Moderating Effect Of Culture Research Articles

The relation between emotion regulation and migraine: A cross-cultural study on the moderating effect of culture.

Effects of emotion suppression on physical health might be contingent on culture. Existing research on emotion regulation has mainly included western participants. Herewith the question arises, whether this gained expertise is transferable to an Asian culture. This cross-sectional study evaluated to what extent the regulation of emotions is related to migraine and if the relation between emotion regulation and migraine complaints differs between a Western and an Asian population. Therefore, the main characteristics and symptoms of patients with migraine from both Germany and Japan are compared. 261 Japanese and 347 German headache patients participated in this online study and completed self-report measures of emotion regulation (suppression and reappraisal) and headache complaints. Cultural groups did not differ regarding their demographic data, intake of medication and number of days with headache. German participants showed significantly higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of emotion suppression compared to Japanese patients. Emotion regulation is not correlated with headache complaints either in the Japanese or in the German patient group. Although group differences were found with respect to anxiety and emotion suppression, subsequent regression analysis revealed these differences were unrelated to headache complaints. As our baseline analysis focused on group means, approaches that examine individual reaction patterns to stress and accompanying sensory stimulus processing may prove to be more fruitful and illuminating.

Moderating Effect of Culture on the Relationship between Social Interaction and Stock Market Participation among Secondary School Teachers from Nakuru County, Kenya

Culture makes individuals to behave the same way in similar situations because of the values and norms grounded in a person. This means that the overall behavior of individual investors is therefore guided by their individual culture. Culture could influence the behavior of individual investors directly and this study sought to investigate how culture could interact with social interaction in influencing individual investor stock market participation. There was need therefore to investigate the moderating effects of investment culture on the relationship between social interaction and stock market participation of secondary school teachers in Nakuru County. The study employed cross sectional survey research design. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires from a sample of 320 teachers' selected using stratified proportionate random sampling technique. The study concludes that investment culture has a positive significant moderating effect on the relationship between social interaction and stock market participation decision (R2 change was 0.04, p<0.05). This implies that investment culture interacts with social interaction thereby significantly enhancing its relationship with stock market participation of secondary school teachers in Nakuru County.

Moderating Effect of Culture on Consumers’ Usage of Social Networks and Its’ Impact on Online Purchase Intentions

This research explored the relationship between Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of the use of Social Network and their impact on Online Purchase Intention moderated by Culture. The data of 384 consumers of online stores belonging to Karachi, Pakistan were taken thorough questionnaire and was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling to identify the relationship between the said variables and the moderating effect of culture. The study found positive impact of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of social media use for online purchase intention. It also proved the moderating role of culture between use of social media and buying behavior. Thus, culture plays positive effect in influencing buying behavior through perceives usefulness and perceives ease of use. Keywords: Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Online Purchase Intention, Culture, SEM, Pakistan DOI : 10.7176/JMCR/55-04 Publication date : April 30 th 2019

Discovering Culture’s Influence in Studies of Individual Behavior in Organizational Settings: A Challenging Proposal

To broaden our understanding of culture-as-operative in organizational settings and make these cultural influences tractable to empirical analysis, we focus upon individual behavior as the outcome of interest and acknowledge the embeddedness of an organizational member in a nested and multiple array of cultures be they national, regional, organizational, or local-interpersonal. At any one of these levels, we may expect cross-cutting impacts of cultural identities built around ethnicity, organization type, company, work function, team, dyad, gender, education level and type, and age-generational cohort. We distinguish between the positioning and the moderating effects of culture, thus enabling an appreciation of the role that each type and level of culture plays in shaping individuals' actions in their immediate work environments. Our goal is not only to describe but also to explain how culture operates upon organizational members at each level of cultural influence and for each type of culturally shaped identity. This is a challenging task, but a broadened cultural appreciation and the availability of big data and the necessary statistical techniques to analyze its complexity make undertaking this initiative practicable in the 21st century. This current project on work-life balance hopes to inspire further work using this perspective.

Developing Culturally Relevant Design Guidelines for Encouraging Physical Activity: a Social Cognitive Theory Perspective.

