With a growing body of literature linking systems of high-performance work practices to organizational performance outcomes, recent research has pushed for examinations of the underlying mechanisms ...that enable this connection. In this study, based on a large sample of Welsh public-sector employees, we explored the role of several individual-level attitudinal factors-job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and psychological empowerment-as well as organizational citizenship behaviors that have the potential to provide insights into how human resource systems influence the performance of organizational units. The results support a unit-level path model, such that department-level, high-performance work system utilization is associated with enhanced levels of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and psychological empowerment. In turn, these attitudinal variables were found to be positively linked to enhanced organizational citizenship behaviors, which are further related to a second-order construct measuring departmental performance.
This study determined the knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding COVID-19 and assessed the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine among healthcare workers and the general population.
A web-based, ...cross-sectional study was conducted using convenience sampling in Libya from December 1 to 18, 2020 among the general population and healthcare workers. Data on demographic characteristics, COVID-19 vaccination-related concerns, knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding COVID-19, and knowledge, attitudes, and acceptance regarding the COVID-19 vaccine were collected using a self-administered survey. A binomial logistic regression was performed with 70% efficacy to determine the association between acceptance of the vaccine and study variables.
Valid and complete responses were collected from 15,087 participants. Of these, 6227 (41.3%) were male and 8860 (58.7%) were female, with a mean (SD) age of 30.6 ± 9.8 years. Moreover, 485 (3.2%) participants were infected with COVID-19 at the time of the study, while 2000 (13.3%) had been previously infected. Overall, 2452 (16.3%) participants agreed, and 3127 (20.7%) strongly agreed, with "having concerns about serious vaccine-related complications." Mask-wearing adherence was reported by 10,268 (68.1%) of the participants. Most participants (14,050, 93.1%) believed that the vaccine should be provided for free, while 7272 (48.2%) were willing to buy it. Regarding vaccine acceptance and efficacy, 12,006 (79.6%) reported their willingness to take the vaccine with an efficacy of 90% or more, 9143 (60.6%) with an efficacy of 70% or more, and only 6212 (41.2%) with an efficacy of 50%. The binomial logistic regression revealed that vaccine acceptance was not associated with belonging to the medical field versus the general population. Acceptance was statistically associated with younger age groups, especially 31-40 (OR = 1.3 1.09, 1.55) and 41-50 years (OR = 1.29, 1.09, 1.54). However, having a family member or friend infected with COVID-19 was positively associated with the likelihood of vaccine acceptance (OR = 1.09 1.02, 1.18), while having a friend or family member who died due to COVID-19 was negatively associated with it (OR = 0.89 0.84, 0.97).
Acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine is an essential determinant of vaccine uptake and the likelihood of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Developing strategies to decrease public hesitation and increase trust is vital for implementing vaccination programs.
This paper provides a consolidated overview of public and healthcare professionals' attitudes towards vaccination in Europe by bringing together for the first time evidence across various vaccines, ...countries and populations. The paper relies on an extensive review of empirical literature published in English after 2009, as well as an analysis of unpublished market research data from member companies of Vaccines Europe. Our synthesis suggests that hesitant attitudes to vaccination are prevalent and may be increasing since the influenza pandemic of 2009. We define hesitancy as an expression of concern or doubt about the value or safety of vaccination. This means that hesitant attitudes are not confined only to those who refuse vaccination or those who encourage others to refuse vaccination. For many people, vaccination attitudes are shaped not just by healthcare professionals but also by an array of other information sources, including online and social media sources. We find that healthcare professionals report increasing challenges to building a trustful relationship with patients, through which they might otherwise allay concerns and reassure hesitant patients. We also find a range of reasons for vaccination attitudes, only some of which can be characterised as being related to lack of awareness or misinformation. Reasons that relate to issues of mistrust are cited more commonly in the literature than reasons that relate to information deficit. The importance of trust in the institutions involved with vaccination is discussed in terms of implications for researchers and policy-makers; we suggest that rebuilding this trust is a multi-stakeholder problem requiring a co-ordinated strategy.
•Coverage rates are likely to underestimate the challenge of sustaining vaccination.•Hesitancy is prevalent and includes people who have not yet rejected vaccination.•Reasons for hesitancy include mistrust in institutions related to vaccination.•Physicians report challenges (time and knowledge) for building trust with patients.•Both on-line and off-line presence will be needed in efforts to re-build trust.
In this article, we consider the attitude tracking control problem for rigid spacecraft with bounded external disturbances. We propose a predefined-time predefined-bounded attitude tracking control ...scheme based on a nonsingular predefined-time sliding-mode manifold. The proposed controller is continuous and it can achieve predefined-time predefined-bounded stability. That is, the attitude tracking errors are driven to a predefined-bounded region around the origin within a predefined time, which can be set as a tuning parameter during the controller design, independently of initial conditions. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed control law.
