The paper presents two empirical studies focusing on the psychosocial determinants of purchasing green personal care and household care products. These products comprise natural components, free from pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms, and are packaged in an environmentally friendly manner to minimize their overall ecological impact. Two different samples of adult Italian consumers participated in the cross-sectional studies by completing online questionnaires, receiving a total of 766 responses (68

The paper describes two studies aimed at validating the Italian version of the Vegetarian Eating Motives Inventory (VEMI; Hopwood et al. PLoS One55:e0230609, 2020), and to deepen the relationships between vegetarian motives (i.e., animal rights, environmental and health motives) and some variables scarcely considered in previous research: meat, fruit and vegetable consumption, intention to restrict meat consumption, healthy eating, pro-environmental and meat-eating self-identity. The first study tested the validity of the VEMI three-correlated factor model, measurement invariance across gender and status groups (i.e., university students and non-student adults), mean differences in VEMI scores across groups, and test–retest reliability of the scale. The second study explored the relationships among vegetarian motives, consumption intentions and behaviors, and self-identity appraisals. Results supported structural validity, invariance, and stability of the VEMI scores, as well as the hypothesized mean differences and correlations with other variables. Regression analyses revealed that the animal rights motive was largely independent of the outcome variables, whereas the environmental motive was related to nearly all outcome variables. It was the only motive associated with meat consumption variables. Health motive was strongly related to healthy-eating self-identity but was independent of meat consumption variables. Overall, the motives underlying dietary choices aligned with distinct self-identities. In conclusion, the Italian version of the VEMI can be used confidently for research and interventions. It offers a valid tool for scholars and practitioners interested in the growing health- and environment-related debate on reducing red meat consumption in favor of a plant-based diet.

This study investigated the psychosocial determinants of using refillable bottles for Italian students and non-student adults. It tested the theory of planned behavior (TPB), integrated with past behavior and self-identity as a person who uses refillable bottles. So far, few studies exist on this specific behavior, which may have a relevant impact on plastic waste reduction and sustainability issues. The study adopted a two-wave prospective online survey design. At Time 1, measures of TPB core constructs (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and intention), past behavior and self-identity were detected. At Time 2, the self-report target behavior of using refillable bottles was measured. The data were analyzed via structural equation modeling. The results confirmed that the extended TPB adequately explained and predicted both intention (73% of variance) and target behavior (68% of variance). At Time 1, attitude, perceived behavioral control and self-identity were associated with intention, which, in turn, was significantly linked to refillable bottle use at Time 2. Past behavior predicted intention at Time 1 and target behavior at Time 2, both directly and indirectly. A multi-group analysis showed that the effect of self-identity on intention was stronger in non-student adults than in the student sample. The results offer insights into designing interventions to promote the investigated pro-environmental behavior.

This article investigates the diffusion and adoption of ChatGPT among college students from a multinational convenience sample, informed by the scholarly literature on the diffusion and progressive appropriation of ChatGPT by students and teachers within the education sector and the strategies adopted by academic institutions. We applied a figurational approach to this study, offering two theses that try to understand the societal meaning of ChatGPT diffusion in the educational sector. Operationally, we explored university students’ behavioral intentions, practices of use, and opinions toward ChatGPT in five countries (China, Italy, Kenya, Uruguay, and the United States of America) through an online survey. Results indicated that: (1) students seem to be cautious or resist the hype of generative intelligence; (2) an essential cultural pattern emerges: American and Italian students are more pessimistic toward ChatGPT, whereas Chinese students, sometimes accompanied by Kenyan and Uruguayans students, are more optimistic; (3) men and techno-scientific students are more positive toward ChatGPT than women and socio-humanistic students.

For the first time, voice-based assistants (VBAs) allow studying the mass consumption of a robotic product in a ‘natural’ environment. The present paper investigates users' perspectives concerning Alexa, informed by the scholarly literature on the diffusion and appropriation of digital media, VBAs, and social robots, in general, in the domestic sphere. Besides CASA, a paradigm widely applied in robotics, we draw on theories on users and theories on the use of users. We explored individuals' use of Alexa in two countries—the US and Italy— through an online survey. Results indicated that: (1) Alexa's use follows the same modalities of the previous digital media; (2) Alexa's use is in an early phase of domestication, and thus, the role of users in reshaping this technological artifact is still limited; and (3) updates to the CASA paradigm are needed.

