Central to many theories of deviance and delinquency (differential association, social learning, and social bond) are peer and familial influences on deviant behavior. A conceptual framework that incorporated both peer and familial influence to address the role of cross-sex peers on female deviance was built based on a review of the literature. Using substance use as an indicator of deviance, the effects of having three forms of male associates (male friends, romantic partners, and sexual partners) on female substance use were examined. Focus was on the effects of different types of male peer relationships, how those effects differed from the effects of female peer relationships, and how parental control might be greater for girls with only female peers. The conceptual model incorporated three measures of parental control—parentally granted autonomy, parental presence at home, and time spent in shared activities with parents—that were used to test the effects of male associates on female substance use. Analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), one combined measure for male associates was regressed on female substance use while controlling for parental control measures to determine if the effects of male associates on female substance use were mediated by parental control. Results indicated that while each type of male associate increased the likelihood of female substance use, effects were stronger for romantic and sexual partners than for male friends. Female friends also increased the likelihood of substance use. While the effects of male friends did not significantly differ from the effects of female friends, the effects of romantic and sexual partners did. The effects of male associates were significant even with the inclusion of parental control measures. Though both relationships with male associates and parents significantly affected female substance use, results did not provide support for the conceptual model. With results providing greater support for theories of peer influence than parental influence, future research should continue to examine peer relationship influences on deviance, how these influences vary by type of association, and how gender effects peer influence processes.

Title: “A Study of Factors That Affect Green Purchase”   Due to the environmental issues, green products have got more attention during the latest years and the availability of such products is increasing in many food stores. The appearance of eco-label assists the consumers in the store to buy eco-friendly products which are less harmful to the environment. Eco-labels which are frequently available in the food stores are; The Nordic eco-label (Svanen), Krav, The Euro Flower, MSC label (Marine stewardship council) and Bra Miljöval.  Governments in some countries are supporting these labels to ensure the sustainable development and a better quality of life for everyone, and for the generations to come. A question, which arises here, is that what compels the consumers to choose eco-labelled products over conventional ones. We have short-listed several factors during literature review which can influence the consumers green purchase behavior and these factors are; Eco-motivation, Eco-knowledge, Gender, Peer influence, Price and Shelf space.    The purpose of this study is to get a deeper understanding of the factors that can affect green purchase of food products in the store. Thus our main research question that we want to answer with our study is: “Which are the most important factors that influence the purchase behavior of eco-labelled products?” Along with this main research question we are also interested to know if ‘shelf space’ is an important factor that can affect the consumer’s choice of eco-labelled products in the store. Due to lack of data there is still no clear understanding about the role of shelf space in the purchase decision of green products. To answer these questions we will investigate all these factors and try to understand their influence on consumer green purchase behavior.  This quantitative study is carried out in Umeå, Sweden with 150 respondents and focuses mainly on the food market consumers. We stand on objectivist position for this study and we believe that cross-sectional research design is most suitable to fulfill our research purpose. We developed several null hypotheses and for this purpose we distributed our research questionnaire at the entrance of different super markets in Umeå, Sweden to collect our data from the respondents. We applied convenience sampling with simple quota to this research. We evaluated the gathered data with help of SPSS. Results proved that eco-motivation and shelf space plays vital role (positive correlated) in the purchase decision of eco-labelled products. We have provided statistical evidence that eco-motivation and shelf space induce actual purchase of green products. Eco-knowledge shows to induce interest in eco-labelled product but does not help in actual purchase of eco-labelled products. Surprisingly price and gender has not shown any influence on the consumer green purchase. We believe that our findings and recommendations can contribute in the area of consumer’s ecological behavior research. Due to our sampling technique (convenience) and small size of our respondent we cannot generalize the results of this study.   Key words: Purchase decision, Green marketing, Eco-labeling, Shelf space, Eco-motivation, Eco-knowledge, Gender, Price, Peer influence

