ABSTRACT Firms commonly implement cause marketing (CM) to attract customers to purchase their products. This study introduces a two‐stage simultaneous game model to examine the CM decisions of two firms offering substitute products of varying quality, while taking into account the prosocial preference of consumers. The research demonstrates that implementing CM can trigger a warm glow effect among prosocial consumers. Firms have the ability to adjust the intensity of this effect through their pricing and donation strategies. However, the costs associated with CM implementation play a significant role in shaping firms' decisions and may give rise to a prisoner's dilemma situation. Nevertheless, an evaluation of CM practices in e‐commerce firms indicates that the adoption of CM can be mutually beneficial for both firms, ultimately enhancing social welfare in specific scenarios.

Warm glow and pro-environmental behavior: Supportive evidence from behavioral tasks

This study investigated the impact of climate action communication on tourists’ destination evaluations. Specifically, it examined how climate action communication (positive vs. negative) influences emotional reactions of warm glow and guilt, which subsequently impact tourists’ intention to visit the destination and evaluate it as proenvironmental. It also examined the moderating role of destination type (natural vs. cultural). Using a multimethod approach, one exploratory and two online experiments revealed that positive climate action messages result in higher levels of warm glow, while negative climate action messages heighten perceptions of guilt. However, only warm glow influences tourists’ intention to visit the destination and their perceptions of its image as proenvironmental. Additionally, positive climate action messages are more effective for shaping tourists’ evaluations of natural destinations compared to cultural destinations. These findings offer novel insights for marketers of natural destinations on effectively communicating climate initiatives and encouraging climate-responsible tourist behavior.

Businesses have increasingly embraced cause-related marketing (CRM) as a tactical tool to align their brands with social causes. While CRM is widely adopted, little is known about factors influencing individual participation in such initiatives. This study investigates the impact of the warm glow effect, spirituality and brand anthropomorphism on attitudes towards CRM and how this attitude influence purchase intention, mediated by brand attitude. Price sensitivity’s moderating influence on this mediated relationship is also investigated. Variance-based structural equation modelling was used to evaluate hypotheses in a cross-sectional survey with 270 respondents, and slope analysis was used to evaluate the effects of interaction moderation. The results show that the indicated antecedents strongly affect views regarding CRM. In addition, the effect of CRM attitudes upon purchase intention is partially mediated by brand attitude. The study indicates that price sensitivity negatively moderates the mediated association. This study is among the first to look at how price sensitivity moderates the direct and indirect impacts of CRM attitude on purchase intention. Marketers can benefit from these perspectives to devise and extract greater strength from CRM strategies that will augment customer engagement when more unexplored aspects of the zone of CRM such as price sensitivity, spirituality and brand anthropomorphism get into the picture.

Many retail organizations, non-profit and for-profit, rely on consumer donations of used goods as a key aspect of their business model. This practice differs from traditional retail, where products are typically acquired through purchases rather than consumer donations. Additionally, major retail brands also actively promote and solicit donations of used goods as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. This study explores the role of ownership duration of goods, particularly idle goods, on consumer intention to donate products. Through six experimental studies ( N = 1,134), the research shows that the duration of ownership influences donation decisions, with consumers displaying a greater intent to donate idle products that have been owned for a longer period compared to those with shorter ownership durations. Cognitive dissonance theory is applied to explain the increased sense of anticipated warm glow associated with delayed donations. Furthermore, guilt is found to moderate this effect, prompting consumers to donate regardless of ownership duration when presented with guilt appeals. These findings offer valuable insights into how ownership duration and emotional factors influence consumers’ willingness to donate used goods, with implications for policy and marketing.

Purpose This study integrates affordance theory and self-determination theory to examine how gamification affordances on consumer-to-consumer (C2C) secondary marketplace apps influence users' pro-environmental behaviors. Drawing on the concepts of warm glow and moral licensing, it investigates how pro-environmental actions via apps may unintentionally lead to overconsumption. Design/methodology/approach We recruited 613 respondents who had recently used Xianyu, a leading C2C secondary marketplace app in China, to sell their unwanted possessions. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS 4.0 to test the proposed path relationships. Findings The findings showed that instrumental and hedonic affordances, but not social affordances, are crucial for enhancing pro-environmental motivations. Users' engagement in pro-environmental actions is driven by autonomous (intrinsic) and controlled (extrinsic) motives. Engaging in pro-environmental actions via apps can increase the warm glow effect, which, in turn, may unintentionally contribute to overconsumption behaviors, including over-purchase, hedonic consumption and impulse purchase. Moral licensing strengthened the impact of warm glow on hedonic consumption and impulse purchase. Practical implications This study suggests C2C secondary marketplace apps can design gamified elements to sustain pro-environmental motivations while reducing overconsumption by leveraging instrumental and hedonic affordances, emphasizing long-term environmental impact and mitigating moral licensing through ongoing commitment. Originality/value This research offers a novel perspective by demonstrating how gamification affordances promote pro-environmental behaviors yet may indirectly drive overconsumption through the emotional benefits of these actions. By highlighting both positive motivations and potential unintended consequences, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of gamification's impact in C2C secondary marketplaces.

