major aspect of distance learning has been the attempt to introduce social presence into learning environments. The history of social presence is explored, as are its levels and consequences for the learner. Contemporary aspects of social presence reviewed include communities of inquiry. While Web 2.0 has spectacularly resulted in connectivity, it remains unclear as to whether this automatically resulted in more strongly connected learners. Connectivist approaches are considered and distinctions made between technological connectivity and pedagogical engagement. It is argued that the full and exciting potential of Web 2.0 in distance learning requires a commitment to the distanced learner, balancing learner autonomy and teacher presence, promoting meaningful social engagement, and meeting the specific needs of the distance learner.

Understanding the factors that influence individuals’ adherence to social distancing is critical to effective policymaking in respiratory pandemics such as COVID-19. This study aims to explore the role of social factors in relation to social distancing measures.

Stratified convenience sampling was used in this survey research, involving 450 adults residing in both rural and urban areas of Aligodarz County, Lorestan, Iran.

The findings showed that approximately 14% of participants did not adhere to any of the assessed social distancing behaviors, while only around 30% adhered to all four assessed behaviors. On average, participants reported having 5.13 (SD = 3.60) close physical contact within the 24 h prior to completing the questionnaire. Bridging social capital and gender emerged as the most frequently observed predictors across the assessed social distancing measures. Additionally, age, employment status and residential setting were identified as influential factors for some of the evaluated measures.

This study contributes to the field by highlighting that the likelihood of non-adherence to social distancing measures tends to increase among male participants, those aged above 60, employed individuals, urban residents and those with a higher level of bridging social capital.

The purpose of this study is to explore the three-way interaction effects among congruence type (proximal vs distal) of nonverbal ad messages, assessment perspective (internal vs external) of verbal ad messages and social distance (close vs faraway) on consumers’ visit intention.

After developing the four categories of restaurant advertisements and scenarios for each type of social distance, the authors used 780 observations collected from Chinese consumers via the online survey platform Sojump and WeChat. The authors conducted ANOVA to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that in proximal congruence situations, consumers who feel a close social distance between themselves and their companions report higher visit intentions when exposed to internal versus external perspective-oriented ad messages; in distal congruence situations, external perspective-oriented ad messages elicit higher intention to visit advertised restaurant when consumers feel a far social distance between themselves and their companions.

Future research can focus on the different categories of messages, such as functional and experiential messages, to find whether similar interaction effects are explored or not.

This paper suggests some practical implications for advertisers to maximize the impact of advertisements on consumers’ behavioral outcomes via combining the different characteristics of nonverbal and verbal messages effectively, especially according to their target consumers’ characteristics.

In the view of the three-way interaction effects, this paper offers a new lens on understanding how advertisements influence consumers’ behavioral outcomes, which could contribute to the advancement of advertisement theories.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of matching social distance and the concrete/abstract visual presentation of the threats of distracted driving in campaign design.

This study conducts a series of 2 (social distance frame: close vs distant) × 2 (visual rhetoric style: literal vs metaphorical) online experiments on the perspective of the construal level theory.

This study identified that a fit between social distance and visual rhetoric style of the threat enhances the effect of a social marketing campaign targeting young adults. A message framed in terms of socially proximal entities shows a favorable impact on young drivers’ threat perception and behavioral intention when the visual rhetoric depicts the threats of texting while driving more concrete. On the other hand, more distant social entities in the message show a better impact when the threats are visualized in metaphor.

This paper enhances the understanding of a threat appeal message design by adding empirical evidence of matching visual rhetoric style and social distance. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for social marketing campaigns, regarding the strategic tailoring of messages, particularly in public service announcements that discourage texting while driving on young adults.

The aim of this paper is to explore whether national diversity in the form of national variety (differences in kind, e.g. number of nationalities) has a positive effect on group processes and performance whereas national separation (differences in attitudes and beliefs; i.e. social distance and national stereotypes) has a negative effect.

This cross-cultural comparative study examines the moderating role of national diversity in the relationship between social attitudes on conflict and performance across two samples. Participants are presented with one of the two national variety conditions (low or high national variety) who then report on social distance, national stereotype, conflict, and performance.

National separation negatively relates to performance and positively relates to conflict. However, there is less conflict and higher performance, despite national separation, when there is high national variety.

This study is limited to individual perceptions. Research could be extended to experienced conflict and effects of individual national separation on conflict and performance at the group level.

Although social distances and negative stereotypes may not be completely eliminated, the results imply that managers can modify the effects by promoting and celebrating national variety. The results show that even conflict is modified (task conflict increases while relationship and process conflict decreases) when there is national variety despite social distances and negative stereotypes.

This study contributes to workgroup research on diversity and conflict management by exploring social attitudes and opinions. Individual attitudes are the bases of group processes and this study attends to two of the social attitudes that need to be added to our understanding of group processes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of craftsmanship content and social distance embedded in the craftsmanship content on luxury brand experiences, perceived luxury and brand purchase intentions using a social media video.

The authors conducted a single factor (close social distance vs great social distance vs control group) using a between-subjects experimental design. The social distance was manipulated by the presence (i.e. a close social distance) or absence (i.e. a great social distance) of a consumer scene in a craftsmanship video shown on social media. The control group watched a video with non-craftsmanship content. Then, brand experience, perceived luxury and purchase intentions were measured.