The prevalence of physical inactivity and non-communicable diseases is on the rise worldwide. This calls for a systematic approach in addressing the problem, which is almost becoming a global epidemic. Research has shown that theory-driven interventions are more likely to be effective than uninformed interventions. However, research on the determinants of physical activity and the moderating effect of culture is scarce. To bridge this gap, we conducted a large-scale comparative study of the determinants of physical activity among 633 participants from individualist and collectivist cultures. Using the Social Cognitive Theory, a widely applied behavioral theory in health interventions, we modeled the determinants of physical activity for each culture and mapped them to implementable strategies in the application domain. Our structural equation model shows that, in the individualist culture, Self-Efficacy (βT = 0.55, p < 0.001) and Self-Regulation (βT = 0.33, p < 0.001) are the strongest determinants of Physical Activity. However, in the collectivist culture, Social Support (βT = 0.42, p < 0.001) and Outcome Expectation (βT = 0.11, p < 0.01) are the strongest determinants of Physical Activity. We discussed these findings, mapped the respective behavioral determinants to the corresponding persuasive strategies in the health domain and provided a set of general design guidelines for tailoring the strategies to the respective cultures.

Cross-cultural comparison of the association between trait emotional intelligence and emotion regulation in European-American and Japanese populations

Although a large body of evidence supports trait emotional intelligence as a positive indicator of well-being, the processes that underlie trait emotional intelligence remain unclear. Emotion regulation is considered a core component of trait emotional intelligence. Given that the consequences of emotion regulation strategies differ between European-American and Eastern Asian populations, culture could moderate the association between these strategies and trait emotional intelligence. Two studies examined whether culture moderated the link between trait emotional intelligence and emotion regulation strategies in European-American and East Asian Japanese populations. The results revealed important cultural similarities and differences in the association between trait emotional intelligence and emotion regulation. Regarding cultural similarities, trait emotional intelligence was positively associated with reappraisal in both groups. With respect to cultural differences, trait emotional intelligence was negatively associated with suppression in European-American, but not Japanese, individuals. These findings are consistent with the notion that emotionally intelligent people are more likely to use adaptive strategies and less likely to use maladaptive strategies to regulate their emotion within their own cultural frameworks. Moreover, the current research provided novel insight into the moderating effect of culture on the emotion regulation process underlying the trait emotional intelligence construct.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Interpersonal Trust in Social Commerce

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the effect of interpersonal trust upon people’s intention to use social commerce. In particular, trust is validated as a construct of three dimensions of competence, integrity, and benevolence. In addition, by applying trust-building theories, familiarity and shared value are incorporated in the research model as antecedents to trust dimensions. Considering culture greatly influences people’s values and trust depends on cultural characteristics, the moderating effect of culture is examined. The research model is tested by survey data collected from the USA and China. Among the three dimensions of trust, competence has the strongest impact upon behavioral intention for both regions. While both familiarity and shared value affect trust dimensions significantly, the effect of familiarity is stronger for users in China whereas the effect of shared value is stronger for users in the USA. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Variations in the diffusion of social media content across different cultures: A communicative ecology perspective

ABSTRACTAlong with traditional marketing channels, social media outlets are integrated into firms’ marketing mix. Social media has changed the dynamics of interactions between organizations and their consumers by fostering an online relationship. These dynamic channels are challenging the belief in the effectiveness of traditional unidirectional marketing. This study uses communicative ecology theory to explore the diffusion of social media content within the communicative ecology framework to improve the existing theoretical understanding of the dimensions of social networking services. Additionally, the study examines the moderating effect of culture on the diffusion of social media content within the communicative ecology framework. We analyzed 1,787 posts to firms’ Facebook brand fan pages for 5 different brands of a single product category in 3 different countries. Ordinary least squares and hierarchical moderated regression was used to test the hypotheses. The current study extends the information system success-related dimensions by finding that the volume of moderator posts to a brand fan page on Facebook is the most important predictor of consumer engagement in the United Kingdom, the day of the post is a highly significant predictor in the United States and the time of the post is a substantial predictor of enhanced customer engagement in Australia. Practical implications for managers are also discussed.

