Despite considerable debate as to what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is, consumer social responsibility (CnSR), as an important force for CSR (Vogel in Calif Manag Rev 47(4): 19-45, 2005), is ...a term that remains largely unexplored and under-theorized. To better conceive the role consumers play in activating CSR, this paper provides a multi-level, multi-agent conceptualization of CnSR. Integrating needs-based models of decision making with justice theory, the article interpretively develops the reasons (instrumental, relational, and moral) why variously positioned agents leverage consumers as a force for corporate social responsibility. The paper theoretically expands currently limited conceptions of CnSR by exploring the levels at which diverse agents engage with CnSR (Who and What?) and the needs driving these agents (Why?). The paper suggests that the so-called "consumer side of CSR" (Devinney et al. in Stanf Soc Innov Rev: 29-37, 2006) is contingent upon the presence, absence, and varying intensities of underlying agent needs. Academic and managerial implications are drawn in the paper's conclusion.
Consumption for many is increasingly underpinned by the search for and creation of identity and status through specific consumption practices, including consumerism and placing a high priority on ...brands. One product category where such consumption practices underpin its growth and marketing is fashion clothing. The expressive nature of clothing makes it particularly important in societies where consumerism and status seeking is a priority. In picking up the significance and the role of fashion clothing, this study explores the impact of Chinese young adults’ consumerism, their status consumption tendencies and decision-making style on their perceptions of fashion clothing brands’ status, with origins from the West versus Asia. The results show that Chinese young adults prefer fashion clothing brands with Western origins over those with Asian origins. The levels of consumerism, status consumption and decision-making styles were major contributors to how they perceived the brands, and in this sense western fashion clothing brands may communicate status and wealth better than Asian brands. Further, the findings show a willingness on the part of young Chinese adults to buy more than what they need and look for prestigious-symbolic brands of fashion clothing.
•Living life to the full for young adults is increasingly aligned with consumerism and status seeking.•Individuals are encouraged by marketers to pursue status through fashion.•Consumerism, status consumption and decision-making style influence brands’ status.•We show that young adults prefer clothing brands with Western origins over Asian.
For decades, the technology acceptance model (TAM) has been validated by studies to discern its predictive power. However, scholars have noted that the assumptions in TAM can incomprehensively ...address the demands of people in modern technologies. The current study, therefore, extends the capabilities of TAM to predict the acceptance levels of the people-to-people (P2P) services of the WeChat wallet in South Africa. The findings show that, in addition to the constructs in TAM, other pivotal factors that influence the behavior of South Africans to adopt WeChat wallet are trust, security, and privacy. Using the structural equation modeling tool for analysis, we found that the proposed model explains acceptable variances in the predictors: 51%, 25%, and 21% in relative advantage or perceived usefulness as used in TAM, privacy, and P2P, respectively, an evidence that may stimulate scholarly discussions in the future. These findings highlight that people in South Africa may adopt and use the WeChat wallet application if the proposed predictors are considered.
•Behavioral factors for the adoption of WeChat wallet have been identified.•The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been extended to incorporate the factors.•Trust, security, and privacy have been found to predict human behavior in WeChat adoption.•Constructs of the original TAM have been validated in light of the WeChat application.•The proposed model explains acceptable variances in the predictors.
It is widely believed that just societies would be characterized by some combination of democratic political institutions and market-based economic institutions. Democratic political institutions are ...required in order...
This article starts with a historical account of the general decline of class consciousness in the UK throughout the 1980s, when the vision of personal affluence was increasingly connected to ...people's choice in the marketplace, rather than their class identity at the sites of mass production. Personal desires were recognized by the Thatcher governments and taken as the motivation to pursue a unique style of life - a marker of Thatcherite individualism - through consumption. In this case, I will read one of James Lovegrove's early novels, Days (1997), as an example of the consumer dreamland in which a different political identity can be formed. This consumption-based identity, however, is established upon the production of not material commodities but Debordian spectacles. These politicized consumers, as I will argue, never become liberated agents in the matrix of social production. They are, instead, spectators in the Debordian sense, who are granted not a political subjectivity but a collective unconscious.
The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly jeopardized the global food systems and affected consumer views on food safety and food purchasing patterns. The SARS-CoV-2 transfer to and from the fomites had ...heightened concerns about the safety in the entire food chain, although there is no evidence so far. In this context, this review gives an overview of existing knowledge on the effect of different food processing, storage, and handling conditions on the survivability of SARS-CoV-2, changing consumer preferences, and common solutions to recreate safe and sustainable food systems for a post-COVID-19 world.
•Achieving more sustainable SES by fostering HNC has rarely been studied.•Rural SES are rich in complex HNC dimensions that are sensible on SES changes.•Land-use intensity drives changes in material, ...experiential, emotional dimensions.•Political, economic paradigms drive changes in cognitive, philosophical dimensions.•Collaborative governance could achieve tangible outcomes on sustainability by HNC.
Contemporary Romania has been subject to several major social and institutional shifts that have had implications for the connectedness of humans with their environment. Four major governance eras have influenced human-nature connections: (1) formal and informal institutional governance after the World Wars and before socialism (before 1947), (2) top-down governance during socialism (1947–1989) and (3) during sovereign state governance and transition to European Union (1990–2006), and (4) multilevel governance since European Union accession (after 2007). We analyzed two cultural landscapes in Transylvania with respect to changes in human-nature connectedness. The two systems were similar at the beginning of the 20th century, but developed differently in their intensity of landscape management in the 21st century. Drawing on 41 semi-structured interviews, we examined changes that influenced landscape management and human-nature connectedness, considering five dimensions of connectedness: material, experiential, emotional, cognitive and philosophical. Material connections have weakened as a result of changes in food production and rising consumerism. Experiential and emotional connections were influenced by socio-economic and landscape management changes. Cognitive connections reflected changes in the knowledge system on the environment. Philosophical connection was influenced by changes in ideologies and globalization. Our findings highlight the central influence of social and institutional change on perceived human-nature connectedness. Understanding this influence provides important pointers for how to reconnect humanity to nature in the coming decades.
This commentary examines the increasing politicization of tourism and attempts to theorize the phenomenon through a multilevel analysis. Tourism scholars have examined the link between politics and ...tourism through the prism of sustainability, terrorism, geopolitics, and tourism development. However, these studies have focused on different tourism activities or encounters without theorizing the relationship between politics and tourism consumption. This commentary argues that the increasing influence of nationalism in global politics, which also affects tourism consumption, requires a new conceptualization. The theoretical premise of political consumption is used to guide the multilevel (macro, meso, and micro) analysis of two recent tourist boycotts: 1) the THAAD incident between South Korea and China and 2) the APA boycott by Chinese tourists.
Purpose
This paper aims to illuminate the characteristics of Analytic and Continental scholarship to generate a deeper appreciation for both writing styles in the consumer culture theory (CCT) ...community.
Design/methodology/approach
Two CCT researchers discuss the merits of Analytic and Continental scholarship in an accessible dialogical format.
Findings
Analytic ideals of scholarship, espoused by elite academic journals, include conceptual rigor, logical claims, theoretical coherence, researcher agnosticism and broad generalizability. Continental ideals of scholarship, more likely to be espoused by niche and/or critical journals, include creative writing, holistic interpretation, intellectual imagination, political provocation and deep contextualization.
Originality/value
This dialogue may build more understanding across variously oriented scholars, literatures, and journals in the CCT community.
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