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The purpose of this paper is to identify the types of social responsibility actions that small local retailers implement in their local community and to explore their underlying motivations and perceived benefits.

A qualitative research method is used to explore small local retailers’ social responsibility practices and underlying motivations. Owners/managers of small apparel retailers in the USA were interviewed and their responses transcribed and analyzed.

Findings highlight that local retailers are active in giving back to their community using various means from monetary donations to promotion of community events. Such contributions to their local community are largely driven by their affection for the community, and the motivation is to maintain a good reputation. It was also found that episodes of giving were also triggered externally by customers, local organizations, and local events. Small retailers’ social responsibility contributions to the community are typically not undertaken in an effort to stimulate sales, profits and/or customer traffic. Rather, local retailers find their experiences enjoyable and their contributions build a sense of connection to the community. These retailers enjoy an extra sense of enrichment and perceive social benefits accrued from actively engaging in social responsibility within the community.

Much has been written about social responsibility from a manufacturing and large retailer viewpoint, but there is a dearth of information on small local retailers. This study explores the understanding of small businesses’ social responsibility practices from a local retail perspective and provides valuable insights about retailers approach to social responsibility in relation to their local community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer involvement in product development creates an emotional connection, satisfaction, and subsequent loyalty toward fast-fashion retailers across high vs low fashion-conscious consumers.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gain understandings of the impacts of customer involvement. To explore customers’ general perceptions of fast-fashion retailers, a focus group interview with 11 US students was conducted. Data for a hypothesis test were obtained from 306 US female consumers and analyzed through structural equational modeling.

The findings underscored the relational benefits of involving customers in product development and the substantial moderating impact of female customers’ fashion consciousness.

The study’s findings support that the customer-brand relationship can be solidified by proactively involving customers in product development. This is beyond benefits derived from leveraging customers’ operant resources in product innovation. Thus, apparel retailers should take such interactive opportunities to build relationships with customers. Also, involving customers in product development can be a critical way for fast-fashion retailers to establish an emotional bond with and loyalty from consumers with a low level of fashion consciousness. Thus, any digital opinion platform designed to foster customer involvement should be managed with the customer-brand relationship in mind.

This study contributes to the emerging body of literature on customer involvement in product development in fast-paced retailing by elucidating the psychological process through which their participation strengthens the customer-brand relationship manifested in emotional, evaluative, and behavioral responses to the brand, and by identifying a consumer attribute that fortifies this process.

This study aims to investigate the differences in underlying psychological aspects regarding pro‐environmental behaviors between two distinct consumer groups: green product purchasers and green product non‐purchasers. Focusing on pro‐environmental behavior in recycling, it seeks to investigate these psychological aspects: cognitive attitude, affective attitude, social norm, personal norm, and behavioral intention.

Using a web‐based survey, a total of 363 responses from US consumers were used for the data analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to check the measurement model, and a multiple regression and MANOVA were performed to test the proposed hypotheses.

Compared to green product non‐purchasers, green product purchasers exhibited significantly higher levels of cognitive attitude, affective attitude, social norm, personal norm, and recycling intention. Also cognitive attitude, social norm, and personal norm predicted recycling intention.

The limitations of this study include the self‐reporting questionnaire and the measurement of consumers' recycling intention rather than their actual behavior.

This study will provide useful information to retailers who are developing product/service offerings and operation practices to address sustainable consumption.

This study provides empirical evidence that certain consumer groups in relation to pro‐environmental product shopping behavior (purchasers vs. non‐purchasers) exhibit differences in the psychological formation of another pro‐environmental behavior, recycling.

This paper aims to examine how a firm’s exposure to economic policy uncertainty affects the auditors’ perceptions of financial reporting risk. Firms that are more sensitive to policy uncertainty are predicted to engage in more earnings management because these firms are more likely to experience greater uncertainty in future operations. Audit fees will reflect this reporting risk. On the other hand, auditors might feel more fee pressure from policy-sensitive firms because firms are more inclined to reduce spending in the face of uncertainty and subsequently charge lower fees.

The author tests my hypothesis using U.S. data on audit fees and client characteristics of public companies between the years 2001 and 2021. The author estimates a standard audit fee model based on the audit fee literature (Hay et al., 2006) while also including the two policy sensitivity measures. This study uses panel data methods that allow time-series analyses, providing a powerful setting to test dynamic audit fee adjustment to improve the understanding of the audit market.

The results suggest that audit fee is higher for policy-sensitive firms than for policy-neutral firms. These results are robust to various proxies of policy sensitivity and various specifications designed to mitigate the endogeneity concerns. The study provides assurance that on average, auditor pricing reflects client risk adequately, mitigating the concern that auditors give in to fee pressure and compromise audit quality as a result.

While the findings from this study should be of value to regulators and academics seeking to understand audit activities amid escalating macroeconomic uncertainty, when interpreting these results, several limitations must be considered. The study does not examine how external auditors evaluate risks tied to policy uncertainty. A comprehensive understanding of how and why external auditors respond to heightened policy uncertainty faced by firms could be better achieved through interviews with external auditors and audit committee members. In addition, while this study posits that auditors adjust their approach in response to changes in policy uncertainty, largely due to potential shifts in the risks of material misstatement, there might be additional factors at play that warrant higher audit fees post a change in policy uncertainty. For instance, specific policy changes may give rise to new risks or modify existing ones, thereby precipitating increased scrutiny of records and procedures as company directors’ demand. These aspects offer potential avenues for future research.

This study underscores the significant role of policy sensitivity in determining audit fees and audit quality. Policy-sensitive firms present unique complexities and potential risks that require additional effort and vigilance from auditors. Auditors must develop a specialized understanding of sectors prone to policy fluctuations to navigate these unique challenges effectively. In addition, the role of professional standards boards and regulators in establishing guidelines for auditing policy-sensitive firms cannot be understated. Such guidelines could lead to more consistent audit practices and improved audit quality. Finally, by recognizing and effectively responding to the policy sensitivity of client firms, audit firms can mitigate their own risks, strengthen public trust and enhance the reliability of financial reports.

First, this study adds to an emerging stream of auditing literature that focuses on how audit fees interact with a firm’s external environment by providing evidence of an unexplored implication, a firm-specific policy sensitivity. Second, my main construct, policy sensitivity, provides two distinct advantages over other variables used in prior studies that explore the relationship between audit fees and external firm environments. Third, this study answers the calls for research by De Villiers et al. (2013, p. 3), who identified the cost behavior of audit fees, especially over time, as an area not well understood.