Search results

Recently, the sharing economy has attracted considerable attention. This emerging paradigm is driven by powerful technological forces and has the potential to change the way consumers access very important markets such as the car market. Indeed, access-based consumption may attract more participants as it enables consumers’ freedom of lifestyle and more flexible identity projects. The empirical literature has so far paid very little attention to car sharing services; when it has, it has focussed mainly on people who are already using them. The purpose of this paper is to consider the drivers behind the adoption intention of car sharing services.

A large multinational survey is carried out in three European capitals: London, Madrid and Paris. Using quota sampling, 2,159 licensed car drivers are recruited through the online panel of TNS Sofres. The sample is representative of the population of licensed car drivers in each city. The questionnaire is developed using established scales from previous research. An OLS regression analysis is performed to test our hypotheses, with a likelihood of choosing a car sharing option as the dependent variable.

The study demonstrates that knowledge, environmentalism, possession-self link and involvement with cars are important determinants of consumer behaviour in the car sharing services market. In addition, the user demographics suggest a target market of younger, predominantly male and urban customers. The empirical findings are consistent across the three capital cities, implying that providers can market their car sharing services in a similar manner.

As important determinants of consumer behaviour in the car sharing services market are underlined, several managerial implications arise from the study. Car sharing providers should promote awareness to help people not only to expand their experience with the service but also to be informed about the potential environmental benefits. Further, a stronger possession-self link in the automotive context is suggestive of a greater willingness to use car sharing systems. Managers should also take into account that it is much more difficult to engage individuals in car sharing services who are highly involved with car, than those who express very little attachment to the product. As people under 45 years old are far more likely to use these services, this generation effect is progressively moving the frontiers of the car retailing sector to a broader mobility service sector.

The foremost contribution of this paper is to demonstrate empirically how consumer intention to use car sharing is driven. To do so, the study addresses the general population of car drivers, interviewing users of the service as well as non-users.

This paper examines the discourse of consumers as they attempt to define and create consensus on the meaning and significance of cultural appropriation within a fashion context.

Data were collected via consumer comments posted to an article from The Guardian about the banning of headdresses from a large-scale music festival in Canada. Data were analyzed according to protocols for grounded theory.

Four themes emerged from the data: values consensus, ideological control, social and symbolic boundaries and social impact and change. These themes captured consumers' perspectives on the debate of cultural appropriation in fashion.

Cultural appropriation has become an increasingly important topic of interest as consumers share their voices online and demand companies increase their cultural competence.

Few researchers have examined cultural appropriation in fashion and captured the various perspectives of consumers on this phenomenon.

This research aims to explore the factors that lead to the prevalence of the green gap. Currently, an overwhelming majority of consumers voice concern about the state of the environment; however, only a select few mirror their intentions with actual green behaviors.

A critical incident technique is utilized in the first study, followed by a quantitative study analyzed via cluster analysis for the second study.

Results suggest the green gap exists for several reasons, of which price is most commonly noted. However, factors such as poor perceptions of quality, lack of green product availability and brand loyalty to conventional products appear to be important issues leading to the gap as well. Additionally, the type of product sought for purchase appears to impact the prevalence of the green gap.

Future research should seek to extend the present study by monitoring actual usage rather than intentions, as well as an examination of strategies that may help to minimize the green gap.

Consumers need to understand why green products are priced higher, the benefits they offer and the impact they can make as an individual. Additionally, firms competing in specific product categories can alter their strategies to better capitalize on the motivations of their target markets.

Past research has focused on why consumers buy green, but there is a lack of research on why consumers fall into the green gap – that is they have the intention of going green, but don’t. This research examines factors surrounding the green gap and the role of product type in the prevalence of the green gap.

Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the exposure of a student population to celebrity chef television programmes, to assess the influence these figures have, and how they are perceived.

