Maria Ek Styvén

• PhD
• Professor at Luleå University of Technology

Purpose This study aims to gain insights into the drivers and inhibitors of proenvironmental behaviors (PEB) among Gen Z tourists through the lens of the goal-framing theory (GFT) and the motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework. It also aims to propose interventions for promoting proenvironmental tourist behaviors. Design/methodology/approa...

Tourism entrepreneurs adapted to regulations during COVID-19 by introducing creative solutions. The crisis was said to be a unique opportunity for innovating sustainable businesses. This study investigates crisis as a driver for innovation and its relevance to service design. Interviews with entrepreneurs are the empirical base that highlights that...

Purpose This paper aims to focus on conditions for workplace learning (WPL) in highly transient workplaces, exemplified by the tourism and hospitality sector in the Arctic region. The aim is to analyse and discuss how employees and employers view the conditions for employees’ WPL from their respective perspectives. Design/methodology/approach The...

This study explores the role of employees as both a target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in tourism and hospitality. Extant research has largely focused on the effects of external employer brands; however, studies on internal employer branding have been lacking. The research problem is addressed through the conceptual lens of emplo...

Attracting and retaining high-quality employees is becoming an unrelenting challenge for many employers. Therefore, employer branding is a key developmental area for companies, as it aims to attract potential employees and to engage the current staff. This paper investigates how current employees in tourism and hospitality perceive their employers...

Purpose This paper aims to explore how place identity can be expressed in residents’ place image descriptions, addressing differences and similarities in place identity expressions between residents’ descriptions of the image of their place and the image of the place as described to others. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were cond...

Recent data leaks such as those involving Dropbox have apparently made Internet users feel less secure than in the past as they face risks when dealing with their digital personal data. However, consumers have increasingly embraced cloud computing empowered Digital Personal Data Stores (DPDSs). To understand this paradox, this study shifts the unit...

This study adopts a social comparison theory perspective to examine the drivers of social comparison frequency (SCF) on Facebook among international travel bloggers who utilize Facebook for their travel blogging activities. An online survey led to 99 usable responses covering travel bloggers from 33 countries. Results suggest that there is a strong...

In a gradually more hypercompetitive global tourism arena, destination marketers are increasingly seeking effective ways to promote places through appealing place brand messages. Local residents can be valuable ambassadors for the place, as well as co-creators of place-related brand communication. However, research focusing on place advertising fro...

Sharing economy (SE) platforms are increasingly providing an effective means of connecting providers and users of secondhand goods. While media seem to emphasize that the trend of selling/buying secondhand has been growing due to the consolidation and development of peer‐to‐peer (P2P) sharing platforms, a comprehensive identification of the anteced...

The role of emotional connections to places has largely been studied with a focus on place visitors. However, while residents are considered integral to the place brand, their perspectives generally have been overlooked. This study aims to increase the understanding of the relationships between place image, self-congruity, place attachment, and pos...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of brand love in place brand communication by incorporating potential antecedents and behavioral outcomes of place brand love in a social media setting. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered from 281 residents and visitors of a place through an online survey focusing on a place bran...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate antecedents of using non-travel-specific social media (specifically Facebook) for travel decision-making before a leisure trip. Design/methodology/approach Based on an online survey of 426 young travel consumers from Italy and Sweden, this work applies structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis. F...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors influencing the propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip, across a sample of Millennial and Generation Z consumers in three different countries. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was sent to consumers between 16 and 30 years in Sweden, UK and India. St...

This study aims to identify and explain perceived benefits and barriers for the use of digital channels by tourism companies in Swedish Lapland. Data were collected through exploratory interviews and an online survey to tourism companies in the region, most of which are small firms. Through factor analysis, we identified four barriers (Financial ri...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to characterize consumers with high impulse buying tendency (IBT) by comparing them with low-IBT consumers in an online shopping context. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through a postal survey to a random sample of Swedish citizens, resulting in 144 responses, which were analysed statistically....

Retailers are facing major changes, including intensified competition, increased internationalization, and technological advances, which are transforming the competitive landscape at a fast pace. Simultaneously we see an emerging paradigm shift in consumers’ buying behavior. Digital devices such as smartphones and tablets allow consumers to search...

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is considered the most important, informal means of communication between consumers (Derbaix and Vanhamme 2003). An increasingly important extension of the traditional face-to-face WOM used by consumers is the electronic word of mouth (eWOM), especially with regard to how eWOM is used within today’s online social m...

Retailers are facing major changes, including intensified competition, increased internationalization, and technological advances, which are transforming the competitive landscape at a fast pace. Simultaneously we see an emerging paradigm shift in consumers’ buying behavior. Digital devices such as smartphones and tablets allow consumers to search...

Communication and public relations play a pivotal role in crisis management (Tirkkonen and Luoma‐aho 2011). Due to the high levels of uncertainty created during a crisis, stakeholders have a strong need for fast and accurate information (Seeger and Griffin Padgett 2010). For public sector organizations, crisis communication is perhaps even more cha...

Consumers express themselves in a multitude of ways; one expression mechanism is brand consumption. Self-expression can be an important driver of consumer preference and choice. Despite the importance of self-expression, additional research is needed as to how brands are used as a means of self-expression. Previous studies indicate that the importa...

In order to increase usage of e-government services, there is a need for better understanding of factors driving citizens' use of such services. This study addresses two main objectives: (1) to assess the influence of trust, perceived sacrifice, and optimism bias on citizens' intentions to use public e-services; (2) to assess the moderating influen...

The supply of drinking water is a crucial and vulnerable element of the Swedish infrastructure. In the past few years it has suffered several crises due to contamination and waterborne diseases. Therefore, management of water crisis has become a highly topical issue for the country's municipalities, particularly after two recent outbreaks of crypto...

This paper aims to enhance the knowledge of business models in the mobile service sector by exploring their key mecha-nisms and underlying components. By combining the business model literature with empirical interview-based case studies of 69 business models in the mobile service sector, it illustrates the findings of a longitudinal case study of...

In order to increase usage of e-government services, there is a need for better understanding of factors driving citizens’ use of such services. This study addresses the following research problem: How do trust, perceived sacrifice, and optimism bias influence citizens’ intentions to use public e-services? A model of e-service adoption is proposed...

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on consumption values. The aim of this study is to explore and compare desired consumption values of different mobile services. The results point out similarities as well as differences in desired consumption values of different mobile services.

Amid the increasing consumption of digital music and generally declining sales of recorded music, physical formats persist as the preferred means of storing and listening to music for many consumers. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of the relationship between music involvement and preference for tangible music formats. To...

Through their websites, biotechnology firms communicate information about themselves and their products to other members of their networks. These networks are made up of an array of organisations with which biotechnology firms collaborate on product development projects, and on whom they rely for funding, and/or marketing and production. Therefore,...

Through their websites, biotechnology firms communicate information about themselves and their products to other members of their networks. These networks are made up of an array of organisations with which biotechnology firms collaborate on product development projects, and on whom they rely for funding, and/or marketing and production. Therefore,...

Purpose – The intangible character of services makes it difficult for customers to evaluate a service offering before consumption. Scent offers a powerful means of making services tangible. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of how scents can be used for services marketing purposes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper...

As music consumption increasingly moves to the Internet, music as a product becomes even more intangible and service-like. This tends to create a number of marketing problems. Through a review of services marketing literature and illustrative observations of online music services, this paper explores the intangibility aspect of online music and ass...