Energy waste is an emerging issue worldwide, with energy conservation goals, such as conscious energy consumption, playing a crucial role in helping the environment. The rapid growth of smart appliances has led to the development of mobile applications, with an increased interest among policymakers to design eco-saving plans for optimizing power and battery consumption. This study aims to explore the usage intention of energy-efficient applications, through young consumers’ energy conservation behavior, behavioral characteristics, and COVID-19 pandemic experience. Based on empirical investigation, a survey was applied in Romania among 590 mobile app users. The data were tested using partial least square structural equation modeling (SmartPLS, version 3). The results indicate the impact of behavioral characteristics, namely, energy conservation attitude, subjective norms, and environmental knowledge on young users’ energy conservation behavior. The influential effect of COVID-19 on energy-saving behavior was also proven. Energy conservation behavior, and functional and hedonic values positively influence Millennials’ and Gen Zers’ energy-efficient app usage intentions. The study also discusses some implications for policymakers, marketers, and software developers, as well as providing theoretical suggestions for future work.

Research background: AI devices and robots play an increasingly important role in consumers’ everyday life, by accompanying the consumer all day long. This presence has several utilitarian and social benefits, but at the same time the optimal functioning of AI requires personal information from the consumer. Purpose of the article: Starting from the premise that people share more information with friends, we have tested empirically whether an emotional behavior of AI can evoke the same emotions in the relationship between consumers and their AI devices, leading to a higher self-disclosing behavior. Methods: To validate the proposed hypotheses, three mediation models were tested using structural equation modelling in Smart-PLS 3.3.3, based on data collected with the help of an online survey. Findings & value added: We prove empirically that AI’s emotional behavior can increase consumers’ trust, it can evoke feelings of friendship and it can determine a higher perceived control over the shared private information, thus leading to lower perceived threats regarding the consumers’ vulnerability and exposure related to sharing of private data. These results have important implications for designing consumer-AI interactions.

The development of social media has triggered important changes in our society and in the way consumers read and trust online information. The presence of consumers in the online environment exposes them to a greater extent to various instances of fake news, which are spread more or less intentionally. Sensational and breaking-news-style information are one of the ways in which consumers’ attention is attracted, by posting exaggerated or distorted information. The objective of our research is to determine the impact of sensational and breaking news headlines on content credibility. In a mediation model, we show that the perception of sensationalism mediates the relation between the presence of breaking news headlines and trust in the content of the information. Based on our proposed model, the existence of breaking news headlines increases the consumers’ perception of sensationalism and reduces trust in news content. These results have important implications for patterns of news consumption. If a piece of information is presented in a sensational way, it might attract more consumers’ attention in the short term, but in the long run it will reduce the credibility of its content. Based on our research, we recommend using sensational headlines with caution to maintain credibility.

In a context of increased world population and imbalanced access to resources, the concept of food waste has gained increased attention in the past years. The waste of food has a negative impact on the economy, the society and the environment. In order to reduce the quantities of wasted food, it is important to understand the factors and the situations in which food waste occurs. Several studies have shown that food waste happens mostly at the consumer level and that it is determined by a wide range of factors, such as socio-demographic characteristics and consumption patterns. The objective of this paper is to determine the impact of the national culture on the quantity of wasted fruit and vegetables. Based on secondary data, the panel regression analysis was applied for 28 European countries with the purpose of determining the influence of the cultural dimensions as described by Hofstede on the quantities of wasted fruit and vegetables. The results of the research show that the uncertainty avoidance of a culture complemented by the indulgence index influences the quantity of wasted fruit and vegetables, confirming that certain characteristics of the national culture are factors that affect the quantity of wasted food.

Celebrity endorsement is nowadays a frequently used technique in marketing and advertising. On the one hand, celebrities have the ability to attract attention towards the advertising while on the other hand, their behavior is imitated by consumers, having a greater impact on buying decisions. One of the main challenges in advertising endorsed by celebrities is the overshadowing effect, by which consumers tend to watch the celebrity and not necessarily the advertised product. In three eye tracking experiments, we investigated the attention of consumers towards advertising with celebrities. The results showed that the celebrity was the eye-catcher of the advertising, being the first and longest object watched, but at the same time the product or the logo was also watched. The results also showed that the number of objects in advertising influenced the attention of the consumer. Across the three studies, we manipulated the number of objects and the results showed that in the case of information overload, the participants tended to watch the most familiar elements, which in our case were the celebrities. Therefore, the design and the number of objects in advertising endorsed by celebrities are also important in having a significant impact on the consumer.