“Travel Tales”: an interpretive analysis of constraints and negotiations to pleasure travel as experienced by persons with physical disabilities

Travel personnel and tourism site managers are often ill prepared to assist travelers with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to expand the understanding of constraints to pleasure travel experienced and negotiation strategies employed by persons with physical disabilities. Comparative pattern analysis was used to systematically analyze narratives written by travelers with disabilities, resulting in the emergence of six intrapersonal, six interpersonal, and eight structural themes. Further examination suggested an interactive, rather than hierarchical, relationship between the themes. Including persons with disabilities at every stage of the travel provision process can help ensure improved services for all travelers.     

Cognition, Persuasion and Decision Making in Older Consumers

Older adults constitute a rapidly growing demographic segment, but relatively little is known about them within consumer contexts: how they process information, respond to persuasive messages, and make decisions. We discuss extant findings from consumer behavior and related disciplines (e.g., cognitive psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, gerontology) as they pertain to the effects of aging on consumer memory, persuasion and decision The first two authors co-chaired the workshop at the Choice Symposium and made major and equal contributions to this article. The remaining authors were participants in the workshop. They also contributed to this article and are listed in alphabetical order. We wish to thank the editor and Cathy Cole for their helpful comments on the paper. The article, including a more complete list of references, was shortened to meet the page-length constraints of the special issue. The longer version is available upon request from the senior authors.     

Contextualist Inquiry into Organizational Citizenship: Promoting Recycling Across Heterogeneous Organizational Actors

Although there is a significant amount of research on organizational citizenship behavior and its importance to individual and organizational outcomes (Podsakoff et al. 2000), relatively little research has explored the process by which such behavior emerges and is established within an organization. Against this backdrop, we combine the perspectives offered by contextualist inquiry (Pettigrew 1990) and actor–network theory (Latour 2005) to propose an integrative framework for investigating how organizational citizenship behavior develops in a large, heterogeneous organization. In order to illustrate the framework, we present a detailed case study of recycling at a large university. Like many other organizations, the university does not have a formal organizational structure to address sustainability concerns and the initiatives are therefore mainly voluntary and emerging in nature, and outcomes are, as a consequence, highly uncertain, and fragile. We argue that contextualist inquiry in combination with actor–network theory provides new and important insights into the emergence and establishment of organizational citizenship behaviors, and that outcomes are contingent upon interactions between the context, process, and content of the behaviors in question and the related networks of human and non-human actors.     

The action suited to the word? Use of the framework of risk information seeking to understand risk-related behaviors

Although a growing body of risk communication research focuses on how people process risk information, one question that is overlooked is how the seeking of information contributes to behavioral adaptation toward the risk issue. How are people’s behavioral responses to risks affected by the search for risk information? Building on the Framework of Risk Information Seeking (FRIS), this paper reports on two studies that focus on the experimental testing of several of the basic FRIS assumptions. In study 1, a 2 (involvement: high vs. low)?×?2 (risk perception: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment was conducted to test the assumption that higher levels of involvement and risk perception stimulate the intention to seek additional risk information as well as the actual risk information. Study 2 is a partial replication of study 1. In study 2, a 2 (involvement: high vs. low)?×?2 (fear appeal: present vs. absent)?×?2 (response efficacy: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment was conducted to test how varying the levels of involvement, risk perception, and response efficacy influence actual and intended information seeking, as well as the intention to adopt risk-mitigating actions. The results showed that the high-involvement, high-risk perception, high-response efficacy group was most likely to actually seek information and make behavioral changes. The results are in accordance with basic FRIS assumptions. Implications for risk communication are discussed.     

Mythic Agency and Retail Conquest

This paper expands agency theory by identifying mythic agency as a lens through which retailers can view spectacular events during which consumers act heroically to achieve an important consumption goal. Partaking in a stressful and challenging retail experience invokes the stages of a quest, through which successful consumers emerge transformed and where they challenge, at least in part, the culturally prescribed role of bride. Retailers who create events that evoke and support consumers’ heroic actions can develop powerful, meaningful, and enduring relationships with their customers.