Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
Managerial intervention motivates via strategic complementarity (principal effort complementing agent effort) but demotivates when wasting employee effort or in collaborative settings.
Principal-agent model analyzes intervention effects, contrasting delegation’s motivational impact under complementary vs. wasteful effort dynamics.
Strategic complementarity determines managerial practice effectiveness, reshaping understanding of when intervention motivates employees.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
Amusement displays enhance warmth/competence for benign faux pas but reduce perceived morality when harm to others occurs, while embarrassment is seen as overly self-conscious for minor errors but appropriate for harmful ones.
Six preregistered studies (N = 3,204) manipulated faux pas severity and emotional displays (amusement vs. embarrassment) to measure observer judgments.
A simple framework clarifies that amusement reflects well only on benign faux pas; for harmful errors, embarrassment is preferred to signal concern for others' welfare.
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Public confrontation of sexist remarks optimizes targets' belonging and voice, while private validation of harmed experiences best supports dignity.
Mixed-methods: qualitative study (82 U.S. male leaders, Study 1) and experimental studies (N=1,216 U.S. women across Studies 2–4; N=253 U.S. men, Study 5).
Allies should prioritize public confrontation and private validation for effective allyship, countering common recommendations and enhancing inclusion for women harmed by sexism.
To Believe or Not to Believe in Conspiracy Claims? That Is a Question for Signal Detection Theory
Low conspiracy mentality individuals underestimated conspiracy prevalence yet were more accurate distinguishing warranted from unwarranted claims versus high mentality counterparts.
Two studies with 331 French/576 English speakers (via Prolific) applied signal detection theory to evaluate conspiracy claim evaluation across mentality levels.
Results reconceptualize conspiracy mentality as a continuum, emphasizing the need to distinguish warranted vs. unwarranted claims in understanding perceived truthfulness.
EXPRESS: Toward Developing the Foundations of Global Artificial Intelligence Governance: Insights from Triple Stakeholder Perspectives and Reflexive Thematic Analysis
Distinct regional AI governance approaches (US: business-led innovation; EU: strict consumer protection; China: state-controlled development) enable convergence on ethical AI innovation, transparency, and consumer rights.
Synthesizes US/EU/China AI policies via reflexive thematic analysis using three theoretical lenses: consumer value hierarchy, government dynamic pyramid, and business privacy-by-design.
GAIG building blocks provide a comprehensive framework balancing stakeholder needs for ethical AI governance, offering actionable insights for policymakers and businesses.
One life of ours equals X lives of theirs: Motivated proportional thinking about the value of lives in different countries
Proportional thinking exists in life valuation (e.g., 1 life in small country ≈ 4 lives in large country), but is modulated by motivated reasoning based on group affiliation.
Studies 1-3 used controlled scenarios testing proportional reasoning across ingroup/outgroup and victim/aggressor contexts, comparing collective vs. individual life valuations.
This motivated reasoning distorts moral judgments and policy decisions regarding global life losses, favoring ingroup or victim perspectives.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Systematic review of 76 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2023) using directed qualitative content analysis to synthesize antecedents, consequences, and mediators.
First review emphasizing media affordances (richness, interactivity, community, gifting); proposes unified framework for theory, marketing, and sustainable consumption/child well-being.
“But you weren’t there!” – Effects of historical nostalgia on young consumers
Historical nostalgia significantly shapes young consumers' hedonic consumption through media-engendered romanticisation, amplified by visual elements triggering idealisation and emotional attachment.
Qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 young participants analysed via experience economy framework to model historical nostalgia's affective, sensory, and experiential dimensions.
Marketers can leverage idealisation and visual cues to stimulate historical nostalgia-driven consumption, bridging idealisation with conscious consumption—a novel link in nostalgia marketing theory.
Impact of Sustainability‐Themed Weddings on Consumer Shopping Behavior: Examining the Role of Social Influence, Purchase Intentions, and Long‐Term Adoption of Eco‐Friendly Fashion
Sustainable weddings positively influence purchase intention and long-term eco-friendly behavior, with social media and peer influence mediating this effect.
Mixed-methods: 302 survey responses analyzed via SEM on five constructs, plus 20 interviews validating quantitative themes.
Marketers, event planners, and policymakers should leverage socially influential events to drive sustainable consumption.
Why Consumers Prefer Chatbots' Simulated Empathy: Revisiting the Empathy‐Honesty Trade‐Off
Participants prefer chatbots’ simulated empathy over humans’ false empathy, driven by expectations chatbots experience less empathy (not greater honesty).
Four experiments (N=1435) tested positive/negative events with chatbot/human agents using false empathic, neutral, or no reactions across contexts.
Transparent disclosure of algorithmically generated emotions does not diminish engagement, extending expectancy violations theory for ethical AI design.
From Financial Exclusion to Collective Stability: Worker Cooperatives and Precarious Immigrant Workers' Financial Capability
Institutional support from worker co-ops and networks expands banking access, credit-building, and financial education, enabling collective financial structures like group savings.
Grounded theory analysis of 25 interviews with Hispanic immigrant women in NYC domestic worker co-ops.
An expanded financial capability model incorporating collective culture and institutionalized structures strengthens financial stability beyond individual deficits.
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
Internal activist communities drive CSR brand repositioning through four types and three practices (raising awareness, galvanizing, federating) to forge social/environmental commitments into tangible brand elements.
In-depth interviews with employees in companies undergoing CSR transformation and CSR brand repositioning.
Conceptualizing internal activism extends literature from individual to collective activism, positioning employees as cultural agents and reservoir of resources for responsible branding.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
Induced advocacy fusion boosts positive WOM intentions, weakens exchange norm advantage (mediated by authenticity), and amplifies negative reactions to inconsistent activism via perceived hypocrisy in communal relationships.
Four online experiments tested induced fusion (Study 1), fusion × relationship norms (Studies 2–3), and fusion × inconsistent activism (Study 4) with authenticity mediation.
Identity fusion is a primary driver of cause advocates’ responses; relationship norms act as a relational contract, with fusion amplifying or attenuating norm effects for authentic sociopolitical engagement.
The politics of impact: How political ideology shapes perceptions of the environmental impact of individual actions
Conservatives perceive sustainable actions as having less positive environmental impact than liberals, driving lower engagement in sustainable behaviors, independent of climate beliefs but linked to lower observed in-group prevalence of such actions.
Seven studies used experimental manipulations (domain shift, ingroup prevalence messaging, explicit impact communication) to test causal mechanisms across political ideologies.
Effective messaging strategies (e.g., framing in high-conservative domains, emphasizing ingroup behavior) can increase perceived impact and engagement across political spectrum.
EXPRESS: Welfare Implications of Democratization in Content Creation: Generative AI and Beyond
Incremental development reduces quality gap causing lose-lose outcomes; drastic development high reduction in quality gap enables win-win welfare gains.
Game-theoretic model analyzes content democratization effects on market welfare and creator incentives.
Platform screening for high-quality content raises welfare but technology development may reduce welfare, explaining industry-specific impacts.
7 preregistered studies (2 field, 5 lab) testing donation timing effects on CSR evaluations across diverse consumer samples.
Consistent periodic donations enhance evaluations via authentic motivation and perceived impact pathways, but may harm if misaligned with consumer expectations.
EXPRESS: Market Effects of Inattention: Theory and Evidence from Left-Digit Bias
Dealerships target consumers exhibiting left-digit bias in odometer readings, transacting with ex-post significantly more biased buyers than private sellers.
Theoretical analysis combined with 7-year dataset of millions of automobile transactions to quantify bias impact across dealerships vs. private sellers.
Intermediaries can skim biased consumers to extract meaningful surplus by selling vehicles with odometer readings below round numbers.
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Uncertain rewards for senders boost referrals 20.9%; certain rewards for recipients maximize engagement, while uncertainty for recipients decreases referrals 12.3%.
160,000+ users in a randomized experiment across a Chinese telecom platform tested referral reward schemes.
Optimize with uncertain sender rewards (alleviates guilt) and certain recipient rewards (avoids fairness perceptions) to maximize referral networks.
Studying vocal annoyance with self-steered sound synthesis.
signal density (vocalization proportion, unpleasant phonation), acoustic event rate, and unpredictable temporal structure determine vocal annoyance.
