Becoming a tree when I will be dead? Why not! Generation X,Y and Z,and innovative green death practices

Within the theoretical field of ethical consumption, the study focuses on consumer behavior and innovative green death practices. While scarcely investigated in the marketing and consumer behavior research domains, at least four main reasons spur to consider the funeral industry as an interesting subject of enquiry: i) the sector boasts of a significant economic relevance; ii) it is extremely impactful from an environmental and social point of view; iii) it is witnessing interesting innovative processes in the direction of social and environmental sustainability; iv) consumer movements are rising all over the world asking for more sustainable death practices. Thus, adopting an augmented version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which includes individuals’ environmentally responsible consumption, and egoistic and altruistic environmental concern, the study investigates behavioral intention to adopt innovative green death practices (a green funeral) of people belonging to three different generations: X, Y, and Z. A purposive sample of 627 Italian people participated in an online the survey. Collected data were analyzed adopting an ordinal logit model. The results confirm the TPB predictive power also in the field of green funeral behavioral intention. Furthermore, environmentally responsible consumption and environmental concern – even though only in its altruistic component – positively influence behavioral intention, and generation exerts a moderating effect among the examined constructs. Overall, the research attempts to enrich the literature on ethical consumption by exploring the underinvestigated phenomenon of buying behavior of unsought and end-of-life products, that of green funerals, and provide managerial recommendations to funeral service sellers.     

Green consumption behavior prediction based on fan-shaped search mechanism fruit fly algorithm optimized neural network

Predicting consumption behavior is very important for adjusting supplier production plans and enterprise marketing activities. Conventional statistical methods are unable to accurately predict green consumption behavior because it is characterized by multivariate nonlinear interactions. The paper proposes an optimized fruit fly algorithm (FOA) and extreme learning machine (ELM) model for consumption behavior prediction. First, to address the problem of uneven search direction of FOA leading to insufficient search ability and low efficiency, the paper proposes a sector search mechanism instead of a random search mechanism to improve the global search ability and convergence speed of FOA. Second, to address the issue that the initial weights and hidden layer bias values of the ELM are randomly generated, which affects the learning efficiency and generalization of the ELM, the paper uses an improved FOA to optimize the weights and bias values of ELM for improving the prediction accuracy. Taking the green vegetable consumption behavior of Beijing residents as an example, the results show the optimization of the initial weight and threshold of ELM by the GA, PSO, FOA, and SFOA, the prediction accuracy of the GA-ELM, PSO-ELM, FOA-ELM, and SFOA-ELM models all surpass those of ELM. Compared with BPNN, GRNN, ELM, GA-ELM, PSO-ELM, and FOA-ELM models, the RMSE value of SFOA-ELM was decreased by 9.45%, 8.40%, 11.89%, 5.84%, 2.22%, and 2.69%, respectively. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the SFOA-ELM model in green consumption behavior prediction and provide new ideas for the accurate prediction of consumption behaviors of other green products with similar characteristics.     

Exploring the factors that drive consumers to use contactless delivery services in the context of the continued COVID-19 pandemic

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the launch of contactless delivery services. This research integrates resource matching, service quality evaluation, and perceived value theories to explore the factors that promote the use contactless delivery services. The data was obtained through questionnaire surveys, and research hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modelling approach. With the exception of convenience, the results show that privacy, reliability, security, and flexibility have a significantly positive effect on consumers' intention to use “contactless” delivery services through consumers' perceived value. This study contributes to the literature by introducing theoretical frameworks from various paradigms and enriches the academic research on existing theoretical structure models. It also helps optimize resource allocation and realize the social environment related to coexisting with the COVID-19 pandemic.     