The results showed that the control group perceived less luxury and had lower brand experiences and purchase intentions than the group that watched the video without a consumer scene. In addition, participants who watched the craftsmanship video that included a consumer scene (i.e. a close social distance) had stronger brand experiences than those who watched the video without the scene (i.e. a great social distance). The brand experience increased perceived luxury and purchase intentions.

By manipulating social distance and providing better brand experiences in social media, experiential marketing allows luxury brands to reconcile two apparently incompatible goals: maintaining an exclusive image while increasing purchase intentions.

In responding to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, drastic public health measures such as social distancing and lockdowns have been implemented across the globe to slow the spread of the virus. In the USA, the public's reaction to social distancing has been mixed, evident in a high number of people flocking to beaches, bars and shops as coronavirus cases soar. Public health officials have issued strong warnings about the danger people face but the problem persists. To fill this gap, informed by the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this research explores why many people refuse to practice social distancing.

Two studies were conducted during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the first study, a sample of 750 respondents was recruited from a US online consumer panel to complete a structured survey questionnaire. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. In the second study, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to 50 US online participants to further uncover people's in-depth perceptions and perspectives toward the pandemic and social distancing. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.

The results from the first study show that risk-taking attitude, authoritarianism and subjective norm are significant predictors of social distancing intention and behavior, through perceived severity of COVID-19. Four themes emerged from the second study, which are consistent with the proposed conceptual framework in the first study.

Theoretically, the authors’ findings first contribute to the emerging marketing literature that focuses on creating sustained positive changes and improving the well-being of consumers, communities and societies. Secondly, their findings corroborate with previous findings documented in the social influence literature by showing that during the times of uncertainty and confusion such as COVID-19, social norms (not forced by laws and regulations) play the most critical role in influencing a voluntary, socially beneficial behavior (such as social distancing). Third, this study extends the application of the TPB into the realm of social distancing behavior. The three main components of the TPB, namely attitude, behavioral control and subjective norm, are shown to predict social distancing behavior. Practically, the results of this research have important implications for public health policies on how to encourage positive public health behavior amid pandemics such as COVID-19.

Findings of previous research imply that virtual contact with other social groups, such as the internet, may have an impact on sociocultural dimensions such as social distance; however, there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting this implication. To fill this void in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social distance and the internet as an information source.

A self-administered survey was conducted on tourists from several different European countries, through random sampling, in select popular tourist destinations of Turkey.

A direct relationship between the use of the internet as an information source about the host community and social distance was not revealed within the scope of this study.

There is limited research on the relationship between Internet and several sociocultural aspects in tourism. This study investigates the relationship between social distance and internet empirically.

The COVID-19 outbreak reached a critical stage when it became imperative for public health systems to act decisively and design potential behavioral operational strategies aimed at containing the pandemic. Isolation through social distancing played a key role in achieving this objective. This research study examines the factors affecting the intention of individuals toward social distancing in India.

A correlation study was conducted on residents from across Indian states (N = 499). Online questionnaires were floated, consisting of health belief model and theory of planned behavior model, with respect to social distancing behavior initially. Finally, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that perceived susceptibility (PS), facilitating conditions (FC) and subjective norms are the major predictors of attitude toward social distancing, with the effect size of 0.277, 0.132 and 0.551, respectively. The result also confirms that the attitude toward social distancing, perceived usefulness of social distancing and subjective norms significantly predict the Intention of individuals to use social distancing with the effect size of 0.355, 0.197 and 0.385, respectively. The nonsignificant association of PS with social distancing intention (IN) (H1b) is rendering the fact that attitude (AT) mediates the relationship between PS and IN; similarly, the nonsignificant association of FC with IN (H5) renders the fact that AT mediates the relationship between FC and IN.

The results of the study are helpful to policymakers to handle operations management of nudges like social distancing.

The research is one of its kind that explores the behavioral aspects of handling social nudges through FC.

The authors proposed a conceptual model by examining the influence of threats to their freedom on tourists’ psychological distance including social distance, spatial distance, and temporal distance, which effect psychological reactance and the consequent online Airbnb booking intentions. Furthermore, media intrusiveness as a moderator determines the boundary conditions between perceived threats to their freedom and social distance, spatial distance, and temporal distance.

Data was gathered from 491 Chinese travelers to provide empirical evidence. The authors performed data analysis in Amos 26.0 using structural equation modeling (SEM) and Hayes (2013) PROCESS macro.

The findings positively reinforced all the structural relationships of the study. Notably, media intrusiveness significantly moderates the association between perceived threats to their freedom and psychological distance (i.e. social distance, spatial distance, and temporal distance).

The findings contribute significantly to the field of social psychology, advertising, and consumer behavior derive prolific implications for policymakers and sharing economy platforms. Lastly, by identifying limitations, this research opens doors for future scholars.

Governments' acute precautionary measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak have confined individual freedom across the globe. This study illuminates how tourists conceive these preventative measures as perceived threats to their freedom, and subsequently engage psychological reactance.