Purpose: Previous research has found mixed evidence of an attitude–behavior gap in organic food consumption. However, the complex mechanisms underlying this gap warrant further investigation. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of word-of-mouth (WOM), trust, and involvement in the relationship between consumer organic food attitudes and conative loyalty. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as underlying framework for modeling our conceptualized arguments.

Design/methodology/approach: A moderation and moderated mediation analysis was performed on a cross-sectional sample of 1,011 Australian organic food consumers.

Findings: The results support the TPB-inspired moderated-mediation model. Specifically, the authors found moderated mediation effects of WOM, trust, and involvement on conative loyalty via attitudes toward organics.

Research limitations/implications: The cross-sectional research design and the focus solely on Australian consumers constitute limitations of this study.

Practical implications: The authors' findings imply that an analysis of the attitude–behavior gap should go beyond the testing of contingent consistency hypotheses and instead combine moderation and mediation mechanisms to better model consumer decision-making leading to conative loyalty. Practitioners would face a resource challenge when targeting low-trust, low-involvement, and low-WOM consumers as developing conative loyalty of these segments would require a longer-term approach through building favorable attitudes toward organic foods.

Originality/value: This study is one of the first to demonstrate the potential of examining the attitude–behavior gap in the organic food context through a moderated mediation lens in explaining the dynamics of conative loyalty.

Despite a growing demand worldwide, organic food remains a niche category, with consumers only purchasing it some of the time. This study examines the mediating effects of consumers’ perceived clarity of organic food-related communication, trust for, and perceived health benefits of organic foods in the relationship between controlled and uncontrolled communication stimuli and organic food purchases. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 1011 Australian organic food consumers using Structural Equation Modeling. We find that all mediators except perceived communication clarity perform as hypothesized, with the latter not mediating the relationship between uncontrolled communications and perceived health benefits of organic foods. The results suggest that marketers should ensure clarity in controlled organic food communications, signal health benefits of organic food and build consumer trust to generate organic purchases. 

Using the framework provided by the Porter hypothesis, we study the impact of environmental regulations and enforcement policies on plant-level green total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components related to efficiency change and technical change. The detailed microdata we use are from Sweden and for the pulp and paper industry. This industry is the source of significant amounts of water and air pollution and is one of the most heavily environmentally regulated manufacturing industries. Sweden has a unique decentralized regulatory structure where the manufacturing plants have to comply with plant-specific regulatory standards stipulated at the national level, as well as decentralized local supervision and enforcement. Our empirical results point to beneficial impacts of the environmental policies on plants' green TFP growth and sustainable production practices. We also find that political economy considerations are important, as the presence of the Green Party and aspects like plant size (with corresponding local and regional economic effects) matter in enforcement of the standards.

Purpose: Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) model, the purpose of this study is to investigate mediating effects of controlled and uncontrolled communications of corporate brand perceptions on consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

Design/methodology/approach: Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 271 Australian automobile consumers.

Findings: The authors find that while consumer satisfaction is indirectly influenced by corporate-level attributes via controlled and uncontrolled communication, the authors did not find an indirect effect between consumer benefits on consumer satisfaction via controlled and uncontrolled communication. By contrast, the authors find highly significant indirect effects – via controlled and uncontrolled communication as well as consumer satisfaction – for the relationship between, on the one hand, corporate-level attributes and consumer benefits and consumer brand loyalty on the other. Uncontrolled communication was significantly associated with consumer loyalty, a relevant finding that indicates an importance of tracking media coverage and maintaining favorable relationships with the media.

Research limitations/implications: The cross-sectional method limits data collection to one point in time.

Practical implications: This study adds to a better understanding of how to leverage corporate brand through communications in ways that it positively resonates with consumers. A fine-grained analysis of corporate brand attributes and consumer-perceived benefits can aid managers in developing specific and more effective marketing strategies.

Originality/value: The overall thrust of this empirical study, which is to investigate how corporate brand perceptions influence short term (satisfaction) and long term (loyalty) via controlled and uncontrolled communications is original. This study comprehensively conceptualizes and operationalizes the corporate brand as a multidimensional construct consisting of corporate-level attributes and brand-level attributes such as perceived consumer benefits. To examine the hypothesized relationships between and among our constructs, the authors go beyond the commonly studied single mediator model and test a multiple mediator model instead.

