The research, conducted by Qingqing Liu, Kavitha Balakrishnan, and Mokhtarrudin Bin Ahmad of the Faculty of Applied Communication at Multimedia University in Malaysia, draws on survey data from 450 eligible consumers in Zhejiang Province, China. The team analysed the data using partial least squares structural equation modelling, a statistical technique well suited to testing how multiple psychological constructs relate to one another simultaneously. Their central innovation was to split the broad concept of cross-cultural competency into two distinct dimensions and trace how each one connects to purchase intention through the established machinery of the Theory of Planned Behavior.

The Theory of Planned Behavior, first formulated by Icek Ajzen, holds that a person’s intention to perform a behavior is shaped by three psychological factors: attitude, meaning the individual’s favourable or unfavourable evaluation of the behavior; subjective norm, meaning the perceived social pressure or approval of relevant others; and perceived behavioral control, meaning the individual’s sense that they have the ability and resources to carry out the behavior. The theory has been applied extensively to consumer and online purchasing contexts, but its conventional formulation focuses on consumer-side psychology and does not explicitly account for culturally relevant characteristics of the communicators doing the selling. The new study extends the theory by positioning consumers’ perceptions of foreign influencers’ cross-cultural skills as antecedents that feed into the three established psychological pathways.

The two dimensions the researchers distinguished are intercultural communication competency, abbreviated ICC, and intercultural adaptability, abbreviated ICA. ICC refers to an individual’s ability to understand culturally situated meanings and communicate both effectively and appropriately across cultural boundaries, encompassing cognitive, affective, and behavioural elements. ICA, by contrast, concerns emotional and behavioural adjustment to an unfamiliar cultural environment, including emotional resilience, flexibility and openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. The distinction matters because live-streaming commerce makes both capacities directly observable: viewers can watch how a foreign influencer explains culturally specific content, deals with misunderstandings, adjusts their communication when needed, and responds to local expectations in real time.

To measure these perceptions, the researchers adapted two established self-report instruments, the Intercultural Communication Competence Scale and the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory, so that respondents evaluated the foreign influencers they had watched rather than themselves. The ICC scale covered cognitive, affective, and behavioural competency facets, while the ICA inventory covered emotional resilience, flexibility and openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. Because the combined instruments contained 60 items, the researchers aggregated them into theory-defined facet parcels, preserving the original content structure while reducing measurement complexity. All items were measured on five-point Likert scales, and the questionnaire was translated into Chinese, checked through back-translation, reviewed by two experts, and piloted with 120 eligible respondents before the main survey.

The results revealed a striking asymmetry between the two dimensions. Intercultural communication competency was positively associated with purchase intention both directly and indirectly through all three Theory of Planned Behavior constructs. The direct path from ICC to purchase intention was statistically significant, and ICC also showed significant positive relationships with attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Intercultural adaptability, however, told a different story: it had no significant direct association with purchase intention, yet it showed significant specific indirect associations through attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. In other words, adaptability appears to work at an earlier stage of the decision process, shaping how consumers evaluate the live-streaming experience, perceive social acceptance, and feel in control of the purchase, rather than serving as a direct reason to buy.

The mediation analysis further differentiated the two dimensions. For ICC, the strongest indirect pathway to purchase intention ran through attitude, followed by perceived behavioral control and then subjective norm. This pattern suggests that clear, culturally appropriate communication leads consumers to view the live-streaming experience more favourably, which in turn strengthens their intention to buy. For ICA, the strongest indirect pathway ran through subjective norm, followed by attitude and perceived behavioral control. The researchers interpret this as reflecting the social implications of cultural adaptation: when a foreign influencer demonstrates awareness of and respect for local norms, consumers may be more likely to regard engagement with that influencer, and purchasing the promoted products, as socially and culturally acceptable. The combined indirect effect of ICA through the three mediators was positive and significant, and the total effect of ICA on purchase intention was also significant, indicating that adaptability is far from unimportant even though its direct path was not.

The three core Theory of Planned Behavior relationships also remained intact. Attitude showed the strongest relationship with purchase intention, followed by subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, confirming that the established evaluative, normative, and control-related structure of the theory remains applicable in foreign-influencer live-streaming commerce. The model explained 43.5 per cent of the variance in purchase intention, a moderate level of explanatory power, while the variance explained in attitude and subjective norm was more modest, reflecting the deliberately narrow set of antecedents included. The researchers note that other factors, such as product quality, price, influencer credibility, trust, and previous shopping experience, would also shape attitudes and norms but were outside the scope of this focused model.

The practical implications are considerable for brands, platforms, and the growing cohort of foreign content creators working in China’s live-streaming economy. The findings suggest that communication strategies should prioritise how viewers experience and evaluate the live stream, since attitude carried the largest indirect relationship between communication competency and purchase intention. Adaptation strategies, meanwhile, should attend to local norms and social expectations, since subjective norm carried the largest indirect relationship for adaptability. The researchers also caution that adaptation does not mean copying domestic influencers; foreign creators can respond to the local cultural setting while retaining an identifiable personal style, and localisation that appears forced or superficial may not produce the intended response. Brands and platforms can additionally use perceived cross-cultural competency as a selection criterion, since follower numbers and sales figures do not reveal how well an influencer communicates with Chinese audiences or responds to cultural differences.

The researchers are careful to specify the boundaries of their findings. The data are cross-sectional and were obtained from a convenience sample of topic-interested consumers in Zhejiang Province, a region with a well-developed platform economy and mature cross-border trade environment. The findings therefore represent conditional associations within this specific sample and should not be generalised to all Chinese consumers. Because purchase intention was measured rather than actual purchasing behaviour, the transition from intention to behaviour could be influenced by price, product availability, logistics, payment conditions, trust, and promotional incentives. Future research, the team suggests, should employ longitudinal designs, experimental manipulations of communication and adaptive behaviours, and platform-generated behavioural data such as click-throughs and completed purchases to establish whether the observed associations hold beyond self-reported intentions. Nevertheless, by separating communication competency from cultural adaptability, the study provides a more precise account of how culturally relevant perceptions of foreign communicators enter consumer decision-making, and it demonstrates how the Theory of Planned Behavior can be extended to cross-cultural live-streaming settings without altering its established psychological structure.

Subject of Research: Consumer psychology

Article Title: Perceived cross-cultural competency and purchase intention in foreign-influencer live streaming commerce: an extended theory of planned behavior perspective

Article References: Liu, Q., Balakrishnan, K., & Ahmad, M. B. (2026). Perceived cross-cultural competency and purchase intention in foreign-influencer live streaming commerce: an extended theory of planned behavior perspective. Frontiers in Communication, 11, Article 1978630. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2026.1978630

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2026.1978630

Keywords: live streaming commerce, theory of planned behavior, intercultural communication, influencer marketing, purchase intention, cross-cultural psychology, China, consumer behavior, Perceived, cross-cultural, competency, purchase

The study builds on the theory of planned behavior, or TPB, a framework introduced decades ago that has become the workhorse of behavioral psychology research. In its classic form, the theory holds that the single best predictor of whether someone will perform a behavior is their intention to do so, and that intention itself is shaped by three forces: attitude, meaning how favorably the person evaluates the behavior; subjective norms, meaning perceived social pressure from people around them; and perceived behavioral control, meaning how easy or difficult they believe the behavior to be. Researchers have repeatedly extended the model by adding constructs such as environmental knowledge, connectedness to nature, personal norms, and efficacy beliefs. What has remained murky, according to the authors, is how these additions should be theoretically ordered relative to one another, and whether the same extended model applies to different forms of environmental action.

That gap matters because pro-environmental behavior is not a single thing. Saving water in a dormitory shower is a private-sphere act, performed alone and quietly. Attending an environmental club meeting, lobbying a university administration, or participating in a collective campus campaign is public-sphere behavior, socially embedded and dependent on other people. Whether the same psychological pathway leads to both has been an open empirical question, and the new study was designed to answer it directly rather than assume it.