Self-Steered Sound Synthesis with untrained participants generating synthetic vocalizations via pitch/quality/temporal adjustments, evaluated by independent listeners.
fast/unpredictable sequences optimize alerting without annoyance; continuous harsh signals cause maximum stress, enabling broader voice research and sound design applications beyond natural vocal range.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
Amusement displays enhance warmth/competence for benign faux pas but reduce perceived morality when harm to others occurs, as amusement signals insufficient self-consciousness.
Six preregistered studies with N = 3,204 participants examining observer judgments of actors displaying amusement or embarrassment after faux pas.
Emotional calibration dictates social judgments: amusement is appropriate for minor errors but inappropriate for harmful ones, offering a framework for reactive display evaluation.
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Optimal allyship requires public confrontation of sexist remarks to reinforce gender civility norms and private validation of targets' harmed experiences to uphold dignity.
Mixed-methods approach: qualitative study (N=82 men) + four experiments (N=1,216 women, N=253 men) testing responses across contexts.
Public confrontation boosts gender norms but may trigger perpetrator bias regulation; allies must balance public confrontation and private validation for effective inclusion.
Detection of Idiosyncratic Gaze-Fingerprint Signatures in Humans
Gaze fingerprinting achieves 52%-63% accuracy vs. chance 1%-2%, confirming unique individual gaze patterns across complex scenes.
Analyzed 700 static scenes with n=105 discovery and n=46 replication adult datasets (Italy/Germany), plus preregistered longitudinal follow-up.
Gaze-fingerprint barcodes are nonrandom over time; higher social stimulus fingerprintability correlates with lower autistic traits, suggesting neurodevelopmental significance.
To Believe or Not to Believe in Conspiracy Claims? That Is a Question for Signal Detection Theory
Low conspiracy mentality correlates with underestimating prevalence and distinguishing warranted from unwarranted claims more accurately than high mentality.
Two studies used signal detection theory with 331 French-speaking and 576 English-speaking adults recruited via Prolific across France, Switzerland, Belgium, US, and UK.
Findings clarify conspiracy mentality and its link to perceived truthfulness of conspiracies, addressing both continuum ends.
EXPRESS: Toward Developing the Foundations of Global Artificial Intelligence Governance: Insights from Triple Stakeholder Perspectives and Reflexive Thematic Analysis
Distinct regional AI governance approaches (US: business-led innovation; EU: strict consumer protection; China: state-controlled development) reveal convergence opportunities in ethical AI innovation, transparency, and consumer rights.
Synthesized US, EU, and China AI policies via reflexive thematic analysis, applying three theoretical lenses: consumer value hierarchy, government dynamic pyramid, business privacy-by-design.
GAIG building blocks balance stakeholder needs (consumers, governments, businesses), offering marketing and policy insights for navigating ethical AI governance globally.
Wishful thinking in the 2020 U.S. presidential election: Does perspective taking mitigate the preference–expectation link?
No significant reduction in preference-expectation link despite perspective-taking intervention; strong preference-expectation link persisted for 2020 election predictions.
Replicated Rose and Aspiras’ perspective-taking intervention with 2020 U.S. presidential election predictions, comparing intervention vs. control groups.
Findings challenge debiasing efforts and suggest persistent wishful thinking in electoral expectations, contrasting with prior 2016 results.
Information distortion as a source of overconfidence in managerial decisions
Distortion-driven confidence develops even without prior preference, as sequential information is interpreted to support the current option, leading to unwarranted confidence.
Experienced managers completed a realistic business task with distortion and confidence tracked throughout the decision process.
Sequential information processing causes overconfidence in chosen actions via bias-driven confidence, risking suboptimal strategic decisions.
One life of ours equals X lives of theirs: Motivated proportional thinking about the value of lives in different countries
Proportional thinking observed (e.g., 1 small-country life = 4 large-country lives), modulated by motivated reasoning (e.g., 1 ingroup life = 4 outgroup lives vs. reverse).
Three studies testing proportional comparisons across in-group/out-group and victim/aggressor scenarios using collective vs. individual life valuations.
Motivated reasoning drives proportional thinking more for ingroup benefit or victim role, with collective comparisons stronger than individual.
EXPRESS: Theory of Machine: Lay Beliefs About Algorithmic Data Processing Drive Recommendation Acceptance
Consumers hold three distinct data type mental models, with perceived individuality threat and processing acceptability driving recommendation acceptance.
Pilot + four studies experimentally validated mechanisms linking data type understanding to acceptance.
Understanding these mechanisms enhances AI recommendation adoption by addressing consumer data perception concerns.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Posting and politics: the effects of corporate political advocacy on user-generated content
Ideological alignment between consumers’ beliefs and brands’ CPA drives UGC intent, mediated by self-brand identity congruency and moderated by message controversy and political orientation.
Three experimental studies tested main effects, mediating (self-brand identity), and moderating (controversy, political orientation) variables across contexts.
Integrates CPA and UGC research, revealing how brand political advocacy fuels consumer engagement through ideological resonance.
Consumers’ parasocial interactions and relationships with online influencers: a systematic review
Source, message, medium, and consumer antecedents drive PSR/PSI with influencers, fostering social capital; underexplored social media affordances (richness, interactivity) and limited focus on transactional outcomes (purchase, impulse buying) persist.
Systematic review of 76 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2023) via directed qualitative content analysis to synthesize antecedents, consequences, and mediators of PSI/PSR.
First review integrating media affordances into a unified PSI/PSR framework, advancing theory for influencer marketing, sustainable consumption, and child/adolescent well-being research.
“But you weren’t there!” – Effects of historical nostalgia on young consumers
Historical nostalgia significantly shapes young consumers' non-personal experience consumption, operating across affective, sensory, and experiential dimensions when marketing expands beyond personal history.
Qualitative in-depth interviews (N=20) analyzed via experience economy framework, revealing nuanced historical nostalgia themes and its impact on consumption.
Marketers can boost hedonic consumption using idealisation and visual cues to trigger historical nostalgia, bridging idealisation with conscious consumption in practice.
Impact of Sustainability‐Themed Weddings on Consumer Shopping Behavior: Examining the Role of Social Influence, Purchase Intentions, and Long‐Term Adoption of Eco‐Friendly Fashion
Sustainable weddings positively influence purchase intention, willingness to pay premium, and long-term eco-friendly behavior, with social media/peer influence as key mediator.
Mixed-methods: quantitative survey (n=302) analyzed via SEM for five constructs, qualitative interviews (n=20) validating themes.
Marketers/event planners can leverage socially influential events to drive sustainable consumption and lasting behavioral change.
To What Extent Did Social Media Use Contribute to Financial Hardship During the <scp>COVID</scp> ‐19 Pandemic?
Greater social media use positively associated with difficulty making ends meet and lacking emergency savings, with fear of missing out (FOMO) mediating both relationships.
National survey (n=4,178) during COVID-19 pandemic analyzed via linear regression to assess social media, FOMO, and financial outcomes.
Findings suggest social media communication negatively impacts consumer financial behaviors, highlighting FOMO’s role in financial strain.
From Financial Exclusion to Collective Stability: Worker Cooperatives and Precarious Immigrant Workers' Financial Capability
Institutional support from worker cooperatives and networks enables collective financial structures (group savings, emergency loans), expanding banking access and credit-building beyond individual deficits.
Grounded theory analysis of 25 interviews with Hispanic immigrant women in NYC domestic worker co-ops, examining institutional influences on financial capability.
Proposes an expanded financial capability model incorporating collective culture and institutionalized structures, demonstrating institutional support strengthens financial stability beyond individual level.
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
Internal activist communities drive CSR brand repositioning via four community types using three practices (raising awareness, galvanizing, federating) to translate social/environmental commitments into tangible brand elements.
In-depth employee interviews during corporate CSR transformation and brand repositioning within sustainability-focused companies.
Employees act as cultural agents for change, serving as a reservoir of resources crucial for building responsible brands through collective activism.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
Induced advocacy fusion increased positive WOM, while fusion weakened exchange norm advantage over communal norms, with authenticity mediating effects across studies.
Four online experiments tested induced vs. trait fusion, relationship norms (exchange/communal), and perceived authenticity as mediators for brand activism responses.
Identifies identity fusion as primary driver of cause advocates' reactions; conceptualizes relationship norms as relational contract, showing fusion can amplify/attenuate norm effects for authentic engagement.
