Theoretical criteria for online consumer behaviour: web-based communication exposure and internal psychological behavioural processes approaches

Various theories, theoretical viewpoints and models on consumer behaviour stipulate consumers’ offline and online behaviour when purchasing a product or using a service. This article deviates from the purchasing perspective and instead proposes an information and web-based communication message ‘seeking and consumption¹ perspective. This new perspective is theoretically grounded in two new approaches to online consumer behaviour: the web-based communication exposure and internal psychological behavioural processes approaches; as well as the integration of various theoretical perspectives, approaches, theories and models that address fragments of offline and online consumer behaviour. The research problem is to address the existing limited and fragmented approaches, because existing purchasing perspectives arguably do not provide adequate theoretical criteria to explain online consumer behaviour during interactive information-seeking and consumption activities. Hence, the main aim of this article is to propose new theoretical criteria for online consumer behaviour to address these shortcomings.     

The European Court of Human Rights,Amicus Curiae,and Violence against Women

Are international courts and advocacy group legal mobilization shaping human rights politics? This question poses a theoretical and empirical challenge to state dominated understandings of international litigation. This article theorizes the interaction between advocacy groups and the European Court of Human Rights and the role this participation plays in the enforcement and development of human rights. The analyses examine institutional factors shaping broad trends in mobilization complemented by two in depth studies examining a single mode of participation, amicus curiae and a single area of law, violence against women. The data identify the critical role standing rules, court review powers and group expertise play in transnational rights mobilization and development. The findings bring into question dominant understandings of international law and contribute to a more complex understanding of law in a global age where international courts and societal actors are shaping the direction of rights protection.     

Intimate Partner Violence Screening in a Women Veterans’ Health Clinic: Assessing Feasibility

Women presenting for care within a suburban Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital (VA) were screened for intimate partner violence (IPV). This study aimed to explore the feasibility of screening for IPV within a VA women’s health clinic, assess how well the screening measure captured women veterans’ experiences of IPV, and compare clinical correlates of IPV in women veterans who have and have not experienced IPV. Of 96 eligible women, 93 (97 %) answered a self-report question regarding experience of lifetime IPV and 72 (75 %) participated in a standardized screening. Among participants, 42 (47 %) reported experiencing past or current IPV, and of those, 11 (25 %) reported that they were currently experiencing IPV, and 31 (70 %) reported that they had experienced IPV in their past. Screening for IPV among women veterans in a women’s health clinic is feasible and identifies women who experience IPV, offering opportunities for referral and intervention.     

The ethical identity of law students

This paper uses measures of values, moral outlook and professional identity to explore the ethical and professional identity of law students. We do so in two jurisdictions, surveying 441 students studying in England and Wales and 569 students studying in the US. The survey covers the first and final years of an undergraduate law degree and the postgraduate vocational stage in England and Wales, as well as students in all years of the JD programme in the US. We explore whether law students towards the end of their legal education have ethical identities predictive of less ethical conduct than those at the beginning of their legal education; whether law students intending careers in business law have values and profiles consistent with less ethical conduct than those intending to work for government or individuals; and what factors might explain these differences in ethical outlook. Our findings suggest that ethical identity is strongly associated with gender and career intentions. They also suggest weaker moral identities for students intending to practise business law. Ultimately, our findings support a conclusion that is more nuanced than the predominant theses about the impact of legal education on student ethicality which tend to suggest legal education diminishes ethicality.     

Understanding Pathways to Family Dispute Resolution and Justice Reforms: Ontario Court File Analysis & Survey of Professionals

This article reports on two related studies about varying pathways to the resolution of family disputes and the effects of family justice reforms in Ontario: a survey of family court professionals (n = 118) and an analysis of 1,000 closed court files of family cases involving children. Both studies reveal that the vast majority of cases are resolved without a trial, often by negotiation. While professionals generally support family justice reform initiatives, there remain significant gaps in the implementation of these strategies. For example, many litigants do not attend information programs despite the requirement for mandatory attendance; there is limited use of mediation; the views of children are being sought in only a small number of cases; and there is a large proportion of self‐represented family litigants. Despite the increase in shared care and joint decision‐making arrangements, a majority of cases in the court file study were sole custody arrangements to the mother, whether the case was settled or resolved by trial. Mediation was associated with greater time of contact with the non–primary residential parent (usually the father).     