The researchers recruited 806 Chinese university students and administered a survey measuring the full battery of TPB constructs alongside the extended variables. Before testing the structural model, they conducted a pooled exploratory factor analysis combining the private-sphere and public-sphere behavior items. This statistical procedure asks whether items measuring two supposedly distinct behavioral domains actually separate into distinct factors when analyzed together. The result was instructive: the analysis supported two strongly related but empirically recoverable subdomains. In other words, private and public environmental behaviors are correlated enough to sit close together in a person’s behavioral repertoire, yet distinct enough that statistical methods can pull them apart. Students who recycle also tend to participate, but the two tendencies are not the same trait.

The structural model then revealed a clear architecture of distal and proximal influences. At the distal level sit relatively stable cognitive and affective orientations. Environmental knowledge, the study found, was most closely associated with perceived behavioral control. This makes intuitive sense: students who understand the environmental consequences of their actions tend to feel more capable of acting, because knowing what to do is a prerequisite for believing you can do it. Connectedness to nature, by contrast, showed strong associations with attitudinal, social, and moral orientations. Students who feel emotionally bonded to the natural world evaluate green behavior more favorably, perceive more social support for it, and experience stronger personal moral obligations to act. Nature connectedness, in this account, functions less as a direct driver of action and more as a fertile soil from which multiple motivational pathways grow.

At the proximal level, the classical TPB variables did their expected work. Attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were all positively associated with behavioral intention, confirming that the original triad remains predictive even when richer constructs are added to the model. Personal norms, the internalized sense of moral obligation that echoes early norm-activation theory, added further predictive power. Intention, in turn, emerged as the central hub for both behavioral domains, the conduit through which all the upstream psychological forces funnel into actual behavior. Whatever distal or proximal origins a motivation has, it must pass through intention to become action.

Yet the two behavioral domains did not follow identical routes. Collective efficacy, a person’s belief that a group acting together can achieve environmental goals, provided an additional pathway specifically for public-sphere participation. Private behaviors can be enacted by an individual alone; participating in collective environmental action requires confidence not just in oneself but in the group’s capacity to make a difference. This finding gives collective efficacy a distinctive theoretical position: it is not a general enhancer of all green behavior but a domain-specific enabler of socially participatory action. For universities hoping to mobilize students into campus sustainability movements, cultivating the belief that organized groups can succeed may be as important as cultivating individual motivation.

The methodological choice to use partial least squares structural equation modeling deserves mention. Unlike covariance-based approaches, PLS-SEM is well suited to complex models with multiple constructs and pathways, making it a practical tool for testing extended frameworks like this one. Combined with the pooled factor analysis, the study offered both a confirmatory test of the ordered model and an empirical check on whether its two behavioral outcome domains were genuinely distinct. The convergent results strengthen the case that the observed architecture reflects something real about how environmental motivation is organized in students’ minds rather than an artifact of questionnaire design.

The practical implications are concrete. Because environmental knowledge feeds primarily into perceived behavioral control, sustainability education that stops at raising awareness may be incomplete; students also need the practical skills and perceived ease that convert knowledge into a sense of capability. Because connectedness to nature nourishes attitudes, norms, and moral obligations simultaneously, experiences that foster emotional bonds with nature, from outdoor programs to campus green spaces, could pay dividends across the entire motivational chain. And because collective efficacy uniquely empowers public-sphere engagement, universities need to offer credible structures for collective participation: student environmental organizations with real influence, visible examples of successful group action, and institutional channels through which student voices demonstrably shape campus policy.

The broader significance of the study lies in its integrated account of environmental behavior. Rather than treating pro-environmental action as a monolith driven by a single motive, the findings support a layered model in which distal cognitive and affective orientations relate to more proximal individual mechanisms, intention serves as the shared gateway, and collective agency becomes particularly important precisely when action requires other people. For a generation of students who will live with the consequences of today’s environmental decisions, the study suggests that building green campuses is a two-part engineering problem: equip individuals with the knowledge, moral conviction, and confidence to act alone, and convince them that acting together can actually change the world around them.

Subject of Research: Psychological predictors of private and public campus pro-environmental behavior among Chinese university students using an extended theory of planned behavior

Article Title: An extended TPB approach to examining Chinese university students’ public and private campus pro-environmental behavior

Article References: Chen, X., Huang, X., Liu, Y., Jiang, L., Kumar, J., & Huang, J. (2026). An extended TPB approach to examining Chinese university students’ public and private campus pro-environmental behavior. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05638-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05638-4

Keywords: theory of planned behavior, pro-environmental behavior, campus sustainability, environmental psychology, connectedness to nature, collective efficacy, personal norms, behavioral intention, PLS-SEM, Chinese university students, private-sphere behavior, public-sphere behavior

A new longitudinal study published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction offers one of the most detailed answers to date. A team of Spanish researchers led by Alberto Parrado-González, José Carmona-Márquez, Belén del Valle Vera, and Fermín Fernández-Calderón set out to test whether the dominant psychological model of health behavior, the theory of planned behavior, could explain cannabis use among young adults, and whether adding measures of habit and past behavior would substantially improve that explanation. Their findings suggest that for regular users, the automatic pull of habit may matter as much as, or more than, conscious deliberation.

The theory of planned behavior, formulated by Icek Ajzen in 1991, holds that the strongest immediate predictor of any behavior is the intention to perform it. Intention, in turn, is shaped by three belief-based constructs: attitudes, which reflect evaluations of the consequences of the behavior; subjective norms, which capture perceived approval from significant others; and perceived behavioral control, which encompasses both perceived control over external circumstances and self-efficacy, the confidence in one’s ability to carry out the required actions. In the substance use context, self-efficacy is typically operationalized as confidence in the ability to refrain from using in high-risk or tempting situations. Meta-analyses indicate that the model explains roughly 40 to 50 percent of the variance in intentions and 25 to 40 percent of the variance in health-related behaviors, and prior cannabis studies have found similar patterns.

But the theory rests on an assumption that has come under increasing scrutiny: that behavior flows from rational, deliberate decision-making. A growing body of research shows that behavior is also shaped by automatic, unconscious processes, particularly when actions are performed repeatedly under stable conditions in response to consistent environmental cues. In such cases, cognitive deliberation becomes a weaker predictor and behavior is enacted with minimal conscious processing. Habit, defined as behavioral patterns automatically triggered by environmental cues consistently associated with the behavior, is the key construct representing these automatic processes. Early research often used past behavior frequency as a proxy for habit, but this approach has limitations, since past behavior also shapes beliefs and intentions through social-cognitive channels, and habit itself extends beyond mere repetition to include automaticity, lack of awareness, and reduced volitional control.

To disentangle these pathways, the researchers recruited 606 Spanish-speaking young adults aged 18 to 25 from public venues in Huelva and Seville, Spain, using non-probability targeted sampling designed to maximize diversity in age, gender, college status, and use frequency. All participants reported cannabis use in the past month, with a mean of 18.1 days of use. At baseline, they completed surveys measuring attitudes, subjective norms, perceived control, refusal self-efficacy, intention to use cannabis over the next 90 days, and habit strength, assessed with a brief two-item measure capturing automaticity and the customary nature of use. Three months later, 501 participants, or 82.6 percent, completed a follow-up assessment of use frequency and habit strength. The study was approved by the Bioethics Research Committee of Andalusia and complied with the Declaration of Helsinki.

The results were striking. The original theory of planned behavior model showed good fit to the data and explained 39.2 percent of the variance in intention and 56.2 percent of the variance in cannabis use frequency at follow-up. All deliberative constructs were significantly associated with intention, with subjective norms showing the strongest association, a pattern the authors attribute to the illicit and stigmatized status of cannabis, which tends to concentrate use within small, close-knit social networks where the expectations of friends and family carry unusual weight. Intention was prospectively associated with use, while perceived control and refusal self-efficacy showed negative relationships, meaning that participants who felt less able to resist used more frequently.

