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Palm oil is a versatile ingredient of many food and non-food products. Yet, over the last year it has rapidly become a controversial product due to its alleged harmful health and environmental effects. Palm oil has rapidly become a controversial product. As a consequence, many food companies have introduced alternative fat sources into their products, in order to meet consumers’ concerns. The purpose of this paper is to: first, investigate consumer purchase intention by assessing whether the environmental, social and health concerns (HCs) act as drivers with regard to the choice of not consuming products containing palm oil; and second, estimate the direct effect of participants’ information seeking (IS) upon their intention, and whether IS mediates the effects of the attitudinal latent constructs on intention.

A quantitative survey of 608 respondents was performed. A structural equation modelling (SEM) procedure was implemented.

Results show that: first, HC is the main driver of participants’ intention to reduce palm oil consumption; second, consumers’ attitudes towards environment and social fairness exert significant direct effects upon intention; third, IS exerts a direct effect on intention; also, it partially mediates the effects of environmental and social concerns, whereas it totally mediates the HC effect.

This is the first study to address the issue of comparison between different drivers of sustainable consumer intentions using a formal test by SEM. Moreover, findings add insightful discussion points to some important issues concerning the role of consumers in the current food system organisational structure and strategies.

In recent years, the food industry has developed and brought to the market a number of “functional food” with healthy characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to study and compare the effects of knowledge and food technology neophobia on individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for functionalized healthy food.

In order to explore these effects in hypothetical vs real settings, an experiment defined by a within-subject design with two treatments (functionalized vs conventional food) on two auction payment conditions (hypothetical vs real) has been conducted. The products chosen for the experiment were two different types of crushed tomatoes: conventional crushed tomatoes (control product) and a crushed tomatoes enriched with lycopene (functionalized product).

Results showed that participants stated, on average, a higher WTP for tomatoes enriched with lycopene than for conventional. This positive premium price was not affected by socio-demographic variables, political orientation and tomato-related preferences. As expected, the level of knowledge about lycopene exerted a significant positive effect on premium price in both auctions condition. Also the Healthy choice subscale of the Food Technology Neophobia Scale (FTNS) was a significant predictor of premium price, but only when the auction was hypothetical.

This paper might shed some light upon the predictive power of the FTNS on individuals’ behavior in a real market setting.

In recent years, it is increasingly common to find situations in which economic or financial decisions are combined with philanthropic or charity issues (for example, “pay what you can”, cause-related marketing initiatives and micro-insurance). How do people behave in these situations? This study aims to analyze whether charity impacts agents’ economic behavior and which factors (gender and social distance) influence these decisions.

Using a modified one-period ultimatum game that includes a charitable giving variable, the authors investigate agents’ behavior in economic decisions when philanthropic issues are considered, and they compare this behavior to purely economic negotiation without explicit philanthropic relevance. Using a sample of 352 undergraduate business students, the authors explore the interaction effect between gender and social distance on giving behavior.

The results of this study show that women offer more than men when philanthropic motivation is involved. However, the solicitation of a charitable sentiment is not an element that substantially shifts the offers beyond the value considered to be economically fair. Finally, women and men are both susceptible to self-image concerns.

The results enable a more nuanced interpretation of gender differences in economic decisions when philanthropic or charity issues are involved. From a practical perspective, the findings could offer insights relevant to for-profit and non-profit organizations when they plan to provide products, services or investments with positive moral connotations or when they plan fundraising strategies.

Unlike existing laboratory studies, this study focuses on the effects that charity has on economic/financial decisions by exploring the interaction effect between the decision-maker’s gender and social distance on the outcome of the negotiation.

Over the past two decades, scholarly attention has focused mainly on a direct and inverse relationship between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and corporate financial performance (CFP). This study aims to explore the bidirectional causality hypothesis, as good environmental results can lead to good financial results, which makes it possible to invest more resources in projects that improve environmental performance.

The authors test the bidirectional causality between CER and CFP on a sample of listed Italian manufacturing firms over the 2005-2014 period. The authors use a fixed effect panel data regression and check the robustness of the results with alternative econometric techniques.

Although the findings do not support bidirectional hypothesis, they establish direction/causality from CFP to CER. As a result, environmental responsibility is a consequence of prior financial performance, which supports the slack resources hypothesis.

Given that companies’ environmental commitment is dictated by economic evaluations or by assessing the availability of resources to invest, it seems that the spread of environmentally responsible behaviours might be supported by different external pressures.

The paper provides further insights on sustainability management literature by establishing a bidirectional relationship between firm performance and environmental responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of strategic alliances (knowledge/learning, efficiency and market motives) on the development of human capital.

To do so, a quantitative study was chosen, with data on technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Portugal, leading to 257 valid answers.

The results obtained from a structural equation model show that motives for strategic alliances (knowledge/learning, efficiency and market) have a strong influence on the human capital of the SMEs analysed.

These outcomes reveal that strategic alliances are a way for SMEs to overcome resource constraints in terms of human capital, representing an important implication for business practice. As strategic alliances influence human capital, the relations SMEs establish with other firms are increasingly important for their sustainability and development. Acting in isolation in the market can reduce this type of firm’s chances of survival.

