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By the end of this chapter on minors, internet-enabled devices and online shopping behaviour, readers will be able to

• Identify fundamental benefits and harm engendered when minors have unlimited access to internet-enabled devices

• Locate the main catalysts of benefit and harm to minors due to internet usage

• Show how a priori studies have created a rich and balanced narrative in the field of benefits and harm of the internet to minors

• Argue how the benefits outweigh the harm (or vice versa) impacting on minors in unlimited use of the internet

• Develop strategies to enhance the benefits and limit the harm caused by unlimited access to the internet

Identify fundamental benefits and harm engendered when minors have unlimited access to internet-enabled devices

Locate the main catalysts of benefit and harm to minors due to internet usage

Show how a priori studies have created a rich and balanced narrative in the field of benefits and harm of the internet to minors

Argue how the benefits outweigh the harm (or vice versa) impacting on minors in unlimited use of the internet

Develop strategies to enhance the benefits and limit the harm caused by unlimited access to the internet

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the new construct online shopper confusion and to identify online confusion causes and consequences.

Data obtained from a projective technique and a quantitative study were analyzed to identify online shopper confusion causes. Two experiments employing different stimulus materials tested the conceptualized consequences of online shopper confusion.

Confusing online store elements are classified into three online confusion causes. Data yielded from two experiments using fictitious and real shopping scenarios as stimulus material show that a confusing internet retail process leads to negative consumer reactions.

The resulting taxonomy of confusing online store elements offers guidance on the creation of non-confusing online shopping trips, and highlights the relevance of a non-confusing internet retail process. Online shopper confusion is linked to negative behavioral reactions. Consequently, this research offers an explanation for undesirable consumer reactions in internet retailing.

The findings provide practitioners with concrete insights into how the internet retail process confuses shoppers which help to assess the confusion potential of their existing online stores and consider confusion issues in the development of new online stores.

This research is the first to explore confusion during the internet retail process. The multi-method approach offers highly valid insights into the causes and consequences of online shopper confusion.

This research aims to examine how consumers react to being ignored by a company once they have complained about an online service failure. The authors seek to propose that automatic reply e-mails to customer complaints are considered a form of cyberostracism, thus having equally harmful effects on customer perceptions as a mere no reply.

The authors first conducted a qualitative study to ensure that consumers feel ignored when companies fail to respond to their e-mails. This was followed by an experimental study that tested the research propositions. The experimental design was a 3 (ostracism) × 2 (severity of failure) factorial between-subjects design.

The results indicated that consumers did not perceive any significant difference between an automatic reply e-mail and no reply at all and perceived both to be a form of cyberostracism. It was also found that cyberostracism led to higher levels of negative emotions, lower levels of satisfaction, and higher levels of negative behavioural outcomes. The prediction that these impacts would be moderated by failure severity was partially supported.

These findings should alert retailers to the fact that when an online failure occurs, proactive and personalised recovery efforts are necessary to maintain customer loyalty and mitigate negative behavioural outcomes.

The authors extend the online failure literature by showing that automatic reply e-mail responses are perceived as cyberostracism and have an equally negative impact on consumer perceptions and post-failure behaviours as a mere no reply.

We review past research on the relationship between attributional perceptions, emotions, and workplace aggression and develop a conceptual model that extends this research in two ways. First, we consider the influence of controllability attributions on the type (otherdirected, self-directed, hostile, non-hostile) and likelihood of aggressive responses to negative workplace outcomes and situations. Second, we consider the extent to which discrete negative emotions might mediate these attribution-aggression relationships. Implications for anticipating and preventing workplace aggression based on this conceptual model are discussed.

Drawing on sensemaking and emotion regulation research, the purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize core contributor withdrawal (CCW) in the context of online peer-production communities (OPPCs). To explain the underlying mechanisms that make core contributors withdraw from these communities, the authors propose a process theory of contributor withdrawal called the core contributor withdrawal theory (CCWT).

To support CCWT, a typology of unmet expectations of online communities is presented, which uncovers the cognitive and emotional processing involved. To illustrate the efficacy of CCWT, a case study of the English version of Wikipedia is provided as a representative OPPC.

CCWT identifies sensemaking and emotion regulation concerning contributors’ unmet expectations as causes of CCW from OPPCs, which first lead to declined expectations, burnout and psychological withdrawal and thereby to behavioral withdrawal.