When the researchers extended the model to include past behavior and habit strength at both time points, explanatory power jumped dramatically. The extended model accounted for 65.7 percent of the variance in intention and 67.6 percent of the variance in cannabis use frequency. More revealing was what happened to the deliberative constructs: their associations with intention were attenuated or nullified entirely. Only subjective norms and attitudes remained significantly associated with intention, and these associations were weaker in magnitude. Perceived control and self-efficacy no longer showed significant associations with either intention or behavior. Notably, baseline habit strength was not significantly associated with intention, a finding the authors interpret as consistent with the view that intention and habit represent partly independent pathways to behavior. Automatic responses do not necessarily generate conscious intention; individuals can act habitually without actively intending to do so in the moment.

Instead, past behavior and habit strength at follow-up emerged as the strongest predictors of actual cannabis use. Indirect-effect analyses revealed three complementary pathways through which past behavior shaped later use: through deliberative constructs such as attitudes and subjective norms, consistent with Ajzen’s proposal that repeated performance shapes cognitive evaluations; through habit strength at both time points, with baseline habit showing a significant indirect association with follow-up behavior via follow-up habit; and through a residual direct association that habit alone did not capture, suggesting that additional non-deliberative factors such as implicit attitudes, implicit identity, and impulsivity may also be at work. The strong association between baseline and follow-up habit underscores the persistence and resistance to change of established habits.

Crucially, the extended model proved statistically invariant across gender and college status. Multigroup analyses showed that constraining the model’s coefficients to be equal across men and women, and across college students and non-students, did not significantly worsen fit. This suggests that the same psychological architecture underlies cannabis use across these subgroups, and that interventions derived from the model could be applied broadly. The finding is notable because prior evidence on gender differences in theory of planned behavior relationships has been mixed, and most cannabis studies have focused on college populations, raising concerns about generalizability to young adults outside academic settings.

The practical implications are substantial. If cannabis use is driven partly by automatic responses to environmental cues, then interventions that target only beliefs and attitudes may be insufficient for established users. The authors suggest that prevention and reduction programs could help participants identify the situations in which they commonly use cannabis, such as spending time with particular friends, visiting certain places, or experiencing boredom or stress, and then modify routines, reduce access, or substitute alternative responses such as contacting a supportive person or leaving the setting. Self-regulation strategies including goal setting, self-monitoring, and contingency management may support change by increasing awareness of use patterns. At the same time, because intention remained significantly associated with use even after controlling for habit and past behavior, conscious decision-making still matters. Techniques such as mental simulation and implementation intentions, for example forming if-then plans like deciding in advance to take a walk before acting on an urge, may help individuals plan alternative responses in cue-rich situations. The study’s authors caution that the non-probability sampling design, reliance on self-report, and brief two-item habit measure limit generalizability, and that the three-month follow-up may have introduced temporal variability. Still, the core message is clear: understanding cannabis use requires accounting for both the reasoned and the automatic, and the most effective interventions will likely need to speak to both.

Subject of Research: The role of habit strength and past behavior as non-conscious predictors of cannabis use frequency within an extended theory of planned behavior model among young adults.

Article Title: The Role of Habit and Past Behavior in Cannabis Use: An Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model

Article References: Parrado-González, A., Carmona-Márquez, J., Vera, B. D. V., & Fernández-Calderón, F. (2026). The Role of Habit and Past Behavior in Cannabis Use: An Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-026-01746-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11469-026-01746-9

Keywords: cannabis use, theory of planned behavior, habit strength, past behavior, dual-process models, young adults, substance use, self-efficacy, subjective norms, longitudinal study, behavior change, prevention

Natural burials, sometimes called green burials, involve returning human remains to the earth in biodegradable containers, without embalming fluids, concrete vaults or permanent grave markers. The authors, Edward Shih-Tse Wang of National Chung Hsing University and Hung-Chou Lin and Mei-Yin Wang of National Taiwan Normal University, frame the practice not merely as an alternative disposal method but as a full-fledged nature-based solution. Where traditional cemeteries impose what planners call land locking, permanently removing hectares of prime urban space from ecological or public use, and columbarium towers simply shift land consumption from horizontal plots to vertical concrete, natural burial grounds can be designed as renewable landscapes. Because biodegradable containers decompose within roughly one to three years, plots can be rested, recultivated and reused on rotating schedules, while the sites themselves double as carbon sinks, stormwater basins, microclimate regulators and biodiversity corridors.

Taiwan’s policy environment already supports this vision. The Funeral Management Regulations of 2002 established a legal framework encouraging natural burials, and municipalities such as Taipei and New Taipei City offer free or subsidized green burial services, with tree burial sites, plant storage options and sea burial available across the island. Yet adoption among seniors remains modest, which is precisely the puzzle the research set out to solve. The team surveyed Taiwanese adults aged 55 and above, the cohort that Ministry of the Interior data show most frequently takes responsibility for funeral arrangements, to identify the psychological, marketing and relational factors that shape their willingness to choose eco-burials.

The study’s theoretical engine is Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior, a widely validated model in which behavioral intention is driven by three constructs: attitude, the individual’s favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior; subjective norm, the perceived social pressure from significant others; and perceived behavioral control, one’s sense of being able to carry the behavior out. To this framework the researchers added social marketing’s classic 4Ps, product, price, place and promotion, the idea being that voluntary behavior change for social good can be promoted much like a commercial offering. Two further variables completed the model: environmental awareness, reflecting knowledge of and concern for ecological issues, and perceived security of attachment to adult children, an emotionally loaded construct capturing how much aging parents trust and feel supported by their grown offspring when contemplating end-of-life choices.

Data collection took place in March 2023 through convenience sampling at senior centers in four districts of Taipei City. Of 330 questionnaires distributed, all returned, 304 proved valid, yielding a 92.12 percent effective response rate. The sample skewed female, at 78.6 percent, a pattern the authors attribute to the well-documented feminization of aging rather than sampling error. The largest age group was 65 to 69 years old, the most common religion was Buddhism, most respondents had two adult children, and 62.5 percent held university degrees. All questionnaire dimensions showed strong internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values above 0.7, and most above 0.9.

The statistical results were emphatic on one point: personal attitude is the single most powerful driver of seniors’ natural burial intentions. In simple regression, attitude alone explained 58.9 percent of the variance in intention, with a standardized coefficient of 0.77. Subjective norm followed closely, explaining 53.5 percent of variance with a coefficient of 0.73, confirming that family support and social expectations weigh heavily in East Asian funeral decisions. Perceived behavioral control explained 37.9 percent. Within the marketing mix, perceived product demand, meaning seniors’ recognition of the ecological value and social benefits of natural burial, explained 46.5 percent, while combined channel accessibility and promotional information explained 25.6 percent. Environmental awareness accounted for 23.4 percent. Only two variables showed statistically significant but practically trivial effects: price and cost, with a small negative coefficient of minus 0.13, and attachment security to adult children, with a coefficient of just 0.12.

Hierarchical regression sharpened the picture further. The three Theory of Planned Behavior variables together explained 63.7 percent of the variance in intention, with attitude remaining dominant in the multivariate model. Adding the marketing variables, then environmental awareness, each contributed roughly two additional percentage points of explanatory power, and in the final model environmental awareness, attitude, subjective norm, and channel and promotion all retained significant direct effects. Strikingly, price sensitivity and attachment security lost statistical significance entirely once the psychological and ecological variables were accounted for. The practical implication is provocative: financial incentives and administrative streamlining, the tools most governments reach for first, are secondary facilitators at best. If core cultural attitudes and family norms remain unfavorable, subsidies alone will not unlock the land-sparing transition that dense cities need.

The authors draw direct connections between these micro-level intentions and macro-level spatial governance. Voluntary psychological acceptance, they argue, is the indispensable human mechanism behind any municipal effort to convert static, stigmatized deathscapes into dynamic green infrastructure. Top-down zoning and master plans cannot succeed through regulatory decree; unless older citizens come to see natural burial as a dignified and honorable end-of-life choice, efforts to recycle cemetery land will stall in public inertia. Conversely, when families mutually validate green burial options, they dismantle long-standing taboos around unmarked, non-permanent resting places, giving governments the social license to replace columbarium construction with cyclical, land-recycling burial parks. Seniors’ ecological consciousness, meanwhile, means that public communications linking mortality choices to parkland expansion and carbon reduction can resonate deeply with this demographic.

