A key role of public relations is to manage crises, unexpected yet unpredictable events that cause emotional and physical harm (Coombs, 2007). Among the challenges in handling a crisis effectively is dealing with the various media in which information is presented. Because the use of social media in a crisis is a relatively new phenomenon, further understanding of the challenges and opportunities of these media is warranted. Part of meeting this challenge requires precise modeling of consumer responses to safety messages. To remedy gaps in our understanding of social media and food safety crisis communications, consumer intent to comply with a food safety message was evaluated within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991). Superimposed on the TPB intention model were possible moderator variables of message source (professional versus user-generated) and message reliability (confirmed versus unconfirmed information). Three focus groups provided background for the construction of a research instrument according to guidelines specified by Francis, Eccles, Johnston, Walker, Foy, et al. (2004). A 2x2 experimental design with four scenarios (message source x reliability), and realism checks of the scenarios were conducted. A pilot test with 130 undergraduate university students preceded administration of the instrument to a representative U.S. consumer panel of 400 participants. Results indicated that intent to comply with a food safety message was higher in response to messages in professional sources than in user-generated sources, but that the majority of this effect could be explained by participant age, which in turn predicted use of social media. Message reliability did not affect intent to comply—confirmed and unconfirmed messages had similar effects on intent to comply. All aspects of the TPB were confirmed by the current results with the exception of perceived behavioral control, which was so consistently strong that it was unable to predict variations in intent to comply with a food safety message. Consequently, the current data support the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) rather than the TPB. Implications of the results for public relations and crisis communications, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

The study examines the phenomenon of purchasing locally produced foods in retail grocery stores. Theoretical foundations from the theory of planned behavior and from the stimulus-organism-response framework were used to support and test a model that hypothesized relationships between attitude, subjective norms, perceived consumer effectiveness, perceived product availability, intention to purchase, store atmospheric responsiveness, price consciousness, and extent of purchase behavior in a retail grocery setting. An online survey methodology was used to collect 600 responses across the United States. A two-step approach to structural equation modeling was used to test the relationships. Confirmatory factor analysis with measurement model development supported the hypotheses of store atmospheric responsiveness as a multidimensional construct reflected in four specific dimensions (1) product assortment responsiveness, (2) display factors responsiveness, (3) customer service responsiveness, and (4) store promotions responsiveness. The construct of perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) was found to highly correlate with attitude and PCE was subsequently dropped as an independent latent construct. Results from analysis of the fitted structural model indicated that attitude and perceived product availability were significant positive indicators of intention to purchase, while subjective norms indicated a significant negative relationship to intention to purchase. A significant positive direct effect between intention to purchase and extent of purchase and a significant positive indirect effect through that of store atmospheric responsiveness was found, suggesting that store atmospheric responsiveness partially mediates the relationship. Consumer price consciousness was found to not significantly moderate the relationship between intention to purchase and extent of purchase. From the results, academic and managerial implications were suggested. For future research directions, four distinct categories emerged; they included (1) a focus on store atmospherics, specifically store atmospheric responsiveness when shopping for locally produced foods, (2) analysis of group differences between shoppers of locally produced foods, (3) category analysis of locally produced food items, and (4) research on the pricing of locally produced foods.

Efforts to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign petroleum encourage the production of fuels from bioenergy crops. Recent energy mandates have therefore “opened doors” for alternative feedstock sources for ethanol production. Switchgrass is a candidate feedstock. Under the University of Tennessee’s Biofuels Initiative, the University of Tennessee, partnering with DuPont-Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC, contracted for the production of switchgrass with local farmers to guarantee biomass feedstock supply for an ethanol conversion research facility. This study used methods borrowed from the social psychology literature in combination with economic theory to analyze factors influencing switchgrass farmers’ intentions to continue growing switchgrass after contracts with the granting agent expired. Understanding what motivates producers to make long term commitments to switchgrass production as an energy crop may be important information for private investors who will rely on a fixed supply of switchgrass. A probit model was used to determine the factors affecting producers’ intentions to continue producing switchgrass after their contract expires. Results suggest that community perceptions about the production of switchgrass as a dedicated energy crop may have an important impact on farmers’ intentions to make a long-term commitment to produce switchgrass. Therefore, educating and involving community and extension personnel may have a positive impact on farmers’ decisions to make long-term commitments to grow switchgrass as a dedicated energy crop.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka sambandet mellan elevers attityder, subjektiv norm, upplevd kontroll, intentioner, rättfärdiganden, motivation samt självvärdering i relation till benägenhet att fuska eller att avstå från att fuska. The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 2006) har använts som teoretisk modell för en enkätundersökning med 122 elever i grundskolans årskurs 9 och i gymnasieskolans årskurser 2–3. Resultatet av studien visar att intentionen att utföra ett beteende, som i denna studie är fusk, är den viktigaste prediktorn för beteendet i fråga. I föreliggande studie har även kunnat styrkas att rättfärdigande av eget fusk har en avgörande roll vad gäller beteende och intention. De övriga variablerna har en viss betydelse med inte i lika hög grad som intention och rättfärdigande.  Resultatet av studien har diskuterats utifrån intentionen och rättfärdigandets starka samband med beteendet.