Testifying Absence in the Era of Forensic Testimony

Commenting on the significance of his work at a mass grave in Vukovar, Croatia, 1993–1995, anthropologist Clyde Snow predicted that the application of forensic scientific methods in the documentation of mass atrocity would help prevent the future denial of atrocities. A couple of years later in nearby Kosovo, others would follow forensic scientific investigators only to report what they never saw or never found leading many commentators and tertiary witnesses to doubt that atrocities had occurred. As absence and lack arise against the backdrop of forensic discourse, we are called upon to weigh the stakes of negative evidence witnessing and its implications for cultural memory. This article contends that the semiotic and positional peculiarity of negative evidence in an era of forensic testimony has its analogue in the paschal figure of Jesus’ empty tomb. Analyzing the rhetoric of denial that accompanied the forensic investigations of Kosovo in the late 1990s, the author suggests that the empty tomb is a paradigm that renders intelligible the interdiction implicitly placed on the forensic presencing of the body as well as the problematic with which memory is met in a world where forensic scientific testimony grows in importance.     

Automatic Gait Recognition and its Potential Role in Counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

Closed-circuit television footage can be used to assemble an often-complex picture of an incident and aid in the identification of suspects after a crime or terrorist attack has occurred. For example, such footage allowed the police to not only identify the 7/7 London bombers but also to piece together the details of the bombers' movements prior to the attack. In the case of the London bombers little attempt was made to disguise their identities but where such identities are concealed it is possible to identify suspects based on other unique biometric characteristics such as the style of walk, referred to as gait. Gait feature–based individual identification has received increased attention from biometrics researchers. In this article, we propose a novel gait biometric methodology that could contribute to the counterterrorism effort and the identification of individuals involved in crime.     

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors approached South Sudan as a tabula rasa, ready for peace and development; since then, engagement has shifted back to large-scale humanitarian efforts and crisis response. This paper investigates how international actors have engaged with the South Sudanese state and local actors in order to improve access to basic services and build state capacity to deliver those services and provide social protection and livelihood support, what the impacts of such engagement have been, and what aid actors can learn from this history. The paper draws on four years of fieldwork by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), with a focus on Jonglei State.     

Post-Foreclosure Conveyance of Occupied Homes and Preferential Sales to Nonprofits: Rationales,Policies, and Underlying Conflicts

This article explores the reasons why the conveyance of foreclosed homes with occupants makes sense, and why nonprofits should be given preferential treatment as purchasers, as well as the relevant policies and practices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Administration (HUD/FHA) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (FHFA/GSEs). It also presents recommendations for revising current policies, and suggestions for further research. These issues also raise underlying questions about how the federal agencies view their public purpose roles and the implications for possible increased long-term public costs to shelter low-income households displaced because of foreclosure of their homes. Although HUD/FHA’s guidelines allow for conveyance of foreclosed homes with occupants, the evidence—interviews with key stakeholders in Boston and data obtained from HUD through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request—reveal that the guidelines are largely irrelevant in practice. Although there has been a change in an FHFA policy that could soften the GSEs’ practice of no occupants at conveyance, it is not yet clear whether this will result in former owners and tenants being allowed to remain in their homes following foreclosure. Concerning preferential sales to nonprofits, whereas positive new policies have been issued by both the FHFA and HUD, the extent of implementation is not known. Finally, it appears that HUD/FHA and the FHFA/GSEs view foreclosed homes more as financial assets, whose value they seek to maximize, rather than as dwellings for financially strained households that, if evicted, may need additional housing subsidies and as part of a strategy to preemptively stabilize neighborhoods.