From the findings, the researchers outline a practical playbook for policymakers and funeral service providers. Municipal funeral offices should establish standardized multi-year plot rotation schedules within natural burial parks, achieving perpetual land recycling on a fixed footprint and eliminating the need for continual land acquisition. Urban planners should reconceive burial grounds as multifunctional green infrastructure woven into city-wide greenbelt networks, serving simultaneously as carbon sinks, stormwater filtration basins and biodiversity corridors. Cross-departmental task forces uniting funeral management, urban planning and environmental protection agencies should streamline pre-registration through both physical and digital channels, embedding natural burial options in community healthcare facilities and civic portals. Most importantly, promotional messaging should be family-centered, highlighting environmental stewardship while engaging the adult children who are, in practice, the primary discussion partners for aging parents contemplating their final arrangements.

The study is not without limitations, which the authors acknowledge candidly. The cross-sectional design captures intentions at a single moment, and intentions may shift as health status or family circumstances change; longitudinal research tracking whether pre-need intentions translate into actual burials would strengthen the evidence base. The sample was also drawn from a highly urbanized setting, and comparative work across metropolitan and rural regions could reveal how local land availability alters the relative weight of psychological versus economic predictors. Still, by extending the boundaries of sustainable consumer behavior research from everyday choices like recycling to mortality-related decisions, the study makes a bold claim: that the path to greener, less land-hungry cities may run through one of humanity’s most intimate and taboo-laden decisions, and that winning over seniors requires appealing to their values, their families and their sense of dignity rather than their wallets.

Subject of Research: Psychological and social marketing determinants of older adults' intentions to choose natural burials as a nature-based solution for sustainable urban land management in Taiwan

Article Title: Drivers of seniors’ natural burial intentions for sustainable urban land management

Article References: Wang, E. S.-T., Lin, H.-C., & Wang, M.-Y. (2026). Drivers of seniors’ natural burial intentions for sustainable urban land management. Frontiers in Sustainability, 7, Article 1858074. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2026.1858074

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frsus.2026.1858074

Keywords: natural burial, green burial, nature-based solutions, urban land management, Theory of Planned Behavior, social marketing, environmental awareness, Taiwan, aging society, sustainable cities, end-of-life planning, columbarium capacity

The research team, led by Van Dinh Ha and An Thinh Nguyen, combined a classic psychological framework from behavioral science with modern machine-learning tools. At the heart of the study lies the Theory of Planned Behavior, a model first formalized by Icek Ajzen in 1991, which holds that behavior is proximately driven by intention, and that intention in turn is shaped by three forces: attitude, the farmer’s own evaluation of whether organic farming is worthwhile; subjective norms, the perceived expectations of important others; and perceived behavioral control, the farmer’s sense of having the knowledge, money, and skills to pull it off. Rather than simply bolting extra variables onto this framework, the researchers gave each addition a distinct theoretical role. Descriptive norms, which capture what farmers observe their peers actually doing, were separated from subjective norms, which capture what important others expect. Policy satisfaction was positioned as a measure of the institutional environment, while farm size was treated as an objective resource condition tied to current practice rather than to intention.

The setting matters as much as the theory. The Mekong Delta is Vietnam’s agricultural heartland, but it is also one of the country’s most climate-vulnerable regions, exposed to salinity intrusion and sea-level rise. In 2017, the Vietnamese government issued Resolution 120/NQ-CP, a landmark strategy urging the delta to work with nature rather than against it, shifting away from intensive rice monoculture toward diversified, climate-resilient systems. Coconut cultivation fits this vision unusually well: palms tolerate saline conditions, need relatively few chemical inputs, and slot easily into intercropping and ecological farming systems. National policy has followed through, with Decision No. 431/QD-BNN-TT designating coconut a priority crop for organic-oriented development through 2030. Yet adoption remains stubbornly limited, which is precisely the gap the study set out to explain.

Fieldwork was conducted in November 2025 through face-to-face interviews across 18 communes of the newly enlarged Vinh Long province, formed by the merger of Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, and the former Vinh Long. The sample was stratified into conventional farmers and farmers already transitioning to or practicing organic methods, though certified-organic growers proved so rare, just three households in the entire sample, that they could not be analyzed separately. The demographics tell their own story: 80.5 percent of respondents were male, most were between 31 and 50 years old, and the majority had primary to high school education. Only 32.7 percent were in a registered organic-conversion process, and a remarkable 81.5 percent said they were unaware of organic coconut farming as a model at all. Awareness, clearly, is not the same as adoption, and the study treats the two very differently.

Methodologically, the team ran a two-stage analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modeling, or PLS-SEM, served as the primary engine for testing the theoretically specified relationships, with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to assess statistical significance. An artificial neural network was then applied purely as an exploratory sensitivity check, ranking the relative importance of the significant variables. The researchers were careful about what the cross-sectional design could and could not show: because intention and current behavior were measured in the same survey wave, the resulting coefficients are associations, not evidence of causal or temporal order. This caution proved prescient, as the heterotrait-monotrait ratio between intention and behavior reached 0.875, slightly above the conventional 0.85 threshold, signaling substantial empirical proximity between the two constructs that the authors explicitly flag as a limitation.

The structural results were emphatic. Every hypothesized relationship held. Intention showed by far the strongest association with current organic adoption practices, with a path coefficient of 0.670, and an effect size of 0.789 that qualifies as large by conventional statistical benchmarks. Among the drivers of intention, subjective norms led with a coefficient of 0.396, followed by attitude at 0.354 and perceived behavioral control at 0.337. Descriptive norms and policy satisfaction also reached significance, at 0.136 and 0.167 respectively, but with much smaller effect sizes. Farm size, notably, influenced current practices directly rather than working through intention, with a coefficient of 0.133, consistent with the idea that larger landholdings give farmers the buffer to absorb certification costs, record-keeping burdens, and the temporary production dips of the conversion period. The model explained 52.8 percent of the variance in intention and 59.5 percent in behavior, solid figures for social science field research.

The neural network told a partly convergent story. For the intention model, subjective norms again ranked first, with a normalized importance of 100 percent, followed by perceived behavioral control at 79.4 percent and attitude at 74.5 percent; descriptive norms and policy satisfaction trailed at roughly half that weight. For the behavior model, the two methods agreed perfectly: intention dominated at 100 percent, farm size came second at 23.1 percent, and perceived behavioral control third at 17.8 percent. The authors interpret this convergence, especially in the behavior model, as evidence that the intention-behavior linkage is robust, while the formation of intention appears to involve more complex, possibly nonlinear interactions among social, psychological, and institutional factors. Two conceptual mechanisms, switching costs and risk aversion, were invoked as theoretical boundary conditions rather than measured variables, framing why favorable intentions can stall when transition burdens loom large.

One of the study’s most useful contributions is its multigroup analysis comparing conventional and transitioning farmers. Within-group patterns hinted at differences: descriptive norms were significant only among conventional farmers, while policy satisfaction was significant only among those already converting. But the formal between-group comparisons found no statistically significant differences on any path, and the authors are refreshingly disciplined about what that means. The extended framework, they conclude, is broadly stable across adoption status; the within-group quirks are descriptive observations, not evidence that different psychological machinery operates in different farmer types. This matters for policy, because it suggests a single well-designed intervention strategy can serve both constituencies rather than requiring fragmented, group-specific programs.

The practical implications reach well beyond Vietnamese coconut groves. First, because intention is the dominant pathway to behavior, extension programs should do more than distribute technical manuals; they should build conviction and confidence by demonstrating long-term economic, soil-health, and market benefits. Second, since subjective norms outweigh everything else, cooperatives, farmer groups, and trusted local institutions are the natural delivery channels, a finding consistent with Vietnam’s Decree 98/2018 on agricultural cooperation and linkage. Third, perceived behavioral control can be raised directly through targeted support for certification costs, credit access, composting, biological pest control, and record keeping, easing the switching costs that keep willing farmers on the sidelines. The study also notes a governance subtlety: because Vinh Long was only recently merged from three provinces, farmers’ policy perceptions may still reflect legacy institutional arrangements, and authorities should harmonize training, credit, and market-linkage services across former administrative boundaries.