ABSTRACT This study aims to identify effective forms of education that motivate tourists to implement pro-environmental behaviors from the perspective of warm glow theory. We introduce the cuteness effect, originally from the marketing field, into tourism studies and explore tourists’ pro-environmental behaviour. National parks are chosen as the study area due to their rich biodiversity and primary role in environmental education. Experimental research methods with textual and pictorial materials are utilised to manipulate the cuteness effect in education and validate the research hypotheses. The results reveal that cute education increases tourists’ willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviours, with anticipated warm glow mediating this process. Perceived outcome efficacy plays a moderating role between cute education and pro-environmental behaviour. Faced with the cute education, tourists with higher perceived outcome efficacy are more likely to generate pro-environmental behaviour in national parks. This study reveals the impacts of cute education on tourists in national parks, expanding the existing research on environmental education and the cuteness effect. The findings offer new insights for national park managers to promote pro-environmental behaviours amongst tourists, and also provide crucial guidance for DMOs on how to enhance tourists’ pro-environmental behaviour after engaging in cuteness education.

ABSTRACT Prior studies have investigated donation behavior across different groups; however, limited research has systematically examined how political ideologies shape the underlying motivations for donating. Accordingly, this study explores why individuals adhering to three ideologies (conservatism, kemalism, and nationalism) engage in donation behavior. Data were collected through focus groups and semi-structured interviews and then analyzed using qualitative content analysis. As a result, six distinct themes representing common and unique donation motivations among ideological adherents were identified. Individuals in all three groups commonly make donations motivated by warm glow-giving. Conservatives’ and kemalists’ donations mitigate their feelings of guilt. Nationalists and kemalists view donations as a means to achieve value congruence with the adhered group. Conservatives make donations with the expectation of receiving rewards hereafter. Donations are crucial for Kemalists to gain recognition in society. Lastly, nationalists regard helping others as a civic duty. By linking political ideology with donation behavior, the study advances theoretical understanding of ideological drivers of giving and provides practical insights for nonprofit organizations to develop ideology-sensitive donor engagement strategies.

Daylight spilled through the open folds of Alexander’s tent, casting a warm glow on the finely woven rugs that softened the ground beneath their boots. The air was thick with the scent of figs and sun-warmed leather, mingling with the faint aroma of oil from the gilded armour resting on a polished wooden stand near the back. Embroidered tapestries hung along the walls, bearing the symbols of Macedon and Persia—the sun and the lion intertwined—a visual declaration of Alexander’s expanding empire. A bronze basin glimmered in the corner, reflecting the light, while untouched goblets sat abandoned among a scattering of scrolls and maps on the low table. Hephaestion stood dutifully at Alexander’s right, as he often did, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes rested on the king, who leaned forward over the table, a finger tracing the eastern edge of the map with a wistful precision. There was a fire in Alexander’s gaze—a gleam Hephaestion knew well. It was the spark that could rally armies or raze cities, a force that inspired both awe and fear.

“It’s a win-win”: Warm glow feeling and intention to buy a price-promoted responsible product

The contribution of meal kits to the waste problem has become a significant concern, leading consumers to demand sustainable practices from meal-kit companies. This study proposes a framework to understand customer behavior toward sustainable meal-kit brands that promote practices such as recycling and waste reduction. This study applies warm glow theory to investigate how pure and impure altruism affect consumers’ perceptions of a meal-kit brand’s sustainability, perceived price fairness, and continuance intention. The findings confirmed that meal-kit brands’ sustainable practices significantly enhanced consumers’ perceptions of brand sustainability, which in turn influenced their perceived price fairness and continuance intention. Furthermore, warm glow and altruistic values were found to significantly moderate the relationship between consumers’ perceptions of brand sustainability and their continuance intention. However, no significant moderating effects were observed between consumers’ perceptions of brand sustainability and perceived price fairness. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying consumer attitudes and behaviors toward meal-kit brands’ sustainability efforts.