Peer crowd affiliation (PCA) has been linked to alcohol use in adolescents, with patterns varying by crowd. However, a comprehensive examination of how peers influence college students’ behaviors, especially with regards to PCA, is lacking. The current study seeks to replicate and extend findings from Barber, Eccles, and Stone (2001) by examining whether high school PCA is associated with average weekly drinking and problematic drinking in a sample of college freshman, including friends’ drinking as a potential mediator and susceptibility to peer influence as a potential moderator. As existing research has found that close friends’ drinking predicts own drinking, peer influence may be the mechanism by which PCA is associated with alcohol use and problems in college. College students (N = 490) completed questionnaires assessing high school PCA, problematic drinking, and alcohol use habits among 3 close college friends, as well as a life history calendar of alcohol use. Hypotheses were tested using Preacher & Hayes bootstrapping mediation approach and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results indicated positive associations between affiliation with Popular or Jock crowds and weekly and problematic drinking in college, and negative associations for affiliation with the Brain crowd. Support for mediation by friends’ alcohol use was found.

Common knowledge dictates that cynicism and mistrust of politics is rampant among US citizens, wreaking havoc on participation in the American political process. Social Capital theories are commonly used to effectively explain US political behavior, but fail to account for alienation from the political process or the influence of peers. I argue that models of political participation would be improved by the inclusion of political alienation variables, which have fallen into disuse in recent decades. Using data from the US Citizenship, Involvement, and Democracy Survey (2006), this paper relies upon negative binomial regression with nested models to compare the explanatory power of social capital variables with models including political alienation and peer influence variables to assess the value of such concepts. Results indicate that while the parent variables of political alienation (powerlessness, meaninglessness, and mistrust of political institutions) improve model accuracy and influence political participation, the latent variable remains ambiguously useful. Powerlessness and mistrust revealed significant effects, but mistrust failed to fit into the latent concept of political alienation, and meaninglessness did not produce significant results. Peer influence only significantly affected political participation when participants specifically discussed political matters with peers. Implications and concepts for future research follow.

Students spend most of their waking hours with their teachers and peers, who are considered to be the significant others, that influence their learning motivation and school life. Whether a student likes to go to school or not, whether she can adjust in school and engage in all learning activities, whether she can get good grades or fail depend not only on herself, but on the significant others. In this study, the aim is to find out how and in what ways teachers and peers influence adolescents in their academic life. Forty-one articles were reviewed to discuss around four research questions: What kinds of influences do peers have on adolescents in the academic context? In what ways do teachers’ high expectations affect the students? What kind of teacher-student relationships do students perceive in order to have positive attitudestowards school and have satisfying outcomes? What aspects in adolescents’ academic life are influenced by teachers’ self-efficacy? Teachers and peers are important motivators in students’ academic life. When the school, teacher and parents are aware of the influences from peers and teachers, they are given a chance to improve the factors involved so that students can learn best in a supportive atmosphere and environment.

This dissertation explored a number of themes associated with adolescent drug and alcohol prevention among culturally diverse Northern Australian adolescents. It was undertaken because important differences are often associated with specific cultural groups and local knowledge is often needed as a means of informing effective prevention programs. Five studies are presented, each, with its own hypotheses, results and conclusions that examine influences on the common dependent variable of adolescent substance use. In consultation with teachers a new universal school-based drug and alcohol prevention program was developed addressing the four most commonly used substances among Australian adolescents, namely alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis and inhalants. The program was predicated on the social influence and alcohol harm minimisation models and was successful in reducing alcohol initiation and increasing cannabis and inhalant refusal self-efficacy among non-initiates. Program delivery is equally as important and program content and prevention programs utilising interactive teaching have been found to be more effective in preventing adolescent substance use than those delivered in a didactic or non-interactive style. The implementation evaluation found that teachers delivered less of the interactive program contents (49%) compared with the non-interactive components (84%). Quality of program delivery may have explained the limited efficacy of the school program to reduce cigarette use and to deter use among those who had already initiated substance use. Additionally three descriptive studies explored variables representing risk and protection for adolescent substance use. Key finding were that cultural identity was observed to be protective of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous alcohol initiation but was associated with risk for Indigenous youth who had any number of drinking friends; that drinking parents had a strong direct effect on adolescent drinking independent of friends’ use; and a lack of school connectedness was associated with increased adolescent smoking and drinking. This dissertation demonstrated that a school drug education program in its self cannot effectively prevent adolescent drug use. While improvements can be made to current teaching practices, school curricula need to be supplemented with multi-modal programs that aim to selectively reduce parental substance use and improve the school experience for all students.

