Torben Hansen’s research while affiliated with Copenhagen Business School and other places

This study provides new insights into the factors that shape tourists’ sustainable behavioral intention by conducting a meta-analysis based on 95 published studies with 47,425 participants from 38 countries. Building upon the theory of planned behavior and value-belief-norm theory, we propose and show the relevance of distinguishing between characteristics that relate to behavioral constructs (i.e. home behavior), social constructs (i.e. social interactions), environmental values (i.e. pro-environmental/anti-environmental values), and mental constructs (i.e. involvement/awareness, knowledge, perceived behavioral control, attitude) during investigation of sustainable tourist attitude and behavioral intention. We also demonstrate that sustainability antecedents do not necessarily influence behavioral intention directly but that they may have an indirect influence through pro-environmental attitude. We find that particularly social interaction and involvement/awareness drive attitude, while social interaction, attitude, and home behavior drive behavioral intention. In addition, this meta-analysis provides insights into the moderating effects of national culture on the relationships between sustainable antecedents, tourism pro-attitude, and behavioral intention. Investigating all the six national values suggested by Hofstede, we find that “power distance” and “individualism” are particularly powerful moderators of these relationships. This research offers several implications to tourist managers and public authorities interested in tourist sustainability attitude and behavioral intention.

In two studies, we identify a novel moderator (objective time pressure) of the relationship between knowledge over-/underconfidence (O/U) and subjective choice quality. Knowledge O/U is an individual difference variable with behavioral correlates in the consumption realm. As a common decision bias, knowledge overconfidence leads consumers to speed up decision making and to deem their decisions more accurate than those who are less knowledge confident. As knowledge-overconfident consumers accelerate decisions, it is tempting to assume that they would be less affected by objective time pressure than less knowledge confident consumers, who often need more decision time. However, we demonstrate that knowledge-overconfident consumers are more prone to suffer from the effects of objective time pressure. Specifically, in a dietary choice setting, objective time pressure positively moderates the relationship between knowledge O/U and subjective time pressure and perceived choice difficulty, respectively. Taking a moderated-mediation approach, we also investigate perceived choice difficulty and subjective time pressure as mediators of the relationship between knowledge O/U and subjective choice quality and find that objective time pressure moderates these mediating effects.

A longer exposure time generally improves individuals’ ability to recognize faces. The current research investigates whether this effect varies between genders and whether it is influenced by the gender of the exposed faces. Based on a set of four experimental studies, we advance our knowledge of face recognition, gender, gender distribution of exposed faces, and exposure time in three main ways. First, the results reveal that women are more likely than men to suffer from a decrease in face recognition ability due to a lower exposure time. Second, the findings show that when exposure time is short (vs. long) women recognize a larger proportion of same gender faces and also recognize a larger proportion of same gender faces as compared with the proportion of same gender faces recognized by men. Third, findings reveal that when individuals are only exposed to same gender faces, women recognize more faces than men regardless whether exposure time is short, or long. In short, the findings of this research suggest that insight into the interplay between gender and exposure time length is critical to appropriately determine human beings’ ability to recognize faces.

Purpose This study aims to investigate relationships among body mass index (BMI), socioeconomic variables, dietary self-efficacy and consumer dietary stress in healthy food buying and explore whether different levels of personal values influence these relationships. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on an online representative cross-sectional study with 380 food consumers. Structural equation modeling served to estimate direct, mediating and moderating effects between the studied constructs and variables. Findings Examples of moderating and moderated mediating effects include a negative impact of BMI on dietary stress for consumers with low levels of enjoyment value but no significant effect for consumers with high levels of enjoyment. BMI also had a greater negative impact on dietary self-efficacy when the level of respect/achievement was high (vs low), and respect/achievement positively moderated the mediating effect of BMI on dietary stress through dietary self-efficacy. Research limitations/implications This study focuses on analyzing healthy food buying in a particular cultural setting and may suffer from a lack of generalizability to other cultures. The results suggest that research should take into account personal values when investigating stress. Practical implications Food managers and health authorities can improve their ability to reduce dietary stress when addressing consumers by understanding the role of personal values in healthy food choice and the impact on mental well-being. Originality/value This study offers a novel, more fine-grained conceptual model of how consumers develop dietary stress when buying healthy food.

The 50 days free download link for this paper is: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Xt3r15oGo~qrY Consumers often associate healthy food consumption with different definitions. Yet relatively little is known about how definitions of healthy eating influence perceived dietary quality. Based on an online survey of 718 Danish food consumers, the present research finds that the healthy eating definitions entitled ’healthy/unhealthy eating’ and ‘mind/body healthy eating’ both showed positive effects on perceived dietary quality, whereas the definition ’healthy eating guideline’ was not significantly related to perceived dietary quality. We also found that consumers’ interest in healthy eating had a significant indirect effect on perceived dietary quality through mind/body healthy eating and that the relationships between interest in healthy eating, consumer definitions of healthy eating, and perceived dietary quality were moderated by different levels of personal values. Our results provide guidance to those seeking to influence consumers’ dietary behavior based on their interest in healthy eating, definitions of healthy eating, and personal values.

