Artificial intelligence (AI) is a cost‐efficient innovation that challenges customers' consumption patterns and fears of uncertainty. This study assesses whether the likelihood that consumers adopt AI in banking services depends on tastes across different cultures. We propose a culturally‐augmented Arrow–Bilir–Sorensen model to assess the propensity that consumers use AI. Analyses of a unique ING Bank dataset encompassing 11,000 respondents from 11 countries reveal that success rates for the diffusion of robo‐advisory financial services in retail banking vary substantially due to the cultural boundedness of choice. This bias seems to be associated with social capital rather than the fear of novelty.

This paper aims to clarify the role of culture as a public good that serves to preserve mental health. It tests the evolutionary hypothesis that cultural consumption triggers a microeconomic mechanism for the self-defense of mental health from uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic offers a natural experiment of cultural consumption under increased uncertainty. Using primary data from a pilot survey conducted online during the pandemic and applying Probit and Heckman selection models, the study analyzes levels of happiness and propensity to help others. The results suggest that past consumption of culture is associated with higher happiness levels during crises. Moreover, spontaneous cultural practices (such as group singing) during times of uncertainty are associated with an increase in the pro-social propensity to help others. These findings highlight culture as a tool for promoting mental health at the micro level and social capital resilience at the aggregate level.

This paper seeks to find evidence for the impact of local culture—living culture and cultural heritage—on regional socio-economic development in Greece. The main aim of the paper is to operationalize the culture-based development hypothesis for the existence of a cumulative causation process of cultural impact on Greek local development. To test this hypothesis empirically, we employ an original and uniquely compiled dataset of over 130 economic and social indicators about Greece on a NUTS3 level, assembled from various international and local sources. Employing a combined nonparametric partial-least squares path modelling approach, we find evidence that—in contrast to results from other European countries and the USA—in Greece, culture influences not only the human capital, but also the overall labour force structure. This appears to affect not only the economic productivity, but also the overall quality of life in the locality concerned. These results, based on nonparametric estimations, were confirmed through triangulation with parametric 3SLS and structural equation model tests. The latter use of parametric and nonparametric techniques in a mutually complementary manner is one of the novelties in this contribution.

This paper explores the sensitivity of youth’s fear of failure to local culture, in terms of its persistence across space and its change (hysteresis) in times of economic shocks, which renders entrepreneurship a very dubious tool for tackling youth unemployment especially in times of crisis. We focus on youth in Germany and Greece which are culturally and economically very different countries. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) provides a pooled cross-section for the period 2003–2010. We address the data using a probit model with year fixed effects. Regarding the influence of personal fear-of-failure, we find that youth between 15 and 24 years of age are less entrepreneurial in both Greece and Germany, while the 25–34 years old young adults in Greece are already at the same entrepreneurial level as an average adult. Our findings also support existing gender differentials in both countries, which generally phase out among young people. Yet, country differences in perceptions have the greatest impact on entrepreneurial propensity. Regarding the local cultural characteristics, there is evidence of cultural embeddedness and cultural persistence effects especially among youth between 15 and 24 years of age which makes entrepreneurship an unsuitable tool for handling youth unemployment for this age group.