12,897 research outputs found

    Reinforcing attitudes in a gatewatching news era: individual-level antecedents to sharing fact-checks on social media

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    Despite the prevalence of fact-checking, little is known about who posts fact-checks online. Based upon a content analysis of Facebook and Twitter digital trace data and a linked online survey (N = 783), this study reveals that sharing fact-checks in political conversations on social media is linked to age, ideology, and political behaviors. Moreover, an individual’s need for orientation (NFO) is an even stronger predictor of sharing a fact-check than ideological intensity or relevance, alone, and also influences the type of fact-check format (with or without a rating scale) that is shared. Finally, participants generally shared fact-checks to reinforce their existing attitudes. Consequently, concerns over the effects of fact-checking should move beyond a limited-effects approach (e.g., changing attitudes) to also include reinforcing accurate beliefs.Accepted manuscrip

    Internet Information and Communication Behavior during a Political Moment: The Iraq War, March 2003

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    This article explores the Internet as a resource for political information and communication in March 2003, when American troops were first sent to Iraq, offering us a unique setting of political context, information use, and technology. Employing a national survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project. We examine the political information behavior of the Internet respondents through an exploratory factor analysis; analyze the effects of personal demographic attributes and political attitudes, traditional and new media use, and technology on online behavior through multiple regression analysis; and assess the online political information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War. The factor analysis suggests four factors: activism, support, information seeking, and communication. The regression analysis indicates that gender, political attitudes and beliefs, motivation, traditional media consumption, perceptions of bias in the media, and computer experience and use predict online political information behavior, although the effects of these variables differ for the four factors. The information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War differed significantly. We conclude with a brief discussion of the value of "interdisciplinary poaching" for advancing the study of Internet information practices

    Reviews Left and Right: The Link Between Reviewers’ Political Ideology and Online Review Language

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    Online reviews, i.e., evaluations of products and services posted on websites, are ubiquitous. Prior research observed substantial variance in the language of such online reviews and linked it to downstream consequences like perceived helpfulness. However, the understanding of why the language of reviews varies is limited. This is problematic because it might have vital implications for the design of IT systems and user interactions. To improve the understanding of online review language, the paper proposes that consumers’ personality, as reflected in their political ideology, is a predictor of such online review language. Specifically, it is hypothesized that reviewers’ political ideology as measured by degree of conservatism on a liberal–conservative spectrum is negatively related to review depth (the number of words and the number of arguments in a review), cognitively complex language in reviews, diversity of arguments, and positive valence in language. Support for these hypotheses is obtained through the analysis of a unique dataset that links a sample of online reviews to reviewers’ political ideology as inferred from their online news consumption recorded in clickstream data

    The political conditioning of subjective economic evaluations: the role of party discourse

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    Classic and revisionist perspectives on economic voting have thoroughly analyzed the role of macroeconomic indicators and individual partisanship as determinants of subjective evaluations of the national economy. Surprisingly, however, top-down analysis of parties’ capacity to cue and persuade voters about national economic conditions is absent in the debate. This study uses a novel dataset containing monthly economic salience in party parliamentary speeches, macroeconomic indicators and individual survey data covering the four last electoral cycles in Spain (1996–2011). The results show that the salience of economic issues in the challenger’s discourse substantially increases negative evaluations of performance when this challenger is the owner of the economic issue. While a challenger’s conditioning of public economic evaluations is independent of the state of the economy (and can affect citizens with different ideological orientations), incumbent parties are more constrained by the true state of the economy in their ability to persuade the electorate on this issue

    Three Essays on CEO Activism, Strategic Choices and Firm Performance

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    There is a longstanding societal expectation that business leaders refrain from involving in social and political issues and primarily focus on managing their firms. In recent years, however, there is a growing trend of CEOs taking a stance on controversial sociopolitical issues that are not directly related to their company’s core business. This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on this phenomenon of CEO activism. In my first essay, given that CEO activism represents a nascent phenomenon, I explore the conceptualization of CEO activism. Additionally, I propose three main motives behind CEO activism: intrinsic, instrumental, and stakeholder-focused. In my second essay, I shift my focus from the antecedents to the consequences of CEO activism. In particular, this essay examines whether CEO activism enhances firm performance and how investors may react to incidents of CEO activism. Having addressed the antecedents and consequences of CEO activism in the first two essays, the third essay focuses on the relationship between CEO activism and non-market strategies. Specifically, I examine the impact of CEO activism on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA). I empirically test my predictions using data drawn from U.S.-based publicly traded S&P 500 between 2008–2017. The findings provide mixed support for my predictions. The first essay shows that several organizational (firm reputation and firm political engagement), managerial (CEO celebrity status and CEO power), and industry level (intensity of consumer activism) variables are positively related to CEO activism. Consistent with agency theory predictions, empirical findings of the second essay indicate that CEO activism engenders a significant negative stock market reaction. The findings suggest that investors and consumers are two prominent stakeholders with conflicting reactions to incidents of CEO activism. Consumers support the stance taken by conservative leaning activist-CEOs rather than liberal leaning activist-CEOs as reflected in the firm’s quarterly sales growth. Finally, the third essay demonstrates that liberal leaning CEO activism, compared to conservative leaning CEO activism, is positively related to CSR. Overall, the findings of this dissertation contribute to the on-going research on corporate governance

    Religious but not ethical: The effects of extrinsic religiosity, ethnocentrism and self-righteousness on consumers' ethical judgements

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    The current research investigates how religiosity can influence unethicality in a consumption context. In particular, considering the link between extrinsic religious orientations and unethicality, this research clarifies why and when extrinsic religiosity leads to unethical decisions. Across two studies, findings show that ethnocentrism is both a mediator (Study 1) and a moderator (Studies 1 and 2) of the effects of extrinsic religiosity on consumers' ethical judgments. This is because extrinsic religiosity leads to ethnocentrism, and in-group loyalty manifested through ethnocentrism increases support for unethical consumer actions, thus establishing ethnocentrism as a mediator. At the same time, different levels of ethnocentrism can also influence how extrinsic religiosity leads to supporting unethical consumption via self-righteousness, thus establishing ethnocentrism as a moderator. The findings from this research have significant implications for diverse stakeholders who have an interest in religiosity and consumer behavior

    Religious but not ethical: The effects of extrinsic religiosity, ethnocentrism and self-righteousness on consumers' ethical judgements

    Get PDF
    The current research investigates how religiosity can influence unethicality in a consumption context. In particular, considering the link between extrinsic religious orientations and unethicality, this research clarifies why and when extrinsic religiosity leads to unethical decisions. Across two studies, findings show that ethnocentrism is both a mediator (Study 1) and a moderator (Studies 1 and 2) of the effects of extrinsic religiosity on consumers’ ethical judgments. This is because extrinsic religiosity leads to ethnocentrism, and in-group loyalty manifested through ethnocentrism increases support for unethical consumer actions, thus establishing ethnocentrism as a mediator. At the same time, different levels of ethnocentrism can also influence how extrinsic religiosity leads to supporting unethical consumption via self-righteousness, thus establishing ethnocentrism as a moderator. The findings from this research have significant implications for diverse stakeholders who have an interest in religiosity and consumer behavior

    “Who asked for this?”: authenticity and race-centered corporate social responsibility

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    The purpose of this study is to conceptualize and operationalize race-centered CSR, a combination of corporate social responsibility and corporate social advocacy concerned with repairing racial relationships and inequities, and test perceptions of authenticity of race-centered CSA. Authenticity in CSR and CSA has assumed a universal consumer, however authenticity, as a cultural construct, suggests that social identity can motivate how groups of people come to understand it. As corporate social responsibility efforts increasingly center race, race itself becomes a new measure by which to understand how those efforts are seen as authentic. The study surveyed 586 Blacks and non-Blacks using a modified version of Alhouti, Johonson, and Holloway’s (2016) consumer perceptions of CSR authenticity scale, Sellers et al.’s (1997) Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI) scale, and adapted measures using the concepts of reconciliation and cultural commodification to conceptualize race-centered CSR and perceptions of authenticity of race-centered CSR. Two new scales were developed to measure perceptions of commodification and reconciliatory discourse as antecedents for race-centered CSR activities. Findings of this study suggests that there are universal understandings of authenticity in race-centered and of what commodification of Black culture is in the context of race-centered CSR. More importantly, the recognition of commodification of Black culture is related to perceptions of authenticity of race-centered CSR. In addition, there are subtle differences in demographic drivers for Blacks and non-blacks, particularly political ideology (conservative Blacks vs. liberal whites) and education, age, and marital status of Black respondents in perceptions of authenticity of race-centered CSR. This study contributes to The study contributes to the body of literature on critical approaches to corporate social responsibility

    Is Antitrust Too Complicated for Generalist Judges? The Impact of Economic Complexity and Judicial Training on Appeals

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    Modern antitrust litigation sometimes involves complex expert economic and econometric analysis. While this boom in the demand for economic analysis and expert testimony has clearly improved the welfare of economists—and schools offering basic economic training to judges—little is known about the empirical effects of economic complexity or judges' economic training on decision-making in antitrust litigation. We use a unique data set on antitrust litigation in district courts during 1996—2006 to examine whether economic complexity impacts decisions in antitrust cases, and thereby provide a novel test of the frequently asserted hypothesis that antitrust analysis has become too complex for generalist judges. We also examine the impact of one institutional response to economic complexity - basic economic training by judges. We find that decisions involving the evaluation of complex economic evidence are significantly more likely to be appealed, and decisions of judges trained in basic economics are significantly less likely to be appealed than are decisions by their untrained counterparts. Our results are robust to a variety of controls, including the type of case, circuit, and the political party of the judge. Our tentative conclusion, based on a revealed preference argument that views a party’s appeal decision as an indication that the district court got the economics wrong, is that there is support for the hypothesis that some antitrust cases are too complicated for generalist judges.antitrust, Daubert, complexity, economic training, expert witness

    Demographic Variables that Influence the Purchase Decision

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    Abstract The purpose of this quantitative correlations study is to investigate factors influencing consumer purchase decision for tires for new entrants’ decision-making. This research serves three purposes. The focus will be the role of demographic influences that interact consumer with ethnocentrism and the factors at the actual point of purchase. The author analyzes the direct effect on actual purchase from five (5) factors of gender, age, educational level, income level, and political leaning. The moderating factors of warranty and free tire services are also noted in the model. The sample included 2945 respondents who participated in a survey conducted from August to September 2017. Analysis also included regional national voting patterns and the zip code where the purchases were finally made. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS v26 to include descriptive statistics, binomial logistic regression analysis, and correlations. The findings point towards certain trends in consumer behavior that are directly influenced by demographic characteristics. The data presents a pattern of actual purchase that contradicts the existing literature concerning age, gender, and this study’s own initial hypothesis of gender, age, and political party affiliation. The results of the study, which reflect purchase patterns, should be guided with certain limitations. Tires presumed to be American made or manufactured in the USA quite possibly are made overseas. Furthermore, these implications have strong considerations for the diversification into the American market by foreign investment because the findings demonstrate that demographic factors such as age and gender influence consumer purchase decisions. Keywords: Demographic Studies, Foreign Direct Investment, Marketing, Branding, Consumer Behavior, and Political Party affiliation
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