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This paper aims to explores the escapist journey that consumers embark on to reduce self-discrepancy, from the motivation to satisfy personal goals to the fulfilment of these goals. Escapism is a powerful concept for understanding why and how people resolve a perceived self-discrepancy. Previous research has provided rich and diverse insights into the motivations and goals, experience contexts and outcomes that are associated with escapism. However, these notions have been explored in an independent, piecemeal fashion that has hampered the development of cohesive theoretical foundations.

The authors conduct a qualitative study, relying on 33 journeys derived from 20 in-depth interviews, to understand and explain how escapism is initiated, formed and relived.

The findings document the existence of a predominantly utilitarian and a predominantly hedonic model, articulating why and how consumers pursue distinctly different types of escapist journeys. Utilitarian escapism is primarily concerned with the need to avoid negative emotional states, prompting consumers to decide impulsively to engage into routinised experience contexts to find relief. Hedonic escapism is primarily concerned with the desire to achieve positive emotional states. It involves lengthy and thoughtful anticipation, promotes consumers to pursue experiences in out of the ordinary contexts, and is realised when consumers obtain reward.

This study’s contributions present significant opportunities for further knowledge development.

The research findings have substantial practical ramifications for industry.

Understanding people’s needs to avoid the stress of everyday life (i.e. utilitarian escapism) and their desires to seek out excitement and pleasure (i.e. hedonic escapism) has important societal implications.

This research provides a robust theoretical foundation for escapism, one that is applicable across multiple settings. Findings are anchored within existing theory to articulate the notions of utilitarian and hedonic escapism, explaining why and how consumers engage in markedly different escapist journeys.

The measurement of women's economic welfare and exploring its underlying factors have been undervalued in the context of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. This study addressed this gap by focusing on assessing women's subjective economic welfare and its socioeconomic and cultural determinants in the education and health sectors within Mardan, Northern Pakistan.

The study used stratified random sampling techniques for the selection of sample respondents and collected data through a well-structured questionnaire. To measure women’s economic welfare, the study utilizes Lorenz curves, the Gini index, the Sen Social Welfare function and an individual's gross monthly income. Furthermore, the ordinary least squares method was utilized to analyze the determinants of economic welfare.

The findings show greater income inequality and a lower welfare level for women in the education sector compared to the health sector. Likewise, the study identifies several key determinants, such as age, educational qualification, job experience, respect for working women, outside and work-place problems and the suffering of family members of working women for their economic well-being.

This study makes valuable contributions to the literature by focusing on the cultural perspective of Pakhtun women in Mardan and providing a context-specific understanding of subjective economic welfare. Additionally, the authors collected first-hand data, which gave an original outlook on working women's current economic welfare level. Furthermore, this study undertakes a comparative analysis of working women's welfare in the health and education sectors. This comparison offers a more accurate portrayal of the challenges and opportunities specific to these occupations.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0246

The purpose of this study is to provide a nuanced understanding of the marketing placebo effect (MPE) of products with reduced sugar labeling and how it forms certain perceptual underpins (perceived healthiness (PH) and perceived tastiness (PT)), with the potential effect of product category and social class in consideration.

The proposed model is tested using a sample of 822 participants by employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Hypothetical relationships among MPE, PH, PT, purchase intention (PI) and social class are examined for both hedonic and utilitarian products.

The results highlight the positive role of MPE in leveraging consumer PI through the parallel mediation of PH and PT. The positive effect of MPE on PH and PT was more pronounced for the utilitarian product. In addition, social class negatively moderated the relationship between PH and PI only in the case of the utilitarian product.

This paper contributed to the MPE literature in the food industry by challenging the conventional intuition of “Unhealthy = Tasty” and highlighting the potential of perceived food healthiness to positively influence perceived food tastiness under the effect of MPE. An upper social class would attenuate the positive effect of perceived food healthiness on PI.

Any credible agenda that seeks to eradicate global poverty must seek to correct the structural injustices and inequities that cause and perpetuate endemic poverty. Such an agenda must aim not merely to aid the poor with grants, welfare, and subsidies (that indirectly perpetuate poverty) but seek to enhance self-sufficiency and productive skills of the poor by ensuring them comparable access to opportunities of the market economies to participate, on more equitable terms, in the dynamic process of overall economic growth. In this context, we apply critical thinking to identify and recognize the structured injustices of the market system, which not only cause poverty but also compromise human dignity via social inequalities and inequities arguably caused by the free market and corporate capital systems of the world. Global poverty that affects more than a quarter of the human population is a pernicious self-serving system connected to the injustices of the business and political systems of the world. The persistent nature of poverty is in direct proportion to our inability to eradicate it as a whole in the cosmic system. Eradication of global desperate poverty and its unjust structural causes can be achieved, we submit, by tracing the roots of global poverty to corporate and free enterprise capital systems and their unexamined structures of social injustice and social inequalities.

With the increasing popularity of live streaming, the exploration of online behaviors on live streaming platforms has become a research hot spot in academia. However, the literature lacks cross-cultural investigations into live streaming addictive (LSA) behaviors among viewers. To address this gap, based on stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory and motivation theory, this study investigates how information seeking, sensation seeking and community commitment (stimulus) affect hedonic and utilitarian motivation (organism), which in turn influence viewers’ LSA behaviors (response). This study also compares American and Chinese viewers to understand how LSA behaviors differ across national cultures.