The purpose of this thesis was to increase the understanding of Swedish consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions of functional food for marketers by using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). It was discovered that previous research conducted in Sweden concerning functional food centered largely on motivational factors for adoption, and perception of the health claims made by these products; however there was a lack in research concerning purchase intentions and a use of theory to evaluate both attitudes and purchase intentions. Both qualitative and quantitative research methodology were utilized in this thesis. The qualitative research data consisted of 14 short interviews designed to elicit beliefs about purchasing functional food. The quantitative research data was gathered using a questionnaire specifically designed for the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A total of 257 responses were received from students, employees, and members of the general public. The results from the questionnaire revealed that Swedish consumers had slightly positive attitudes towards purchasing functional food and neutral intentions to purchase functional food. The results from the interviews revealed that amongst other things, Swedish consumers believed that functional foods provide beneficial health benefits, but they are quite expensive. Doctors and family were viewed as important when considering the purchase of functional food. And price and knowledge were viewed as controlling factors of whether or not these foods were purchased. The results provided by this thesis will be helpful to marketers of functional food as they plan marketing related activities aimed at Swedish consumers

Swedish households are getting deeper in debt and house prices keeps on rising. This is what happened in USA and it was one of the major causes of the recent financial crisis. To avoid a similar crisis in Sweden we think one part of the solution is to make sure that those who are students today and soon will get jobs, buy houses, take loans etcetera have necessary knowledge to do so. Students’ saving is an area that almost completely lacked researchers’ attention, and one goal with this thesis is to point out why it’s an important subject and to increase interest among other researchers. We want to give other researcher a foundation to start from, to give an idea of what students saving looks like, so they can continue to explore this important subject. Our research is using theories developed on private saving in American households as a background, and two psychological theories, The theory of planned behavior by Ajzen (1991) and Self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan (2000) as a foundation. This thesis primary focus is on researching students attitude towards saving, students attitude towards stocks and students motivation towards saving. This is researched by distributing a Likert Scale based questionnaire to two groups, business students and technical energy students, a total of 133 students. The answers were collected in two classrooms and all students agreed to fill in the questionnaire leaving us with no non-response bias. The result was very positive and quite surprising. A majority of the students in our study have a positive attitude towards saving, a slightly positive attitude towards stocks and they are motivated to save. Our conclusion is that although the result is positive students saving and students knowledge about saving can be further improved by more education.

Due to the increased number of niched retail banks in Sweden, the competition for the customers has become severe. Bank customers in the Swedish bank market tend to stay with their bank. The challenge of how to manage to attract new customers is a central part of the retail banks’ management tasks. The research area on which we have been focusing on is the area of consumer behavior. We have been focusing on student switching behavior of financial services provided by retail banks in general and ICA banken in particular. To strengthen the practical connection, we choose to focus on the case of ICA banken. Our objective was to investigate which predictors that affect switching intention and investigate how these predictors affect students’ switching behavior, which in the extension will contribute to how retail banks can work towards manage these rising issues. We formulated the following research question: How do the predictors of switching intention affect switching behavior in the retail banking context? Our purpose was to investigate the predictors of switching intention and their effects on switching behavior in the retail banking context. The study was performed with a quantitative method and a deductive approach. By using a convenience sampling technique, we collected the data electronically. The population examined was the student segment at Umeå University. Our questionnaire was constructed with the theoretical chapter as framework, and the discussion, conclusion and practical implications are based on our empirical findings. Our study was geographically limited to Umeå University. The ability to generalize our findings was also limited, due to our chosen sampling technique. We reached a conclusion that the greatest predictor of switching intention was attitude towards switching. Additionally, the greatest predictors of switching behavior was a combination of attitude towards switching and customer satisfaction. Our practical implications consisted of the recommendation for retail banks to focus on developing marketing strategies that would bank customers more positive towards the act of switching bank in order to attract new customers. Our findings showed that bank customers in general were neither negative nor positive towards the act of switching bank. For ICA banken we gave three proposals; to attract new customers, to transform customers that only partly use the bank to customers that use ICA banken for the majority of their financial transactions and to maintain current customers. These actions are made by managing customer satisfaction, brand image, the relational investment between ICA banken and customers, and subjective norms since these should affect the attitude towards switching bank.

