Facets of country image and brand equity: Revisiting the role of product categories in country‐of‐origin effect research

The country‐of‐origin effect is a topic central to the field of international marketing. Country of origin has been found to exert a particularly potent effect on consumer evaluation in situations where there is a strong link between a country and a particular product category. The present study provides further insight into how this particular effect can be understood. Drawing on a novel conceptualization of how country image and product categories interact, this study tested the relative evaluative relevance of product category with respect to estimates of brand equity across a variety of product categories. The findings suggest that facets of a country's image that are more closely related to the evaluation situation exert a greater influence on the evaluation of brands. This result encourages scholars as well as practitioners to re‐evaluate which situations might cause the country of origin effect to hold managerial relevance and paves the way for new paths toward a more comprehensive understanding of the effect. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interobserver agreement and procedural fidelity: An odd asymmetry

We examined articles with experiments published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and in Behavior Analysis in Practice from 2017 through 2021 to determine how frequently procedural fidelity was assessed. When procedural fidelity was assessed, we determined how often a measure of interobserver agreement for those fidelity data was provided. We also determined how often a measure of interobserver agreement for participants' behavior was provided. Across both journals and all years, 54.7% of relevant articles provided a measure of procedural fidelity. Of them, 17.7% provided a measure of interobserver agreement for procedural fidelity. In marked contrast, 96.4% provided interobserver agreement data for participants' behavior. It is unfortunate that applied behavior analysts frequently fail to provide procedural fidelity data and, when they do, often fail to provide interobserver agreement data for the fidelity data. Reviewers for, and editors of, behavior-analytic journals are encouraged to strongly consider the relative value of procedural fidelity and agreement on procedural fidelity measures when rendering recommendations on the suitability of a given submission.     

Police,courts, and corrections: Experiences of procedural injustice among Black adults

Racial disparities and a corresponding lack of trust have been documented within the criminal legal system. In response, criminal legal system actors have sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their agencies. However, legitimizing these agencies can be problematic. Some argue that the current criminal legal system continues the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as Blacks are disproportionately policed and incarcerated. As a framework, procedural injustice can offer a unique backdrop and interrogate ways in which the criminal legal system engages in delegitimizing actions that provoke noncompliance and enable social control. Using a procedural injustice lens, this study examines how justice-involved Black adults experience mistreatment by justice system actors. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 84 Black adults in Newark and Cleveland. Study findings offer a comprehensive account of how participants experience procedural injustice as arrestees, defendants, and incarcerated persons. More specifically, participant narratives describe deliberately antagonistic, abusive, and dehumanizing treatment by justice-system agents—often depicted as racially motivated. Participant accounts also describe this mistreatment as occurring in a context of coercion and powerlessness and as being institutionally sanctioned. Implications for the preservation of racial hierarchies, research, practice, and community psychology are discussed.     

Procedural dependence in action memory: Effects of verb form and individual vs group conditions

Two experiments explored whether the magnitude of the enactment effect in action memory (i. e., higher recall with motor than with non-motor encoding) may depend upon the use of individual or group testing procedures. Nonmotor encoding instructions, requiring the subjects to listen to orally presented action items, were compared to instructions which also required enactment. With encoding treated as a within-subject factor, the observations failed to reveal any significant difference between individual and group testing. With encoding treated as a between-subject factor, the results showed an interaction between test and encoding conditions, such that an enactment effect was found only with group testing. Different support value for auditory cues in group and individual test situations was assumed to account for this difference. In a third experiment the indicative and imperative verb forms were compared. An interaction was observed, showing that in Norwegian, enacted verbs were remembered better when presented in the indicative than in the imperative. No corresponding difference was found under non-enactment conditions. For this finding, a social interaction interpretation was offered.     

Factors influencing public awareness of autonomous vehicles: Empirical evidence from Brisbane

Growing concerns, regarding transport disadvantage and increased socioeconomic disparities, demand innovative ways to improve equity and make transportation systems smarter. One of the most anticipated developments within the field of smart mobility is driving automation systems. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to improve accessibility, affordability, safety and efficiency of transport systems, but come with risks including the intensification of private vehicle travel. Understanding public awareness is an important step to determine whether motivation and intention to use AVs will impact on its potential. This paper aims to investigate factors influencing public awareness of AVs as a solution to transport disadvantage. The study applies an ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyse survey data collected from the residents of Brisbane (Australia). Our findings reveal that awareness is positively correlated within young and middle-aged adults, low-income residents, disability, public transport users, and those who feel unsafe on public transport, while an increase in the number of household vehicles is negatively correlated. The study provides insights into public awareness towards the potential benefits of AVs, and highlights potential opportunities and challenges associated with these expectations.     

First steps toward an understanding of procedural fairness

In four experiments, we tested whether 20‐month‐old infants are sensitive to violations of procedural impartiality. Participants were shown videos in which help was provided in two different ways. A main character provided help to two other agents either impartially, by helping them at the same time, or in a biased way, by helping one agent almost immediately while the other after a longer delay. Infants looked reliably longer at the biased than at the unbiased help scenarios despite the fact that in both scenarios help was provided to each beneficiary. This suggests that human infants can attend to departures from impartiality and, in their second year, they already show an initial understanding of procedural fairness.     

Nanotechnology — A new field of ethical inquiry?

Parallel to the public discussion on the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, a debate on the ethics of nanotechnology has begun. It has been postulated that a new “nano-ethics” is necessary. In this debate, the — positive as well as negative — visionary and speculative innovations which are brought into connection with nanotechnology stand in the foreground. In this contribution, an attempt is made to discover new ethical aspects of nanotechnology in a more systematic manner than has been the case. It turns out that there are hardly any completely new ethical aspects raised by nanotechnology. It is much rather primarily a case of gradual shifts of emphasis and of relevance in questions which, in principle, are already known and which give reason for ethical discussions on nanotechnology. In a certain manner, structurally novel ethical aspects arise through the important role played by visions in the public discourse. New questions are also posed by the fact that previously separate lines of ethical reflection converge in the field of nanotechnology. The proposal of an independent “nano-ethics”, however, seems exaggerated.