This paper provides novel empirical insights into the Porter hypothesis (PH) and its dynamic nature. The PH posits that well-designed environmental regulations induce eco-innovations at polluting firms that improve both their environmental and business performance via ‘innovation offsets.’ We conduct an econometric test of this proposition, using Swedish pulp and paper plants as empirical application. Swedish environmental regulation of polluting industries provides an interesting case because it has been praised, due to containing elements of ‘well-designed’ regulations, for being conducive to accomplishing the ‘win-win’ situation of mutual environmental and economic benefits. The empirical results indicate that flexible and dynamic command-and-control regulation and economic incentive instruments have induced innovation offsets through improved energy efficiency. Our study bears important implications: empirical tests of the PH that do not account for its dynamic nature, and that do not measure ‘well-designed’ regulations, might provide misleading conclusions as to its validity.

This article examines the moderating role of regional social capital in the intention–behaviour link in entrepreneurship. We investigate to what extent the regional social capital context in which aspiring entrepreneurs are embedded strengthens or weakens the translation of individual entrepreneurial intentions into new venture creation activities. Our results suggest that the intention–behaviour link is weakened by cognitive regional social capital in the form of regional hierarchy values and strengthened by structural regional capital in the form of regional cultural diversity and regional breadth of associational activity, as well as by relational regional social capital in the form of high levels of regional generalised trust. Our findings suggest that to support new venture creation activity, there is a need to grow regional social capital via the enhancement of social trust, associational activities and regional cultural diversity – and at the same time decrease hierarchical social structures within regions.

Using recent data on a cross-section of Swedish chemical and pulp and paper firms, this paper provides novel empirical insights into the Porter hypothesis. Well-designed environmental regulation can stimulate firms’ innovative capabilities, while at the same time generating innovation offsets that may both offset net compliance costs and yield a competitive edge over those firms that are not affected by such regulations. In doing so, we also test the alleged effectiveness of regulatory time strategies in stimulating innovation activities of regulated firms. We find evidence for the effectiveness of such well-designed regulations: announced rather than existing regulation induces innovation and some innovation offsets. Our results imply that empirical tests of the Porter hypothesis that do not account for its dynamic nature, and that do not measure well-designed regulations, might provide misleading conclusions as to its validity.

This thesis is devoted to the empirical analysis of how externalities—the nonexistence of private markets in some good or the absence of sufficient incentives to establish such markets— affect firm performance and growth. A minor part investigates a direct link between positive externalities, in the form of localized knowledge spillovers, and firm growth, by testing the so-called local export spillover hypothesis: Exporting firms in a region may reduce export entry costs for other local firms through export-related informal knowledge and information flows. The results support the notion of the role of such local externalities as external input into firms’ export-specific knowledge function, while also providing some support for such export spillovers being more important in contract-intensive industries and small firms.

The bulk of my articles examines indirect performance effects of negative pollution externalities. This type of externality calls for formal, as well as informal, institutions that take corrective measures to make polluting agents pay the social and environmental cost of their emissions, thereby restoring the social efficiency losses caused by those externalities. The operational tool to achieve an internalization of the social and environmental costs brought about by pollution externalities is environmental policy, with laws and regulations constituting common policy manifestations. In other words, protecting human health and the environment is the primary purpose of environmental policies. Increasingly, the economic growth paradigm of modern market economies has added a second argument to polluting societies’ welfare function: economic growth.

Harmonizing these two arguments—social and environmental well-being and economic welfare—has traditionally been considered difficult, with conventional wisdom arguing that environmental regulation of polluting agents is costly and ultimately detrimental to growth. Harvard professor Michael Porter, in his widely debated Porter Hypothesis, has challenged this entrenched view, arguing that environmental policy, if ‘well-designed,’ can attain a ‘double dividend’ or ‘win-win’situation of simultaneous environmental and economic benefits. The present thesis aims to find empirical evidence of Porter’s reasoning. Using microdata on the Swedish pulp, paper and chemical industries, it attempts to empirically analyze whether there are adequate institutional configurations in the form of properly crafted environmental policies that allow for an internalization of pollution externalities such that a ‘win-win’ situation characterized by the simultaneous accomplishment of environmental benefits for society and economic benefits for the polluting agents can be created. The empirical results suggest that environmental regulation, if properly designed, indeed can induce mutual environmental and economic benefits, which provides valuable implications for modern environmental policy.

Exporting firms in a region may reduce export entry costs for other local firms either through market or non-market interactions. This paper tests this proposition by analyzing whether the probability of exporting among Swedish firms is positively associated with the local presence of exporters in their region and industry. Our results support this conjecture, while also providing some support for such export spillovers being more important in contract-intensive industries and small firms. The results for different industries and size-classes of firms are also sensitive to whether we focus on firms' export status or restrict the sample to export starters.