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The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development underscores eradicating global poverty (Goal#1) and empowering women and girls (Goal#5) to foster sustainable, inclusive communities (Goal#11). The World Bank recognises female entrepreneurship as a catalyst for global economic growth, poverty reduction and gender equity. This chapter delves into the challenges hindering female entrepreneurship, obstructing poverty alleviation and community sustainability efforts worldwide. Public–private collaborations are crucial to support women in launching start-ups, adopting new technologies, enhancing digital skills and accessing financing in the era of Industry 4.0.

Our focus is on women entrepreneurship in BRICS nations due to their diverse growth trajectories and global economic significance. Employing a qualitative approach, we analyse public and private initiatives promoting female entrepreneurship in BRICS countries. Our findings highlight both commonalities and distinctions in their strategies and policies, implicitly contributing to poverty reduction and social and economic growth. This chapter not only identifies barriers faced by women entrepreneurs but also underscores factors fuelling their ventures. It offers a practical toolkit for scholars, policymakers and practitioners (entrepreneurs and consultants) to devise tailored strategies and actions for local growth and intervention. The study comprises four parts: the introduction, setting the chapter's goal and previewing outcomes; the second part, exploring female entrepreneurship as a key to poverty alleviation and community sustainability; the core, the third part, unveiling in-depth BRICS country analysis; and the conclusion, summarising implications and highlighting avenues for further research.

This study aims to explore the emerging trend of business-wide Sustainability Third-Party Labels (STPLs), exemplified by entities like B-Corp. These labels are awarded to organizations committed to a distinctive approach to business, typically embracing the triple-bottom-line (TBL) framework, prioritizing not only financial performance but also social and environmental impact. The research investigates whether these labels enhance trust and influence perceptions of sustainability information quality among young consumers in Spain.

A factorial experiment has been conducted among a convenience sample of individuals belonging to the Z-generation (n = 126). The experiment involved randomly exposing the participants to different versions of an informational brochure from a fictional company in the agricultural sector (with and without label). Following the experiment, a focus group with 15 participants was conducted to assist in interpreting the results.

The results of this study suggest that the use of a nonsector specific label across various sectors with distinct sustainability challenges can lead to confusion among Z-generation consumers. Especially within sectors grappling with environmental concerns, such labels may be susceptible to being perceived as manifestations of greenwashing. Additionally, the study adds supporting evidence to the existing body of literature asserting gender differences in the interpretation of sustainability signals, including labels.

As far as this research is concerned, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that studies the perception of Z-generation members regarding business-wide STPLs. Focusing on studying, the attitudes toward sustainability of younger generations and how they respond to signals like business-wide STPLs are relevant, as they not only possess the longevity to drive substantial change but are also more susceptible to behavioral shifts, thereby holding significant potential in shaping a sustainable future. The study combines both qualitative and quantitative perspective and provides critical insights, relevant to stakeholders within business-wide STPL ecosystems, emphasizing the need for strategic coherence and transparency in label implementation.

As consumer debt can substantially impair subjective well-being, it is crucial for research to gain insights into how consumers can be motivated to improve financial planning. This paper aims to investigate how frontline employees in financial services can help consumers regulate their financial planning behaviors and how financial service providers can effectively support their frontline employees in this effort through leadership and organizational climate.

We incorporate regulatory focus theory and conservation of resource theory to develop a conceptual model that we test in a triadic study with a unique dataset collected from consumers, frontline employees, and managers in the banking sector.

We find that frontline employees must pay attention to the details of consumers’ needs and customize the service to those needs to trigger consumer promotion focus and stimulate consumers’ financial planning behaviors. Moreover, our results emphasize that the organization must act as an integrated entity. Thus, a manager’s servant leadership and an organizational climate of customer stewardship are crucial for frontline employees to transform consumers’ financial planning behaviors.

The study highlights frontline employees’ key role in motivating consumer financial planning behavior, offering a new perspective in transformative service research on enhancing financial well-being.

The findings provide financial service providers with actionable implications for enhancing consumers’ financial planning. This benefits both consumers and financial institutions, as customers with greater spending power can buy more financial products.