Does social protest following the police killing of unarmed Black civilians have a widespread “opinion-mobilizing” effect against the police? Or, does the racialized nature of these events polarize ...mass opinion based on standing racial and political orientations? To answer these questions, we use a large dataset comprised of weekly cross sections of the American public and employ a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) approach leveraging the random timing of the police killing of George Floyd and ensuing nationwide protests. We find that the Floyd protests swiftly decreased favorability toward the police and increased perceived anti-Black discrimination among low-prejudice and politically liberal Americans. However, attitudes among high-prejudice and politically conservative Americans either remained unchanged or evinced only small and ephemeral shifts. Our evidence suggests that the Floyd protests served to further racialize and politicize attitudes within the domain of race and law enforcement in the U.S.
Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, motivating individuals to behave in sustainable ways constitutes a key challenge for environmental science. Although many studies evidence people’s ...long-lasting pro-environmental attitudes, such attitudes often do not translate into behavior. The present research hypothesizes that cognitive resources are a crucial moderator, explaining when pro-environmental attitudes turn into behavior. Specifically, we investigate the attitude–behavior gap while taking a “cognition perspective” on environmental behavior. Using experience sampling, the present research demonstrates that individual differences in central aspects of cognitive control (assessed by working memory capacity) moderate the relationship between environmental attitudes and behavior. Our correlational findings suggest that people with positive environmental attitudes also require high working memory capacity to behave in line with their ideals. Our results do not only provide empirical support for recent theorizing in environmental research, but, perhaps more importantly, might offer a central lever for behavioral change initiatives (e.g., “nudging”).
With both cost and safety taken into account in the context of the life-threatening COVID-19 pandemic globally, rural tourism is expected to be the top choice for Chinese residents for relaxation and ...enhancing parent-child relationships. In this paper, a structural equation (SEM) model was proposed to compare risk knowledge, risk perception, risk aversion attitudes and behavioral intentions towards rural tourism. According to the empirical results, there was a large proportion of tourists showing preference for rural tourism recently. Potential participants in rural tourism paid most attention to the performance realization and time cost of scenic spots, while the psycho-social risk posed by COVID-19 had little impact. The inherent risk nature of risk aversion attitudes made knowledge of the pneumonia risk less effective in reducing tourists' intentions, while knowledge of the pneumonia risk was more effective in alleviating the risk perception that potential tourists have towards rural tourism. With regard to travel intention and recommendation intention of rural tourism, the negative impacts of risk aversion attitude were more considerable compared to risk perception. Meanwhile, the parallel mediating effect of risk perception and risk aversion attitude in rural tourism needed to be taken into consideration together.
The problem of control input saturation and measurement uncertainties in spacecraft attitude control systems is investigated in this paper. Asymmetric limitation of the control torque and additive ...attitude measurement errors are considered in the backstepping attitude controller design. Stable antiwindup compensator is employed to handle the adverse effect of input saturation. The additive attitude measurement errors, external disturbances, and parametric uncertainties are compensated by the outputs of stable nonlinear disturbance observers in the robust controller design. The tuning conditions of controller parameters are derived based on the Lyapunov analysis, and it is proved that attitude, angular velocity, saturation compensator states, and disturbance observer states converge to small neighborhoods of zero. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.
This article introduces the Causal Attitude Network (CAN) model, which conceptualizes attitudes as networks consisting of evaluative reactions and interactions between these reactions. Relevant ...evaluative reactions include beliefs, feelings, and behaviors toward the attitude object. Interactions between these reactions arise through direct causal influences (e.g., the belief that snakes are dangerous causes fear of snakes) and mechanisms that support evaluative consistency between related contents of evaluative reactions (e.g., people tend to align their belief that snakes are useful with their belief that snakes help maintain ecological balance). In the CAN model, the structure of attitude networks conforms to a small-world structure: evaluative reactions that are similar to each other form tight clusters, which are connected by a sparser set of "shortcuts" between them. We argue that the CAN model provides a realistic formalized measurement model of attitudes and therefore fills a crucial gap in the attitude literature. Furthermore, the CAN model provides testable predictions for the structure of attitudes and how they develop, remain stable, and change over time. Attitude strength is conceptualized in terms of the connectivity of attitude networks and we show that this provides a parsimonious account of the differences between strong and weak attitudes. We discuss the CAN model in relation to possible extensions, implication for the assessment of attitudes, and possibilities for further study.
This research demonstrates that two- versus one-sided counterattitudinal messages can encourage people with a strong moral basis for their attitudes to be more open to contrary positions. Studies ...1A/B demonstrated that the interaction between moral basis and message sidedness was present not just for a controversial issue with balanced views in society but also for a topic with a majority opinion. In Study 2, the relative effectiveness of two- over one-sided messages for people with a moral attitude basis was shown to occur only when the two-sided message respectfully acknowledged the recipient’s side. In Study 3, the effect was replicated in a preregistered experiment. Furthermore, moral bases provided unique predictive power beyond alternative attitude strength indicators. Across all studies, perceived appreciation of the speaker acknowledging the recipient’s view mediated the impact of the independent variables on openness.