Perceived value of advanced mobile messaging services

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of perceived value on post-acceptance behaviour for users of advanced mobile messaging services (AMMS). The paper also compares differences in the influence of perceived value on satisfaction and of satisfaction on loyalty to AMMS in Spain and Greece, to test the moderating effect of culture.Design/methodology/approachPartial least squares path modelling is used to test the model. Perceived value is modelled as a multidimensional reflective construct with four dimensions. Culture is studied at a national level. Differences between countries are tested using the multigroup analysis approach proposed by Henseler et al. (2009).FindingsPerceived value contributes significantly to satisfaction. Satisfaction also has a significant effect on loyalty. Regarding the moderating effect of culture, the influence of perceived value on satisfaction is higher in Greece than in Spain. The authors report similar findings for the effect of satisfaction on loyalty, demonstrating the relevant moderating role of cultures with different degrees of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism.Practical implicationsThis cross-cultural comparison enables mobile phone companies to understand how to provide the greatest value with AMMS in each country in order to increase user satisfaction and loyalty to the service.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies that develops cross-cultural research to analyse the post-acceptance of mobile services. It analyses the effect of perceived value and satisfaction, making an original comparison of two countries generally considered too similar to be compared.

Schein’s Career Anchors

The purposes of this study are to (1) examine the factorial validity of Schein’s career anchors orientation inventory (COI), comparing the original eight-factor model with an alternative nine-factor model, (2) examine the cross-cultural invariance of the COI and its factor structure across two countries, (3) investigate whether core self-evaluations (CSE) is associated with career anchors, and (4) determine whether the relationship between CSE and career anchors varies by country. Survey data were collected from 469 participants (230 from the United States and 239 from Turkey). Based on multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, the results indicated that the alternative nine-factor career anchor model of the COI has better factorial validity and configural invariance than Schein’s eight-factor model. The findings showed support for the association between CSE and the pure challenge anchor and a moderating effect of culture on the relationship between CSE and two other anchors.

Entrepreneurial motives and their antecedents of men and women in North Africa and the Middle East

PurposeThis study aims to investigate how educational attainment and entrepreneurial competencies affect entrepreneurial motives of women (vs men) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This study shows that education has a more positive effect on women’s entrepreneurial motives compared with men. On the other hand, there is a greater positive effect of competencies on men’s motives. Moreover, the moderating effects of culture are compared. The results of the multiple regression analysis show that, within the MENA region, the cultural value of self-expressionism engenders increased opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship by men. Yet, it has no significant effect on women’s entrepreneurial motives.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyses survey data using multiple regression analysis, relationship between independent variables, educational attainment and entrepreneurial competencies, as well as culture, and the dependent variable, entrepreneurial motivation. The present study focuses on data records concerning 13 MENA countries, notably, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The sample includes early-stage and established female entrepreneurs, a total of 1,551 respondents, for all countries for the entire period.FindingsEntrepreneurs with higher levels of education and competencies are more likely to exploit market opportunities. However, effects from educational attainments and competencies are significantly stronger for men. Moreover, the increasing introduction of liberal or post-modern values in MENA societies has significant effects on men but no effect on women, suggesting that men tend to benefit much more than women in the Arab world with regards to their entrepreneurial behaviour.Originality/valueThe study is one of the few attempts to clarify the relationship between individual factors, here represented by education and competencies, and environmental factors, here represented by culture (post-modern values) and entrepreneurial motivation. Moreover, it addresses the MENA region, which is a politically and economically important and challenging environment, and which, to date, has received relatively little attention in entrepreneurship research.

