Attitudes towards shoplifting: a preliminary cross-cultural study of consumers

Shoplifting has a substantial impact on retailers, consumers and wider society, yet we know very little about people‟s attitudes towards this behaviour, especially from a non-Western perspective. A better understanding of consumer misbehaviour in Arabic countries would therefore be of particular interest as such societies represent a new market for global retailers. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explore the initial results of consumers‟ attitudes towards shoplifting from a cross-cultural perspective. Preliminary analysis of 529 questionnaire responses from UK, US and Libyan consumers finds that attitudes towards shoplifting are broadly similar despite the different cultural and retail contexts. However, on closer inspection these findings suggest interesting disparities between the countries in relation to attitudes towards the consequences of shoplifting, the impact it has on the social networks of the perpetrator and whether the demographics of the shoplifter play a role in the decision to punish the offender

Attributes, Ethical Attitudes and Behaviors of Tax Evaders in a Permissive Collection Society

Tax evasion remains a fascinating research topic, as it is more often committed by individuals considered by society to be “ethical.” The purpose of this study is to explore the various attitudes of tax evaders and examine them in relation to their personal moral philosophies. The results of the current study found that tax evaders possessed several attributes, and their personal moral philosophy attitudes (idealism or relativism) influenced their ethical behavior. Idealism was found to be negatively associated with self-interest tax evasion behavior while relativism had the opposite effect. Idealism was also found to be positively related to tax evasion attitudes stemming from perceived “injustice” of the tax system. The results were explained with respect to the study’s setting of a permissive tax collection society and lower moral intensity of respondents. Managerial implications of this study explained, among others, why individuals who obeyed the idealistic moral philosophy often sought tax evasion

Measuring Unethical Consumer Behavior Across Four Countries

The huge amounts spent on store security and crime prevention worldwide, not only costs international businesses, but also amounts to a hidden tax on those law-binding consumers who bear higher prices. Most previous research has focused on shoplifting and ignored many other ways in which consumers cheat businesses. Using a hybrid of both qualitative research and survey approaches in four countries, an index of 37 activities was developed to examine consumers’ unethical activities across UK, US, France, and Austria. The findings indicate that around three quarters of consumers in all four countries can be classified as heavy offenders for these minor cheats. The paper argues that government agencies, marketers, and retailers should adopt more pro-active preventative approaches, rather than reactive loss limitation measures to combat unethical behavior

Agricultural workers in meatpacking plants presenting to an emergency department with suspected COVID-19 infection are disproportionately Black and Hispanic

Objective Facilities that process and package meat for consumer sale and consumption (meatpacking plants) were early sites of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks. The aim of this study was to characterize the association between meatpacking plant exposure and clinical outcomes among emergency department (ED) patients with COVID-19 symptoms. Methods This was a retrospective cohort study of patients presenting to a single ED, from March 1 to May 31, 2020, who had: 1) symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and 2) a COVID-19 test performed. The primary outcome was COVID-19 positivity, and secondary outcomes included hospital admission from the ED, ventilator use, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, hospital length of stay (LOS; <48 or ≥48 h), and mortality. Results Patients from meatpacking plants were more likely to be Black or Hispanic than the ED patients without this occupational exposure. Patients with a meatpacking plant exposure were more likely to test positive for COVID-19 (adjusted relative risk [aRR] = 2.37, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.59 to 3.53) but had similar rates of hospital admission (aRR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.82 to 1.07) and hospital LOS (aRR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.45 to 1.23). There was no significant difference in ventilator use among patients with meatpacking and nonmeatpacking plant exposure (8.2% vs. 11.1%, p = 0.531), ICU admissions (4.1% vs. 12.0%, p = 0.094), and mortality (2.0% vs. 4.1%, p = 0.473). Conclusions Workers in meatpacking plants in Iowa had a higher rate of testing positive for COVID-19 but were not more likely to be hospitalized for their illness. These patients were disproportionately Black and Hispanic

Corporate ethical identity as a determinant of firm performance : a test of the mediating role of stakeholder satisfaction

In this article, we empirically assess the impact of corporate ethical identity (CEI) on a firm’s financial performance. Drawing on formulations of normative and instrumental stakeholder theory, we argue that firms with a strong ethical identity achieve a greater degree of stakeholder satisfaction (SS), which, in turn, positively influences a firm’s financial performance. We analyze two dimensions of the CEI of firms: corporate revealed ethics and corporate applied ethics. Our results indicate that revealed ethics has informational worth and enhances shareholder value, whereas applied ethics has a positive impact through the improvement of SS. However, revealed ethics by itself (i.e. decoupled from ethical initiatives) is not sufficient to boost economic performance.Publicad

Exploring perceptions of advertising ethics: an informant-derived approach

Whilst considerable research exists on determining consumer responses to pre-determined statements within numerous ad ethics contexts, our understanding of consumer thoughts regarding ad ethics in general remains lacking. The purpose of our study therefore is to provide a first illustration of an emic and informant-based derivation of perceived ad ethics. The authors use multi-dimensional scaling as an approach enabling the emic, or locally derived deconstruction of perceived ad ethics. Given recent calls to develop our understanding of ad ethics in different cultural contexts, and in particular within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we use Lebanon—the most ethically charged advertising environment within MENA—as an illustrative context for our study. Results confirm the multi-faceted and pluralistic nature of ad ethics as comprising a number of dimensional themes already salient in the existing literature but in addition, we also find evidence for a bipolar relationship between individual themes. The specific pattern of inductively derived relationships is culturally bound. Implications of the findings are discussed, followed by limitations of the study and recommendations for further research

Effects of Wartime Crisis Perceptions on the Effectiveness of Political Advertising: The Moderating Role of Political Involvement

This research examines how political advertising is operated in a volatile context, such as a state of war or instability. The study employed a self-completing cross-sectional survey to gather the data in the period of the 2016 Syrian elections for members of parliament. The research tested the hypothetical model and its equivalency related to political involvement through the use of structural equation modelling. The outcomes of the tests revealed the structure of belief as a four-dimensional variate. The four dimensions encapsulate information, veracity, sarcasm, and cynicism. In addition, perceptions during conflicts had a negative effect on attitude through sarcasm displayed by voters with low political involvement. The results also found that negative attitude had a link with lower degrees of veracity with regards to voters who are less involved but to greater degrees of cynicism highly politically active individuals. We found that less favourable attitudes to political advertising lowered the likelihoods for voters to watch political ads or announcements, support a runner, and be willing to go to the poll. We found no relation between the fact of paying attention to political advertising and intention of voters to use their ballot

Who approves fraudulence? Configurational causes of consumers' unethical judgments

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient ‘‘recipes’’ for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors