The role of self-control in pro-environmental behaviour

Enhancing individuals’ pro-environmental behaviour is a key aspect of climate change mitigation. Despite most individuals endorsing positive environmental motivations, such as attitudes, pro-environmental behaviour uptake remains low. The thesis proposes that one’s self-control ability may play a role in their pro-environmental behaviour, by enabling individuals to overcome the obstacles in the way of acting on pro-environmental motivations. This thesis thus explores the relationship between self-control and pro-environmental behaviour, and the practical implications of this relationship, by investigating how self-control strategies can be used as a marketing tool to enhance pro-environmental behaviour. The first six studies provide evidence that self-control influences pro-environmental behaviour. A consistent, positive relationship between self-control and pro-environmental behaviour is found across three correlational studies. Findings from three experiments further suggest that lower self-control is linked to reduced pro-environmental behaviour, while higher self-control is linked to higher pro-environmental behaviour. Furthermore, self-control and attitudes are shown to predict pro-environmental behaviour together. The latter five experiments address the implication that enhancing one’s self-control may benefit one’s pro-environmental behaviour engagement, and explore the use of implementation intentions, a strategy shown to effectively support one’s self-control, for promoting pro-environmental behaviour, in a marketing context. As implementation intentions typically involve lengthy manipulations that are not suitable for wider-scale marketing use, this set of studies explores a brief, picture-based format of implementation intentions that is more suitable for marketing application. The first two experiments demonstrate that this implementation intentions format is as effective in influencing behaviour as the conventional format. Next, three field experiments demonstrate that implementation intentions, in this brief format, can effectively enhance pro-environmental behaviour. The findings contribute to a better understanding of pro-environmental behaviour, by highlighting a novel influence on pro-environmental behaviour, and identifying a new, independent predictor of pro-environmental behaviour. Furthermore, the findings provide practical insights into interventions for promoting pro-environmental behaviour and suggest an effective marketing tool that policy-makers and social marketers could use to promote pro-environmental behaviour on a wide scale

TRIPLE crowdfunding user research

A demo presentation of the GoTriple crowdfunding solution. Rationale for this research:Setting up successfully a crowdfunding solution requires knowledge for supporting the decision making and an effective delivery.Questions:•What kind of projects would interest the potential users of the crowdfunding service? •Do crowdfunders want feedback after the funding? •Would participants like to get involved in other ways? •What contributes toward trusting the researchers/projects?•Could the career stage of the researcher (junior or senior) have an impact toward funding decisions?<br/

Creating a new crowdfunding channel for social sciences and humanities research:exploring the user needs

Over the years, the funding of scientific projects has been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions, such as government programmes or mainstream trusts. However, there are areas and topics of research which, for a variety of reasons, remain underfunded by traditional programmes. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial support to researchers and projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. This paper explores the user needs of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in Europe. The goal of the research was to understand and formalise a set of users’ needs that could help in setting up this nascent crowdfunding solution. The users are the SSH researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. We utilised a mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalised in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel, which might have a broader application for the design of crowdfunding solutions. This research is part of a large European research project, focused on building a discovery platform for SSH, called GoTriple, of which the new crowdfunding channel is one of the services

Creating a new crowdfunding channel for social sciences and humanities research:exploring the user needs

Over the years, the funding of scientific projects has been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions, such as government programmes or mainstream trusts. However, there are areas and topics of research which, for a variety of reasons, remain underfunded by traditional programmes. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial support to researchers and projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. This paper explores the user needs of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in Europe. The goal of the research was to understand and formalise a set of users’ needs that could help in setting up this nascent crowdfunding solution. The users are the SSH researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. We utilised a mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalised in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel, which might have a broader application for the design of crowdfunding solutions. This research is part of a large European research project, focused on building a discovery platform for SSH, called GoTriple, of which the new crowdfunding channel is one of the services