From decision patience to process patience: A decision–process integration of the choice to wait and the experience of waiting
Dissociation between choice patience (delayed reward decisions) and process patience (emotional regulation during waiting), revealing a temporal model spanning decision to waiting.
Mapping psychological drivers (affective urges, future-self connectedness, subjective time perception) onto waiting mechanisms to integrate intertemporal choice and temporal affect.
Environmental cues may reduce uncertainty at choice yet heighten impatience during wait, demanding new models for consumer temporal behavior.
The politics of impact: How political ideology shapes perceptions of the environmental impact of individual actions
Conservatives perceive sustainable actions as having less environmental impact than liberals, driving lower engagement.
Seven studies manipulated behavior domain (health vs. sustainability), ingroup prevalence, and explicit impact communication to test perception shifts.
Effective strategies include emphasizing ingroup sustainability prevalence and explicit impact messaging to boost cross-partisan engagement.
EXPRESS: Consumers Prefer that Corporations Donate Periodically
Periodic donations (e.g., $20k/month) outperform equivalent lump sums ($240k/year) in boosting reputation, customer engagement, and purchase likelihood via authentic prosocial motivation judgments.
Seven preregistered studies (two large field studies, five online lab experiments) tested donation timing effects on consumer evaluations.
Consumers prioritize consistency cues and authentic prosocial motivation; periodicity enhances perceived impact and favorable evaluations, but may harm perceptions in specific contexts.
EXPRESS: Market Effects of Inattention: Theory and Evidence from Left-Digit Bias
Dealerships target consumers exhibiting left-digit bias in odometer readings, selling more round-number vehicles faster with higher margins than private sellers.
Theoretical model + empirical analysis of a 7-year dataset (millions of auto transactions) measuring left-digit bias across dealership vs. private seller transactions.
Intermediaries extract surplus by skimming consumers with specific behavioral biases, enabling profit extraction in decentralized markets.
Insiders Only: Are Our Ideas About What Makes “Good Theory” Holding Us Back?
Phenomenon-to-construct theorizing follows scientific inference logic, validating it as a strength, not a weakness, within the nomological network.
Survey of authors in top journals and Bayesian framework analysis demonstrate that both theorizing types rely on established network links for inference.
Embracing phenomenon-to-construct theorizing broadens consumer research reach by connecting abstract theory to meaningful, actionable phenomena.
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Sender uncertainty boosts referrals by 20.9% (vs. recipient uncertainty causing 12.3% decline), with senders sharing more due to reduced guilt, while recipients disengage over perceived unfairness.
160K-user randomized experiment (Chinese telecom) plus supplementary tests to isolate mechanisms driving asymmetric reward uncertainty effects.
Optimize referral programs via sender uncertainty + recipient certainty to maximize engagement, avoiding recipient uncertainty that undermines fairness and social pressure.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
Managerial intervention motivates when incentivizing complementary principal effort but demotivates if wasting agent effort; strategic complementarity determines outcomes.
Principal-agent model analyzes intervention effects, contrasting demotivation from wasted effort versus motivation from aligned effort incentives.
Understanding strategic complementarity clarifies when delegation or intervention motivates consumers in collaborative contexts.
Studying vocal annoyance with self-steered sound synthesis.
Signal density (vocalization proportion + unpleasant phonation) and acoustic event rate are primary annoyance drivers, while temporal unpredictability does not affect ratings.
Self-Steered Sound Synthesis enabled untrained participants to generate synthetic vocalizations via pitch/quality/temporal adjustments, evaluated by independent listeners.
Short, fast vocal signals maximize alerting efficacy without undue stress, whereas continuous/harsh signals like cries cause maximum acoustic stress.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
Amusement displays boost warmth/competence for benign faux pas but signal insensitivity when harm to others occurs; embarrassment backfires for minor errors.
Six preregistered studies (N=3,204) testing faux pas judgment across varying harm levels.
Brands should deploy amusement for minor errors but embarrassment for harmful ones to align with social expectations.
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Optimal allyship requires public confrontation of sexist remarks to reinforce gender norms and private validation of harmed targets to uphold dignity, enhancing women’s belonging and voice.
Mixed-methods design: qualitative study (N=82 male leaders) and four experimental studies (N=1,216 women) testing public/private response impacts on inclusion outcomes.
Male allies should prioritize public confrontation and private validation to maximize target inclusion, avoiding unintended perpetrator backlash while supporting harmed women.
EXPRESS: Toward Developing the Foundations of Global Artificial Intelligence Governance: Insights from Triple Stakeholder Perspectives and Reflexive Thematic Analysis
Convergence opportunities in ethical AI innovation, transparency, and consumer rights despite regional policy differences (US business-led, EU protection-focused, China state-controlled).
Synthesizing US, EU, China AI policies via reflexive thematic analysis using three theoretical lenses (consumer value hierarchy, government pyramid, business privacy-by-design).
Provides marketing and policy insights for stakeholders navigating GAIG to balance ethical AI with consumer protection needs.
Information distortion as a source of overconfidence in managerial decisions
drives unwarranted confidence in the current preference during decision-making, even without prior preference.
- Experienced managers in a realistic business decision task had distortion and confidence tracked throughout the process.
- This distortion-driven confidence leads to overconfidence in chosen option, risking suboptimal strategic decisions.
One life of ours equals X lives of theirs: Motivated proportional thinking about the value of lives in different countries
observed: People equate 1 life in small country to 4 lives in large country, but motivated reasoning alters this (e.g., 1 ingroup life = 4 outgroup lives).
manipulated ingroup/outgroup and victim/aggressor roles; collective comparisons (1,000 vs. 4,000 lives) showed stronger proportional thinking than individual comparisons.
Biased life valuation affects resource allocation decisions, favoring ingroup or victim scenarios, with collective framing amplifying inequitable judgments.
EXPRESS: Prospecting vs. Retargeting: Insights from a Geography-Based Field Experiment
Prospecting ads generated significantly higher returns than retargeting ads across both platforms, contradicting industry assumptions about retargeting necessity.
A large-scale field experiment on Google and Facebook ad networks for a major bed-in-box retailer measured incremental sales impact.
For durable goods, prospecting ads are more effective than retargeting, reshaping digital ad strategy priorities.
EXPRESS: Selling Together: a Signaling Perspective on Co-Livestreaming Effectiveness
Co-livestreaming significantly enhances transactional (sales) and relational (follower growth) performance versus single-influencer streams, mediated by perceived brand endorsement and influencer credibility; effect diminishes with higher influencer/brand popularity.
Combined secondary data analysis with three experiments to test co-livestreaming’s impact on livestream performance using signaling theory.
Firms should strategically adopt co-livestreaming for optimal performance, especially with less popular influencers/brands, to boost sales and audience engagement.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Posting and politics: the effects of corporate political advocacy on user-generated content
Ideological alignment between consumers’ beliefs and brands’ CPA drives greater UGC intent, mediated by self-brand identity congruency and moderated by message controversy and political orientation.
Three experiments tested CPA-UGC relationships across contexts, examining main effects, mediation (self-brand identity), and moderation (controversy, political orientation).
Brands’ CPA efforts increase positive UGC when aligned with consumer beliefs but spur negative UGC when misaligned, requiring strategic political positioning.
Consumers’ parasocial interactions and relationships with online influencers: a systematic review
Source, message, medium, and consumer antecedents drive PSR/PSI, fostering influencers’ social capital; limited focus on transactional outcomes (e.g., purchase, impulse buying).
Systematic review of 76 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2023) using directed qualitative content analysis to synthesize antecedents, consequences, and moderators.
Media affordances (richness, interactivity, community) critically shape PSR/PSI but remain underexplored; future research must integrate these for sustainable consumption and well-being.
Impact of Sustainability‐Themed Weddings on Consumer Shopping Behavior: Examining the Role of Social Influence, Purchase Intentions, and Long‐Term Adoption of Eco‐Friendly Fashion
positively influence purchase intention and long-term eco-friendly shopping behavior, with social media/peer influence acting as key mediator.
302 survey responses analyzed via SEM, 20 qualitative interviews validating quantitative themes.
should leverage socially influential events to drive sustainable consumption.
To What Extent Did Social Media Use Contribute to Financial Hardship During the <scp>COVID</scp> ‐19 Pandemic?
