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Call for Paper: Journal of Consumer Behaviour special issue on Consumers' Transport and Mobility Decisions

  • 1.  Call for Paper: Journal of Consumer Behaviour special issue on Consumers' Transport and Mobility Decisions

    Posted 11-25-2021 03:45
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    Call for Papers - Special Issue of Journal of Consumer Behaviour

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14791838/homepage/call_for_papers

     

    Consumers' Transport and Mobility Decisions

     

    Submission Window: 1st November 2021 - 31st December 2021

     

    The decisions that individuals have to make about how to travel to undertake a range of activities, routine or non-routine, alone or with other people, have significant economic, environmental and health consequences. These decisions are influenced by both marketing strategies and government policies and yet, most of the research on transport and mobility decisions is conducted in either transportation science or transport economics (Gijsenberg and Verhoef, 2019). There are obviously some exceptions in the field of marketing and consumer behaviour. For instance, Bardhi and Eckhardt (2017) consider and utilise the context of 'car sharing' to inductively elucidate the constructs of access-based consumption versus ownership. Another related study on car sharing by Mohlmann (2015) indicates that, amongst other variables, service quality, trust and familiarity are important antecedents of satisfaction and use of the service. Qian, Soopramanien and Daryanto (2017) argue that the subjective knowledge of consumers about cars influences whether they choose foreign or local brands of cars.

     

    Given the key implications that consumers' choices about travelling have on the current climate change and obesity crises, we argue that there is a need to put consumer behaviour theories at the heart consumers' transport and mobility decision making. Relatedly, there is a need to consider decisions relating to mobility; a broader conceptualisation coined and mostly used by researchers in sociology (Buscher, Sheller and Tyfield, 2016). This would imply, at one level, decisions including but beyond, for example, the choice of which brand of cars consumers want to buy, towards focusing more on the choice of modes of transport such as the decisions related to adopting car sharing or ride sharing instead of driving their own cars. To further illustrate, consider the following proposition: The way consumers feel about their preferred mode of transport to commute to work can influence where they choose to reside and, vice versa; this can often entail renting a second home closer to work. Furthermore, in conjunction, the preference for certain modes of transport, in the first place, may be influenced by one's concern about the environment and their desire to change one's family lifestyle and self-perceptions (Belk, 1988).     

     

    It is an opportune time for the discipline of consumer behaviour to explicitly address transport and mobility decisions considering the significant technological, environmental and societal factors that continue to shape consumers' preferences and decisions: electrification of vehicles, government policies and regulations to tackle climate change, health crises (e.g., obesity and COVID-19), autonomous vehicles and sharing/collaborative and access-based consumption. The aim of the special issue is, therefore, to initiate a scholarly debate on consumers' transport and mobility decisions in order to enhance understanding of how specific consumer behaviour and psychological factors impact such decisions. The guest editors invite conceptual and empirical submissions that offer new and original insights in this domain. Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

    • Consumers' environmental/green attitudes and mobility decisions
    • The role of values (e.g. materialism) and value mapping in understanding mobility decisions
    • The roles of information, knowledge and learning in shaping mobility choices and decisions.
    • Levels of involvement in consumers' decision on transport and mobility (e.g. car and motorbike enthusiasts and their propensity to consider alternative modes of transport)
    • Functional and symbolic (status seeking) motivational factors and their impact on mobility decisions (e.g. the motivation to seek a certain type of status by owning an electric car instead of a petrol fuelled car-or vice versa)
    • Cross cultural differences in mobility preferences
    • Lifestyle, personality and psychographic factors and their influence on mobility decisions
    • The role of culture in consumers' transport and mobility decisions
    • Habit and habit formation and their influence on consumers propensity to switch to new transport mode alternatives
    • Risk perceptions and mobility decisions; e.g. the impact of technological risk on consumers' propensity to adopt autonomous vehicles (Brell, Philipsen and Ziefle, 2019) or infection risk associated with different travel modes (e.g. the declined usage of public transport/shared mobility and the upsurge of biking and using scooters in COVID-19 pandemic)
    • Antecedents of mode of transport dependency (e.g. car dependency attitudes and mobility preferences of consumers)

    Submission

    All manuscripts submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or be currently under consideration elsewhere.

    Manuscripts  should  be  submitted  in  accordance  with  the  JCB  author  guidelines  online

    All submissions should be made via the ScholarOne online submission system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cb) and should be made to the special issue which is identified on the submission site.

    The starting date for submissions: 1st November 2021

    The deadline for submissions is: 31st of December 2021

    Guest Editors

    Dr. Lixian Qian, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (Lixian.Qian@xjtlu.edu.cn)

    Dr Didier Soopramanien, Loughborough University (D.G.Soopramanien@lboro.ac.uk)

    Dr Nina Michaelidou, Loughborough University (N.Michaelidou@lboro.ac.uk)



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    Lixian Qian
    Senior Associate Professor
    Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
    Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
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