The limitations are honestly catalogued. The non-probability sample of 205 households in a single province limits generalizability; the cross-sectional design cannot establish that intention precedes behavior; household income, land tenure, and certification costs were not modeled; and the neural-network validation relied on internal cross-validation rather than an independent test set. The authors call for longitudinal designs with at least two measurement waves, larger probability-based multi-province samples, and explicit measurement of switching costs and risk preferences. Even so, the study’s core message travels far. In the global push toward organic agriculture, which by 2022 spanned 188 countries and 4.5 million farmers, the transition is often framed as an economic calculation. This research suggests something more fundamentally social is at work: farmers change not merely when the numbers add up, but when the people who matter to them expect it, when they can watch their successful neighbors do it first, and when they feel capable of surviving the switch. Any policy that ignores that social fabric is likely to wither in the field.

Subject of Research: Drivers of smallholder farmers' adoption of organic coconut farming in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Article Title: Drivers of farmers' adoption of organic coconut farming in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam: PLS-SEM with an ANN-based sensitivity analysis

Article References: Ha, V. D., Nguyen, A. T., Nguyen, Q. D., Nguyen, B. H., Ngo, N. D., Do, T. M. L., Nguyen, K. L., Nguyen, H. T. L., Nguyen, K. H., Nguyen, T. T. H., Nguyen, T. L. C., & Bui, T. M. A. (2026). Drivers of farmers' adoption of organic coconut farming in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam: PLS-SEM with an ANN-based sensitivity analysis. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 32, Article 101568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101568

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101568

Keywords: organic farming, Mekong Delta, Vietnam, coconut, Theory of Planned Behavior, PLS-SEM, artificial neural network, farmer adoption, subjective norms, sustainable agriculture, smallholders, policy satisfaction

The research team applied the Theory of Planned Behavior, a widely used psychological framework that explains intentions through three forces: attitude, the personal evaluation of a behavior; subjective norms, the perceived approval of family, peers, and society; and perceived behavioral control, the sense of having the resources and ability to act. They added a fourth construct, self-efficacy, borrowed from Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory. What makes the study unusual is that instead of treating agricultural career intention as a single yes-or-no outcome, the researchers split it into five distinct destinations—government jobs, researcher or professor positions, farming, agripreneurship, and civil services—and modeled the odds of each against government employment using multinomial logistic regression in STATA 17.

The sample was drawn purposively from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University in Uttar Pradesh and VIT University in Tamil Nadu, institutions chosen because they sit in semi-urban regions where traditional and modern agriculture coexist and because they represent northern and southern India’s different agro-climatic and cultural zones. Respondents answered a structured questionnaire distributed through Google Forms. The team pre-tested the instrument, confirmed internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha values all above the 0.70 threshold—attitude scored 0.960 and self-efficacy 0.962—and validated the constructs through expert review and factor analysis. A post-hoc power analysis in G*Power 3.1 returned a value of 0.999, far above the conventional 0.80 benchmark, indicating the study had excellent statistical sensitivity despite its modest sample.

The descriptive statistics alone tell a striking story. More than 80 percent of the students came from farming families, and 198 of the 285 were from rural areas, meaning most respondents had grown up with agriculture literally at their doorstep. Biology was the dominant academic background at the higher secondary level, with 169 students, and most had studied in English medium. Yet even among this cohort—arguably the most agriculture-embedded group of young people in the country—the gravitational pull of secure public employment dominated every demographic slice. Government jobs were the top choice for both men and women, across both universities, and regardless of whether students came from farming households.

The regression results revealed which psychological levers actually move career intentions. Attitude toward agriculture emerged as a strong, significant predictor of choosing a research or academic career over a government job, with a coefficient of 1.25 (p = 0.005). Subjective norms were similarly powerful (1.04, p = 0.009), suggesting that encouragement and perceived prestige from teachers, family, and peers are critical for steering students toward laboratories and lecture halls. This aligns closely with what the Theory of Planned Behavior predicts: positive personal evaluations and social validation strengthen intention, particularly for long-horizon paths like research that demand sustained commitment.

But the study also uncovered a genuine paradox. Self-efficacy—the confidence students have in their own abilities—was a significant negative predictor of research careers (-0.93, p = 0.032) and a marginal negative predictor for both civil services and agripreneurship. In other words, the most self-assured students were the ones least likely to pick these paths relative to government employment. The authors interpret this counterintuitively: highly confident students may prefer careers with clear recruitment mechanisms, faster returns, and greater certainty, viewing research and entrepreneurship as prolonged, uncertain gambles. Self-efficacy, it turns out, does not uniformly push people toward ambitious options; it interacts with how students weigh risk against reward.

Language proficiency produced one of the study’s most practical findings. Students with stronger language skills were significantly more likely to choose agripreneurship over government jobs (1.29, p = 0.039) and showed a marginal positive tendency toward farming (0.93, p = 0.057). Communication ability, the researchers argue, functions as a form of human capital in modern agriculture, easing networking, marketing, input negotiation, and engagement with digital and global agri-networks. Meanwhile, the constants for farming (-4.48, p = 0.001) and agripreneurship (-4.59, p = 0.006) were strongly negative, indicating that structural deterrents—income instability, physical labor intensity, financial risk, limited access to capital, and lower social prestige—overwhelm individual attributes. Even students inclined toward these paths are being held back by forces no single personality trait can overcome.

Demographics mattered too, though in patterned ways. Female students leaned toward research and civil services, while male students showed a marginal preference for farming, echoing persistent gender norms and traditional roles around land ownership and family expectations. Institutional affiliation shaped preferences as well: students at DDU Gorakhpur University, a public university with many rural students, showed stronger interest in government jobs, farming, and civil services, whereas VIT students, embedded in a more urban, tech-oriented environment, were comparatively less drawn to these options. The authors caution, however, that university affiliation lost statistical significance once psychological factors were accounted for, suggesting the institutional effect operates largely through the attitudes and norms students bring with them.

Perhaps the most theoretically interesting contradiction is that attitudes and subjective norms, which so strongly reinforced government job preferences, did not extend to agripreneurship despite years of policy advocacy for agri-startups under initiatives like RKVY-RAFTAAR and the National Education Policy 2020. Social approval, the study suggests, is context-dependent: government employment is perceived as secure and socially endorsed, while entrepreneurship is still coded as risky and uncertain. The gap between policy push and student perception persists because mentorship, market access, and risk-sharing mechanisms remain insufficient to shift the underlying norms.

The authors close with concrete recommendations: targeted career awareness programs exposing students to the full spectrum of agricultural opportunities, curriculum reforms that showcase real-world success stories and hands-on training in tech-driven ventures, and structured land-leasing schemes that give landless but educated young people temporary, renewable access to cultivable land, supported by input subsidies and digital tools. The broader message is that India’s agricultural future will not be secured by exhortation alone. If the sector wants its best and brightest, it must change what a career in agriculture is perceived to be—not a fallback of last resort, but a path with genuine security, prestige, and reward.

Subject of Research: Psychological and socio-demographic drivers of agricultural career intentions among Indian university students using the Theory of Planned Behavior

Article Title: Cultivating agricultural career intentions through behavioral drivers among students

Article References: Chaurasiya, C., Priya, A. P., Mansingh, J. P., Ihou, A. F. Y., & Mathew, M. (2026). Cultivating agricultural career intentions through behavioral drivers among students. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02286-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02286-z

Keywords: agricultural careers, Theory of Planned Behavior, career intentions, agripreneurship, government jobs, self-efficacy, subjective norms, India, agricultural education, multinomial logistic regression, youth in agriculture, career counseling

The appeal of food tourism has grown dramatically worldwide. Travelers increasingly seek authentic experiences, and few experiences feel more authentic than tasting dishes that have been prepared in a region for generations. Beyond introducing visitors to local culture and traditions, the researchers note, village food tourism can reinforce the rural micro-economy, support smallholder farmers, and sustain family businesses that might otherwise collapse under economic pressure. Local foods also play a significant role in destination branding, giving rural areas a distinctive identity that can attract repeat visitors. Yet, despite this potential, the psychological drivers behind tourists’ willingness to eat local food have remained underexplored, particularly in developing countries where rural livelihoods are often most fragile.

