Consumers’ Perspectives and Behaviors towards Corporate Social Responsibility—A Cross-Cultural Study

This study measured consumers’ perspectives and behaviors with respect to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, we explored the components of CSR, including CSR aimed towards the environment, society, customers, employees, suppliers, and shareholders. We also examined the impact of CSR practices on brand attitude and purchase intention. The study surveyed 616 consumers across three locations, with detailed questionnaires in four languages. A total of 564 samples (186 from Vietnam, 189 from Indonesia, and 189 from Taiwan) qualified for data analysis. Additionally, statistics software including LISREL 8.8, STATISTICA 10, and MINITAB 19 were utilized to evaluate our hypotheses and construct a structural model. The results indicated that the consumers across the three areas were not concerned about CSR aimed towards shareholders, while all consumers considered CSR aimed towards themselves. Vietnamese customers prioritized a company’s care for its employees, while both Indonesian and Taiwanese consumers concentrated on the environment and society. In addition, suppliers’ benefits and rights attracted Indonesians’ attention. Furthermore, CSR had a positive significant impact on brand reputation in all three cultures. However, while CSR had a positive influence on customer purchase intention in Indonesia and Taiwan, it did not in Vietnam.

A Cross-Cultural Study on the Effects of Envy-Evoking Ads

Ads often feature celebrities or others similar to the target viewer and thereby evoke envy. Envy occurs when people make an upward social comparison, and evoked envy can be either benign or malicious. The authors propose that people with different self-construals feel different degrees of benign and malicious envy depending on who is being envied: a celebrity or a similar other. Three studies were conducted comparing Americans to Koreans (Study 1), Americans to the Chinese (Study 2), and Koreans with different self-construals (Study 3). The results showed that people with high independence showed less benign envy toward the celebrity ad than toward the similar others ad, while people with low independence showed the opposite pattern. People with high interdependence showed less malicious envy toward the celebrity ad than toward the similar others ad, while people with low interdependence showed the opposite pattern.

Perception of Greed and Unfairness

In the past decade, interest in greed among empirical business scholars has emerged. It starts with the trailblazing attempt to analyze greed by Wang and Murnighan (2011), followed by the development of the Dispositional Greed Scale by Seuntjens et. al. (2015a, 2015b), which serves as a basis for the research done by Zhu et. al. (2019) and Bao et. al. (2020). However, since Seuntjens’ work, the overwhelming focus has been on greed as a disposition to “always want more and never being satisfied with what one currently has” (Seuntjens et. al., 2015b). Independently, Cheung (2019) proposed a more sophisticated philosophical analysis of greed, which argues that there are three dimensions of greed, and its dimension of unfairness has largely been neglected. This article reports on our investigation of that neglected dimension of greed. Our cross-cultural study (n=395) shows that when the rating of greediness was not very high, the perception of greed went hand in hand with the perception of unfairness, such that there was a positive linear association between the two. The demographics of the participants suggests that the sample is diverse enough to make a broad generalization. The result of this study confirms the conception of greed in Cheung (2019), which claims that the perception of unfairness, i.e., (2) above, is a significant component of perceived greed. Cheung’s account of greed can also explain the data when the rating of greediness is very high, but logically there could be other explanations.

Study of ethnocultural values in the Finno-Ugric regions: dominants of Finno-Ugric culture and ways of their actualization in modern society

Introduction. The use of the axiological field of the Finno-Ugric culture within the framework of the formation of the socio-humanitarian component of modern education presupposes the acquisition of new knowledge related to the study of the value dominants of the Finno-Ugric culture in diachrony and the ways of their actualization in modern society. The article considers the study of the ethnocultural values of the Finno-Ugric peoples on the example of the Baltic-Finnish (Karelians, Vepsians), Perm (Udmurts, Komi), Volga (Mordovins, Mari), Ugric (Khanty, Mansi) groups. Materials and Methods. The material was the data of a questionnaire on the value dominants of the Finno-Ugric culture and the ways of their actualization in modern society. The research methodology includes a combination of humanitarian (cultural-anthropological, axiosociometric, functional, cross-cultural) approaches and natural research methods of analysis (mathematical statistics). Results and Discussion. With the help of the questionnaire developed by the authors, a cross-cultural study was carried out, which made it possible to identify the system of ethnocultural values of the Finno-Ugric peoples, as well as the most important value dominants characteristic of these peoples at the present stage. The main mechanisms of actualization of the value dominants of the Finno-Ugric culture, as well as Russian experience, are demonstrated. Conclusion. The main provisions and conclusions of the work can be used in the further study of the problem of the place and role of the axiological field of ethnoculture in a renewing society, as well as to optimize the ethno-cultural policy of modern Russia, including ethno-branding of territories.

Altruistic or Egocentric, or even Hypocritic? - A Cross-Cultural Study of the Safety Priority Choice of Autonomous Car

How should the autonomous car behave when faced with an unavoidable accident? In particular, in situations where either the driver or the pedestrian will inevitably be killed, whose safety should the autonomous car prioritize? There can be cases in which sacrificing the driver would be the best solution to maximize lives and minimize deaths. And we also need to consider the possibility that the victim could be ourselves. In this cross-cultural study with participants from US, Japan, and China, we investigated the drivers' safety setting preferences and found some interesting cultural differences in such preferences.

Altruistic or Egocentric, or even Hypocritic? - A Cross-Cultural Study of the Safety Priority Choice of Autonomous Car

How should the autonomous car behave when faced with an unavoidable accident? In particular, in situations where either the driver or the pedestrian will inevitably be killed, whose safety should the autonomous car prioritize? There can be cases in which sacrificing the driver would be the best solution to maximize lives and minimize deaths. And we also need to consider the possibility that the victim could be ourselves. In this cross-cultural study with participants from US, Japan, and China, we investigated the drivers' safety setting preferences and found some interesting cultural differences in such preferences.