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Given the seriousness of environmental issues, academic research has proposed social norms as an effective policy tool to encourage a wide range of pro-environmental behaviors, including green consumption. However, tangible evidence of the effectiveness of the social norm approach for green consumption behaviors is unreconciled, raising controversy about such a strategy. Considering that social norm interventions are only effective when targeted at the right consumers, this study aims to focus on exploring the role of individual difference factors, namely, social power value-, social face value- and independence orientations, in clarifying the effects of social norms on green consumption behaviors.

The study uses hierarchical ordinary least squares regression to test the hypotheses with survey data from 269 consumers in Southeast Asia.

The study reveals that perceived social norms positively predict green consumption behaviors, providing additional evidence for the effectiveness of the social norms. It also finds that the perceived social norms have a stronger impact on the green consumption behaviors of consumers who value social power and social face. However, the effect becomes weaker for consumers with a strong tendency toward independence.

This study highlights the importance of individual difference factors in explaining the effectiveness of social norms. The current findings also offer insightful implications for designing more effective social influence approaches for constructing green consumption culture.

Individuals perceive multiple barriers to consuming cultured meat. This study empirically investigates whether different types of social norms enhance behavioural intentions towards this novel food technology. Specifically, it examines the impact of general norms, in-group norms and out-group norms (based on meat-eaters or non-meat eaters, respectively) on consumers' willingness to try cultured meat.

A two-factorial between-subject online experiment was conducted using a sample of 431 Austrian consumers. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling in AMOS.

This study finds empirical support that both general norms and dietary in-group norms enhance consumers' behavioural intentions towards cultured meat, whereas dietary out-group norms do not affect the latter. The effect of in-group norms on behavioural intentions is mediated by identification with the respective dietary in-group. In addition, in-group identification and out-group disidentification as well as dietary identity also directly affect willingness to try cultured meat. Overall, meat-eaters report greater behavioural intentions than non-meat-eaters.

The findings indicate that using normative dietary cues in marketing campaigns might assist in efforts to increase consumer acceptance of cultured meat. Such efforts might be particularly relevant when introducing cultured meat to European markets.

This study is the first to experimentally examine the principles of the focus theory of normative conduct and social identity theory in the context of consumer-oriented cultured meat research. It contributes to the current literature by empirically demonstrating the relevance of social (group) norms in this domain.

This paper aims to investigate the factors affecting local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior among Indonesian local government officials.

This study uses a self-report survey and collected 449 questionnaires from 65 village government districts in Central Java province, Indonesia. This study uses a simple and partial correlation to measure the relationship between the susceptibility to corrupt behavior and the independent variables. Binary logistic regression was used to investigate which independent variables were best to explain the local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior.

The results show that the factors that best explain corrupt behavior’s susceptibility are the officials’ moral conviction to refrain from corrupt behavior, the perceived opportunity of corruption and the perceived benefit of engaging in such behavior. Further, this study finds an appealing crossover interaction between the perceived cost and social norms on corrupt behavior, such that when officials perceive the cost of engaging in corrupt behavior as low, they will rely more on social norms to decide whether to commit corrupt behavior.

This study provides actionable information for policy formulation. In particular, this study indicates that improvement of internal control can deter corrupt behavior. In addition, the findings of this study also suggest that changing the way we convey the message about corruption might be a promising intervention to mitigate corrupt behavior among government officials. More specifically, a more persuasive-positive-tone message that emphasizes the benefit of not engaging in corrupt behavior or that most people are against corruption can deter corrupt behavior.

The present study provides empirical evidence on the determinants of local government officials’ corrupt behavior from Indonesia’s perspective, which is currently limited.

The rapid adoption of social media has resulted in a fundamental shift in the way communication and collaboration take place. While social media is recognized as an important marketing communication tool, it has become overlooked how social media marketing activities (user-generated and firm-generated content) influence brand equity creation in the higher education sector. Drawing from social identity theory, this study identifies how higher education institutions develop customer-based brand equity using social media marketing and social brand engagement, taking cross-comparison between high and low subjective norms.

A survey was used to collect data from a sample of 936 undergraduates of private higher education institutions in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. These data were gathered using purposive sampling, and in testing the hypothesis and structure among the variables, structural equation modeling was used to determine the relationship between the study variables.

For the conceptual framework, the authors found that the structural equation model complies with the empirical data. The structural equation model shows that social brand engagement mediates the relationship between user-generated content, firm-generated content and brand equity. Further, the subjective norms were found to moderate the relationship between user-generated content, firm-generated content and social brand engagement, highlighting that the lower the subjective norms the higher the influence on social brand engagement as students receive low pressure and influence from external parties.

The study was conducted at private higher education institutes in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Future research could benefit from the perceptions of undergraduates in public higher education institutes. Future researchers could widen the diversity of service settings in the sample and replicate this investigation to discover if the results are consistent across the whole services sector.

The current research contributes to the services marketing and branding literature in the higher education context. The paper presents the crucial elements in building brand equity for higher education institutes to fill the existing gaps in higher education branding literature. The findings of the current study provide strategies to improve the higher education sector.

Drawing on self-determination theory, this study reveals the formative and functional mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership and constructs an integrated model that combines objective and subjective career success.

