Green consumers and their identities: how identities change the motivation for green consumption

This research aims to fill the gap in green consumption literature from the perspective of values as types of intentions and identity‐based motivation. In two studies, we examine how the salience of personal and social identities can change the relationship between types of intentions and green consumption. The results demonstrate that when personal identity is salient, self‐transcendence intentions influence green consumption more than self‐enhancement intentions. This is because personal identity (compared with social identity) increases the positive effect of congruent intentions (self‐transcendence) on green consumption. However, when social identity is salient, self‐transcendence and self‐enhancement intentions have a similar impact on green consumption. This is because social identity (compared with personal identity) reduces the negative effect of self‐enhancement intentions on green consumption. Finally, we discuss theoretical and managerial implications for values as types of intentions, identity‐based motivation and green consumption.     

Auditing program evaluation audits: Executive training exercise for assessing management thinking, planning, and actions

The present article is an application of Schank's (Schank, Roger C. (2005), Lessons in Learning, New York: Wiley.) “principle #1: just-in-time information delivery makes information useful….OR, don't tell people things that they cannot immediately make use of.” The article describes five activities that always occurring implicitly and sometimes explicitly in managing a product, brand, or service: scanning, planning, implementing, assessing, and administering. Management and financial audits of actions and outcomes of programs are sometimes required by firms and government legislative bodies. Similar to the use of written checklist by pilots of the multiple steps involved before plane take-offs, management audit templates are useful for insuring complete and in-depth assessments of management actions and outcomes. This article provides such a management audit template and illustrates its use. The article includes an invitation to the reader to use the template immediately in evaluating both an audit report and a marketing program that the audit report details.     

Using household surveys to implement field experiments: the willingness to donate to food banks

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to jointly produce household surveys and field experiments by incorporating field experiments into the structure of the financial incentives used to enhance response rates. We use the opportunity to donate the financial incentive to a food bank to illustrate how the strategy would work.     

Internal control reporting and market liquidity

We investigate the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) on information asymmetry by analyzing the relation between SOX Sections 302 and 404 control reports and market liquidity using bid-ask spreads. Lower market liquidity indicates higher levels of information asymmetry implying that market participants perceive financial statement misstatement risk is higher. If SOX disclosures contain relevant information, then one would expect firms reporting internal control material weaknesses to have lower market liquidity. Accordingly, we find that market liquidity is lower (i.e., bid-ask spreads are higher) for firms reporting ineffective control compared to firms reporting effective control using either annual SOX 404 internal control reports or quarterly SOX 302 disclosure control reports, which suggests that SOX 302 and 404 reports provide useful information for identifying firms with a higher risk of financial statement misstatement. However, we do not find consistent results using two alternative liquidity measures: trading volume and market quality indices. We then examine whether changes in control reports are associated with changes in market liquidity. We generally do not find that firms with improved (deteriorated) control reports experience a larger decrease (increase) in bid-ask spreads or larger increases (decreases) in trading volume and market quality indices compared to other firms, suggesting that market participants do not discern a change in information asymmetry when the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting changes.     

COHABITATION AND THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILD POVERTY

We use 1990 U.S. Census of Population data to calculate what poverty rates would have been if cohabitors were treated in the same manner as married couples. We find that the official treatment of cohabiting partners as separate family units overstated the extent of poverty in 1989 among all children by about three percent. Only about 11 percent of the observed rise in child poverty between 1969 and 1989 would be eliminated if the Census Bureau made this change in its definition of the family. We estimate a logistic regression model of the likelihood that poor, cohabiting families with children would be reclassified as non-poor if the cohabitor's income were included in family income.     

The performance of banks around the receipt and repayment of TARP funds: Over-achievers versus under-achievers

In this paper, we look at how the pre-crisis health of banks is related to the probability of receiving and repaying TARP capital. We find that financial performance characteristics that are related to the probability of receiving TARP funds differ for the healthiest (“over-achiever”) versus the least healthy (“under-achiever”) banks. We find that TARP under-achievers have some, but not consistent, weaknesses in income production. These banks also are experiencing liquidity issues as customers, shut out of public debt markets, get bank loans through drawdowns of loan commitments. Unlike TARP under-achievers, TARP over-achievers’ loans are performing well. Yet, liquidity issues (from low levels of liquid assets and core deposits and drawdowns of loan commitments) hurt the abilities of these banks to continue their lending. Differences between under-achiever and over-achiever banks are also found for repayment and deadbeat TARP banks.     

Cultivating imagination: Ethics,education and literature

The purpose of this paper is to first critique approaches to ethics education based on the application of frameworks and models for ethical decision making. We argue that underlying such approaches is a number of assumptions which fail to fully capture the nature of ethics and the nature of the individual and suggest that when applied in the classroom such would only offer limited possibilities for developing students’ moral and imaginative capacities. The paper then offers an alternative perspective of the nature of the individual and the link between the self and the ethical. Rather than regarding the individual as an autonomous decision maker who sporadically interacts with the ethical domain we, following Dewey, J. (1983, 1987 [Dewey J. Human nature and conduct. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press; 1983; Dewey J. Art as experience. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press; 1987]) conceive of the individual as a self in the making and suggest a closer nexus between the individual and the ethical. In this paper ethics is seen as permeating all aspects of our lives and always being relevant. For Dewey, imagination is at the core or moral inquiry and based on this perspective we make a case for using literature and stories for ethics education. We discuss the role of fiction in cultivating the moral imagination (Dewey, 1983, 1987; Fesmire, 2003 [Fesmire S. John Dewey and moral imagination: pragmatism in ethics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press; 2003]), and show why teaching ethics through literature is likely to yield more fruitful results than approaches based solely on frameworks and models.     

Enhanced GM foods: Are consumers ready to pay for the potential benefits of biotechnology?

The present study analyzes and compares willingness to pay estimates for different genetic modifications in a tomato plant. Results suggest that consumers are ready to pay the highest premiums for modifications which increase the tomato flavor or enhance the nutritional value. However, these premiums are still fairly small, reflecting the general difficulty of opening new markets for products that consumers may perceive as not completely safe.     

Economics and Prescribed Fire Law in the United States

Prescribed burning is increasingly recognized as a useful but risky land management and conservation tool. Common law relating to prescribed fire is generally predicated on negligence rules. However, virtually all states also have statutory law specifying liability rules or criminal penalties for prescribed burning, and the laws in many states have been changing substantially in recent years. We develop an economic model of the incentive and welfare effects of prescribed burning, where both the burner and potential victims of escaped fires can reduce expected damage with precautionary effort. The model provides implications regarding the comparative advantages of strict liability versus negligence rules. We then examine the characteristics and geographic distribution of prescribed fire liability law in the United States in the context of the model. Specifically, we discuss possible economic underpinnings of the recent emergence of statutes in southeastern states that are more supportive of prescribed fire use, despite its associated risks.     

America's Most Admired Companies Social Media Industry Divide

While public relations and marketing research has analyzed how companies are using individual social media channels, minimal research has explored an organization's social media presence across several channels or identified differences among industries. Using theoretical guidelines for best practices, this study does both by analyzing the complete list of Fortune's “America's Most Admired Companies” (N = 417) on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Results found there were differences across industries regarding their adoption and integration of best practices into their social media accounts. A list of 20 gold standard companies is provided.