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.     

Electoral uncertainty and financial volatility: Evidence from two‐round presidential races in emerging markets

We study how the predictability and the decisiveness of electoral outcomes affect financial volatility. We argue that traders’ optimal investment strategies depend on their ability to make accurate electoral forecasts and the prospective losses associated with placing a bet on the wrong candidate. Using a triple difference‐in‐difference approach and data from two‐round presidential elections in five Latin American countries between 1999 and 2018, we find that financial volatility is greatest in the days immediately following unpredictable, decisive, elections. Postelectoral volatility also occurs following predictable, indecisive elections. The effect of learning the identity of the winning candidate on financial volatility is null when the election is unpredictable and indecisive, as well as when the election is decisive, but the outcome is predictable. These findings offer insights into investors seeking to hedge price risk around elections. They also have important implications regarding the relationship between public opinion polls and postelectoral financial volatility.     

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.     

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.     

Discovering India's three levels of luxury consumption: An exploratory research to find a conceptual framework

Luxury marketing research has moved from functional product attributes to a ‘democratized’ view in emerging economies. This seems to be based on the development of interactive and digital communications. Luxury research studies have historically focused on the brand's and marketer's perspectives. Thus, little attention has been given to the consumer's view of what we consider to be the individual drivers, i.e., the ‘inner and outer self’ and how that impacts luxury consumption. This paper presents a framework of luxury and self, using concepts such as interdependent or outer, independent or inner, and a new concept of ‘digital self’. These appear as three levels of luxury consumption, i.e., conspicuous, individual, and interactive. The interdependent self is influenced by the external motives and leads to conspicuous luxury behavior. Individual self is affected by internal motives and thus influences individual luxury consumption. Digital self affects the networks of motive and relationships and thereby impacts interactive luxury consumption and behavior.     

Examining the efficacy of self-classification approach in segmenting special-interest tourists: food tourism case

Self-classification is used as an a priori approach to tourist typology and market segmentation. However, skepticism still surrounds its ability to incorporate the multidimensionality of tourist behavior. This study seeks to empirically verify the efficacy of a single-item self-classification approach. The robustness of this self-classification measure is examined by comparing it to a data-driven multidimensional psychographic approach in terms of its ability to predict the behaviors of tourists toward food-related destination consumption. Results suggest that the single-item self-classification approach performs equally well as the psychographic approach in segmenting food-related consumption behaviors. The implications and limitations of this study are also discussed.     

We share; we connect: how shared brand consumption influences relational brand connections

This research examines how married consumers form relational brand connections. Findings from two studies contribute to research on identity‐related brand consumption by showcasing how shared brand consumption and marital satisfaction influence relational brand connections and the perceived importance of the brand to the marital relationship. This research has important theoretical contributions and managerial implications. From a theoretical perspective, the authors show how consumers incorporate brands into their interpersonal relationships through shared brand consumption and that relational brand connections influence brand‐related outcomes, such as brand attitudes, purchase intentions, brand affect, and brand separation distress. From a managerial perspective, the findings highlight the importance of considering relational aspects of brand consumption when designing branding strategy and advertising appeals.