Background: The Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) is a widely used self-report measure of eating styles, i.e., emotional, restrained, and external. A short and reliable version is useful for screening, routine assessments, and multipurpose surveys. Objective: The short version of the DEBQ by Bailly et al. (2012) was validated in the Italian context in two studies. Concurrent criterion validity was tested by considering gender, body mass index, self-esteem, eating self-efficacy, and snacking habits. Method: Data were collected via online questionnaires administered to two convenience samples of university students ( n = 613, n = 856). Results: The three-factor structure of the short version of the DEBQ was supported and was invariant across genders. Correlations among the three eating styles, gender, body mass index, self-esteem, eating self-efficacy, and snacking habits followed the expected pattern. Conclusion: The short form of the DEBQ is psychometrically sound and can be used to investigate eating styles among Italian university students.

In robotics, a field of research still populated by prototypes, much of the research is made through videos and pictures of robots. We study how the highly human-like robot Sophia is perceived through a YouTube video. Often researchers take for granted in their experiments that people perceive humanoids as such. With this study we wanted to understand to what extent a convenience sample of university students perceive Sophia’s human-likeness; second, we investigated which mental capabilities and emotions they attribute to her; and third, we explored the possible uses of Sophia they imagine. Our findings suggest that the morphological human-likeness of Sophia, through the video, is not salient in the Sophia’s representations of these participants. Only some mental functions are attributed to Sophia and no emotions. Finally, uses of Sophia turned out to be connected to the gender stereotypes that characterize stereotyped women’s professions and occupations but not completely.

This research adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict intention and behavior to avoid food waste. In a pilot study, behavioral, normative, and control beliefs were identified. In the main study, a TPB model extended with descriptive and moral norms was assessed using a two-wave design and applying SEM. The associations between beliefs and TPB constructs were analyzed by MIMIC models. Attitude, descriptive and moral norms, and perceived behavioral control were associated with intention to avoid food waste, which predicted behavior. Considering the most important beliefs in forming intentions has important implications for designing food waste prevention interventions.

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect-maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion-achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility.

The fair trade business model represents a strategy to achieve some of the sustainable development goals. The studies reported in this paper examined the intention formation process concerning the purchase of food and non-food fair trade products. The theoretical framework is the theory of planned behavior (TPB), extended with an additional predictor, the moral norm, and an individual difference variable, the social dominance orientation (SDO). SDO is supposed to act as a background factor in the hypothesized TPB model and to be negatively associated with intention to buy fair trade products and its proximal antecedents (attitude, subjective norm, moral norm and perceived behavioral control). Considering the role of SDO within the TPB constitutes a novelty for the literature on socio-cognitive determinants of purchase intentions. Data were supplied by two convenience samples of Italian adults and analyzed via path analysis. The test of the original TPB provided further evidence for its efficacy. Moral norm showed a significant effect on intentions and its addition to the original TPB model led to an increase in the explained variance in intentions. Overall, SDO proved to be significantly and negatively associated with the intention's antecedents and showed the expected negative indirect effects on intention, mediated by its proximal predictors and moral norm. These findings help to improve the comprehension of the socio-psychological basis of behavioral intentions to engage in sustainable behaviors.

In this paper we test the efficacy of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), extended with descriptive norm and habit, to predict the behavior of consuming fresh fruit and vegetables as snacks. A longitudinal study was carried out. In a one-month period, 162 students, from University of Padova and senior high schools in the North-East of Italy, were surveyed. Data were analyzed by using structural equation models. The inclusion of habit improved the predictive power of TPB and the expanded model explained a large amount of variance in intention (76%) and a moderate amount (28%) in behavior. Affective attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and habit were significantly related to intention; behavior was affected by intention and habit. Results support the efficacy of the TPB in predicting the target behavior: they also suggest strategies that can be followed to promote this healthy eating behavior.

Mainly, the scholarly debate on Alexa has focused on sexist/anti-woman gender representations in the everyday life of many families, on a cluster of themes such as privacy, insecurity, and trust, and on the world of education and health. This paper takes another stance and explores via online survey methodology how university student respondents in two countries (the United States, n = 333; and Italy, n = 322) perceive Alexa’s image and gender, what they expect from this voice-based assistant, and how they would like Alexa to be. Results of a free association exercise showed that Alexa’s image was scarcely embodied or explicitly gendered. Rather, Alexa was associated with a distinct category of being—the VBA, virtual assistant, or digital helper—with which one talks, and which possesses praiseworthy technical and social traits. Expectations of Alexa and desires regarding Alexa’s ideal performance are presented and compared across the two country samples.