A survey was conducted through an online questionnaire distributed at Bath Spa University. The approach included asking respondents why they watched programmes featuring celebrity chefs; to select a named celebrity chef whom they thought had most influenced their food habits, and to name particular chefs relating to campaign descriptions.

A significant proportion of the study group watched television programmes fronted by celebrity chefs (84 per cent); the main reason for watching was for entertainment. Overall, reported influence was insignificant, though Jamie Oliver was selected as the chef with most influence on the respondent’s food habits. Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve school dinners was also the most recognised, and celebrity chefs were generally viewed positively.

The study population was quite specific in its gender, age and ethnicity, and therefore might not be representative of wider society. Further work could consider gender differences in chef influence, as well as different forms of exposure.

Despite their ubiquity, academic research into the role of the celebrity chef in modern society is limited, where very few studies have assessed the influence of named chefs or the public perception of these figures. This paper gives an insight into this under-researched field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate optimal resources to promote resilience in staff working in inpatient mental health services. The study also provides an example of card sorting methodology used as an efficient way to identify the most helpful resources for resilience.

In total, 25 clinical staff participated in the study. A preliminary focus group and brief literature search identified resources used in two tasks. Two card sorting tasks identified resources participants found helpful vs unhelpful and abundant vs scarce, and resources they would find valuable to use more often.

The results indicate that most resources helpful to resilience and available to staff were personal resources (relating to positive outlooks or ways of working), whereas resources valuable to resilience but scarce in the working environment were organisational resources (relating to management or social workplace culture). Resources found to not be valuable to resilience were largely personal tangible resources (e.g. smoking, massages).

The findings and method may be generalisable to other mental health services, giving insight into promoting resilience within individuals and organisations. This information could serve as guidelines to streamline the allocation of organisational resources to best promote resilience across various mental health settings.

Staff resilience to working in mental health services contributes to high-quality, sustainable patient care. This study provides further insight into how personal and organisational resources are both vital to resilience in staff working in highly challenging environments.

As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity. Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.

Whole Foods and Wild Oats were both natural- and organic-food stores that competed for similar customers on values such as high-quality and healthy products, excellent customer service, knowledge of products, and an enjoyable shopping experience. In February 2007, Whole Foods announced that it would purchase a smaller but formidable competitor, Wild Oats. There was tremendous geographic complementarity involved: The merger would give Whole Foods the largest footprint within the natural- and organic-grocery industry in North America.

This paper examines how a beginning teacher in Virginia and a beginning teacher in Florida make sense of the high-stakes tests in their state. By examining beginning teachers in two states where the tests are so very different, we gain important insight into whether there are similarities and differences across states and how the nature of the test affects the teaching and learning of history. We first offer insight into the context of accountability in Virginia and Florida and then discuss what ambitious teaching and learning look like in these states as informed by the literature. Then, we turn to our research methods, findings, and implications for the field of social studies.

For over a decade now, various stakeholders in accounting education have called for the integration of technology competencies in the accounting curriculum (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), 2013, 2018; Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC), 1990; American Institute of Certified Public Accountant (AICPA), 1996; Behn et al., 2012; Lawson et al., 2014; PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 2013). In addition to stakeholder expectations, the inclusion of data analytics as a key area in both the business and accounting accreditation standards of the AACSB signals the urgent need for accounting programs to incorporate data analytics into their accounting curricula. This paper examines the extent of the integration of data analytics in the curricula of accounting programs with separate accounting AACSB accreditation. The paper also identifies possible barriers to integrating data analytics into the accounting curriculum. The results of this study indicate that of the 177 AACSB-accredited accounting programs, 79 (44.6%) offer data analytics courses at either the undergraduate or graduate level or as a special track. The results also indicate that 41 (23.16%) offer data analytics courses in their undergraduate curriculum, 61 (35.88%) at the graduate level, and 12 (6.80%) offer specialized tracks for accounting data analytics. Taken together, the findings indicate an encouraging trend, albeit slow, toward the integration of data analytics into the accounting curriculum.