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This study explores the coping strategies employed by people of color in response to racial discrimination and examines how cultural norms inform these strategies.

In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 34 Black and Asian Americans about their experiences with racial discrimination.

Findings reveal that participants cope through humor, seeking social support on social media, from family and friends, and through avoidant coping strategies. Seeking social support from empathetic others, especially when they shared the same racial background as participants, contributes to feelings of comfort, sanity, and a sense of community. Group differences emerge in seeking family support with Black Americans more likely to seek parental support, likely because of racial socialization practices by their parents that prepared them for experiencing bias. Asian Americans preferred talking to siblings or cousins, citing a cultural gap between them and their parents.

The study underscores the importance of considering the quality of social support, not just its use, as a buffer against harms related to discrimination.

Racial discrimination is a routine experience for many people of color. This study demonstrates how the type of coping strategy matters for coping with the distress that often accompanies these experiences.

In contrast to monoracial-focused studies, this research demonstrates the convergence and divergence of coping strategies among different racial groups.

Researchers have examined the influence of the factors on reducing return rates in retailing over the years. However, the returns experience is often an overlooked way to drive customer engagement and repeat sales in the now ubiquitous omnichannel setting. The focus on returns prevention in existing research overshadows management’s need to understand better the comprehensive mechanics linking the customer in-store return experience with their repurchase actions. Recognizing the need to bridge different stages of the returns management process, this research aims to explore the facilitators and barriers of in-store return activities.

Analysis of customer corporate data from 5,339 returns at the retail level provides insights from the customer return experience. Expanding our theoretical understanding, a deductive research approach then examines how those factors impact customer repurchase intentions both online and at brick-and-mortar stores. Stage two of the study employs a scenario-based role-playing experiment with consumer respondents to test hypotheses derived from signaling theory and justice theory.

Results find that returns policy and loyalty program capabilities are essential in creating a positive customer in-store experience. Moreover, a return experience enhanced by frontline employee service can retain existing shoppers and drive additional store traffic, further stimulating retailer sales.

These findings refine our understanding of returns management in evolving omnichannel retailing and offer practical insights for retailers to manage customer relationships through in-store returns.

Managing public ‘affect’ was a critical component of Aotearoa New Zealand's COVID-19 policy approach, which was predicated on collective emotional feelings of calmness, compassion and trust. A long history of health promotion efforts have involved co-opting children as tools to manipulate (adult) public affect towards motivating behavioural change or accepting health interventions. Little research has yet considered the consequences of objectifying children for affect management in the name of public health. The Pandemic Generation study compared the perspectives of Auckland children aged 7–11, generated through co-drawing comics about their pandemic experience, with a critical discourse analysis of children's representation in New Zealand COVID-19 public health messaging. In this chapter, I argue that by leveraging performative care for children to manipulate an adult public affect, the New Zealand government erased children's subjectivities, their care-giving roles and contributions, further disenfranchising children as members of the ‘public’ in public health.

This article describes what department directors and chiefs of staff reported when asked about the competencies they need to be effective in addressing on-the-job challenges. The study analyzed the generated data in two different ways to both understand what participants said in their own terms and to determine whether there is a fit between participants’ responses and facilitative leadership theory.

Twenty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with five department directors and seven chiefs of staff in a US city that had a mayor-council form of government. Responses were analyzed in two ways. Initially, coding categories were developed inductively in an effort to employ what anthropologists characterize as an emic or insider perspective. Then the data were recoded from an etic perspective using the theory of facilitative leadership as a conceptual framework.

Although participants identified a wide variety of competencies, all participants emphasized the importance of working collaboratively with others, including the members of their teams, the elected official they worked with (and for) and constituents.

While most studies of facilitative leadership have focused on mayors and city managers, i.e. those at the top of the city administration hierarchy, this study’s focus is on middle managers who are not necessarily thought of as leaders but who must in fact, exercise leadership at least at times. Another relatively unique feature of this paper is its focus on a city that employs a mayor-council form of governance, a type of governance structure that has been underdiscussed in the literature to date.

In recent years, there has been significant interest in adopting XR (extended reality) technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), particularly in retail. However, extending activities through reality-mediation is still mostly believed to offer an inferior experience due to their shortcomings in usability, wearability, graphical fidelity, etc. This study aims to address the research gap by experimentally examining the acceptance of metaverse shopping.

This study conducts a 2 (VR: with vs. without) × 2 (AR: with vs. without) between-subjects laboratory experiment involving 157 participants in simulated daily shopping environments. This study builds a physical brick-and-mortar store at the campus and stocked it with approximately 600 products with accompanying product information and pricing. The XR devices and a 3D laser scanner were used in constructing the three XR shopping conditions.

Results indicate that XR can offer an experience comparable to, or even surpassing, traditional shopping in terms of its instrumental and hedonic aspects, regardless of a slightly reduced perception of usability. AR negatively affected perceived ease of use, while VR significantly increased perceived enjoyment. It is surprising that the lower perceived ease of use appeared to be disconnected from the attitude toward metaverse shopping.

This study provides important experimental evidence on the acceptance of XR shopping, and the finding that low perceived ease of use may not always be detrimental adds to the theory of technology adoption as a whole. Additionally, it provides an important reference point for future randomized controlled studies exploring the effects of technology on adoption.