In the bustling world of the modern workplace, where ambition and recognition often collide, a curious dynamic unfolds. Some employees thrive on appreciation, their efforts blooming under the warm glow of acknowledgment. Others, particularly those with narcissistic traits, react in ways that are far more complex—sometimes expected, sometimes surprising. This study dives into the intricate relationship between narcissism, recognition, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), peeling back the layers of what drives employees to go beyond their formal duties. We look at five dimensions of OCB—altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue. As the findings reveal, recognition is a powerful force, but one that doesn’t always land as intended. When narcissistic employees are publicly praised, they respond with sharpened focus and diligence, their conscientiousness surging as if to prove they were always the star of the show. Yet, in moments when status-enhancing rewards are on the line, sportsmanship falters. Patience wears thin, and a competitive edge emerges—after all, why endure inconveniences when the spotlight could be stolen by someone else? Curiously, the more selfless dimensions of OCB, such as altruism, courtesy, and civic virtue, remain largely unmoved by recognition. Perhaps because true generosity requires something beyond external validation. The implications are clear: recognition programs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. To harness motivation, organizations must understand what truly fuels their employees—be it ambition, admiration, or something deeper.

In the circular economy, the existing literature on tourism and marketing has revealed very few studies investigating how firms’ green knowledge-sharing policies drive travellers’ revisiting behavioural intention, constituting a significant gap that needs to be studied. Drawing on the service-dominant logic theory, this study unravels (a) the multiple mediating roles of pro-environmental behaviours and warm glow and (b) the moderated mediation role of green trustworthiness of social media influencer in the relationship between green knowledge sharing and revisiting behavioural intention. A quantitative study was employed based on time-lagged survey data collected from 1,694 respondents in Vietnam. The research findings support our prediction that two variables, travellers’ pro-environmental behaviours and warm glow, can mediate the relationship between a firm’s green knowledge sharing and travellers’ revisiting behavioural intention. Additionally, the study finds that the green trustworthiness of social media influencers can moderate the mediating relationship (via pro-environmental behaviours). However, unexpectedly, green trustworthiness does not moderate the mediating relationship via a warm glow. These findings are critical to contributing to the business implications, focusing on using online strategies and green knowledge sharing by social media influencers to foster responsible tourism and enhance green marketing, ultimately aiding sustainable development.

Abstract This paper combines several large-scale surveys and empirical strategies to shed new light on the determinants of cooperative behavior. We provide evidence indicating that the level of trust maximizing subjective well-being tends to be above the income maximizing level. Higher trust is also linked to more cooperative and pro-social behaviors, including the private provision of global public goods such as climate change mitigation. Consistent with “warm glow” theories of pro-social behavior, our results indicate that individuals may enjoy being more cooperative than what would lead them to maximize income, which can be reflected in higher levels of subjective well-being.

This study explores the effect of sustainability communication on employee ecological behavior in green hospitals in China, with the mediating effects of communal relationships and ecological norms and the moderating effect of green warm glow. The study design was a cross-sectional survey conducted with 428 employees of several green hospitals. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data in testing the hypothesized relationships. The results show that sustainability communication has a direct positive influence (β = 0.238, p < 0.001), and an indirect positive influence on ecological behavior through communal relationships (β = 0.095, p < 0.001) and ecological norms (β = 0.074, p < 0.001). Furthermore, green warm glow significantly buffers the relationship between communal relationships and ecological behavior (β = 0.107, p < 0.001), while failing to significantly buffer the relationship through ecological norms (β = 0.009, p = 0.831). These results reinforce the importance of effective sustainability communication strategies in developing ecological behavior, via psychological and relational pathways, with the potential to increase sustainability practices in the healthcare sector.

Encouraging online green purchasing requires overcoming the abstract nature of e-commerce and making the environmental benefits of green products more tangible. Augmented reality (AR) is a promising tool that allows consumers to try on green products virtually, fostering self-proximity—the perception that the augmented self-representation is close to oneself. We explore how and under what conditions AR-enabled self-proximity enhances consumer responses to green products. We find that AR-enabled self-proximity enhances the personal relevance of green products, heightens the anticipated warm glow, and improves consumer responses to green products. AR is particularly effective in promoting green purchasing because it heightens anticipated warm glow, which in turn leads to higher purchase intentions for green products than for generic ones. We highlight the need to carefully design AR experiences that emphasize self-relevance and intrinsic rewards to maximize impact, offer practical recommendations, and suggest avenues for future research in this growing area of study.