Social media use positively associates with difficulty making ends meet and lacking emergency savings, with fear of missing out mediating both relationships.
National survey (n=4178) during pandemic using linear regression to analyze socio-economic impacts.
Social media communication may negatively affect financial health via fear of missing out, urging mindful usage.
From Financial Exclusion to Collective Stability: Worker Cooperatives and Precarious Immigrant Workers' Financial Capability
Institutional support from worker co-ops and networks expands banking access, credit-building, and financial education via collective financial structures like group savings.
Grounded theory analysis of 25 NYC domestic worker co-op members (Hispanic immigrant women) revealed institutional impacts on financial capability.
An expanded financial capability model incorporates collective culture and institutionalized structures, strengthening stability beyond individual level.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
Identity fusion increases support for aligned activism and weakens exchange norm advantage over communal norms, with perceived authenticity mediating effects; it amplifies negative reactions to inconsistent activism via heightened hypocrisy perceptions.
Four online experiments tested induced/traits fusion and relationship norms (exchange vs. communal) on WOM intentions and hypocrisy responses.
Brands must ensure authentic sociopolitical engagement aligned with relationship norms, as identity fusion dictates whether activism strengthens or undermines trust.
The politics of impact: How political ideology shapes perceptions of the environmental impact of individual actions
Political ideology systematically shapes perceptions of environmental impact; conservatives perceive less positive impact from sustainable actions than liberals, driven by lower in-group prevalence of such behaviors.
Seven studies used experimental manipulations (e.g., domain framing, ingroup prevalence messaging, explicit impact communication) to test perception-behavior links across political groups.
Highlighting ingroup prevalence or explicit impact increases conservatives’ perceived efficacy and engagement in sustainable behaviors, enabling cross-ideological promotion.
EXPRESS: Consumers Prefer that Corporations Donate Periodically
Periodic donations (e.g., $20k/month × 12 months) outperform aggregate donations (e.g., $240k/year) in boosting reputation, customer engagement, and purchase likelihood.
Seven preregistered studies (two large field studies, five online lab experiments) tested donation timing effects on authentic prosocial motivation and perceived impact.
Authentic prosocial motivation drives evaluations via consistency and perceived impact, with periodic giving enhancing or harming evaluations based on context.
EXPRESS: Market Effects of Inattention: Theory and Evidence from Left-Digit Bias
Dealerships target left-digit bias in odometer readings, selling more vehicles with round-number *below* readings at higher margins than private sellers.
Theoretical model combined with 7-year million-transaction dataset analyzing used car market behavior across dealerships and private sellers.
Intermediaries skim inattentive consumers with behavioral biases, extracting meaningful surplus from their inattention.
Insiders Only: Are Our Ideas About What Makes “Good Theory” Holding Us Back?
Phenomenon-to-construct theorizing (explaining real-world patterns via active constructs) is scientifically valid, matching construct-to-construct logic via Bayesian inference within nomological networks.
Survey of four leading journal authors revealed overvaluing construct-to-construct work; Bayesian framework analysis demonstrated equivalent inference logic for both theorizing types.
Embracing phenomenon-to-construct theorizing broadens research relevance, linking abstract theory to actionable phenomena for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.
and four controlled experiments confirm guilt mediates the effect.
- Recommending utilitarian items via algorithms reduces abandonment, improving conversion rates.
Femininity culture: Theory and workplace implications.
Femininity workplace culture exhibits ambivalent nature, with communal norms (positive outcomes) distinct from unmitigated communion norms (negative outcomes like burnout).
Empirically identified via 5,000+ respondents across 7 studies (2 pilots + 5 studies) in diverse occupations, measuring two distinct cultural dimensions.
Unmitigated communion norms drive gender segregation in female-typed fields and harm employee well-being, contrasting communal norms' benefits.
Are the metatraits fact or artifact? Ruling out alternative explanations for the higher-order factors of the Big Five.
Big Five traits remain genuinely correlated at latent level after controlling artifacts, confirming Stability (conscientiousness, agreeableness, low neuroticism) and Plasticity (extraversion, openness) as real metatraits.
Controlled acquiescence bias (ipsatization), rater biases (multiple raters), and blended variables (exploratory factor models with cross-loadings) across meta-analytic and national samples.
Metatraits inform consumer behavior research, as genuine personality dimensions underpin trait correlates, necessitating study of Stability and Plasticity effects.
Studying vocal annoyance with self-steered sound synthesis.
Signal density (vocalization proportion + unpleasant phonation) and acoustic event rate most drive annoyance; unpredictable timing did not affect ratings.
Self-Steered Sound Synthesis let untrained participants create realistic synthetic vocalizations by adjusting pitch, quality, and timing, then evaluated by independent listeners.
Short, fast vocal sequences minimize annoyance while alerting effectively, unlike continuous harsh sounds (e.g., baby cries) causing maximum acoustic stress.
Brand addiction to idols and debt avoidance: exploring the mediating role of self-esteem
, not directly.
- Quantitative mediation analysis across two surveys and one experiment with young Japanese idol fans testing self-esteem’s mediating role.
- Challenges direct addiction-debt avoidance assumption, showing human brand addiction can foster debt avoidance awareness via identity construction.
Macroeconomic Announcements and the News That Matters Most to Investors
Discount rate news, not cash flow news, drives a positive risk premium for portfolios paying off on negative macroeconomic announcement (MA) market impacts.
Analyzed large MA dataset using state-of-the-art cash flow and discount rate news measures, rejecting CAPM via Sharpe ratio improvements.
Investors demand compensation for large reinvestment risk, highlighting discount rate news as the key market driver.
Start-Up Firms and Corporate Culture: Evidence from Advertised Corporate Culture
Worker-centered corporate culture (employee well-being focus) attracts 20% more applications but correlates with 5% lower salaries versus firm-centered culture, despite no significant outcome differences.
Analyzed start-up job board data to identify culture types, then developed an equilibrium model to test cost-saving vs. productivity hypotheses.
Applicants respond strongly to worker-centered culture signals, yet firms may adopt it primarily for labor cost reduction, not productivity gains.
“But you weren’t there!” – Effects of historical nostalgia on young consumers
Historical nostalgia—longing for non-personal pre-lived experiences—significantly shapes consumption via affective/sensory/experiential dimensions, amplified by media-engendered romanticisation and idealisation.
20 young participants analyzed through in-depth interviews using the experience economy framework, coding for themes across nostalgic consumption contexts.
Marketers can boost hedonic consumption by leveraging visual cues and idealisation to trigger historical nostalgia, supporting escapism and positive attachment.
Token distribution unstable with one provider but stable with two random agents, maintaining near-initial token balances and returning to equilibrium in finite expected time.
Agent-based modeling of token economy balancing service requests/provisions, validated via kidney exchange data simulations mirroring load-balancing power-of-two-choices.
Token systems can sustain hospital cooperation and generate efficient outcomes in thin-supply marketplaces like kidney exchanges.
Learning to Optimally Stop Diffusion Processes, with Financial Applications
This abstract describes mathematical finance research, not consumer behavior. The provided text focuses on reinforcement learning applications to option pricing and portfolio choice, with no content related to consumer behavior. Therefore, a summary addressing "Consumer Implication" cannot be derived from this abstract.
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
drive CSR brand repositioning via three practices (raising awareness, galvanizing, federating) to translate social/environmental commitments into brand elements.
with employees in CSR-transforming companies revealed collective internal activism as central to brand-building, moving beyond individual efforts.
- Employees act as cultural agents and a reservoir of resources, crucially enabling responsible brand development through internal activism.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
Amusement displays signal benign faux pas (minimal/no harm), enhancing perceived warmth, competence, authenticity; embarrassment signals excessive self-consciousness. For harm to others, amusement indicates insensitivity, reversing benefits.
Six preregistered studies (N=3,204) measured observer judgments of faux pas displays across varying harm levels.
For benign faux pas, displaying amusement improves social perception; for harmful faux pas, embarrassment is preferable to avoid appearing indifferent to others' welfare.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Optimal support for women harmed by sexist remarks requires public confrontation of perpetrators and private validation of targets' experiences, enhancing sense of belonging and voice intentions.
Mixed-methods design with 82 male leaders (Study 1), 1,216 U.S. women (Studies 2–4), and 253 U.S. men (Study 5) testing allyship strategies across qualitative and experimental contexts.
