Month: September 2025

Navigating the Complexity of Sustainability Communications: The Influence of Product Type, Media Type, and Brand Realism Summary This paper (Park & Minton, Psychology & Marketing) reports three experiments (total N = 1,153) testing when sustainability claims build consumer trust and persuasion. The study integrates product type (search, experience, credence), media channel (digital vs traditional), and […]

Beyond Traditional Metrics: Developing and Validating a Multidimensional Scale for Consumer Financial Well‐Being Summary This paper develops and validates a new Consumer Financial Well-Being (CFW) scale that moves beyond debt-focused measures to capture a multidimensional, consumer-centred construct. Using a rigorous five-study process (qualitative item generation, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, cross-national validation and experimental tests), […]

Experiencing Dehumanization, Seeking Uniqueness: The Effect of Organizational Dehumanization on Uniqueness‐Seeking Consumption Summary This paper tests whether organisational dehumanisation – feeling treated like a machine or a replaceable resource – acts as a deep threat to people’s sense of humanness and drives them to seek uniqueness through consumption. Across one preliminary survey and five experiments, […]

Love Affair With Thin Air: Mortality, Mastery, and the Consumerism of Mountaineering Summary This paper applies Terror Management Theory (TMT) to mountaineering and reframes the activity as a long-term, mortality-buffered identity project rather than merely adrenaline-driven recreation. Drawing on ethnography, netnography and eight depth interviews from a Mount Rainier expedition, the authors identify four core […]

Charity Without Choice: The Impact of Receiving Prosocial Gifts on Subsequent Donations Summary This paper examines how receiving a prosocial gift — a charitable donation made to a cause in someone’s name — affects that recipient’s willingness to donate to the same charity later. Across four experiments (and a supplemental study), the authors find that […]