Using data from 189 leaders from China, this study examined the relationship among cognitive style, social norms, entrepreneurial leadership and career success. Using SPSS version 25.0 and AMOS version 23.0, factor analysis, correlation, path analysis and moderation analysis were performed.

The results indicated that innovative cognitive style is positively related to entrepreneurial leadership, and this relationship is reinforced by social norms. Adaptive cognitive style is negatively related to entrepreneurial leadership, but this relationship is not regulated by social norms. Besides, this study found a significantly positive relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and objective career success, while entrepreneurial leadership does not demonstrate a significant relationship with subjective career success.

By combining subjective and the objective career success into entrepreneurial leadership research, the findings provide a new perspective for understanding what other experiences entrepreneurship can bring to leaders. Furthermore, the current study analyzes the informal institutional environment's promoting and impeding roles between cognitive style and entrepreneurial leadership.

Soil quality is in decline in many parts of the world, in part due to the intensification of agricultural practices. Whilst economic instruments and regulations can help incentivise uptake of more sustainable soil management practices, they rarely motivate long-term behavior change when used alone. There has been increasing attention towards the complex social factors that affect uptake of sustainable soil management practices. To understand why some communities try these practices whilst others do not, we undertook a narrative review to understand how social capital influences adoption in developed nations. We found that the four components of social capital – trust, norms, connectedness and power – can all influence the decision of farmers to change their soil management. Specifically, information flows more effectively across trusted, diverse networks where social norms exist to encourage innovation. Uptake is more limited in homogenous, close-knit farming communities that do not have many links with non-farmers and where there is a strong social norm to adhere to the status quo. Power can enhance or inhibit uptake depending on its characteristics. Future research, policy and practice should consider whether a lack of social capital could hinder uptake of new practices and, if so, which aspects of social capital could be developed to increase adoption of sustainable soil management practices. Enabling diverse, collaborative groups (including farmers, advisers and government officials) to work constructively together could help build social capital, where they can co-define, -develop and -enact measures to sustainably manage soils.

Researchers and practitioners recognize whistleblowers and the media as disparate control agents to uncover fraud and corruption in and by organizations. However, whistleblowing is mainly studied in relation to individual and organizational antecedents. Social norms and in particular the media as a form of social norm influence or norm conveyer on whistleblowing are largely unexplored. In this paper, I study the influence of perceived critical media coverage (i.e., whether media are perceived as criticizing fraud and corruption) on whistleblowing intentions (WBI) on fraud and corruption. I draw on norm activation theory to develop a moderation-mediation model of whistleblowing to highlight how the media can convey social norms influencing WBI. Using a cross-national survey of employees from China, Germany, and Russia (n = 1,159), I hypothesize and find that media directly influence employee attitudes toward fraud and corruption as well as the likelihood to whistle blow. Critical media coverage also reduces the influence of descriptive norms by co-worker misconduct on attitudes and the negative influence of fear of retaliation on WBI. This paper is the first to highlight the importance of critical mass media on whistleblowing decisions. My findings suggest that the media influence potential whistleblowers in a way that can be described along the lines of “I report if they report.”

This study aims to examine the influence of sustainability education in 15 Indian universities and the mediating role of the theory of planned behavior in predicting students’ intentions to start an enterprise supporting sustainability.

The data, which consists of 422 samples, was collected from 15 universities in India. It was analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling, which is frequently used for prediction models. The model was further checked for goodness-of-fit using Amos.

The results suggested that personal and subjective norms play a mediating role in shaping the intentions of students to choose entrepreneurship in the sustainability field. Education on sustainability has a significant influence on personal and subjective norms, and these norms further help to develop entrepreneurial intentions.

The study will be helpful for researchers and universities in understanding the importance and stake of including courses on sustainability.

As the results suggest, social norms play a significant role in determining entrepreneurial intentions; therefore, the study will develop a societal culture of start-up education and ethos.

The research is original and one of the first to examine the mediating role of the theory of planned behavior on the relationship between education and intentions to start a sustainable enterprise.

Knowledge sharing is a key part of enterprise knowledge management, which helps to develop and use knowledge-related resources and ultimately achieve organizational goals. This study aims to theoretically discuss and empirically investigate the mechanism by which the intention to share knowledge is influenced by employees’ attitudes, social pressure and job characteristics.

Based on the theory of planned behavior, this study uses primary data collected from technology companies in the Yangtze River Delta region of China based on a longitudinal tracking research method of different variables at two different points in time. The data from 287 questionnaires were investigated by hierarchical regression analysis and processed with SPSS 21.0.

The findings suggest that attitudes toward knowledge sharing, perceived social norms and job autonomy positively affect knowledge-sharing intentions. Job autonomy plays a moderating role in the relationship between perceived social norms and knowledge-sharing intentions. Specifically, job autonomy positively moderates the effect of pro-sharing norms on knowledge-sharing intentions and negatively moderates the effects of subjective norms on knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study brings together employees’ and work-related characteristics to systematically explore the influence of employees’ personal evaluations of knowledge sharing. Additionally, by empirically distinguishing between subjective and pro-sharing norms, the study contributes to a better understanding of the antecedents of knowledge sharing and other voluntary behaviors at the individual level.