We surveyed live stream viewers in both nations, collecting 758 valid samples including 377 Chinese respondents and 381 American respondents for use with the research model. A partial least squares (PLS) approach is employed for data analysis.

The results show that information seeking increases utilitarian motivation, sensation seeking increases hedonic motivation, and community commitment strengthens both hedonic and utilitarian motivation. Both hedonic motivation and utilitarian motivation positively affect LSA behaviors. In addition, based on cross-cultural analysis, we found that there was a significant mediating path common to the respondents in China and the USA (i.e. sensation seeking ? Hedonic motivation ? LSA).

The findings of this study make theoretical contributions to live streaming research and offer practical guidance for live streaming firms to formulate proper marketing strategies. Last, this study outlines several limitations and possible directions for future research.

This chapter on animal ethics, animal rights, and animal welfare is a logical sequence to and ontological consequence of the arguments in earlier chapters. By respecting Mother Nature in all her ecosystems and biodiversity levels, especially by recognizing animal rights and their uniqueness, autonomy, and intrinsicality, we actively contribute to natural sustainability and animal welfare. Our anthropocentric economic models that are profoundly insensitive to the complex interdependencies between human and nonhuman behavior systems and their irreversible environmental challenges endanger both animal rights and global sustainability. Philosophically, we confront epistemological and anthropocentric structures that uncritically privilege humans disproportionately to nonhumans and unwittingly rationalize, moralize, and commodify meat production and consumption such that animal rights and welfare get seriously compromised. To achieve animal welfare, however, we need to seriously rescale Nature's hierarchies first by dethroning ourselves from self-appointed and self-serving, uncontested and critically unexamined presumed human superiority over the nonhuman world and restoring global equality of being an opportunity for all.

This contribution responds to the call of various researchers for a shift in Responsible Management Education (RME) to adopt a more human-centered and less organizational-centered approach. Service learning (SL) is introduced as a possibility to offer didactical opportunities for participants to connect real-world experiences to system thinking in various ways. We suggest an approach called a “Prism of Reflections” to pique participants' hermeneutical, technical, and emancipatory interests so they can delve deeply into local social and environmental issues and be able to connect them to broader global issues as encapsulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We exemplify our method by demonstrating how students reflect on their experiences working at food banks, and how they relate to concerns of sustainability, poverty, and access to food. Our research suggests that this approach offers a way to situate organizational thinking and instrumental reasoning in a larger framework that considers the aims of hermeneutics, technical and emancipatory discourses. Our findings demonstrate that there are conflicts and dissonances when connecting intersubjective real-world perceptions to emancipatory interests and technical knowledge, particularly when it comes to challenges in the realm of food.

This study examines the relationship between the emphasis on organic food in Afyonkarahisar's cuisine and the growing demand for healthier and sustainable options. This study aimed to understand the factors influencing the intention to consume organic foods.

This study uses a quantitative research method. It uses scales adapted from previous research to assess the health and safety of organic food's functional, hedonic, and social values. Data were collected using the purposive sampling method, and a sample size of 410 individuals was analyzed using the PLS-SEM method. Measurement and structural models were evaluated to assess validity, reliability, and model fit.

The results indicate that implementing health and safety practices significantly and positively affects perceptions of organic food's functional, hedonic, altruistic, and social values. Additionally, consumers' attitudes toward organic food are greatly influenced by their perceptions of functional and social value, whereas hedonic and altruistic values do not have a significant positive effect.

The results of this study have a beneficial impact on food industry practitioners and policymakers. Emphasizing health and safety practices in producing and promoting organic foods can improve consumer perceptions and attitudes toward organic products. Understanding the importance of practical benefits and social issues can help companies respond effectively to consumer preferences and market organic foods.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between organic food emphasis and consumer perceptions in the unique context of Afyonkarahisar, a city renowned for its gastronomy. While focusing on Afyonkarahisar provides valuable insights into the specific values that influence consumers' attitudes toward organic food, it is essential to highlight that this research extends beyond the local context to offer broader implications and significance.

This study aims to analyze the effect of cognitive load and social value orientation on managers’ preferences when they face with two types of restructuring choices in financially distressed firms: the first belonging to the family of organizational restructuring (massive layoffs) and the second to the family of financial restructuring (debt increases).

The authors investigate experimentally the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the decision to restructure leveraged buyout (LBO) firms in financial distress by using either massive layoffs or debt increases.

By investigating the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the restructuring decision of an LBO firm in financial distress, the research reveals that, on average, cognitively loaded managers prefer massive layoffs over increased debt levels. The massive layoffs seemingly provide a relatively easier way to avoid conflict with influential, residual claimants. In contrast, social value–oriented managers actively avoid massive layoffs and prefer to increase debt.

These results imply that the performance mechanisms emphasized to improve agency relations, for example, in LBOs, have their own limitations during periods of financial distress. This study shows that one of these limits is related to cognitive distortions and personality traits.

In this research, the originality lies in understanding how managers’ internal factors affect their restructuring decision-making, in the case of LBO firms in financial distress.