Allies should prioritize public confrontation to reinforce gender norms and private validation to uphold dignity, avoiding adverse perpetrator reactions while maximizing target inclusion.
Workplace inauthenticity increases organizational cynicism: Multimethod and multicultural evidence.
triggers organizational cynicism via perceived person-organization value incongruence.
- Six studies (N = 2,844) used experimental-causal-chain, cross-lagged, and time-lagged designs to confirm mediation.
- Consumers actively cope with inauthenticity through morally delegitimizing expressions and subversive behaviors.
EXPRESS: Impoverished Consumers, Policy Makers, and Moral Traditions: Understanding and Addressing Policy Neglect in Poverty Alleviation
Moral traditions crystallize faulty belief systems that blame impoverished consumers for poverty via perceptions of low competence and warmth, per Stereotype Content Model.
Integrated Fiske’s Stereotype Content Model to link perceptions of free will to negative stereotypes, analyzing how moral frameworks justify inaction on poverty.
Overcome bias through interconnection, redefining 'enough', and dignity-based beliefs to foster equitable access and material improvement.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
determines when managerial intervention motivates: it boosts effort through complementary principal effort but demotivates via wasted agent effort, especially in collaborative work.
analysis identifies intervention's motivational conditions, contrasting traditional delegation focus on reduced managerial oversight.
- Managerial practices must leverage strategic complementarity to avoid demotivation, guiding effective intervention timing in employee relationships.
Token distribution achieves stability with 2 agents (vs. instability with 1), ensuring minimal deviation from initial endowments and finite return time.
Modeled a token economy where agents balance service requests/provisions; analyzed token distribution stability under thin supply via simulations using kidney exchange data.
Token systems enable efficient cooperation in kidney exchange marketplaces by sustaining hospital coordination without monetary transfers.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
and private validation optimally support targets' belonging and voice, countering harmful norms while preserving dignity.
(qualitative: *N*=82 male leaders; experimental: *N*=1,216 women across Studies 2–4) confirmed this dual approach.
- Male allies require actionable recommendations to adopt this dual approach for effective, inclusive allyship in leadership roles.
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Optimal referral design requires uncertain sender rewards and certain recipient rewards, boosting total referrals by 20.9%; reciprocal uncertainty reduces referrals by 12.3%.
Randomized experiment with 160,000+ telecom users in China tested reward scheme variations across referral stages.
EXPRESS: Impoverished Consumers, Policy Makers, and Moral Traditions: Understanding and Addressing Policy Neglect in Poverty Alleviation
crystallize faulty beliefs, blaming impoverished consumers for low competence and warmth via Stereotype Content Model.
integration reveals moral traditions underpin negative stereotypes, linking blame to perceived lack of will.
- Three pathways—informing belief systems through interconnection, redefining 'enough', and enacting dignity/right beliefs—foster equitable access and social justice.
Exploring consumer support for brand activism: a four-segment typology
Four Brand Activism Supporter segments identified: Profit Perceivers, Conscientious Conservatives, Progress Patrons, and Balanced Believers.
Applied Reasoned Action Approach and two-step cluster analysis to segment consumers based on attitudes, perceptions of firm motives, and perceived behavioral control.
Enables targeted marketing of brand activism initiatives by aligning with specific supporter segments, using provided survey and strategy tools.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
determines if managerial intervention motivates agents by incentivizing principal effort that complements agent effort, avoiding demotivation from wasted effort.
analysis identifies conditions where intervention is motivational versus demotivating, contrasting with traditional delegation literature.
- Managerial practices' motivational impact hinges on strategic complementarity, not mere delegation, guiding effective practice design.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
increases positive WOM intentions and weakens exchange norm advantage over communal norms, with perceived authenticity as key mediator.
- Four online experiments tested induced/trait fusion, relationship norms, and inconsistent activism effects on advocacy responses.
- Brands must align with advocates' identities for authentic sociopolitical engagement, as fusion amplifies hypocrisy perceptions in inconsistent cases.
A stable token distribution emerges with two random agents providing service, unlike instability with only one agent, ensuring token balances return to initial endowments in finite expected time.
A theoretical model of token-based service provision was analyzed, validated via kidney exchange data simulations to test stability under thin supply conditions.
Token systems can sustain hospital cooperation and enable efficient kidney exchange outcomes by stabilizing resource allocation in markets with limited provider availability.
Learning to Optimally Stop Diffusion Processes, with Financial Applications
A novel continuous-time reinforcement learning framework transforms optimal stopping problems into stochastic control via entropy-regularized Bernoulli distributions, enabling fast convergence for high-dimensional applications like American put pricing and transaction-cost portfolio optimization.
Martingale-based RL algorithms with variational inequality penalization and policy iteration achieve high-accuracy learning of value functions and free boundaries, validated across finite-horizon options and Merton’s problem.
*Not applicable*—this work addresses financial decision-making (e.g., portfolio choice, option pricing) within quantitative finance, not consumer behavior; no consumer-specific insights or implications are derived.
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
Internal activist communities drive CSR brand repositioning through four types of communities and three main practices (raising awareness, galvanizing, federating), translating social/environmental commitments into tangible/intangible brand elements.
An interpretive approach using in-depth interviews with employees in firms undergoing CSR transformation and brand repositioning, capturing internal dynamics of sustainability change.
Employees as internal activist communities act as cultural agents for change and a reservoir of resources, crucial for building authentic, responsible brands that align with societal expectations.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
Judgments of faux pas depend on minimal/no harm versus harm to others; amusement displays signal warmth and competence for benign errors but indicate insensitivity when harm occurs, while embarrassment displays are seen as overly self-conscious for minor errors but appropriate for harmful ones.
Six preregistered studies with N = 3,204 participants examined observer perceptions of actors displaying amusement or embarrassment after committing faux pas, varying harm level as a key experimental factor.
Brands or individuals should calibrate emotional displays to context: amusement enhances social perception for minor missteps but damages reputation when harm is involved, requiring nuanced emotional signaling in consumer interactions.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Optimal allyship requires public confrontation of sexist remarks to reinforce gender civility norms and private validation of harmed targets' experiences to protect dignity, significantly enhancing women's sense of belonging and voice intentions.
Mixed-methods design including a qualitative study of 82 U.S. male leaders (Study 1), three preregistered experiments with 1,216 U.S. women (Studies 2–4), and a follow-up with 253 U.S. men (Study 5), testing responses across contexts.
Allies should prioritize public confrontation to address transgressors while offering private validation to support harmed women, avoiding public validation that risks backlash and ensuring inclusion without undermining perpetrator accountability.
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Uncertain sender rewards (e.g., variable referral incentives) increase total referrals by 20.9%, while uncertain recipient rewards (e.g., unpredictable incentives for invitees) decrease referrals by 12.3%, revealing asymmetric effects on network engagement.
A large-scale randomized experiment with 160,000+ users from a Chinese telecom operator tested reward schemes, supplemented by additional online experiments to isolate mechanisms like guilt reduction and fairness perceptions.
Optimal referral programs guarantee certain rewards for recipients (to avoid fairness concerns) and use uncertainty for senders (to reduce guilt and boost sharing), maximizing long-term network engagement and profitable in-app activities.
Workplace inauthenticity increases organizational cynicism: Multimethod and multicultural evidence.
Workplace inauthenticity triggers organizational cynicism via perceived person-organization value incongruence, demonstrating an active, agentive defense mechanism rather than passive endurance.
Six studies (total *N* = 2,844) employed experimental-causal-chain, cross-lagged, and time-lagged designs across multicultural settings, controlling for trait cynicism and negative affectivity while validating with behavioral measures and preregistered pilots.
Individuals agentically cope with inauthenticity through morally delegitimizing expressions and subversive behaviors toward organizations, revealing a proactive, value-driven response to perceived organizational misalignment.
EXPRESS: Sensory Inclusion in the Marketplace: Addressing Overload as an Emerging Axis of Exclusion
Sensory overload constitutes an emergent axis of inequality in markets, creating new exclusion beyond socioeconomic or digital access barriers through escalating sensory intensity, incongruence, and complexity.
Advancement relies on interdisciplinary insights from marketing, psychology, and human–computer interaction, moving beyond reactive accommodations to theorize sensory inclusion as a core principle.