This study develops a baseline model specifying expected relationships between consumer motivations (health, environmental, and social consciousness), organic food identity, and organic food behavior. Based on an online survey of 1176 Danish food consumers, we investigate whether these relationships are influenced by different levels of personal values (self-transcendence, openness to change, self-enhancement, and conservation). We find that health consciousness has a higher positive influence on organic food identity with higher levels of all four investigated personal values. When openness to change is low, health consciousness has a positive effect on intentional organic food behavior through organic food identity, whereas social consciousness has a negative effect on intentional organic food behavior through organic food identity. Our results provide guidance to those seeking to segment organic food markets based on consumers’ motivations and values.

Although consumers' risk-taking, supplier trust, social norms and information involvement are central to much of thought in the financial market and consumer economic literature, it is not known how the interplay between consumers' trust in supplier information, risk-taking behaviour and social norm may influence information involvement. This research contributes to the consumer economic literature by investigating how product savings risk and social norm affect the relationship between young adults' trust in supplier information and their information involvement. On the basis of two samples with young adults who recently have purchased a low-risk savings product (n = 641) and a high-risk savings product (n = 219), respectively, several results are obtained. It is found that both product savings risk and social norm positively moderate the relationship between young adults' trust in supplier information and their information involvement. In addition, the results indicate that the three-way interaction between trust in supplier information, products savings risk and social norm has a positive effect on information involvement. As direct implications, financial authorities and financial service managers should especially consider investing additional resources in developing information trust for high-risk savings products and should also take social norms into account when considering young adults' high-risk-taking behaviour. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Substantial research results suggest the global financial crisis has negatively affected consumers' trust in financial service providers. Notably, trust not only relates to consumer trust in individual companies but also relates to the broader business context in which consumers may plan and carry out their financial behavior. This latter form of trust can be referred to as "broad-scope" trust (BST). BST is especially important in a society context because lack of BST may reduce financial market dynamism, competition, and productivity. Consequently, financial service providers assume an important social responsibility in order to develop BST. Unfortunately, not much is known about the interplay between BST and consumer financial behavior. Based on two surveys comprising 1155 bank consumers and 756 mutual fund investors, respectively, this study investigates the moderating influence of BST on relations between knowledge, cognitive effort, and financial healthiness and also examines the direct influence of BST on cognitive effort and financial healthiness. The results indicate that BST negatively moderates relations between knowledge and financial healthiness and between cognitive effort and financial healthiness. In addition, it is demonstrated that BST negatively influences cognitive effort and positively influences financial healthiness. Our results demonstrate the importance of developing BST as it may ease the burdens put on consumers' financial knowledge and processing capabilities, which in turn may facilitate their financial well-being.

Unhealthy eating patterns present in most Western countries pose a serious threat to economic welfare and have severe consequences for the health and quality of life of the individual consumer. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model for understanding how health authorities and marketers can affect consumption of healthy food – and ultimately body mass index (BMI) – by addressing perceptual antecedents of consumers' involvement and health competencies. A qualitative (n = 16) pilot study and a consumer panel survey (n = 599) assisted in completing this task. The obtained structural equation modelling results confirmed that increasing consumers' competencies concerning healthy food consumption may improve the healthiness of their food behaviour, and ultimately reduce their BMI. Notably, these effects may occur even for consumers who perceive healthy food consumption to be a challenge. Our results also revealed that it may be problematic to improve health competencies for food consumers who are less involved in healthy food consumption. However, our study shows that two perceptual factors, ‘personal food identity’ (the extent to which consumers believe that their health identity is linked to their food behaviour) and ‘unhealthy food taste belief’ (the extent to which consumers believe that unhealthy food is more enjoyable and tastier than healthy food), may assist health authorities and marketers in increasing consumers' involvement in healthy food consumption.

This study examines the role of trust in customer–seller relationships before and after the 2008 financial crisis. On the basis of two surveys comprising 1155 and 757 bank customers, respectively, it is shown that trust is less likely to mediate the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty after the financial crisis compared with before the financial crisis. The results suggest that consumers rely more on satisfaction and less on trust after the financial crisis compared with before the financial crisis when determining whether they should remain loyal to a particular financial service provider. Hence, as a direct managerial implication, financial service managers should consider investing additional resources in satisfying their customers in the after crisis era. In addition, it is suggested that managers should seek to rebuild the positive relationship between trust and loyalty in order to receive the full benefit of their trust-building efforts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.