Multiple reference effects on restaurant evaluations: a cross-cultural study

Purpose This paper aims to explore multiple reference effects with regard to customers’ post-consumption evaluations in a cross-cultural context. The authors propose to test an integrative model of three types of reference effects (disconfirmation, attractiveness of alternatives and self-image congruity) and their relationship to customers’ evaluations associated with satisfaction and loyalty. Additional insight into the link between reference points and customer satisfaction is provided by examining the moderating influence of the cultural orientation of customers: South Korean (an Eastern, collectivist and high uncertainty avoidance culture) versus American (a Western, individualistic and low uncertainty avoidance culture). Design/methodology/approach The data for this study were collected through a Web-based survey. Based on a sample of 723 Korean and American consumers, multi-group analysis of structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model and the moderating effect of culture. Findings Overall, the results indicated that American customers’ use of reference points in their post-consumption evaluations is significantly different from that of Korean customers. Specifically, disconfirmation had a stronger effect on Korean customers than on their American counterparts, whereas the attractiveness of alternatives had a stronger effect on American customers than on those from Korea. Moreover, self-image congruity was found to be equally important in both cultures. Research limitations/implications Owing to the comparison of American and Korean participants in this study, these results may not be applied to customers from other countries. Moreover, the study is limited to post-consumption evaluations in restaurants and generalization of the results to other industries may be ill advised. Thus, further research is required to replicate the results and include customers from different countries in more diverse consumption settings. Practical implications The findings provide useful guidance for efficient marketing strategies to generate positive consumer outcomes across borders. Marketers must consider the interaction of cultures and customers to better understand customer perceptions and evaluations about their experiences. This understanding will enable the marketers to more effectively communicate with their target markets and allow them to tailor advertising to different segments of their customer base contingent upon their cultural orientations. Originality/value Although the role of reference effects has begun to attract considerable interest among consumer behavior researchers, much of this research has been conducted in a single cultural context. Because the global economy is becoming increasingly cross-cultural, it is valuable to conduct international consumer research to further the understanding of consumers’ post-consumption evaluation processes using multiple reference points from a global perspective.

Is it always good to provide positive feedback to students? The moderating effects of culture and regulatory focus

To extend the previous research findings by Heine et al. (2001) and Idson and Higgins (2000) to educational setting, two experimental studies were conducted to examine the moderating role of culture (Study 1) and regulatory focus (Study 2) on the motivational consequences of success and failure feedback. College students (N=111 for Study 1 and N=93 for Study 2) received alleged feedback on their performance of a novel task. Results across the two studies replicated the previous findings and showed that success was motivating to students from the Western culture and students with promotion focus whereas failure feedback was motivating to students from the Eastern culture and students with prevention focus. The current studies provide empirical evidence for the replicability of previous research findings in the educational context. They also point to the future directions for the investigation of self-view and motivation.

Intention to purchase behavior on social e-commerce website across cultures (case study: Iranian online purchaser)

With the increasing popularity of social media, millions of users use social media services in the space such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Following that many organizations see this phenomenon as an opportunity to create new business and know this is known as social commerce. This phenomenon is not only due to the growth of social media, but is also because of users' participation in the fate of the marketing and sale of products. So, e-commerce has undergone a revolution, which is affected by the adoption of web 2 functionalities to increase customer participation and achieve greater economic value. Therefore, studying the behavior of buyers in the social commerce platforms can create more value for owners of e-commerce in the context of social commerce. For this reason, attempts were made to obtain more accurate findings regarding the behavior of e-commerce purchasers in social networks by taking into account the moderating influence of culture on it (Iranian online purchasers).This is an applied study. It also considered a descriptive cross-sectional study with regards to the way data are collected. The analysis of data collected from 184 active professionals in the IT industry and users of social networks indicates the moderating effect of culture and the mediating role of trust in a social network community in terms of social identity, trust transference (Familiarity), social influence (intimacy and friendship), cognitive style and the intention to purchase in the social business environment. Moreover, these findings also show that trust transference affects intention to purchase in social networks considering the aspects of familiarity, social identity and cognitive style. But the direct effect of social influence (feel close to) on the purchase intention has been rejected.

National Culture, Gender Inequality and Women’s Success in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

Barriers faced by women entrepreneurs are different from the barriers faced by male entrepreneurs. These barriers differ based on age, culture, geographical region, education, marital status and ethnicity. This paper investigates barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and the moderating effect of culture on the relationship between barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and women entrepreneur’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises. The five main research findings from this study are (1) gender inequality is a major barrier to women’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises, (2) national culture is positively related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs, (3) barriers faced by women entrepreneur’s is negatively related to women entrepreneurs’ success in micro, small and medium enterprises, (4) national culture is negatively related to women entrepreneurs success in micro, small and medium enterprises and (5) culture moderates the relationship between gender inequality and women’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises.

