Exploring consumer attitudes to online collaborative consumption: A typology of collaborative consumer profiles

Online collaborative consumption enhances peer networks, members of which communicate, collaborate, and even deliver services to one another via digital sharing platforms. Despite the tremendous increase in collaborative consumption, due in large part to the development of the Internet, the reality of the economic and social movements that underpin this trend is much less visible. Of course, not all consumers seek collaborative consumption or interact through online platforms. Using a qualitative approach, this paper aims to investigate motivational factors and barriers against collaborative consumption and to establish a typology of collaborative consumer profiles, identifying the most suitable type of online sharing platforms for each profile. The findings reveal the following collaborative consumer profiles: committed, pragmatists, intermittent, and skeptical, each demonstrating different preferences for the different type of online sharing platform.     

A happy experience of a dark place: Consuming and performing the Jallianwala Bagh

This article adopts a phenomenological, ethnographic approach to examine place consumption and place experience through visitors' practices in situ. It focuses particularly on an examination of the embodied practices and performances of both tourists and the local community. Viewing memorial places as ‘performative fields’, we argue that a set of processes are simultaneously at play: while consuming the place and its representations (place consumption), visitors are also producing the meaning of the place through their embodied practices (place production) and, simultaneously, form and project a construct of their own selves (self-identity construction), within wider social narratives (social/national-identity construction). The simultaneity of these processes is empirically illustrated and supported by the findings from the qualitative research in the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar, India, where British colonial forces massacred more than one thousand peaceful protesters in 1919.     

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.     

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.     

Sustainable consumption in China: New trends and research interests

China is currently the largest CO₂ emitter in the world and demonstrates one of the highest levels of energy consumption. The sustainable consumption behavior has increased in China, especially in urban cities. Some clear evidence of this includes food purchasing behavior. Recent studies have also suggested that considering full product information transparency, consumers are willing to pay premium prices for products. With this in mind, sustainable consumption must still be facilitated by related policies, regulations, and tools. This study focuses on sustainable consumption behavior in China and collects and analyzes the literature from the last decade (2007–2017) on the topic. In so doing, it highlights new trends and research topics against the background of circular economy development. The method of systematic review is applied. The review is categorized into several main groups: national policies and regulations, the green awareness of consumers, the definition of related concepts, the barriers between sustainable consumption and the circular economy, and the indicators for circular economy assessment in China. Future research directions are discussed. Furthermore, future challenges are addressed from three perspectives: sustainable consumption facilitating the circular economy, “cradle‐to‐cradle” practices, and the link between the European Union and China. This is a fundamental study in the research domain of sustainable consumption behavior. It provides added value that benefits both academic researchers and decision makers. It also sheds light on the further study of sustainable consumption behavior in China from a macroeconomic perspective.     

Regional disparity of embedded carbon footprint and its sources in China: a consumption perspective

Carbon emission reduction could be achieved through extensive cooperation between relevant groups such as businesses, governments and consumers. Generally, carbon emissions stem from consumer behaviour. To tackle the increasingly serious energy crisis and climate change in China, it is thus vital to control carbon emissions generated by the country's urban consumers. From a consumption perspective, we utilize a self-organizing feature map model to analyse the spatial differentiation of per capita embedded carbon footprint (ECF) in urban China. We found that the spatial differentiation is significant with the per capita ECF of the east coastal area at a high level and that per capita disposable income is the key factor affecting ECF. Based on these findings, potential business opportunities to develop low-carbon products are discussed.     

民营企业薪酬体系设计策划

改革开放以来,民营企业取得了长足的发展,对我国的社会就业、经济增长和经济体制改革等方面都做出了巨大的贡献。对于民营企业来说,如何留住人才确保自身持续发展,这是一个重要的课题。本文从薪酬体系的角度进行阐述,通过介绍薪酬杠杆的作用和民营企业薪酬体系的现状,同时提出薪酬体系设计思路,进而为民营企业薪酬体系设计提供参考依据。     

Vegetarian Utopias: Visions of dietary patterns in future societies and support for social change

The current study draws on the collective futures framework to examine how visions of future societies where most people consume plant-based, vegetarian or vegan diets are related to current support for social change towards plant-based diets. Participants were 506 university students in Aotearoa New Zealand invited to imagine a society in 2050 where most individuals consume a plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet. A thematic analysis was conducted on responses to an open-ended item asking how these future societies would be different to today. Participants reported a variety of potential positive and negative outcomes for individuals and wider society. Subsequent analyses of attitudes scales investigated the relationships between the collective dimensions of plant-based future societies and support for policies to promote plant-based diets. For a vegetarian future, the strongest predictor of current support for social change was the expectation that widespread vegetarianism would reduce societal dysfunction. For a vegan future, the strongest predictor of support for social change was an expectation of increased warmth in a vegan society. Implications for theory and advocacy are discussed.