To fill this gap, the team turned to one of the most widely used frameworks in behavioral science: the Theory of Planned Behavior, or TPB. Developed originally to explain how human actions arise from measurable psychological antecedents, the TPB holds that behavior is driven by three factors. The first is attitude, the individual’s overall evaluation of the behavior, in this case whether a tourist believes eating local food is a good and rewarding thing to do. The second is subjective norm, the perceived social pressure from family, friends, and fellow travelers to engage in the behavior. The third is perceived behavioral control, the tourist’s sense of whether eating local food is easy and within their power, which depends on factors such as availability, affordability, and hygiene.

What makes the new study innovative is that the authors did not stop with the classic model. They extended it with two additional psychological variables that are rarely incorporated into food tourism research: risk perception and benefit perception. Risk perception captures the concerns a tourist might harbor about unfamiliar rural cuisine, including worries about food safety, hygiene standards, or the possibility of an unpleasant culinary experience. Benefit perception, by contrast, reflects the perceived advantages of eating locally, from supporting village economies to enjoying fresher, more distinctive flavors. By adding these two constructs, the researchers aimed to capture the full mental calculus a tourist performs before deciding whether to sit down to a traditional meal in a village setting.

The empirical work was carried out through a structured questionnaire survey targeting tourists visiting the rural areas of Shushtar County. The statistical population consisted of domestic tourists, and a sample of 400 participants was selected using the Krejcie and Morgan table, a standard tool in survey methodology for determining adequate sample sizes relative to population size. Data collection took place between January and May 2022, with participation voluntary and anonymous, and informed consent obtained from all respondents, in written form where possible and verbally for participants with limited literacy. The study was reviewed through the departmental academic and supervisory processes of the authors’ university, which at the time had no formal institutional review board, and was conducted in accordance with internationally recognized ethical principles for research involving human participants.

Once the questionnaires were collected, the team analyzed the data using structural equation modeling, or SEM, a statistical technique that allows researchers to test complex networks of cause-and-effect relationships among latent psychological variables that cannot be observed directly. SEM is particularly well suited to studies like this one, because attitudes, norms, and perceptions are all internal states that must be inferred from multiple survey items rather than measured with a single question. By fitting the extended model to the survey data, the researchers could estimate both the strength and the statistical significance of each pathway leading to the final outcome: the tourist’s willingness to consume local food.

The results were striking. The original Theory of Planned Behavior model alone explained 56.6 percent of the variance in tourists’ willingness to eat local food, with all three of its core variables, attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms, exerting significant effects. In plain terms, tourists who viewed local eating positively, who felt social encouragement to do so, and who believed it was practically feasible were substantially more willing to choose village cuisine. But the real headline came from the extended model. When risk perception and benefit perception were added, the model’s explanatory power increased by 14.4 percentage points, a substantial gain in a field where even modest improvements in predictive accuracy are considered meaningful. This demonstrates that tourists’ decisions about rural food are shaped not only by attitudes and social norms but also by a careful weighing of potential dangers against potential rewards.

The implications of this finding extend well beyond academic theory. For rural communities in Iran and similar contexts, the enriched model provides a diagnostic tool: it identifies precisely which psychological levers policymakers and tourism planners can pull to increase demand for local food. If risk perception is a barrier, for example, interventions might focus on visible hygiene improvements, food safety certification, or transparent preparation practices that reassure visitors. If benefit perception is underdeveloped, marketing campaigns could emphasize how every meal purchased directly supports farming families and keeps culinary traditions alive. Because the model quantifies the contribution of each factor, resources can be directed toward the variables with the greatest influence rather than spread thinly across generic promotional efforts.

The study also carries a broader message about the economics of authenticity. In many developing countries, rural depopulation and agricultural decline are intertwined problems: as young people leave villages for cities, local food systems weaken, and the cultural heritage embedded in regional cuisine erodes with them. Food tourism offers a potential feedback loop in the opposite direction. When tourists value and pay for local dishes, demand rises for local ingredients, which supports farmers, which in turn sustains the knowledge and practices that make the cuisine distinctive in the first place. Destination branding built on food can amplify this loop, giving a region like Shushtar a recognizable culinary identity that competes for attention in a crowded tourism market.

Of course, the research has boundaries that should temper enthusiasm. It examined domestic tourists in a single county of southwest Iran, and psychological drivers of food choices may differ across cultures, regions, and international visitor segments. The survey design captures willingness, which is a strong predictor of behavior but not behavior itself; longitudinal and observational studies would be needed to confirm that increased willingness translates into actual spending in village restaurants and homes. Nevertheless, the authors argue that their enriched framework, integrating the Theory of Planned Behavior with risk and benefit perceptions, offers a more comprehensive foundation for understanding tourist behavior than existing approaches, and can serve as a basis for developing effective marketing strategies and destination branding initiatives in rural tourism. For communities whose livelihoods hang in the balance, that combination of rigorous modeling and practical application may prove to be a recipe worth savoring.

Subject of Research: Psychological modeling of domestic tourists' willingness to consume local food as a driver of rural livelihood improvement in southwest Iran

Article Title: Modeling the improvement of the livelihoods of local communities in Iran through the development of local food tourism

Article References: Larki, Z. H., Savari, M., & Yazdanpanah, M. (2026). Modeling the improvement of the livelihoods of local communities in Iran through the development of local food tourism. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09399-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09399-8

Keywords: food tourism, rural livelihoods, Theory of Planned Behavior, risk perception, benefit perception, structural equation modeling, Iran, Shushtar County, destination branding, rural development, tourist behavior, local cuisine

The research is grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior, one of the most widely used frameworks in environmental psychology. Developed by Icek Ajzen, the theory holds that human actions are best predicted by three proximal factors: attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, which capture perceived social expectations, and perceived behavioral control, which reflects how easy or difficult a person believes the behavior to be. In this study, the authors extended the classic triad with three additional constructs: environmental knowledge, sources of information, and environmental behavior. The central question was whether these extensions could explain a financially consequential intention, namely the willingness to pay for sustainability, in a developing-country higher-education context where such evidence has been scarce.

Methodologically, the study is a cross-sectional quantitative investigation. Data were gathered from 440 students enrolled at three private universities in Dhaka using structured questionnaires. The analysis pipeline was unusually thorough for a behavioral survey of this kind. The researchers began with preliminary ordinal association tests to check for baseline relationships among variables, then moved to confirmatory factor analysis to verify that the survey items genuinely measured the intended constructs. The heart of the analysis was covariance-based structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that allows researchers to test an entire network of hypothesized cause-and-effect pathways simultaneously rather than one relationship at a time. Mediation analysis was then used to trace whether some variables influence willingness to pay indirectly through others.

Because self-reported survey data are vulnerable to artifacts, the team also ran a battery of validity diagnostics. These included an assessment of common method bias, the risk that correlations arise simply because all answers come from the same respondents at the same time; the HTMT ratio, a modern criterion for checking that conceptually distinct constructs are statistically distinguishable; a cross-loading examination to confirm that each survey item loads most strongly on its own factor; and a statistical power evaluation to ensure the sample size was adequate to detect the effects being tested. This layered approach matters, because findings in consumer behavior research are only as credible as the measurement and modeling safeguards behind them.

The results paint a coherent picture. Sources of information, meaning the channels through which students encounter environmental content, were positively associated with both environmental knowledge and environmental attitudes. In other words, students who are exposed to more and better sustainability information know more about environmental issues and feel more favorably toward pro-environmental action. This finding positions information channels as the upstream infrastructure of the entire psychological chain: before attitudes can form and intentions can crystallize, someone or something has to deliver the relevant knowledge.