Rural women’s farmers access to productive resources: the moderating effect of culture among Nupe and Yoruba in Nigeria

This paper analyzes ownership and control of productive resources by gender as determined by culture. This is premised on the fact that past researchers have isolated gender and productive resources on one hand and gender and culture on the other. In this paper, the novelty is the exploration of the interplay among culture, gender and productive resources. Using a descriptive quantitative research design, a simple random sampling was used to select 100 households from a sampling frame of 200 households generated through house listing in three villages from Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara State. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire covering ownership, and decision making on selected productive resources and analyzed using Frequency counts, percentages and Chi-square test statistics based on the fact that the variables are categorical. Gender and ownership as well as decision making were cross-tabulated and then layered with culture as a third variable. The results were disaggregated along Nupe and Yoruba culture as well as along gender lines for the selected productive resources covered in this paper. Men predominate in ownership of productive resources among Yoruba than Nupe culture. Women from Nupe culture had higher distribution of ownership in the productive resources than men particularly land, small livestock and non-mechanized farm equipment. The results further show higher proportion of ownership of productive resources among men in Yoruba culture. Women in Nupe culture had greater proportion of ownership of productive resources than Yoruba women. Males make decision to sell all productive resources except small livestock and also make decision in almost all the farming activities listed except when and who will take crop to the market in both Nupe and Yoruba cultures. Culture has a stronger influence on women’s access and control of productive resources than the mere biological differentiation of gender into male and female. There is a strong cultural influence among Nupe and Yoruba women as a result of the interplay of gender, ownership and decision making and culture on selected productive resources.

Does a server's attentiveness matter? Understanding intercultural service encounters in restaurants

Interaction between customers and servers from different cultures provides an interesting case of intercultural communication. Although a server's attentive service on customers is common in full service dining restaurants, especially in the United States, this may not be preferable to customers from different cultures. Two studies examined cultural differences between Americans and Japanese customers on their preferences regarding U.S. restaurant servers’ attentiveness and a moderating effect of culture on the relationship of server attentiveness with customer orientation, customer satisfaction and tip. A survey study (N=975) and an experimental study (N=145) found that server attentiveness had a positive effect on customer orientation, customer satisfaction and the amount of tip for Americans, but not Japanese customers. Implications and future directions were discussed.

Is Frequent Service Check-Back Really a Good Service? An Experimental Study of Culture and Service Quality in Restaurants

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of culture on the relationship between server behaviors, specifically service check-back frequency and perceived service quality in restaurant businesses. The scenarios were presented to U.S. and Japanese citizens before collecting respondents’ perceived service quality ratings on the given service scenario. The main effects for check-back style and cultural group on service quality were significant. In addition, the moderating effect of culture on the relationship between check-back style and service quality was significant. Implications for restaurant service training are discussed for practical guidelines to provide culturally sensitive service to their customers.

A Comparative Study of Smoking in American and Japanese Adolescents: Self, Social Influences, and Health Beliefs

Adolescent health-endangering behaviors are often explained in relation to psychosocial factors. The present study examined how differing psychosocial factors affect smoking by comparing American and Japanese adolescents. Participants in this study were 844 American (374 boys, 401 girls, and 69 undefined) and 734 Japanese (426 boys, 297 girls, and 11 undefined) students from the 7th to 12th grade. The average age of the American sample was 15.24 years old (SD = 2.05); the average age of the Japanese sample was 15.78 (SD = 1.16). Multiple regression analysis with a moderation analysis was conducted to examine the effects of culture on smoking status. A significant moderation effect of culture was found for the perceived prevalence of smoking among peers—perceived prevalence predicted smoking in the past month for Japanese adolescents but not for Americans. The results suggest that Japanese adolescents’ smoking behavior is influenced by the collectivistic nature of their culture.

The significance of direct-leader and co-worker trust on turnover intentions: A cross-cultural study

This study examines the relative strength of the relationships of an employee's affect-based and cognition-based trust of their direct leader and co-workers to the employee's turnover intentions in four countries. Surveys were completed by 554 participants; the sample consisted of 81 Russians, 113 Poles, 155 Americans and 205 Turks. It was found that the employee's affect-based trust of their direct leader was more strongly associated (negatively) with turnover intentions than was the employee's affect-based trust of their co-workers for our combined international sample; however, the association of cognition-based trust of the direct leader and cognition-based trust of their co-workers to turnover intentions did not differ. This study looked at the moderating effect of culture. We found that in-group collectivism moderated the relationship of both affect-based trust of co-workers and cognition-based trust of co-workers to turnover intentions.