Month: September 2025

Beyond Traditional Metrics: Developing and Validating a Multidimensional Scale for Consumer Financial Well‐Being Summary This paper develops and validates a new, consumer-centred scale for Consumer Financial Well‑Being (CFW). The authors propose CFW as a second‑order reflective construct measured by four first‑order dimensions: Financial Wisdom, Financial Security, Financial Preparedness & Satisfaction, and Financial Resilience. The scale […]

Experiencing Dehumanization, Seeking Uniqueness: The Effect of Organizational Dehumanization on Uniqueness‐Seeking Consumption Summary This paper treats organisational dehumanisation — feeling treated as mechanistic or replaceable — as an ontological threat to one’s sense of humanness. Across one preliminary survey and five experiments, the authors show that experiencing organisational dehumanisation increases consumers’ preference for uniqueness-seeking consumption. […]

Love Affair With Thin Air: Mortality, Mastery, and the Consumerism of Mountaineering Summary This paper reframes mountaineering as a mortality-buffered identity practice rather than merely a thrill-seeking recreational pursuit. Using ethnography and depth interviews from a guided Mount Rainier expedition plus digital netnography, the authors apply Terror Management Theory (TMT) to show that climbers derive […]

Charity Without Choice: The Impact of Receiving Prosocial Gifts on Subsequent Donations Summary This paper examines how receiving prosocial gifts — donations made to a charity in someone else’s name — affects recipients’ willingness to donate to the same charity later. Across four experiments, the authors find that when a prosocial gift is unrequested, recipients […]

Cross Ownership Versus Merger Under Product Differentiation Summary This paper compares passive cross ownership (CO) — noncontrolling shareholdings among rivals that create partial cooperation — with full horizontal mergers in oligopolistic markets with horizontally differentiated products. Under Cournot (quantity) competition the authors find that insiders (the cooperating firms) generally prefer symmetric CO to a merger. […]