Lo studio esplora il ruolo del rimpianto anticipato nella teoria del comportamento pianifica-to (Theory of Planned Behaviour, TPB; Ajzen, 1991) applicata al consumo di frutta come snack. Il modello ipotizzato estende la TPB con l'inclusione del comportamento passato e del rimpianto anticipato. Gli obiettivi principali sono: a) testare se il rimpianto anticipato migliori il potere predittivo della TPB, anche dopo aver considerato il comportamento passato; b) analiz-zare se il rimpianto moderi la relazione tra intenzione e comportamento. Lo studio è stato con-dotto in due fasi, a distanza di due settimane. Nella prima fase, il questionario strutturato online includeva le misure dell'intenzione e dei suoi antecedenti e item per rilevare il comportamento passato e il rimpianto anticipato. Nella seconda è stato rilevato il comportamento di consumo di frutta fresca come snack nelle due settimane precedenti. Ha partecipato allo studio un campione di convenienza di 361 studenti universitari italiani. I risultati ottenuti mediante le analisi di re-gressione mostrano che comportamento passato e rimpianto anticipato migliorano la capacità della TPB di prevedere sia l'intenzione sia il comportamento futuro. Inoltre, il rimpianto mode-ra l'effetto dell'intenzione sul comportamento, che è significativo solo quando il rimpianto è elevato. In conclusione, i risultati supportano l'importanza di considerare il rimpianto anticipa-to nella previsione delle intenzioni di mettere in atto questo comportamento alimentare salutare e l'utilità di far leva su questa reazione affettiva per rinforzare il legame intenzione-comportamento.

The gendering of machine agents risks further complicating the social framework in ways that reverberate to humans' relationships and identities. This paper explores how users perceive the gender and status of Amazon's Alexa. We argue that voice-based assistants, particularly those with feminine names and voices, may contribute to reinforcing a retrieval ideology of the feminine as the place of social subordination and contempt. We conducted an online survey of women and men in the US (n = 322) and Italy (n = 333). Most (80%) identified Alexa as "female." However, there was a lack of concordance between the gender respondents ascribed to Alexa and their spontaneous use of pronouns in writing. In terms of status, over half of the sample perceived Alexa as an inferior communicator (for Italian respondents, inferiority was associated with perceiving Alexa as female), while over one-third rated Alexa as equal or superior to humans, evidencing the change happening in the ontological order. The few respondents who noticed gender differences in people's interactions with Alexa perceived women to be more courteous, serious and accommodating in their use. Respondent gender and culture comparisons are presented, implications of the findings are discussed, and future research is proposed to reduce harmful impact.

The two studies reported in this paper aimed to present and discuss both the validation of the Work-Home Culture (WHC) scale (Dikkers et al., Work & Stress, 21(2), 155-172, 2007) in the Italian context (Study 1), and a relational model that links the WHC to subjective well-being via the mediation of three facets of the work-home interface: work-family conflict, work-family enrichment and work-family balance (Study 2). Heterogeneous samples of workers from different organisations took part in the cross-sectional studies. Substantial support was provided for the robustness of the factorial structure of the 18-item WHC scale with five factors (three support dimensions and two hindrance dimensions). Individuals' perceptions of a supportive WHC that characterises the organisation they work for - particularly with respect to work-family issues and the use of family-friendly benefits - turned out to be positively associated with work-family enrichment and balance. Only organisational time demands, which is a hindrance dimension, was associated with work-family conflict. Moreover, our findings suggest that WHC is significantly associated with subjective well-being and that this association is largely indirect - through the facets of work-family interface - rather than direct. The results of the two studies represent a relevant achievement from the perspective of conducting future research using this measure in different socio-cultural environments and ad hoc interventions in the fields of organisational psychology and occupational health.