abstract: Social media offers a powerful platform for the independent digital content producer community to develop, disperse, and maintain their brands. In terms of information systems research, the broad majority of the work has not examined hedonic consumption on Social Media Sites (SMS). The focus has mostly been on the organizational perspectives and utilitarian gains from these services. Unlike through traditional commerce channels, including e-commerce retailers, consumption enhancing hedonic utility is experienced differently in the context of a social media site; consequently, the dynamic of the decision-making process shifts when it is made in a social context. Previous research assumed a limited influence of a small, immediate group of peers. But the rules change when the network of peers expands exponentially. The assertion is that, while there are individual differences in the level of susceptibility to influence coming from others, these are not the most important pieces of the analysis--unlike research centered completely on influence. Rather, the context of the consumption can play an important role in the way social influence factors affect consumer behavior on Social Media Sites. Over the course of three studies, this dissertation will examine factors that influence consumer decision-making and the brand personalities created and interpreted in these SMS. Study one examines the role of different types of peer influence on consumer decision-making on Facebook. Study two observes the impact of different types of producer message posts with the different types of influence on decision-making on Twitter. Study three will conclude this work with an exploratory empirical investigation of actual twitter postings of a set of musicians. These studies contribute to the body of IS literature by evaluating the specific behavioral changes related to consumption in the context of digital social media: (a) the power of social influencers in contrast to personal preferences on SMS, (b) the effect on consumers of producer message types and content on SMS at both the profile level and the individual message level. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Business Administration 2013

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During adolescence many youth spend increasing amounts of time gaining new knowledge and skills outside of their home in environments such as structured afterschool activities. In these settings, youth have meaningful opportunities to explore new interests, develop varied competencies, and seek social support from peers and adults. As youth get older rates of participation in structured activities decline. Given the role that structured activities can play in nurturing positive youth development, gaining a better understanding of how peers may affect youth's choice to participate in structured activities is important. This study used logistic regression to examine the role of peer influence and how the perceptions of close friends (direct peer influence) and other peers (social norms) impact a youth's decision to participate in structured activities as well as use alcohol and marijuana. Additionally, the association between youth participation in structured activities and reported use of alcohol and marijuana was examined. Study results indicated that youth who reported engaging in specific types of structured activities, specifically performing arts and volunteering, reported lower rates of alcohol and marijuana use respectively. Direct peer influence was an important factor in substance use whereby for each additional best friend a youth had that participated in school activities, students were less likely to have used alcohol or marijuana. Findings are interpreted using an ecological systems perspective and demonstrate that gaining a better understanding of the influence that direct peers and social norms exert on youth behavior has important implications for promoting the positive development of youth.

abstract: This study aimed to advance understanding of the relation between social media and adolescent alcohol use while accounting for offline peer alcohol use, exploring offline peer alcohol use separately as a covariate and as a moderator, with an additional exploratory analysis of the relation between social media and alcohol use without offline peer alcohol use in the model. A total of 868 students (55% female) in grade 7 (n = 468) and grade 8 (n = 400) at wave 1, self-reported on alcohol use, binge drinking, and social media use as well as nominated friends from their school and grade. Data from nominated peers who also completed the questionnaires were used for peer-report of alcohol use. Data were collected annually from students at grades 8, 9, 10, and 11 were used in analyses. Final structural models consisted of a cross-lagged panel design with saved factor scores for social media and peer alcohol use predicting a categorical alcohol use variable or a binary binge drinking variable. With offline peer alcohol use as a covariate in the model, social media did not prospectively relate to subsequent grade alcohol use or binge drinking. However, without offline peer alcohol use, the path from social media use to subsequent grade alcohol use was significant but not the path to binge drinking. Offline peer alcohol use did not significantly moderate the relation between social media and subsequent grade alcohol use or binge drinking. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2020