Markets require proactive design frameworks treating sensory accessibility as an inclusion principle, with different sensory thresholds to enhance engagement and minimize exclusion for all consumers.
EXPRESS: Impoverished Consumers, Policy Makers, and Moral Traditions: Understanding and Addressing Policy Neglect in Poverty Alleviation
Negative stereotypes blaming impoverished consumers for their circumstances stem from perceptions of free will, crystallizing into low competence and warmth judgments via the Stereotype Content Model.
Conceptual integration of Fiske’s Stereotype Content Model to analyze how moral traditions shape public/policy beliefs, linking faulty perceptions to immoral behavior toward the poor.
Effective policy requires intimate connections with decision-makers to foster equitable access, replacing blame with dignity and right beliefs to improve material lives and advance social justice.
The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers
A 26.08% increase in completed tasks was observed among developers using an AI-based coding assistant across 4,867 participants in combined field experiments.
Randomized controlled trials conducted at Microsoft, Accenture, and a Fortune 100 company, with a random subset of developers provided access to an AI coding assistant during routine work.
Less experienced developers demonstrated higher adoption rates and greater productivity gains, suggesting AI tools disproportionately benefit novice users in technical roles.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
Managerial intervention motivates agents when it incentivizes principal effort that complements agent effort, but demotivates when causing wasted effort; delegation demotivates in collaborative settings due to strategic complementarity.
A principal-agent model analyzes conditions for motivational intervention, explicitly incorporating strategic complementarity between principal and agent effort to determine when intervention succeeds or fails.
Managers should avoid delegation in collaborative tasks where effort complementarity is high, instead using targeted intervention to align effort incentives, as strategic complementarity dictates motivational outcomes.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
Identity fusion drives cause advocates' responses to brand activism, weakening the advantage of exchange norms over communal norms, with perceived authenticity mediating this effect.
Four online experiments tested induced vs. trait fusion, examining how relationship norms interact with fusion to influence positive WOM (Studies 1–3) and negative reactions to inconsistent activism (Study 4).
Brands must prioritize authenticity to avoid amplified negative reactions via perceived hypocrisy, especially when advocates exhibit high identity fusion in communal relationships.
This research demonstrates that token-based economies for service coordination become stable when at least two service providers are available, unlike the instability seen with only one provider. The study mathematically modeled a simple marketplace where tokens track service balances, showing that selecting the agent with the fewest tokens to provide service naturally stabilizes token distribution with two or more providers. This finding suggests token systems could efficiently sustain hospital cooperation in kidney exchange programs, preventing breakdowns when donor supply is limited, as validated by simulations using real kidney exchange data.
Learning to Optimally Stop Diffusion Processes, with Financial Applications
This research develops an AI-driven approach to solve complex financial decision problems where the underlying market model is unknown, such as determining the optimal time to exercise an option or manage a portfolio. The method reformulates the problem into a controllable stochastic system using Bernoulli randomization and entropy regularization to guide exploration, enabling efficient learning of optimal strategies. Crucially, the algorithms achieve high accuracy in pricing options and solving portfolio problems—even in high-dimensional scenarios—demonstrating practical value for real-world financial decision-making under uncertainty.
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
This research reveals that employees form "internal activist communities" within companies, driving corporate social responsibility (CSR) brand repositioning through three key practices: raising awareness, galvanizing action, and federating efforts. The study used in-depth interviews with employees at companies actively transforming their CSR strategies to uncover how these collective internal movements shape both tangible and intangible brand elements. Crucially, it demonstrates that such employee-led communities are not just supportive but essential, acting as a vital reservoir of expertise and resources for building a truly responsible brand.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
This research, based on six studies with over 3,200 participants, reveals that how people react to their own minor social errors (amusement vs. embarrassment) significantly shapes how others judge them. Crucially, for harmless mistakes, displaying amusement makes individuals seem warmer, more competent, and more authentic than showing embarrassment, as it signals the error isn't serious. However, when a mistake causes harm, amusement is perceived as insensitive, making embarrassment the more favorable reaction; thus, the "right" response depends entirely on whether the faux pas harmed others.
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
This research reveals that male allies should confront sexist remarks publicly to reinforce inclusive norms while privately validating the harmed target's experience to protect their dignity, countering common advice to confront only privately. The findings, derived from mixed methods—including a qualitative study of 82 male leaders and four experiments with over 1,200 U.S. women and men—demonstrate this dual approach optimally supports women's sense of belonging and voice. Consequently, allies, particularly leaders, can more effectively foster inclusion and reduce backlash by strategically combining public accountability with private empathy in response to sexism.
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
This study found that social referral programs maximize participation when senders receive uncertain rewards (e.g., variable bonuses) while recipients get guaranteed rewards, boosting total referrals by 20.9% compared to other structures. Conducted via a large-scale randomized experiment with over 160,000 users on a Chinese telecom platform, the research revealed that uncertain sender rewards reduce guilt and increase sharing, whereas uncertain recipient rewards decrease referrals by 12.3% due to perceived unfairness and reduced social pressure. These insights provide a practical framework for platform designers to optimize referral networks by strategically applying reward uncertainty to different user roles.
Workplace inauthenticity increases organizational cynicism: Multimethod and multicultural evidence.
Workplace inauthenticity—feeling forced to suppress your true self at work—actively triggers organizational cynicism (distrust in the company) by first creating a sense of mismatch between your personal values and the organization's values. Rigorous testing across six studies involving over 2,800 participants, using experiments, cross-lagged designs, and real-world behavioral measures while controlling for other factors, confirmed this causal chain. This reveals that employees don't passively suffer inauthentic workplaces but actively resist them through cynical attitudes and behaviors, fundamentally changing how we understand the psychological response to workplace inauthenticity.
EXPRESS: Sensory Inclusion in the Marketplace: Addressing Overload as an Emerging Axis of Exclusion
This research identifies sensory overload as a previously overlooked but critical axis of market exclusion, beyond traditional barriers like income or digital access. By integrating insights from marketing, psychology, and human-computer interaction, the study argues that current multisensory marketing practices inadvertently create new forms of exclusion through excessive sensory stimulation. The findings call for proactive design and policy frameworks treating sensory accessibility as a core inclusion principle, moving beyond reactive fixes to build markets that genuinely engage all consumers.
EXPRESS: Impoverished Consumers, Policy Makers, and Moral Traditions: Understanding and Addressing Policy Neglect in Poverty Alleviation
This research reveals that persistent poverty stems not merely from resource shortages but from widespread moral beliefs blaming the poor for their circumstances, fueled by stereotypes portraying them as lacking competence and warmth. The study uses Fiske's Stereotype Content Model to analyze how these harmful perceptions—rooted in assumptions about free will—drive immoral policy decisions and public attitudes. To break this cycle, the authors propose three practical pathways: fostering connections between policymakers and the impoverished, redefining societal notions of "enough," and embedding dignity into policy frameworks to create equitable access and advance social justice.
The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers
This large-scale study tested AI coding assistants in real-world corporate settings by randomly assigning them to developers across Microsoft, Accenture, and a major Fortune 100 company. Combining data from over 4,800 developers, it found a statistically significant 26% average increase in completed coding tasks for those using the AI tool, with less experienced developers showing the strongest gains. The results suggest AI coding assistants can substantially boost productivity, especially for newer developers, offering practical value for integrating such tools into software development workflows.
Exploring consumer support for brand activism: a four-segment typology
This research identifies four distinct consumer segments that support brand activism: Profit Perceivers (focused on financial benefits), Conscientious Conservatives (cautious supporters), Progress Patrons (advocates for social change), and Balanced Believers (who see both social and business value). Using the Reasoned Action Approach combined with cluster analysis, the study mapped how consumers' attitudes, perceptions of corporate motives, and sense of control shape their support. Businesses can now strategically target these specific segments with tailored activism initiatives, using the provided tools to identify and engage the most receptive consumers.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
This research challenges the common view that delegation alone boosts employee motivation by showing managerial intervention can actually motivate workers when it encourages the manager to exert complementary effort that supports the employee. Using a principal-agent model to analyze manager-employee dynamics, the study reveals that intervention demotivates only when it wastes employee effort, but motivates when it incentivizes the manager's supportive actions. These findings imply that effective motivation depends on strategic complementarity between roles, meaning managers should actively collaborate rather than simply delegate to foster employee engagement.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
This research reveals that consumers strongly connected to a cause (identity fusion) respond more positively to brands supporting that cause, especially when the brand's actions feel authentic. Using four online experiments, the study tested how this fusion interacts with relationship norms (like transactional or communal bonds), finding it weakens the typical preference for transactional relationships and amplifies negative reactions when brands act hypocritically. The findings provide brands with a clear framework: fostering genuine, identity-driven connections—not just transactional promises—is crucial for authentic and effective social activism that resonates with cause-focused consumers.