Downstream, the study found that environmental behavior, subjective norms, attitudes, and perceived behavioral control all significantly predicted willingness to pay for sustainability. Each of these factors carried independent statistical weight. Students who already acted in environmentally responsible ways, who felt that people around them expected sustainable conduct, who held positive attitudes toward environmental protection, and who believed they had the capacity and opportunity to act sustainably were all more willing to spend money on sustainability. The fact that environmental behavior itself predicted willingness to pay suggests a self-reinforcing loop: practicing sustainability in daily life appears to build a disposition that extends to financial commitments.

The authors are careful about the limits of their model. They describe the extended Theory of Planned Behavior as a useful, though not perfectly fitting, explanation of sustainability-related financial intentions in their sample. This honesty is scientifically important. Behavioral models rarely capture every source of variance in human decisions, and a model that fits acceptably rather than perfectly still provides actionable leverage. In this case, the actionable levers are clear: improve the quality and reach of environmental information, cultivate positive attitudes through education, harness peer and social norms, and strengthen students’ sense of behavioral control.

The context of the study gives these findings particular weight. Bangladesh is one of the countries most exposed to climate change, facing sea-level rise, cyclones, flooding, and severe urban pollution, yet research on sustainability-related consumer psychology in its higher-education sector has been limited. Private university students in Dhaka represent a segment of the population with purchasing power and future leadership roles in business and policy. Understanding what drives their willingness to pay for sustainability therefore has implications far beyond campus boundaries. Prior studies cited in the paper have examined green fees on campuses, willingness to pay for green buildings, carbon offsets, and sustainable food, but context-specific evidence from developing-country universities has remained thin, a gap this study directly addresses.

The findings also connect to a broader international literature on environmental education. Research from Portugal, China, Indonesia, and elsewhere has repeatedly shown that environmental knowledge shapes attitudes, which in turn shape behavior, but the knowledge-action gap, the frequent disconnect between what people know and what they do, remains a persistent puzzle. By demonstrating that information sources feed both knowledge and attitudes, and that actual behavior feeds financial willingness, the Bangladeshi study suggests that interventions should target multiple points in the chain simultaneously rather than relying on knowledge alone. Sustainability curricula, campus campaigns, and media exposure may each contribute differently, and the study’s mediation framework offers a template for evaluating which pathways matter most in a given setting.

For policymakers and university administrators, the practical message is that willingness to pay for sustainability is buildable. It grows when students receive credible environmental information, when their social circles normalize sustainable choices, when their attitudes are shaped by engaging education, and when they experience the confidence that comes from acting sustainably in everyday life. For researchers, the study demonstrates that an extended Theory of Planned Behavior, validated with confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and rigorous bias diagnostics, can travel successfully into a developing-country context and yield interpretable, actionable results. As universities worldwide grapple with how to finance greener campuses and as young consumers increasingly face sustainability-labeled choices in the marketplace, evidence about what makes students willing to pay, and what merely makes them nod in agreement, has never been more valuable.

Subject of Research: Determinants of university students' willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh

Article Title: Determinants of students’ willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh

Article References: Imran, S. A., Mahbub, S. B., & Weerasinghe, C. K. (2026). Determinants of students’ willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 527. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01825-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01825-7

Keywords: willingness to pay, sustainability, Theory of Planned Behavior, environmental knowledge, environmental behavior, higher education, Bangladesh, consumer behavior, environmental attitudes, structural equation modeling, environmental education, subjective norms

The study, conducted by Maryam Begum and Muhammad Naeem Butt of the University of Peshawar together with Sabeeh Ullah of The University of Agriculture Peshawar, surveyed 161 business students drawn from five public sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The researchers used partial least squares structural equation modeling, a statistical technique well suited to testing networks of relationships between psychological and behavioral constructs, to trace how entrepreneurship education translates — or fails to translate — into entrepreneurial intention, the self-declared plan to launch a venture at some point in the future.

The headline finding is striking in its negative result. The direct association between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention was positive but statistically insignificant. In plain terms, students who had taken entrepreneurship courses were not meaningfully more likely to say they intended to become entrepreneurs than students who had not absorbed the same material in a way that changed them. This echoes a persistent puzzle in the field: decades of research, stretching back to early reviews of entrepreneurship education in the late 1990s, have produced mixed evidence about whether classroom instruction reliably produces founders. Some studies report strong effects, others weak ones, and a few even find that courses can dampen enthusiasm by revealing how difficult entrepreneurship really is.

But the Pakistani data reveal why the direct path is so weak. When the researchers inserted entrepreneurial capacity into their model as a mediating variable, the picture transformed. Entrepreneurial capacity — a construct formalized in the entrepreneurship literature to describe a person’s accumulated ability to recognize opportunities, mobilize resources and act on them — fully mediated the relationship between education and intention. Education did not push students toward entrepreneurship directly; it pushed them toward entrepreneurship only insofar as it built their capacity. Once that indirect pathway was accounted for, the direct link between coursework and intention vanished entirely. The practical implication is profound: the value of an entrepreneurship program lies not in its content delivery but in its capacity-building effect.

This finding aligns with a competency-based view of entrepreneurship education that has gained traction over the past decade. Scholars such as Morris and colleagues have argued that entrepreneurship is best taught as a set of learnable competencies rather than as a body of facts to memorize. Studies from Vietnam, China and elsewhere have similarly identified mediating mechanisms — self-efficacy, learning orientation, mindset — that carry the influence of education toward intention. The Pakistani study adds entrepreneurial capacity to this list and, crucially, shows that the mediation is complete rather than partial. Nothing leaks around the capacity mechanism. If a course fails to build capability, it fails to build founders.

The second major discovery concerns the environment in which that capacity building takes place. The researchers tested institutional climate — the entrepreneurial atmosphere of a university, encompassing role models, support structures, encouragement of risk-taking and the visibility of entrepreneurial activity on campus — as a moderator of the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial capacity. The moderation was confirmed. In other words, the same course can produce very different gains in capacity depending on the institutional soil in which it is planted. A lecture series delivered in a university with a vibrant entrepreneurial climate, where students see peers launching ventures and faculty championing innovation, builds capacity more effectively than the identical curriculum delivered in a sterile institutional setting.

This moderating role resonates with earlier work on university entrepreneurial climates, including research published in Research Policy showing that higher education institutions differ systematically in how supportive their climates are for entrepreneurship, and studies from African and Asian contexts demonstrating that institutional context conditions the outcomes of entrepreneurship education. The theoretical backbone of the new study is the theory of planned behavior, Icek Ajzen’s influential framework holding that intentions — the best single predictor of deliberate behavior — are shaped by attitudes, perceived social pressure and perceived behavioral control. Entrepreneurial capacity maps closely onto that third element: a student who feels capable of executing a venture is a student whose perceived control, and therefore intention, rises.

The context of the study matters for interpreting its significance. Pakistan is a country with a young population, acute unemployment pressures and a policy push to embed entrepreneurship education across its higher education sector. Previous research has documented entrepreneurial intentions among Pakistani students since at least the early 2010s, and recent reviews of the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem have highlighted persistent gaps in finance, education and human capital. Against that backdrop, the finding that coursework alone is insufficient carries real weight for policymakers. The authors argue that their results necessitate a redesign of curricula to include practical, experiential learning approaches, and they call for government support to strengthen entrepreneurship education within Pakistani higher education institutions.

Experiential learning is the operative phrase. A systematic review of experiential approaches in entrepreneurship education has documented a global shift away from lecture-based instruction toward methods that immerse students in real venture creation, simulation, live case work and interaction with practicing entrepreneurs. Studies applying experiential learning theory to entrepreneurship teaching have found that students who practice entrepreneurial behaviors, rather than merely reading about them, show stronger gains in the self-efficacy and capability that drive intention. The Pakistani results give this movement fresh empirical ammunition, particularly for developing economies where entrepreneurship education is often delivered through traditional classroom formats inherited from general business curricula.

