Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) can address environmental externalities when mandatory regulations are unattainable or undesirable. The extent to which VEPs succeed at improving environmental quality depends on participation levels from firms and consumers. We examine the factors that lead to a successful VEP by studying participation levels in residential green electricity programs. Am...

This study investigates the manner in which corporate philanthropy affects consumer patronage toward a brand. In so doing, we propose reciprocity as a key mechanism, which manifests the effect of corporate philanthropy on patronage behavior, and examine how vicarious licensing and strategic fit would mitigate the relationship between reciprocity and patronage behavior. The results indicate that...

This article contributes, in two ways, to our understanding of the nature, scope, and significance of conversations between strangers in service environments. First, a framework is introduced that provides both academics and practitioners with a summary of the key issues associated with the stimuli, manifestations, and consequences of such conversations. Second, the article reports a market-ori...

MyUniversity is a European project to foster the eParticipation in European higher education institutions and allow their members to influence the final decision making performed by the institutions’ authorities. A framework, composed of the two existing interactive tools Gov2Demoss and Pnyx.eVoting, and a methodology to manage eParticipation initiatives have been created for this purpose. This...

This study reports the impact of high sensitivity to early exchange in 11-grade, CSCL triads solving welland ill-structured problems in Newtonian Kinematics. Analysis of the evolution of participation inequity (PI) in group discussions suggested that participation levels tended to get locked-in relatively early on in the discussion. Similarly, high (low) quality member contributions made earlie...

Northern Initiative for Social Action (NISA) is a consumer-run, occupation-based, nonprofit organization located in northeastern Ontario, Canada. The NISA organization has grown in response to research revealing few opportunities for participation in personally meaningful and socially valued occupation for persons with mental illness living in the community of study. This article describes a mi...

We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finance and Survey of Income Program Participation to show that young households with children are under-insured against the risk that an adult member of the household dies. We develop a macroeconomic model with human capital risk, limited pledgability of human capital (limited contract enforcement), and age-dependent returns to human capital investment. ...

Active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. Examples include demandside management programs, incorporation of consumer-owned energy storage or renewable energy units, and active energy trading. However, despite the foreseen technological benefits of such consumer-centric grid features, to date, their widespread adoption in practice remains modest. To sh...

This paper investigates home baking as an instance of ‘craft consumption’ (Campbell, 2005) against the backdrop of rising participation in the phenomenon of home baking and the increasing importance of emotion in consumption defined as the ‘Rebirth of Romanticism’ movement (Gray, 2011). Phenomenological interviews conducted with a sample of 14 home bakers indicate that pleasure, authenticity an...

Developments in ICT have created a new generation of networking technology that affects all areas, including healthcare. The use of ICT in healthcare organizations, for example in health information systems (HIS), has developed the same way as the wider landscape, and includes the use of Internet-based technology. The adoption of social network features as the ‘front end’ of electronic health (...