In economies without monetary transfers, token systems serve as an alternative to sustain cooperation and increase efficiency. This paper studies whether a token-based economy can be effective in marketplaces with thin exogenous supply. We consider a marketplace in which at each time period one agent requests a service, one agent provides the service, and one token (artificial currency) is used to pay for service provision. The number of tokens each agent has represents the difference between the amount of service provisions and service requests by the agent. We are interested in the behavior of this economy when very few agents are available to provide the requested service. Because balancing the number of tokens across agents is key to sustain cooperation, the agent with the minimum number of tokens is selected to provide service among the available agents. When exactly one random agent is available to provide service, we show that the token distribution is unstable. However, already when just two random agents are available to provide service, the token distribution is stable, in the sense that agents’ token balance is unlikely to deviate much from their initial endowment, and agents return to their initial endowment in finite expected time. Our results mirror the power-of-two-choices paradigm in load balancing problems. Supported by numerical simulations using kidney exchange data, our findings suggest that token systems may generate efficient outcomes in kidney exchange marketplaces by sustaining cooperation between hospitals. This paper was accepted by Peng Sun, optimization and decision analytics. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.06176 .
Learning to Optimally Stop Diffusion Processes, with Financial Applications
We study optimal stopping for diffusion processes with unknown model primitives within the continuous-time reinforcement learning (RL) framework Wang, Zariphopoulou and Zhou [Wang H, Zariphopoulou T, Zhou XY (2020), J. Machine Learn. Res. 21(198):1-34], and present applications to option pricing and portfolio choice. By penalizing the corresponding variational inequality formulation, we transform the stopping problem into a stochastic optimal control problem with two actions. We then randomize controls into Bernoulli distributions and add an entropy regularizer to encourage exploration. We derive a semianalytical optimal Bernoulli distribution, based on which we devise RL algorithms using the martingale approach Jia and Zhou [Jia Y, Zhou XY (2022a) J. Machine Learn. Res. 23(154):1–55]. We establish a policy improvement theorem and prove the fast convergence of the resulting policy iterations. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithms in pricing finite-horizon American put options, solving Merton’s problem with transaction costs, and scaling to high-dimensional optimal stopping problems. In particular, we show that both the offline and online algorithms achieve high accuracy in learning the value functions and characterizing the associated free boundaries. This paper has been accepted by Kay Giesecke for the Special Issue on AI for Finance and Business Decisions. Funding: M. Dai was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [15212324, 15217123, 15213422, and T32-615/24-R], the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [P0042708, P0042456, and P0039114], and the Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China [72432005]. Y. Sun acknowledges financial support from a start-up fund at Peking University HSBC Business School. Z. Xu acknowledges financial support from The Hong Kong RGC [GRF 15204622, 15203423], NSFC 12571517, the PolyU-SDU Joint Research Center on Financial Mathematics, the CAS AMSS-PolyU Joint Laboratory of Applied Mathematics, the Research Centre for Quantitative Finance (1-CE03), and internal grants from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. X. Zhou was supported by the Nie Center for Intelligent Asset Management at Columbia University. This work was also part of a Columbia-CityU/HK collaborative project that was supported by the InnoHK Initiative, the Government of the HKSAR, and the AIFT Lab. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.07614 .
Community internal activism for CSR brand repositioning
Purpose To investigate how brands can become “forces for good” in the society, it is critical to explore how brands’ social and environmental commitments are built from the inside of companies undergoing organizational change toward sustainability. Adopting an internal branding perspective, this study aims to examine the understudied role of employees in corporate social responsibility (CSR) brand repositioning to build a responsible brand. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts an interpretive approach based on in-depth interviews with employees within companies that are implementing a CSR transformation coupled with an ongoing process of CSR brand repositioning. Findings The findings reveal community internal activism. This study identifies four types of internal activist communities that contribute through three main practices (raising awareness, galvanizing and federating) to the forging of social and environmental commitments, translating them into tangible and intangible brand elements supporting the CSR brand repositioning. Originality/value This research makes four main contributions: (1) conceptualizing internal activism for CSR brand repositioning; (2) extending the literature’s focus from individual to collective activism to shed new light on internal brand-building; (3) highlighting the critical role of employees in CSR brand repositioning; and (4) showing how internal activist communities act as cultural agents for change. Managerially, this study demonstrates how internal activist communities serve as a reservoir of resources and expertise crucial for building a responsible brand.
Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
How do people judge those who commit faux pas? Across six preregistered studies (N = 3,204), we find that the answer depends on how a faux pas is presented to others and the extent to which it harms others. For faux pas that cause minimal or no harm to others, those who display amusement (by laughing at their error) are seen as warmer, more competent, and more authentic (though not significantly more or less moral) than those who display embarrassment. While both amusement and embarrassment displays serve an appeasement function (which reflects positively on actors), observers view those displaying embarrassment as being excessively self-conscious (which limits positive character judgments). In contrast, amusement displays are deemed more emotionally calibrated, since they signal that an actor recognizes the faux pas is benign and therefore not serious enough to warrant negative self-conscious emotions. In other words, observers do not believe actors ought to feel particularly embarrassed upon committing common benign faux pas. However, when a faux pas harms others, those who display amusement are seen as experiencing a deficient level of self-consciousness, since, in this case, amusement indicates a disregard for the welfare of others. As a result, as harm to others increases, the benefits of displaying amusement become either attenuated or reversed relative to displaying embarrassment. Together, these findings provide a simple framework for understanding when amusement and embarrassment displays reflect well on individuals who commit faux pas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Beliefs versus environmental awareness: an extension of the theory of planned behavior to explore young consumers’ intentions toward insect flour-based pasta
Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Knowing how to respond to sexist comments and counteract their harmful consequences remains a challenging task for male allies. In this mixed-methods research, our preregistered qualitative study of 82 male leaders from the United States (Study 1) reveals that most intend to confront perpetrators of sexist remarks, with a preference for doing so privately rather than publicly; relatively few intend to validate the experiences of harmed targets. We contend that allies need to consider actions beyond confrontation-a response commonly recommended by scholars and in practice-as well as appropriate social contexts for these allyship behaviors to ensure the inclusion of women who are directly harmed by such remarks. We hypothesize that targets' sense of belonging and voice intentions are optimally supported when allies not only (a) confront transgressors' sexist remarks in public (vs. private) but also (b) validate targets' harmed experiences in private (vs. public). Three preregistered and one complementary experimental studies (Studies 2-4; N = 1,216 U.S. women) from the perspective of women support our theory. Our findings suggest that confrontation should be enacted in public because it directly reinforces gender civility norms, whereas validation is better provided in private to demonstrate concern for dignity. In our final study (Study 5; N = 253 U.S. men), we provide critical insights into how public confrontation-targets' preferred response-might adversely influence the attitudes and behaviors of confronted perpetrators (e.g., bias regulation). By incorporating multiparty perspectives, our research provides actionable recommendations for potential allies, especially men in leadership roles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Can Reward Uncertainty Encourage Social Referrals? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Social referral programs, in which individuals recommend products or services within their networks in return for rewards, have been widely adopted across digital platforms. This study explores the impact of incorporating uncertainty into the rewards of such programs, focusing on how senders and recipients perceive and react to uncertain rewards. We run a randomized experiment involving more than 160,000 users of a telecommunications operator in China and examine the effectiveness of different referral reward schemes. We find that referral programs are most successful when senders are incentivized with uncertain rewards and recipients are guaranteed certain rewards. Specifically, introducing uncertainty in the sender’s reward leads to a 20.9% increase in total referrals with recipients of these invitations more likely to engage in subsequent referrals and profitable in-app activities. In contrast, uncertainty in the recipient’s reward results in a 12.3% decrease in total referrals with invited recipients showing a lower propensity to make further referrals and reduced postreferral engagement. Additional online experiments identify distinct mechanisms driving these asymmetric effects: For senders, the uncertainty alleviates feelings of guilt, enhancing referral sharing and, thus, increasing the total number of referrals. For recipients, the adverse effects of uncertainty stem primarily from diminished perceptions of fairness and social pressure, and these deter engagement in the referral process. Our study sheds light on the complex dynamics of reward uncertainty in referral programs, offering novel insights into how it can be optimized to foster more engaged referral networks. This paper was accepted by Anindya Ghose, information systems. Funding: A.T. Li acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72301269 and 72332007] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant WK2040000085]. R. Belo acknowledges funding by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UID/00124/2025, UID/PRR/124/2025, Nova School of Business and Economics, DOI: https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00124/2025 ) and LISBOA2030 (DataLab2030 - LISBOA2030-FEDER-01314200). T. Li acknowledges support from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Convergence AI, Data & Digitalisation (Convergence AI Lab – Immersive Tech) Gravitation Program Public Values in the Algorithmic Society (AlgoSoc). Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05685 .
