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The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative reflexive process evaluation method for a social marketing programme featuring an innovative virtual reality (VR) simulation experience for adolescents.

A process evaluation framework focusing on three key elements – context, implementation and mechanisms of impact – was followed in this study. In total, 374 participants (mean age: 15.2 years, 58 per cent female) completed outcome evaluation surveys before and after the programme delivery, and 300 participants completed qualitative feedback forms following their participation in the VR component of the programme.

A process evaluation delivers insights beyond those attained in outcome evaluations, enhancing the understanding of factors contributing to programme success or failure that can be used to improve future programme iterations. The VR experience demonstrated high satisfaction scores with users, and the findings demonstrate the importance of a multi-disciplinary and industry partnered programme approach to support VR implementation and delivery.

This research demonstrates that additional learnings are obtained from a process evaluation. The findings are limited to one specific research programme, and the outcome effects of the VR simulation have not been assessed in isolation.

The methods outlined in this paper offer a process evaluation tool that can be used by marketers and other practitioners to reflect on programme success or failure to enhance core offerings.

The application of Moore et al.’s (2015) process evaluation framework delivers a reflexive research tool that can be applied to critically consider three key elements: context, implementation and mechanisms of impact of developed programmes. VR’s capacity to provide a satisfying and highly valued programme resource that participants value for its realistic, novel and immersive experiential learning experience was demonstrated.

This paper aims to present pertinent research challenges in the field of (big) data-informed policy-making based on the research, undertaken within the course of the European Union-funded project Big Policy Canvas. Technological advancements, especially in the past decade, have revolutionised the way that both every day and complex activities are conducted. It is, thus, expected that a particularly important actor such as the public sector, should constitute a successful disruption paradigm through the adoption of novel approaches and state-of-the-art information and communication technologies.

The research challenges stem from a need, trend and asset assessment based on qualitative and quantitative research, as well as from the identification of gaps and external framework factors that hinder the rapid and effective uptake of data-driven policy-making approaches.

The current paper presents a set of research challenges categorised in six main clusters, namely, public governance framework, privacy, transparency, trust, data acquisition, cleaning and representativeness, data clustering, integration and fusion, modelling and analysis with big data and data visualisation.

The paper provides a holistic overview of the interdisciplinary research challenges in the field of data-informed policy-making at a glance and shall serve as a foundation for the discussion of future research directions in a broader scientific community. It, furthermore, underlines the necessity to overcome isolated scientific views and treatments because of a high complex multi-layered environment.

With the explosion of digital technologies in contemporary daily life, fuelled by a pandemic and remote working, online learning and shopping and the proliferation of social platforms, much remains nebulous about the opportunities these technologies hold for social marketers beyond their previously documented use as communication and promotion tools. This paper aims to provide a rich examination of the variety of digital technologies used within social marketing and establish the scale of integration between digital technologies and social marketing.

Following systematic literature review procedures, a systematic literature review through eight databases was conducted. The systematic review focussed on the assessment of social marketing studies that incorporated a wide range of mature and emerging digital technologies such as the internet, mobile platforms and social media channels. A total of 50 social marketing studies (2014–2020) were analysed.

The review found that there have been major advancements in the technologies available to social marketers in recent years. Furthermore, the adoption of digital technologies by social marketers has evolved from a communication or promotion function where generic information is pushed to the citizen, towards the use of these technologies for a more personalised design, content and behaviour change intervention. In some studies, the digital technologies were the primary means for interactions and collaborations to take place. The review also found that digital technologies target more than the individual citizen. Digital technologies are used to target multi-level stakeholders, policy makers and partners as part of behavioural change interventions.

Only two previous reviews have synthesised digital technologies and their use in social marketing. This review provides a recent depiction of the range and scale of integration within social marketing. Specifically, it demonstrates the expansion beyond a persuasive application to their use for research, segmentation and targeting, collaboration and co-creation, the product and facilitator of service delivery. Finally, this review provides a heat map to illustrate the integration between digital technologies and key concepts and criteria within social marketing.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been frequently proposed as a promising tool for learning. However, researchers have commonly implemented a plethora of design elements in these IVR systems, which makes the specific aspects of the system that are necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes unclear. Against this background, this study aims to combine the literature on presence with learning theories to propose that the ability of IVR to present 3D objects to users improves the presence of these objects in the virtual environment compared with 2D objects, leading to increased learning performance.

To test this study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted a 2 (training condition: approach vs avoid) x 2 (object presence: high vs low) between-subjects laboratory experiment that used IVR with 83 female participants.

The results support this study’s hypotheses and show that training with high object presence leads to greater reactions to cues (chocolate cravings) and improved health behaviour (chocolate consumption).

This study shows that increased object presence leads to unique experiences for users, which help reinforce training effects. Moreover, this work sheds further light on how immersive computer technologies can affect user attitudes and behaviour. Specifically, this work contributes to IVR research by showing that learning effects can be enhanced through an increased degree of object presence.

