Background In recent years, neuroscientific knowledge has been applied to marketing as a novel and efficient means to comprehend the cognitive and behavioral aspects of consumers. A number of studies have attempted to evaluate media contents, especially TV commercials using various neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG). Yet neurophysiological examination of detailed cognitive and affective responses in viewers is still required to provide practical information to marketers. Here, this study develops a method to analyze temporal patterns of EEG data and extract affective and cognitive indices such as happiness, surprise, and attention for TV commercial evaluation. Methods Twenty participants participated in the study. We developed the neurophysiological indices for TV commercial evaluation using classification model. Specifically, these model-based indices were customized using individual EEG features. We used a video game for developing the index of attention and four video clips for developing indices of happiness and surprise. Statistical processes including one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and the cross validation scheme were used to select EEG features for each index. The EEG features were composed of the combinations of spectral power at selected channels from the cross validation for each individual. The Fisher’s linear discriminant classifier (FLDA) was used to estimate each neurophysiological index during viewing four different TV commercials. Post hoc behavioral responses of preference, short-term memory, and recall were measured. Results Behavioral results showed significant differences for all preference, short-term memory rates, and recall rates between commercials, leading to a ‘high-ranked’ commercial group and a ‘low-ranked’ group (P < 0.05). Neural estimation of happiness results revealed a significant difference between the high-ranked and the low-ranked commercials in happiness index (P < 0.01). The order of rankings based on happiness and attention matched well with the order of behavioral response rankings. In the elapsed-time analysis of the highest-ranked commercial, we could point to visual and auditory semantic structures of the commercial that induced increases in the happiness index. Conclusions Our results demonstrated that the neurophysiological indices developed in this study may provide a useful tool for evaluating TV commercials.

This paper investigates the effects of experiencing diverse positive emotions in technology use on users’ well-being, referred to as positive emodiversity. We examined technology’s role in facilitating positive emodiversity and well-being through a questionnaire study (N = 116; 580 example cases), in which three sources of emotions were considered: technology as an object, instrument, or enabler. Further, we evaluated how technology-supported hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits are associated with well-being. A regression analysis showed that increased positive emodiversity leads to increased well-being (p<.001). The effect was predicted by the three sources and both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits. When engaged in positive activities enabled by technology, users experienced more diverse positive emotions, increasing their well-being. The study offers new understandings of the relationships between technologies, emodiversity, and well-being, and provides evidence that designing for a wide diversity of positive emotions, as opposed to generalized pleasure-displeasure distinction, can enrich users’ experiences, enhancing their well-being.

Upcycling, as a way to reutilise resources, offers a promising alternative to production and consumption based on virgin materials. Despite the growing academic and industrial interest in recent years, there is a lack of large-scale cross-country or cross-regional studies that systematically investigate influencing factors for consumer upcycling behaviour. By drawing on social psychological theories of interpersonal behaviour and planned behaviour, this study investigated predictors of upcycling behaviour in five highly industrialised countries of three continents: Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, and USA. Results showed that intention and perceived behavioural control (confidence in abilities) were the most important factors for upcycling. Theoretical and practical implications from this study are discussed in the context of efforts to scale up global upcycling.

Emotional well-being manages people’s emotions and copes with challenges throughout life. Positive emotion and emotion regulation have beneficial effects on overall emotional well-being (Colombo et al., 2021; Quoidbach et al., 2010; Yoon & Kim, 2022). In the sensory perception of humans, touch interaction is regarded as a vital contributor to regulating our emotions. Considering that appropriate touch experience can lead to more positive emotion regulation, the study attempts to figure out how the touch experience relates to positive emotion regulation. Among several factors of tactile perception, our focus was on texture and weight, which are presumably closely related to positive emotion regulation. For the study, an experiment was designed in which LEGO-based blocks were used as an experimental stimulus in the sense that LEGO as a toy is highly associated with positive emotion. In the experiment, 20 participants were recruited and asked to make assembled ones with combinations of softness (soft and hard) and weight (light and heavy). The findings indicate that the combination of Soft-Heavy was most preferred among the participants because it gave them a sense of comfort and stability. Moreover, diverse positive emotions were associated depending on the levels of texture and weight. A possible implication of the findings is that a particular combination of product materials' texture and weight could facilitate positive emotion regulation. Limitations and future studies are also discussed at the end.