We examine the role of borrower societal culture in influencing microlender funding amounts. Prior research has highlighted the ‘warm glow’ of giving as motivating lenders, finding that certain individual attributes of borrowers can lead to better outcomes for them. Recent work, however, suggests that the borrower’s societal culture may be an important contextual factor to consider. We use societal culture theory from Project GLOBE, a cross-cultural management study that includes 63 cultures, to hypothesise that uncertainty avoidance, future orientation and power distance practices of a borrower’s societal cultures will influence the loan amount. Using a sample of 506,671 microlending projects from Kiva, we find that all three cultural practice dimensions are negatively related to funding amounts. The findings are robust across a series of additional tests. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings in international funding decisions and their value in explaining low-stakes decisions in low-information contexts.

ABSTRACTPromoting word‐of‐mouth for green products enhances consumer awareness and increases product acceptance. Given the distinct perceptions associated with purchasing green versus conventional products, the internal processes underlying word‐of‐mouth intentions may differ. Drawing on self‐verification theory, this study develops a conceptual model to investigate the impact of green product consumption on consumers' word‐of‐mouth intentions. To test the hypotheses, the study collected data from an online survey of 397 consumers and analyzed it using structural equation modeling. The results reveal that consumers' awareness of a product's green benefits significantly enhances both warm glow and psychological empowerment. In turn, warm glow fosters pro‐environmental and self‐expression motivations, while psychological empowerment strengthens self‐expression and dominance motivations. These motivations, in turn, positively influence word‐of‐mouth intentions. Moreover, the effect of green benefits on warm glow is more pronounced for consumers with a stronger prevention focus, while those with a stronger promotion focus experience greater psychological empowerment. The findings contribute to the understanding of the internal psychological mechanisms underlying word‐of‐mouth intentions following green consumption. They also offer a new perspective on the spillover effects of green product consumption and enrich the theoretical literature on word‐of‐mouth behavior. Additionally, the study provides valuable practical implications for businesses seeking to effectively manage word‐of‐mouth in the context of green consumption.

Drawing upon warm glow theory, this paper examines the effects of various hotel collaboration strategies on guests’ intentions to engage in green consumption. The findings from three scenario-based experiments reveal that hotel collaboration strategies significantly boost guests green consumption intentions, and reciprocal strategies prove to be more effective than incentive-based ones. Warm glow serves as a mediator in the association between hotel collaboration strategies and guests’ green consumption intentions, with reciprocal strategies fostering a stronger warm glow effect compared to incentive-based strategies. The mediating function of warm glow amid hotel collaboration strategies and guests’ green consumption intentions is regulated by environmental self-identity, thereby generating a moderated mediation effect on these intentions. This paper advances theoretical and empirical research on the application of collaborative strategy nudges in fostering green consumption within the hotel sector. It additionally makes contributions to the studies regarding warm glow and green consumption in hotels, presenting actionable insights for hoteliers who aim to effectively inspire guests’ green consumption intentions.

Digitalization has transformed the way enterprises communicate corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, highlighting the critical role of interactive content in the realm of digital CSR (DSR). This research investigates the influence of informational and emotional DSR content on consumer perceptions and behavioral outcomes through two experimental studies. Study 1 employed a one-factor between-subjects design (informational vs. emotional) with 50 participants in each condition. Study 2 utilized a 2×2 factorial design (content type: informational vs. emotional; product quality certification: present vs. absent), with 50 participants assigned to each of the four conditions. The results demonstrate that informational content significantly enhances consumers' perceptions of competence and positively influences purchase intentions. In contrast, emotional content primarily evokes perceptions of warmth but does not directly impact purchase intentions. However, the presence of product quality certification amplifies the effectiveness of emotional content, creating a "warm glow" effect that enhances warmth perceptions and fosters consumer engagement. These findings underscore the importance of combining emotional content with informational details, such as time, place, amount, and channel, to balance warmth and competence in DSR communications. By integrating the Stereotype Content Model and the "warm glow" effect into DSR research, this study provides theoretical advancements and practical insights for optimizing DSR-related interactive content strategies to maximize consumer engagement and purchase behavior.