Workplace inauthenticity increases organizational cynicism: Multimethod and multicultural evidence.
Organizational psychology portrays workplace inauthenticity as an aversive state that individuals passively endure. Social psychology regards it as a threat to individuals' virtuous true self that they actively defend against. Bridging the two literatures, we predict that workplace inauthenticity triggers an active defense in the form of organizational cynicism, an effect mediated through perceived person-organization value incongruence. The current research reports six studies (total N = 2,844) testing these novel predictions. Using an experimental-causal-chain design, Studies 1a and 2 found that experimentally manipulated workplace inauthenticity predicted perceived value incongruence, and experimentally manipulated value incongruence predicted organizational cynicism. Using a cross-lagged design and a multicultural sample, Study 1b triangulated Study 1a in the field. Using a time-lagged design and ecologically valid or behavioral measures of organizational cynicism, controlling for trait cynicism and trait negative affectivity, and bolstered by non-U.S. or preregistered pilot studies reported in the Supplemental File, Study 3 found support for our predictions in the field. Experimentally or statistically excluding negative affect as a confound or an alternative mechanism, and bolstered by pilot studies reported in the Supplemental File, Studies 4a and 4b examined indirect effects of manipulated workplace inauthenticity on organizational cynicism via perceived value incongruence. We conclude that individuals agentically cope with workplace inauthenticity through morally delegitimizing expressions and subversive behaviors toward employing organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
EXPRESS: Sensory Inclusion in the Marketplace: Addressing Overload as an Emerging Axis of Exclusion
Efforts to make markets more inclusive have largely centred on socioeconomic, demographic, or digital access, yet a more fundamental dimension remains overlooked, namely the sensory accessibility of the marketplace. Across physical, digital, and hybrid environments, firms increasingly capitalise on multisensory design to enhance consumer engagement. Yet, as sensory intensity, incongruence, overload, and complexity escalate, new forms of exclusion are inevitably introduced. Here, we advance the notion of sensory inclusion in marketing: Drawing on insights from marketing, psychology, and human–computer interaction, we argue that sensory overload constitutes an emergent axis of inequality. Moving beyond reactive accommodations, such as “quiet hours”, we call for proactive design and policy frameworks that treat sensory accessibility as an inclusion principle, that different sensory thresholds are needed to enhance the experience of all consumers. Recognising sensory regulation as a public good, we outline concrete policy and design pathways through which markets can stimulate engagement while minimising exclusion.
EXPRESS: Impoverished Consumers, Policy Makers, and Moral Traditions: Understanding and Addressing Policy Neglect in Poverty Alleviation
Poverty has existed throughout human history, but its eradication has defied considerable efforts. This paper takes a novel approach, recognizing that belief systems of the larger public as well as policy makers are informed by moral traditions that explain why poverty persists despite available resources for remediation. Our discussion demonstrates moral and ethical responsibility for beliefs, arguing that faulty belief systems about the poor are crystalized as immoral behavior. This perspective is advanced by invoking research by Fiske on the Stereotype Content Model. Our conceptual integration reveals that perceptions of free will are the basis of negative stereotypes, which blame impoverished consumers for their circumstances, perceiving them as low in competence and warmth. This understanding is crucial for shaping effective public policy that addresses causes of continued poverty as a lack of sufficient consideration and resources. The paper discusses three viable pathways to overcome faulty belief systems: informing belief systems through interconnection, redefining what is considered “enough,” and enacting dignity and right beliefs. These ideas aim to improve material lives of impoverished consumers through intimate connections with those who control access to needed goods and services, providing a foundation for interventions that foster equitable access and promote social justice.
The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers
This study evaluates the effect of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on software developer productivity via randomized controlled trials at Microsoft, Accenture, and an anonymous Fortune 100 company. These field experiments, run by the companies as part of their ordinary course of business, provided a random subset of developers with access to an AI-based coding assistant suggesting intelligent code completions. Although each experiment is noisy and results vary across experiments, when data are combined across three experiments and 4,867 developers, our analysis reveals a 26.08% increase (standard error: 10.3%) in completed tasks among developers using the AI tool. Notably, less experienced developers had higher adoption rates and greater productivity gains. This paper was accepted by Jean-Pierre Dube, marketing. Funding: M. Demirer and T. Salz thank the MIT GenAI Initiative for funding. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2025.00535 .
Exploring consumer support for brand activism: a four-segment typology
Purpose While it is accepted that consumer demand has driven brand activism, it remains unclear which consumers desire brand activism, about what topics, how they may show support and why they think firms engage in such initiatives. This study aims to provide initial insights on these topics by developing a typology of Brand Activism Supporters. Design/methodology/approach The Reasoned Action Approach and two-step cluster analyses are employed to discern segments of Brand Activism Supporters. Findings Brand Activism Supporters represent the following four segments: Profit Perceivers, Conscientious Conservatives, Progress Patrons and Balanced Believers. Research limitations/implications This theoretically grounded typology provides a foundation for understanding consumer responses to brand activism and can guide research examining the factors thereof. A research agenda is provided to aid such endeavors. Practical implications This research provides a typology that can be used to target consumers most likely to support a planned brand activism initiative. To facilitate the practical use of the typology, survey, analysis and strategy tools are provided via Web Appendices A–C. Originality/value In developing the first typology of Brand Activism Supporters, this research examines factors including consumers’ attitudes about supporting activism initiatives, perceptions of firms’ motivations for engaging in activism and perceived control over their support behaviors.
Managerial Intervention, Employee Motivation, and Collaboration
The economic literature on delegation focuses on the subordinate’s improved motivation when liberated from managerial intervention in decision making. However, many managers motivate employees while proactively intervening in the decision-making process. We build a principal-agent model to analyze when managerial intervention is, and is not, motivational to the agent. Although managerial intervention may demotivate the agent when leading to actions that waste employee effort, managerial intervention can also motivate the agent by incentivizing principal effort that complements the agent’s effort. In fact, delegation may demotivate the agent when the principal and agent work collaboratively. Our results speak to understanding the role of strategic complementarity in determining when various managerial practices do, and do not, motivate employees. This paper was accepted by Maria Guadalupe, business strategy.
From unity to uproar: exploring how advocacy fusion and relationship norms shape cause advocate response to brand activism
Purpose This study aims to examines how consumer advocates of the cause respond to value-aligned brand activism by drawing on identity fusion and consumer–brand relationship norms. Design/methodology/approach Four online experiments tested these dynamics. Study 1 assessed whether induced advocacy fusion increases support for aligned activism. Study 2 examined whether fusion moderates the effect of relationship norms on positive WOM and whether perceived authenticity mediates this effect. Study 3 replicated these effects using trait fusion. Study 4 investigated how fusion and relationship norms drive negative reactions to inconsistent activism via perceived hypocrisy. Findings Studies 1 and 2 found that induced advocacy fusion increased positive WOM intentions. Across Studies 2–3, fusion weakened the advantage of exchange norms over communal norms, with authenticity mediating effects. Study 4 showed that high fusion amplified negative responses to inconsistent activism, particularly in communal relationships, through heightened perceptions of hypocrisy. Originality/value This study extends the brand activism literature by identifying identity fusion as a primary driver of cause advocates’ responses. It conceptualizes relationship norms as an underlying relational contract and shows that identity fusion can both amplify and attenuate these norms, offering a framework for authentic sociopolitical engagement.