This paper describes an investigation of student perceptions of the cognitive and affective capabilities of four robots that have a decreasing degree of morphological human likeness. We showed and illustrated the robots (i.e., InMoov, Padbot, Joy Robot and Turtlebot) to 62 students. After showing the students each of these robots, and explaining their main features and capabilities, we administered a fill-in questionnaire to the students. Our main hypothesis was that the perception of a robot’s cognitive and affective capabilities varied in correspondence with their appearance and in particular with their different degree of human likeness. The main results of this study indicate that the scores attributed to the cognitive and emotional capabilities of these robots are not modulated correspondingly to their different morphological similarity to humans. Furthermore, overall, the scores given to all of these robots regarding their ability to explicate mental functions are low, and even lower scores are given to their ability to feel emotions. There is a split between InMoov, the robot which has the highest degree of human likeness, and all of the others. Our results also indicate that: (1) morphological similarity of a robot to humans is not perceived automatically as such by observers, which is not considered a value in itself for the robot; and (2) even at lower levels of robot–human likeness, an uncanny valley effect arises but is quite mitigated by curiosity.

When someone decides to buy organic food products trust plays a role. Consumers, in fact, are neither supposed to have the appropriate knowledge to evaluate the characteristics of these products, nor can they control that the food was actually manufactured following the procedures prescribed by organic production. Therefore, trust may contribute to the explanation of both purchasing intention and behavior since it represents a heuristic or shortcut that people adopt in order to reduce the large amount of information that consumers need to take into account. The present research aimed to analyze the role of trust in organic products on buying behavior adopting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as theoretical framework. A relational model was tested in which this variable was supposed to act as a background factor associated with all the classical constructs foreseen by the theory and the buying behavior. Also, indirect effects of trust on both intention and behavior were assessed. Two studies were conducted targeting the purchase of organic food products in general (Study 1) and of fresh organic fruit and vegetables (Study 2). In both studies, the data collection was organized in two waves, with a time lag of 1 month. At Time 1, the questionnaires included measures of intention, its antecedents and trust, while at Time 2 self-reported buying behavior was collected. Data were supplied by two convenience samples of Italian adults (237 and 227 participants) and analyzed via structural equation modeling. Results turned out to be overlapping in both studies, since trust was positively associated with attitude and subjective norm, and it was indirectly associated with intention and behavior, thanks to the mediation of the TPB constructs. The outcomes highlighted the importance of people’s trust in organic products as a meaningful antecedent that boosts the TPB-based psychosocial processes that are supposed to stand behind both purchasing intentions and behaviors.

Individual energy-saving behaviours are crucial for reducing energy consumption, and research on the determinants of these behaviours has been increasing over the last decade. The aim of this study is to explore the determinants of two specific behaviours: 'switching off non-essential lights' and 'completely switching off electronic devices'. An extended model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has been used as the theoretical research framework. The extension was implemented by considering two components (affective and cognitive) of the attitude towards these behaviours and then adding habit as a new variable. A two-waves study was conducted in which a convenience sample of Italian workers completed a questionnaire measuring the TPB constructs in relation to the two energy-saving behaviours (Time 1). The participants then completed another questionnaire a month later to assess self-reports of these behaviours (Time 2). The inclusion of habit improved the predictive power of the TPB, and the extended model was found to explain 65.5% and 76.1% of the variance in intentions and 16.2% and 22.9% of the variance in behaviours. Cognitive attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and habit were significantly related to intentions, and perceived behavioural control was the strongest predictor. Habit moderated some relationships between the TPB constructs and intentions. Behaviours were associated directly only with intentions. The results of this study support the efficacy of the TPB model in predicting target behaviours; they also suggest some strategies that can be followed to promote these energy-saving behaviours.

With the development of educational robotics, teachers of secondary and high school frequently request clear indications on which type of robot is most effective for strengthening students' mental schemes on the robot. This paper investigates whether using crafts and recycled materials or structured materials to build robots is more effective in terms of pupils' cognition in educational robotics. Some scholarship argues that using crafts and recycled materials to build a robot from scratch is more effective than using structured materials. The design of the educational research applied here, and in which we tested this hypothesis, included two different robotics activities, carried out in Italy with two classes of secondary school. In the first, we asked the students to build a robot from scratch using crafts and recycled materials, while in the other we asked the students to build a robot from structured materials. These two activities were preceded and followed by the completion, by students, of the same questionnaire about knowledge of mechanics, manual skills, conceptualization of robots, and beliefs about the robotization of everyday life machines, which were the learning outcomes identified in this study according to the concept of constructive alignment and outcome-based education. Results show that building a robot from scratch increases pupils' knowledge and manual skills, while building a robot with structured materials increases their awareness of the robotization of machines. Thus, current scholarship's approach is only partially confirmed. To conclude, although pupils' appreciation involves equally both these robotics activities, each of these outlines a specific educational outcome.