CCWT clearly identifies how and why important participation transitions, such as from core contributor to less active contributor or non-contributor, take place. By adopting process theories, CCWT provides a nuanced explanation of the cognitive and affective events that take place before core contributors withdraw from OPPCs.

CCWT highlights the challenge of online communities shifting from recruiting new contributors to preventing loss of existing contributors in the maturity stage. Additionally, by identifying the underlying cognitive and affective processes that core contributors experience in response to unexpected events, communities can develop safeguards to prevent or correct cognitions and emotions that lead to withdrawal.

CCWT provides a theoretical framework that accounts for the negative cognitions and affects that lead to core contributors’ withdrawal from online communities. It furthers the understanding of what motivates contributing to and what leads to withdrawal from OPPC.

In this study, we develop reliable scales for measuring taxpayers' social norms toward tax compliance and explore the effect of social desirability bias and several methodological issues that may affect behavioral tax and accounting studies. This study provides theoretical specificity to a potentially “decisive” (Alm & McKee, 1998) influence on tax compliance by drawing on Cialdini and Trost's (1998) taxonomy of social norms in developing our scale items. We describe in detail the methods that we used to develop these scales. On the basis of the responses of 218 experienced taxpayers, our results identify four separate social norm dimensions that correspond with the four social norm constructs identified by Cialdini and Trost. We also consider the effect of social desirability bias and find that these effects are mild for experienced taxpayers and are not directly related to compliance intentions. Finally, we also manipulate both the order of the items presented in the experiment and the form (online or paper-based) of the experimental instrument. While order and form effects do not interfere with the interpretation of the influence of social norms on tax compliance, we do find a significant presentation order effect driven by the paper condition, which suggests that online data collection may be preferable to uncontrolled paper and pencil administration.

While marketing and management research suggests that managers’ individual characteristics influence pricing decisions, the influence of personality traits in this context remains unclear. This study aims to explore the relationship between the five basic personality traits of the five-factor model (extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism) and three basic pricing practices (value-, competition- and cost-informed).

On the basis of a non-experimental decision-making scenario, the analysis examines the pricing decisions of 57 managers in relation to a new business service.

The results suggest that managers’ conscientiousness and openness to experience are positively related to preference for value-informed pricing. Similarly, managers’ agreeableness is positively related to preference for competition-informed pricing and managers’ openness to experience and agreeableness are positively related to preference for cost-informed pricing.

The cross-sectional study design does not support causal inference, and the modest sample size may limit the external validity of the findings.

By increasing awareness of the influence of personality on pricing preferences, the findings are of relevance to managers who are directly involved in pricing decisions. Additionally, the findings are informative for managers who must assign responsibility for pricing authority within firms.

This empirical exploration of the relationship between certain personality traits and specific pricing practices contributes to the literature on psychological aspects of pricing theory by showing how managerial personality influences pricing preferences under uncertainty.

This study aims to extend previous research on the relationship between role stressors and symptoms of burnout by examining the influence of job resourcefulness as a situational personality trait in the burnout process, and its impact on service recovery performance. Using data from call centre frontline employees (FLEs) in New Zealand, it seeks to investigate the moderating influence of job resourcefulness on the relationships between role stressors, burnout symptoms and FLE service recovery performance.

In this study, call centre FLEs completed a self‐administered online survey questionnaire on role stressors, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, job resourcefulness and service recovery performance. Data were analyzed using structural equations modelling (SEM) by means of LISREL 8.53.

The results show that job resourcefulness buffers both the dysfunctional effects of role stressors on symptoms of burnout and the effects of role stressors on FLE service recovery performance.

Limitations of the study include the generalisability of the findings within one organisational context. Suggestions for future research include an examination of other personality traits specific to FLE jobs such as customer orientation.

The research advances understanding of the relationships between role stressors, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, job resourcefulness as a situational personality trait and FLE service recovery performance in a call centre environment. The findings highlight the value of job resourceful FLEs, and suggest a number of practical implications for the identification, recruitment and retention of call centre FLEs.

No attention has been given to examining the role of situational personality traits and their effect on the burnout process. By extending previous research on the relationship between role stressors and burnout symptoms, this study investigates the impact of job resourcefulness in the burnout process and in influencing the service recovery performance efforts of call centre FLEs directly.