The study is not without limitations that readers should bear in mind. The sample of 161 business students from five public universities in a single Pakistani province is modest, and cross-sectional survey data cannot prove causation with certainty; it remains possible that students with higher capacity seek out more entrepreneurship education rather than the reverse. Self-reported intentions are also an imperfect proxy for actual founding behavior, which depends on opportunity, capital and family circumstances that no survey can capture. Common method bias — the risk that correlations inflate when all variables come from the same questionnaire — was assessed using established full collinearity procedures, but the underlying constraints of the design remain.

Even so, the core message travels well beyond Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For universities everywhere investing in startup incubators, entrepreneurship minors and innovation certificates, the study delivers a two-part test. First, does the program demonstrably build entrepreneurial capacity — the skills, knowledge and confidence to act? Second, does the wider institutional climate amplify that building process rather than neutralize it? Programs that fail either test, the evidence suggests, will produce graduates who can define opportunity recognition on an exam but never intend to act on it. The future of entrepreneurship education, this research implies, belongs not to the lecture hall but to the campus ecosystem that turns instruction into capability, and capability into the ambition to build something of one’s own.

Subject of Research: The effect of entrepreneurship education on student entrepreneurial intentions through entrepreneurial capacity and institutional climate

Article Title: Unveiling the dynamics of entrepreneurship education: how entrepreneurial capacity and institutional climate shape student intentions

Article References: Begum, M., Ullah, S., & Butt, M. N. (2026). Unveiling the dynamics of entrepreneurship education: how entrepreneurial capacity and institutional climate shape student intentions. SN Social Sciences, 6(9), Article 419. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01719-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01719-8

Keywords: entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial intentions, entrepreneurial capacity, institutional climate, higher education, PLS-SEM, Pakistan, business students, experiential learning, theory of planned behavior, university ecosystem, curriculum design

The stakes could hardly be higher. Neonatal medicine has made astonishing progress in keeping the smallest infants alive. In the United States, survival of extremely preterm infants rose from 76 percent for those born between 2008 and 2012 to 78.3 percent for those born between 2013 and 2018, according to the Neonatal Research Network. South Korea’s trajectory is even more dramatic: the survival rate of very low birth weight infants climbed from 38.3 percent in the 1980s to 89.3 percent in 2020. But survival is only the first act. Preterm infants who escape the NICU often face lifelong challenges in cognition, motor function, and behavior, and the quality of care they receive during their hospital stay is closely linked to their long-term prognosis and quality of life.

Developmental support care, abbreviated DSC in the research literature, encompasses a broad range of interventions designed to minimize the stressors of life outside the womb. It includes careful positioning, management of light and noise, protection of sleep, modulation of sensory stimulation, pain and stress management, and support for the infant’s emerging interactions with parents. The most rigorously validated structured program is the Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program, or NIDCAP, which originated in the United States and individualizes care to each infant’s behavioral cues. More recently, European units have embraced Infant- and Family-Centered Developmental Care, which extends these principles to parents as partners. Studies suggest such programs can shorten hospital stays, reduce post-discharge complications, lower stress for infants and families, and improve long-term developmental outcomes.

Yet in South Korea, these structured programs have not been widely adopted. Developmental care in Korean NICUs is largely delivered at the level of individual nurses or individual wards, and surveys have found that more than half of Korean NICU nurses have never received formal training in DSC, while most of those who did received only a single session. The result is a workforce with uneven knowledge and limited practical skills in exactly the interventions that matter most for preterm infants’ developing brains. Understanding what actually drives nurses to perform developmental care, rather than merely to endorse it in principle, became the central question for Haeryun Cho and Mihae Im, the researchers behind the new study.

To answer it, they turned to one of the most successful frameworks in behavioral psychology: the theory of planned behavior, developed by Icek Ajzen in 1991. The theory holds that the most immediate predictor of any behavior is the intention to perform it, and that intention itself is shaped by three forces: attitudes, meaning a person’s evaluation of whether the behavior is worthwhile; subjective norms, meaning the perceived expectations of colleagues, supervisors, and the organization; and perceived behavioral control, meaning the sense that one is able to overcome barriers and carry the behavior out. The framework has successfully predicted nurses’ care behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, hand hygiene among nursing students, and pediatric nurses’ intravenous fluid administration, but it had never been rigorously applied to developmental care in the NICU.

Cho and Im added a crucial extension. Intention, they reasoned, is motivational, but motivation alone cannot translate into action without capability. They therefore positioned nursing competence, a measure integrating knowledge, skills, and attitudes across domains such as environmental support, parental support, interaction, and critical thinking, as a mediator between the psychological constructs and actual performance. Knowledge was placed upstream as a cognitive antecedent to competence. The team surveyed 188 nurses from six Level III or IV NICUs in university hospitals across Seoul, Gyeonggi, Jeolla, and Gyeongsang provinces, each with at least two years of clinical experience, using validated scales for knowledge, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, intention, competence, and performance, and then tested their hypothesized model with path analysis.

The statistical results were striking. The final modified model explained 62.5 percent of the variance in developmental support care performance, with competence emerging as by far the strongest direct predictor, carrying a standardized coefficient of .72. Intention did not influence performance directly; instead, it worked through competence, with a strong path coefficient of .48. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control all shaped intention, with coefficients of .31, .33, and .35 respectively, meaning that nurses performed developmental care not because of perceptions or external expectations alone, but because a preformed intention strengthened their competence and led to practice. The model also explained 46.5 percent of the variance in competence itself, with intention again the dominant influence.

Perhaps the most counterintuitive finding concerned knowledge. Nurses scored an average of 82.87 out of 100 on the knowledge test, yet knowledge showed no significant association with either competence or performance. The authors offer several explanations: the scale primarily measured declarative, factual knowledge rather than the procedural knowledge embedded in clinical practice; the high average score suggests a ceiling effect that restricted variance; and without the organizational scaffolding of structured programs like NIDCAP, which South Korea has not adopted nationally, knowledge alone may simply be insufficient to change behavior. Perceived behavioral control, similarly, showed no direct effect on performance, which the researchers interpret as a signal of insufficient institutional and environmental support in Korean NICUs.

The practical implications reach well beyond Korea. If competence is the gateway through which intention becomes action, then traditional one-way lectures are the wrong tool. The authors point to evidence that training through hands-on clinical experience, simulation, case-based learning, and even virtual reality can improve developmental care performance, and they argue that education should be redesigned to build motivation and intention through goal setting and self-directed practice, then convert that motivation into capability through competence-based strategies. Because subjective norms matter, organizational culture is not a luxury: peer expectations, manager attitudes, institutional guidelines, adequate staffing, and even reimbursement structures for developmental care all shape whether intentions survive contact with a busy shift.

The study’s authors are candid about its limitations. Both competence and performance were measured by self-report from the same participants, raising the possibility of common method bias and conceptual overlap between the two constructs; the attitudes scale showed internal consistency slightly below the conventional threshold; convenience sampling limits generalizability; and data were collected in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when workloads and priorities in Korean NICUs were under unusual strain. The modified model’s global fit indices were also imperfect, warranting cautious interpretation. Even so, the core message stands with unusual clarity for a field often dominated by fragmented descriptive studies. Saving a preterm infant’s future is not a knowledge problem to be solved with another lecture. It is a motivation-and-capability problem, solved by building nurses’ conviction, surrounding them with a culture that expects developmental care, and giving them the competence to deliver it, one carefully positioned, gently handled infant at a time.

Subject of Research: Determinants of neonatal nurses' developmental support care for preterm infants based on the theory of planned behavior

Article Title: Neonatal nurses’ developmental support care for preterm infants in South Korea: Path analysis based on the theory of planned behavior

Article References: Cho, H., & Im, M. (2026). Neonatal nurses’ developmental support care for preterm infants in South Korea: Path analysis based on the theory of planned behavior. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45537

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45537

Keywords: preterm infants, developmental support care, NICU nurses, theory of planned behavior, nursing competence, South Korea, NIDCAP, behavioral intention, path analysis, neonatal intensive care, nursing education, family-centered care