We investigated whether the personal importance of objects influences utilitarian decision-making in which damaging property is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome. In Experiment 1, participants judged saving five objects by destroying a sixth object to be less acceptable when the action required destroying the sixth object directly (rather than as a side-effect) and the objects we...

As with organizational development, citizenship behavior should be central to the development and success of open professional virtual communities. An increasing literature emphasizes on predicting knowledge contribution behaviors in virtual communities (VC) from the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation or benefit perspectives. In line with the consumer behavior literature that distinguishes betw...

Is it permissible to harm one to save many? Classic moral dilemmas are often defined by the conflict between a putatively rational response to maximize aggregate welfare (i.e., the utilitarian judgment) and an emotional aversion to harm (i.e., the non-utilitarian judgment). Here, we address two questions. First, what specific aspect of emotional responding is relevant for these judgments? Secon...

In this paper we re-examine the axiomatic basis of the key result on weighted utilitarian representation of preference orders on finite utility streams. We show that a preference order satisfying the axioms of Minimal Individual Symmetry, Invariance and Strong Pareto need not have a representation, and thus in particular a weighted utilitarian representation. The example establishing this resul...

It is generally recognized that online shopping has both utilitarian as well as hedonic components. The primary focus of this investigation is to examine task framing (either utilitarian or hedonic) and length of viewing time (unlimited or 5 s) as conditions that influence user website perceptions and viewing behavior. Whether a task is framed as either hedonic or utilitarian received limited s...

 Arguments for and against the legal prohibition of drugs are surveyed. Various kinds of argument are identified and analysed: arguments against prohibition from a moral right to personal liberty; utilitarian and contractualist arguments for a right to personal liberty; arguments for prohibition from liberty-limiting principles (the harm principle, legal paternalism, legal moralism, Kan...

this research, applied as a survey approach aimed at investigating farmers’ tendency and attitudes toward agricultural water management styles (wmss). therefore, using cochran’s formula and simple random sampling, 244 farmers were selected in doroudzan region, iran. the data were acquired by face-to-face structural interviews and as well through a questionnaire that consisted of closed and open...