The concept of grit has been receiving increased attention in recent years. Grit is a trait that enables individuals to persevere while facing challenges and obstacles in life, sometimes “winning at any cost”. The purpose of the study is to understand how ethical views may vary among different groups of people segmented on grittiness. Our key argument is that grittier segment is more inclined towards Machiavellian factors (amorality, desire for control, desire for status, distrust of others) and materialism.

Data derived from self-administered questionnaires completed by convenience samples of Indonesians living in Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (DIY), a region commonly considered as the miniature of Indonesia. Turning to market segmentation tools (n = 467), we first segment people based on their level of grittiness and, subsequently, investigate each segment's perception towards various Machiavellian factors (amorality, desire for control, distrust of others) and materialistic attitudes.

The study identified three segments of grittiness: The Least Gritty (the Good), The More Gritty (the Bad) and The Most Gritty (the Ugly). The results of this study showed the dark side of grit. Individuals with higher grit traits are more likely to behave unethically which could be referred to as “bad” and “ugly”. To help them succeed, cheating and lying are more likely considered acceptable by gritty individuals compared to less gritty “good” individuals.

Merely focussing on grit–be it grit promotion or training–may produce individuals who achieve success at all costs and disregard ethical values. An implication from the study is not to discourage developing grit in individuals but instead to add and emphasise ethical components. This implication is especially critical for educators and managers developing grit as a part of their activities.

The results of this study will have important theoretical implications and managerial implications educators balancing the consequences of teaching grit, but also for managers interested in understanding employees' level of grit within their workplaces along with ethical considerations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which youth have ready access to alcohol and the extent to which immediate family influence affects consumption.

This qualitative descriptive exploratory study undertook semi-structured peer-group interviews with 20 participants from four New Zealand high schools. The interviews centred on exploring the “general” experiences of youth related to alcohol access – but with a focus on alcohol access “at home” and the parental role.

The study confirmed that the home unit was the main source of alcohol for most youth and parents were the most common source of provision. Parents provided financial access to alcohol by giving their child money to purchase it themselves through older family members or friends. It was also found that youth used negotiation strategies with their parents to influence their consumer purchases of alcohol.

Youth frequently used strategies such as pressure tactics, exchange tactics, ingratiating tactics and consultation tactics to influence their family’s decision-making process and to pressure their parents into supplying them with alcohol.

It is important to recognise the role that family play as “gatekeepers” for readily allowing access and supplying youth with alcohol – and the reasons for doing so.

Alcohol plays an important part in many societies. It is important to understand how young people consume and access alcohol – particularly when the family plays a major role in access and consumption.

Many studies have been conducted in relation to youth and alcohol consumption. Very few, as far as we can tell, explore the role of the family from the young consumers’ perspective and especially from a qualitative narrative perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to study the social representations of polydrug use in the Finnish mainstream media. Social representations are shared ways of talking about socially relevant issues and have ramifications on both individual and socio-political levels.

The social representations theory and the “What’s the problem represented to be?” analysis provided the theoretical framework. In total, 405 newspaper articles were used as data and analysed by content analysis and thematic analysis. The key tenets of the social representations theory, anchoring, objectifying and naturalisation, were used in data analysis.

The study found that polydrug use was written about differently in articles over the study period from 1990 to 2016. Three social representations were introduced: first, polydrug use as a concept was used to refer to the co-use of alcohol and medical drugs. This was seen as a problem for young people, which could easily lead to illicit drug use. Second, illicit drugs were included in the definitions of polydrug use, which made the social representation more serious than before. The typical polydrug user was portrayed as a person who was addicted to substances, could not quite control his/her use and was a threat to others in society. Third, the concepts were naturalised as parts of common language and even used as prototypes and metaphors.

The study provides a look at how the phenomenon of polydrug use is conceptualised in everyday language as previous research has concentrated on its scientific definitions. It also adds to the research of media representations of different substances.

Due to the large-size, non-uniform transactions per day, the money laundering detection (MLD) is a time-consuming and difficult process. The major purpose of the proposed auto-regressive (AR) outlier-based MLD (AROMLD) is to reduce the time consumption for handling large-sized non-uniform transactions.

The AR-based outlier design produces consistent asymptotic distributed results that enhance the demand-forecasting abilities. Besides, the inter-quartile range (IQR) formulations proposed in this paper support the detailed analysis of time-series data pairs.

The prediction of high-dimensionality and the difficulties in the relationship/difference between the data pairs makes the time-series mining as a complex task. The presence of domain invariance in time-series mining initiates the regressive formulation for outlier detection. The deep analysis of time-varying process and the demand of forecasting combine the AR and the IQR formulations for an effective outlier detection.

The present research focuses on the detection of an outlier in the previous financial transaction, by using the AR model. Prediction of the possibility of an outlier in future transactions remains a major issue.

The lack of prior segmentation of ML detection suffers from dimensionality. Besides, the absence of boundary to isolate the normal and suspicious transactions induces the limitations. The lack of deep analysis and the time consumption are overwhelmed by using the regression formulation.