智慧居家养老服务协同供给的优化路径研究——以广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目的实践经验为例

智慧居家养老服务的协同供给可以形成社会联动效应，降低公共服务成本。运用公共服务协同供给分析框架，通过交叉分类方法从协同主体的利益与目标两个变量的耦合性出发分析广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目中养老服务主体间不同种类的协同关系，可以从加强政府领导、形成合作联盟、建立市场标准、创新扶持政策4个方面完善政府、企业、社会组织之间不同类型的协同供给，实现社会资源的高效利用以及向智慧居家养老服务的发展和转变。     

Addressing plastic pollution through green consumption: Predicting intentions to use menstrual cups in the Philippines

Plastic pollution is a global environmental crisis that poses a huge threat to the health of people and marine ecosystems worldwide. A significant source of plastic pollution is menstrual hygiene management, and an approach that can help address this crisis is the usage of washable and reusable menstrual cups. Using an extended theory of planned behavior model that includes self-identity and perceived quality, the study predicted intentions to use menstrual cups in the Philippines. Structural equation modeling results showed that perceived quality predicted attitudes towards menstrual cup usage. Moreover, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and self-identity predicted intentions to use menstrual cups. There were also some differences in the factors and predictors of intentions between non-users and regular users of menstrual cups. Among regular users, perceived behavioral control did not predict intentions. These findings provide empirical support for the extended model, and provides insights for governments, non-government organizations, and corporations in promoting the usage of menstrual cups to address the global plastic pollution crisis.     

How power distance belief,self-construal,and relationship norms impact conspicuous consumption

Building on the idea that luxury products can signal the owner's status to others, this research elucidates how fundamental and pervasive social factors—power distance belief (PDB), self-construal, and relationship norms—dynamically impact consumers' preferences for conspicuous consumption. Through three experiments, we found that (1) high-PDB consumers are more likely to prefer conspicuous consumption compared to low-PDB consumers, and this effect is mediated by their need for status; (2) the relationship between PDB and conspicuous consumption is enhanced under interdependent self-construal, attenuated under independent self-construal, and mediated by consumers' need for status; (3) these effects are moderated by relationship norms, such that the positive effect of PDB on conspicuous consumption under interdependent self-construal is attenuated when communal relationships (vs. exchange relationships) are salient. Our conceptualization and findings contribute to the literature on the dynamics of individuals' status-related behavior in social psychology and related fields, and provide important practical applications for luxury businesses.     

Chinese relationship management: a qualitative study of banking in New Zealand

This study investigates the relational factors and motivations of Chinese migrant consumers towards financial service providers in New Zealand. Using convergent interviews, a deeper understanding is developed of immigrants’ relational behaviour with service providers. These relationships with service providers are significantly influenced by traditional Chinese values and guanxi and relational embeddedness plays an important role in how they are developed. The research contributes a better understanding of the interplay between Eastern and Western cultures in service relationships among immigrant groups. A general theory of the Chinese perspective of customer relationship management is developed. The implications for how marketing practitioners manage their relationships with migrant customers are explored.     

Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption

Using a novel data set for the U.S. states, this paper examines whether household debt and the protracted debt deleveraging help explain the dismal performance of U.S. consumption since 2007 in the aftermath of the housing bubble. By separating the concepts of deleveraging and debt overhang—a flow and a stock effect—we find that excessive indebtedness exerted a meaningful drag on consumption over and beyond wealth and income effects. The overall effect, however, is modest—‐around one sixth of the slowdown in consumption between 2000–06 and 2007–12—and mostly driven by states with particularly large imbalances in their household sector. This might be indicative of non‐linearities, whereby indebtedness begins to bite only when misalignments from sustainable debt dynamics become excessive.     

Viewpoint: Regulating meat consumption to improve health,the environment and animal welfare

Meat consumption has increased significantly in the last 50 years. This trend raises various health and environmental issues, as well as moral concerns regarding farm animal welfare. In this paper, we discuss the regulation of meat consumption in developed countries. Specifically, we discuss possible justifications for this regulation in terms of environmental, health and animal welfare considerations, as well as the effect of fiscal, informational and behavioral regulatory instruments. Finally, we present a list of challenges that policy makers and food scholars may need to confront in the future.