Consumer Behavior in Moral Markets. On the Relevance of Identity, Justice Beliefs, Social Norms, Status and Trust in Ethical Consumption

This article addresses ethical consumer behavior and uses the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) coffee to gain insights into determinants of ‘moral behavior’ in the marketplace. Our primary concern is to clarify which theoretical concepts and determinants are more useful than others in explaining FT consumption. We compare the explanatory power of consumer budget restrictions, consumer identity, social and personal norms, social status, justice beliefs, and trust. Our second aim is methodological; we contrast data on self-reported consumption of FT coffee with experimental data on hypothetical choices of different coffee products. To gain insights into the robustness of our measurement and findings, we test our propositions using two samples of undergraduate students from Germany and the United States. Our data show that consumer identity and personal norms are the major determinants of FT consumption in both samples, the results from survey-based data and from our experimental data are similar in this regard. Further, we demonstrate that studies based on a limited number of determinants might overestimate effects; the effect of justice beliefs for instance vanishes if other determinants are taken into account.

The Ethnographic Moment: Event and Debate in Mediatized Fieldwork

This article introduces the term ‘the ethnographic moment’, which takes up and ‘plays’ with the long-disputed ‘ethnographic present’ in anthropology, as an indicator of changing conditions and requirements for ethnography in the context of mass media and mediation. It argues that event and debate, rather than structure and practice, have become pivotal aspects in thinking and conducting fieldwork that has to deal with the ephemeral. At the same time, it tries to show that an unquestioning acceptance of technological advancement and speed of societal change immunizes us to the thinkable absence of media and obscures analysis of lasting states of injustice and inequality, in whose (re-)production they have a stake.

Gender and language in online job advertisements - a cross-cultural study

The aim of this project is to investigate the use of gender-fair language from a cross-linguistic perspective. Specifically, we are interested in whether the use of gender-fair language correlates with socio-economic rankings of gender equality and with structural features of a language. We decided to analyze online job advertisements, as they reflect common language use and can easily be compared across languages. Moreover, formulations in job advertisements have been shown to impact personnel selection via the way target groups are addressed and referred to. In the present study we examined to what extent job advertisements are formulated in a gender-fair way and how this correlates with factors such as language, culture as well as status and gender-typicality of the job advertised. The data consisted of job advertisements published online in four European countries which occupy different positions in socio-economic rankings of gender equality (World Economic Forum, 2011): Switzerland (10), Austria (rank 34), Poland (42), and Czech Republic (75). We randomly selected 100 job advertisements from four lines of business characterized by different proportions of female employees – steels/metals, science, restaurants/food services, and health care. The advertisements were analyzed with regard to the linguistic form of the job title and the remaining text; we also noted indicators of job status, reference to gender-typical traits, pictures of women/men and other information which might be relevant to the use of gender-fair language (e.g., equal opportunity policies). A first analysis of the data indicates that the phrasing of job titles is closely related to the gender-typicality of a profession. While mainly gender-fair forms are used in healthcare, masculine forms are used more often in the domain of steels and metals. Feminine forms only, however, are almost never used. Cultural differences as well as correlations with associated variables will be discussed.

Gender-fair Language Changes the Social Perception of Professional Groups: The Case of German and Italian.

Gender-fair language, including women and men, such as word pairs has a substantial impact on the mental representation, as a large body of studies have shown. When using exclusively the masculine form as a generic, women are mentally significantly less represented than men. Word pairs, however, lead to a higher cognitive inclusion of women. Surprisingly little research has been conducted to understand how the perception of professional groups is affected by gender-fair language. Providing evidence from an Italian-Austrian cross-cultural study with over 400 participants, we argue that gender-fair language impacts the perception of professional groups, in terms of perceived gender-typicality, number of women and men assumed for a profession, social status and average income. Results hint at a pervasive pay-off: on the one hand, gender-fair language seems to boost the mental representations in favor of women and professions are perceived as being rather gender-neutral. On the other hand professional groups are assigned lower salary and social status with word pairs. Implications of results are discussed.

Social role effects on gender stereotyping in Germany and Japan

Social role theory postulates that gender stereotypes are restrained for men and women observed in the same social role. Cultural differences in the valuation of communal attributes might moderate this effect. To examine this possibility, 288 participants (144 German, 144 Japanese) estimated the communal and agentic attributes of an average man or woman described in a male-dominated role, a female-dominated role, or without role information. We hypothesized and found that in Germany and Japan, participants perceived men as more agentic than women without role information and as similarly agentic in the same role. However, for communion, German and Japanese participants reacted differently. German participants perceived women as more communal than men without role information and in male-dominated roles and perceived men as more communal than women in female-dominated roles. Japanese participants perceived all targets as similarly communal, regardless of role or gender, suggesting that communion is generally expected in Japan.

Small town sustainability: economic, social, and environmental innovation. 2. überarb. Aufl.

In an age where the globalization process is threatening the uniqueness and vitality of small towns, and where most urban planning discourse is directed at topics such as metropol-regions or mega-regions and world cities, the authors here emphasize the need to critically reflect on the potential of small towns. The second edition is expanded to cover the intensive development of small towns in China and Korea. In addition, the authors examine the impact of the economic crisis on small towns and the recent development of the Slow City movement.

Social stressors at work and sleep quality on sunday night – The mediating role of psychological detachment

Purpose Recovery is a critical link between acute reactions to work-stressors and the development of health-impairments in the long run. Even though recovery is particularly necessary when recovery opportunities during work are insufficient, research on recovery during weekends, is still scarce. To fill this gap we tested, whether the inability to psychologically detach from work mediates the effect of social stressors at work on sleep quality on Sunday night. Design/Methodology Sixty full-time employees participated in the study. Daily assessment included diaries on psychological detachment and ambulatory actigraphy to assess psychophysiological indicators of sleep quality. Results Hierarchical regression analyses revealed social stressors at work to be related with psychological detachment and with several sleep quality parameters on Sunday night. Furthermore, psychological detachment from work mediated the effect of social stressors at work on sleep quality. Limitations Methodological considerations regarding the use of actigraphy data should be taken into account. Research/Practical Implications Our results show that social stressors at work may lower resources just before people get started into the new working week. Originality/Value This is the first study to show that social stressors at work are an antecedent of psychological detachment on Sunday evening and of objective sleep quality on Sunday.