Marketing meal kits:from customer agency to corporate social responsibility

Meal kits delivered to the home have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Several companies offer these through monthly subscription with a vast range of ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes based on chef-inspired meals that customers can cook themselves. This paper examines the marketing of meal kits from three UK companies in terms of how they discursively construct the agency of the consumer. The study is based on a thematic analysis of web-based marketing material from the companies in terms of more or less coherent rhetorical ways of constructing matters in terms of common place descriptions, tropes, figures of speech, and metaphors. The findings point to several ways in which such a positioning is achieved under four thematic headings: the creative and committed consumer, the ethical consumer committed to sustainability, the consumer as an efficient time-saver, and the consumer aligned with corporate social responsibility. It is argued that this marketing approach is more elaborate than conventional identity approaches associated with brands, in that it taps into the consumer’s sense of agency both with and beyond the product

Crowdfunding scientific research:a case study based on user research

Over the years, funding scientific projects have been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions. Many projects were not getting funded due to the difficulties of accessing government funds. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial solutions to projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. A crowdfunding platform is an internet-based matchmaker where the citizens (the funders) are matched with the researchers who are seeking funds to finance their projects. This paper investigates the users of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities. The users are the Social Sciences and Humanities researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. The goal of this research was to find out about the user needs and preferences to help in the decision-making about this nascent crowdfunding channel. We utilized the mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalized in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel.</p

Data for: Exploring customer engagement with Instagram influencers, post Covid-19

This dataset was collected as part of a Masters by Research project. The data comprises responses collected from 633 Instagram users globally, aged between 18-35 yrs age, on the relationship between Instagram users and Influencers using a 5-point Likert scale survey on Qualtrics. The socio-demographic data was on their profession, frequency of usage, and reason for use. The study aimed to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between COVID- 19 restrictions and customer engagement on Instagram between the relationship of users and Influencers. The study looks at the different variables that impact customer engagement between influencers and users on Instagram, such as trust, interactivity, virtual experience, and visual display of content

Data for: Exploring customer engagement with Instagram influencers, post Covid-19

This dataset was collected as part of a Masters by Research project. The data comprises responses collected from 633 Instagram users globally, aged between 18-35 yrs age, on the relationship between Instagram users and Influencers using a 5-point Likert scale survey on Qualtrics. The socio-demographic data was on their profession, frequency of usage, and reason for use. The study aimed to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between COVID- 19 restrictions and customer engagement on Instagram between the relationship of users and Influencers. The study looks at the different variables that impact customer engagement between influencers and users on Instagram, such as trust, interactivity, virtual experience, and visual display of content

Safety of Antibiotics in Hospitalized Children in Romania: A Prospective Observational Study

Antibiotics are among the most prescribed drugs in pediatric inpatients and are frequently associated with adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in children. This study aimed to assess the frequency and type of ADRs related to the use of antibiotics in pediatric inpatients through a prospective observational study, conducted over 6 months, covering the winter and spring seasons when the incidence of infections peaks in Romania. ADRs were evaluated for causality, avoidability and severity. Among the 266 included children, 25 (9.4%) experienced 30 ADRs. ADR frequency tended to be higher in ≤2-year-olds (13 of 25, 52.0%) than in other age categories. Gastrointestinal and hematological ADRs were most frequently observed. Diarrhea was the most common ADR associated with antibiotics (8 of 30, 26.7%). Ceftriaxone (16 of 30, 53.3%), cefuroxime, ceftazidime and azithromycin (3 of 30, 10.0% each) were most commonly responsible for ADRs. After causality assessment, 2 (6.7%) ADRs were considered definite, 12 (40.0%) probable and 16 (53.3%) possible. One ADR was classified as definitely avoidable and one as possibly avoidable. Seven children required treatment for ADRs. Antibiotic treatment was discontinued in 4 children. Antibiotics frequently caused ADRs in ≤ 2-year-olds and were commonly associated with gastrointestinal symptoms. Close monitoring of antibiotic-associated ADRs remains important in the pediatric population