Denna studie grundar sig på en enkätundersökning av 59 gymnasieungdomars intentioner till att inom de närmaste 5 åren påbörja studier vid högskola eller universitet. Undersökningen är baserad på Theory of planned behavior och syftar till att testa teorins pålitlighet i att besvara vilken av de socialt betingade bakgrundsfaktorerna attityd, subjektiv norm och upplevd beteendekontroll som utgör den bästa prediktorn för undersökningsdeltagarnas intentioner. Därtill undersöks dessa faktorers samband med föräldrarnas utbildningsnivå. Theory of planned behavior visade sig vara ett reliabelt mätinstrument gällande studiens övriga frågor, där den upplevda beteendekontrollen och den subjektiva normen utgjorde signifikanta prediktorer gällande undersökningsdeltagarnas intentioner. Därtill påvisades samband mellan föräldrars utbildningsnivå och deltagarnas intentioner samt subjektiva norm. Författaren menar att studier likt denna ger ett värdefullt bidrag till det viktiga arbetet med att förverkliga den svenska skolans likvärdighetsmål.

In Taiwan, the environmental protection actions that people usually take are "physical actions", such as picking up litter, sorting trash, installing household resource-conserving devices. Other kinds of actions¡Xe.g., persuasive actions, civic action (such as signing for environmental causes, petitioning and lobbying) ¡Xare far less common. However, the latter actions, especially civic actions, are more effective than physical actions in pushing the government to adopt proenvironment policies and thus have more far-reaching impacts. This study thus focused on three civic and persuasive actions¡Xsigning for environmental causes, lobbying, and being an ecotourism interpreter. And since these actions are usually taken as a group action (people do so either because they are members of environmental groups or other NGOs, or because they join the actions of these organizations) , this study took environmental group members as its target population. A survey of intentions regarding the above three kinds of actions was made, with 210 environmental group members as respondents. Two models were used to predict these behaviors. One was the theory of planned behavior (TPB) proposed by Ajzen (1988, 1991) , the other one was an integrated model based on theories from three disciplines¡Xsocial psychology, environmental education, public health¡Xand literatures of society mobilization. The integrated model contained 8 predictors, 4 of which were from the TPB (the subjective norm variable in the TPB was further split into 2 variables: subjective norm with respect to family members, subjective norm with respect to community members) . The other 4 variables were environmental moral obligation, environmental attitude, response efficacy and collective efficacy. Results showed that both the TPB and integrated models could predict all three kinds of environmental intention (R2 > .49 for each model and intention) . The integrated model, however, was not better than the TPB model in predicting the intention to lobby. And it was only a little better in predicting the intentions to sign and to be an interpreter. Implications of these results and suggestions for environmental groups and environmental education organizations were discussed.

This essay investigating outbound factors by theoretical planning behaviors approach which generate knowledge information sharing component to knowledge workers of IC Testing/Assembly plant. The external essence and factor is divided into Individual-Level Factors, Team-Level Factors and Organizational-Level Factors: Individual-Level factors including motives (Self-Interest factor and altruistic Factor), job satisfaction; Team-Level Factors should be complied with trust, leaderships; Organizational-Level Factors would be concluded with enterprise culture, management constitutions. Investigated objects would be focused on Walton Advanced Engineering Co.,Ltd., after sampling with the IT engineering, I have concluded with the following issues: 1. Self-Interest factor and job satisfactory factor would be greater influence than the altruistic Factor. 2. Leadership is a critical influencing factor in the knowledge sharing process. 3. Trust is an essential factor for knowledge sharing within a group. 4. Culture and reward system are the most influencing factor for knowledge sharing. 5. It is necessary to tie in administrative strategy to raise the wills to share knowledge. 6. Encouraging group members explode the nuclear tacit knowledge benefits a lot to individuals and overall group improvement and growth. 7. It is quite a challenge to enterprise to build the knowledge sharing mechanism. Hoping the conclusions above would benefit to those knowledge works related managers and knowledge owners to inherit and preserver the main essence of knowledge base for their working groups.