This study advances transformative service research on consumer financial planning behavior, which has largely focused on consumer-related or society-level variables, by exploring the role of frontline employees and organizational support in terms of leadership and climate.

Consumer well-being (CWB) is a flourishing area of research. It is an important field of study for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-3 (Good Health and Well-Being). However, despite some recent reviews, there is a lack of a comprehensive overview of the broad themes emerging in the CWB literature. The study aims to thoroughly integrate and organize the fragmented existing literature on CWB by uncovering its emergent themes and their impact.

To address this gap, this study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of 166 peer-reviewed journal articles from 2013–2023 following the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews protocol from the Scopus and Web of Science databases.

This study’s SLR uncovered seven themes: subjective well-being; psychological well-being; food well-being; financial well-being; environmental well-being; social well-being; and societal well-being. Further, this study identifies that these themes impact consumers on three levels: micro, meso and macro. Thus, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the emergent themes along the levels of impact.

This paper anticipates that the study, which is a thorough overview of the CWB literature, will provide managers, academics and students with an introduction to the topic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first articles that shows the themes of the CWB literature along the respective levels of impact and draws avenues for future research.

El bienestar del consumidor (CWB) es un área de investigación en auge. Es un campo de estudio clave para los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS), en particular el ODS-3 (Salud y Bienestar). Sin embargo, a pesar de algunas revisiones recientes, falta una visión general completa de los amplios temas emergentes en la literatura de CWB. El objetivo de este estudio es integrar y organizar exhaustivamente la literatura existente sobre CWB, revelando sus temas emergentes y su impacto.

Para abordar esta brecha, el estudio presenta una revisión sistemática de la literatura (SLR) de 166 artículos de revistas revisados por pares, publicados entre 2013 y 2023, siguiendo el protocolo SPAR-4-SLR, extraídos de las bases de datos Scopus y Web of Science.

Nuestra SLR reveló siete temas: (a) bienestar subjetivo; (b) bienestar psicológico; (c) bienestar alimentario; (d) bienestar financiero; (e) bienestar ambiental; (f) bienestar social; y (g) bienestar societal. Además, identificamos que estos temas afectan a los consumidores en tres niveles: (i) micro, (ii) meso y (iii) macro. Así, este estudio proporciona una visión completa de los temas emergentes a lo largo de los niveles de impacto.

Anticipamos que este estudio, que ofrece una revisión exhaustiva de la literatura de CWB, proporcionará a gestores, académicos y estudiantes una introducción al tema.

Según nuestro conocimiento, este es uno de los primeros artículos que muestra los temas de la literatura de CWB junto con sus respectivos niveles de impacto y traza rutas para futuras investigaciones.

消费者幸福感(CWB)是一个蓬勃发展的研究领域, 对可持续发展目标(SDGs), 尤其是 SDG-3(良好健康与幸福感), 具有重要意义。然而, 尽管近期已有一些综述, CWB 文献中出现的广 泛主题仍缺乏全面概述。本研究旨在深入整合和组织现有 CWB 文献, 通过揭示其新兴主题及其影响, 填补这一空白。

为解决这一问题, 本研究按照 SPAR-4-SLR 协议, 从Scopus和Web of Science数据 库中选取了 2013 年至 2023 年的 166 篇经过同行评审的期刊文章, 进行系统文献综述(SLR)。

我们的文献综述揭示了七个主题:(a)主观幸福感; (b)心理幸福感; (c)食品幸福感; (d)金融幸福感; (e)环境幸福感; (f)社会幸福感; (g)社会整体幸福感。此外, 我们发现这些 主题在三个层面上影响消费者:(i)微观层面; (ii)中观层面; (iii)宏观层面。因此, 本研究提供 了沿影响层面的新兴主题的全面概述。

我们期待这篇全面概述 CWB 文献的研究能为管理者、学者和学生提供关于该主题的全 面介绍。

据我们所知, 这是首篇阐释 CWB 文献主题及其相应影响层次的文章之一, 并为未来研究指 明了方向。

While the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.

This study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.

The empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.

This study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007