Despite some studies relating the formation of strategic alliances and human capital, there is a gap regarding the relationship between the role of strategic alliances and human capital in the technology-based sector. Therefore, this research represents a contribution and innovation in academic terms in this area.

In the era of artificial intelligence, natural language processing (NLP) models are revolutionizing numerous sectors. This research aims to explore the perceived value of them among university students. In particular, it aims to investigate how gender may influence students’ intention to use these models in educational contexts, highlighting potentially significant differences that could inform the implementation and adoption of educational technologies.

This study investigates the relationship between perceived value and students' intention to adopt NLP models, considering gender as a moderator. The research involves 562 students from the University of Salerno, in Italy, and uses confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement scales. A regression model with robust errors is used to explore the moderating role of gender on the relationship between perceived value and intentions of use of NLP models.

The results reveal a significant positive association between perceived value and intention to use NLP models, confirming that students with higher perceived value are more likely to adopt these technologies. Furthermore, gender moderates this relationship, indicating that females are less prone to use NLP models than male counterparts.

Research takes on a significant role in the academic field, underlining the importance of adapting teaching practices to the increasingly widespread digitalization. The inclusion of NLP models in university programs emerges as a possible improvement of the learning experience, ensuring cutting-edge education in tune with the needs of the digital society.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between employee training and bank risk to verify whether and to what extent an increase in employee training, as a soft component of total quality management (TQM), affects bank risk.

The research adopts a panel regression, based on a unique dataset of a sample of Italian banks over the period 2011–2018, to test whether employee training affects bank risk, measured alternatively in terms of Z-score, a proxy of bank stability and non-performing loans (NPLs)/gross loans ratio as a proxy of credit risk.

Research findings reveal that increasing employee training leads to growing bank stability. In contrast, credit risk is not affected by employee training. However, by investigating training heterogeneity, this study found that the increase in the number of managerial training hours, as a proxy for soft skills training, negatively impacts credit risk. Therefore, an increase in soft skills leads to a reduction in bank credit risk.

This study provides empirical evidence in support of the relationship between employee training and bank risk, which seems novel in the literature. From a managerial point of view, this study highlights the need for banks to pay attention to the skills, particularly soft skills, that banks' employees must possess to effectively manage bank risk and, more specifically, the core bank risk.

Empirical evidence on the relationship between employee training, soft/hard skills and bank risk appears limited if not absent. Therefore, the findings provide insights for a more nuanced interpretation of variables that affect bank risk.

This paper aims to analyze unexplored connections between economic, environmental and social dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and knowledge management (KM) strategies (exploration, exploitation), also considering environmental dynamism as an influencing variable on these connections. The predicted CSR-KM interplay suggests, from stakeholder and knowledge-based views of the firm, the existence of ideal configurations between CSR and KM strategies that generate differentiated impacts on companies’ innovation capabilities, especially in dynamic environments.

Structural equation modeling by means of the partial least squares technique was used to test the study’s hypotheses after collecting survey data from Spanish companies of the renewable energy sector.

The study findings show that in highly dynamic environments, companies will tend to commit prominently in CSR, although their orientation (economic, environmental, social) and effects on innovation capabilities will depend mainly on the selected KM strategies. Social and environmental CSR are found to be highly related to KM exploration, whereas economic CSR is highly related to KM exploitation. Nevertheless, while a significant indirect effect of economic CSR by means of the KM exploitation strategy on innovation capabilities is found, the proposed indirect effect of both environmental and social CSR through the KM exploration strategy on innovation capabilities is not significant.

The results suggest that company managers should be aware of the advantages of following specific paths of investment in KM and CSR initiatives in highly dynamic environments, as there is a potential payoff in terms of innovation capability improvement. The results also suggest that “good” relationships with stakeholders, built from specific CSR investments, make firms able to get valuable knowledge that it is useful to develop KM strategies for innovation capability development.

Previous studies do not consider the interplay between KM strategies and CSR as a catalyzer for developing a firm’s innovation capabilities. This paper contributes to the KM and innovation literatures by introducing CSR into the conversation about how to improve innovation capabilities in dynamic and sustainable industries by using configurations of KM strategies and specific CSR investments in economic, social and environmental areas.

This study aims to analyse the importance of intellectual capital (IC) in networks formed by start-ups, with a view to obtaining resources that individually they would be unable to acquire.

To achieve this aim, a qualitative approach was adopted, and within this, the case study method was used. The data-collecting instrument was the semi-structured interview, held with the business-people/managers of five start-ups present in an incubator (Startup Rém) based in Portugal, and with the person in charge of this incubator, together with observation and documentary analysis.

From content analysis, the results suggest that the business people recognise the presence of IC at the moment of creating their business and that this is a means to attain sustainability and, consequently, business survival. The results also show that in the absence of network formation, the relation between the incubator and the incubated firms can be affected and limited, interfering directly with firms’ use of IC.

This research aimed to highlight the importance of IC as an essential resource for business survival and sustainability and to encourage start-ups to regard networks as a way to share and convey knowledge. This study also intends to help firms understand the role of cooperation and mutual assistance in seeking sustainability and economic growth.

This study is innovative because it has filled the gaps identified in the literature, particularly the absence of studies on the importance of IC in networks formed by start-ups, and the study of the impact of IC on firms focussing on cooperation networks.