Explore the vast range of titles available.

This paper explores how communication interventions can be designed to motivate children to choose more sustainable commuting options (cycling) to go to school. One-hundred and eighty-six children (between 8 and 11 years old) from Flanders, Belgium, participated in an intervention study testing the effectiveness of using informative versus behavioral interventions and the moderating role of motivational messages. The study employed a between-subjects research design with 3 types of interventions (informational versus behavioral versus a combination of informational and behavioral interventions) and 2 types of motivation (autonomous versus controlled motivation). Findings revealed that the average change in the number of times the child indicated to commute by cycling was biggest after being exposed to a combination of informational and behavioral interventions. The type of motivation (autonomous versus controlled) did not have an impact on the average change in the number of times the child indicated to commute by cycling, nor moderated these effects. Additionally, including age and gender as covariates in the model did not alter the results. The study’s findings provide more insights in how sustainable commuting can be promoted among children. It shows the benefits of combining informational and behavioral interventions in public awareness programs (such as in schools).

Children’s personal data are often collected for commercial aims. Although regulations in different countries aim to protect children’s privacy (e.g., by imposing websites to request parental consent for the processing of children’s data for commercial purposes), concerns about protecting children’s online data continue to rise. This article therefore aims to get insights into parents’ and children’s privacy coping strategies and perceptions underlying these strategies. In-depth interviews with ten parents and nine children (8–11 years) were conducted. Findings show that although children engaged in avoidance (e.g., leaving the particular website) and confrontation (e.g., seeking support) strategies, they mainly did this to protect their privacy from malicious individuals—and not from commercial parties. Participating children also lacked general knowledge about both explicit and implicit data practices. To protect their children’s privacy, parents in this study mainly adopted restrictive mediation strategies, but lacked the knowledge to undertake concrete actions in the case of implicit data collection. Implications for policymakers are discussed.

Water resources are under pressure, which poses serious challenges for our society. Persuading individuals to conserve water is difficult, especially when they have the impression that they already conserve water. This is identified as the cognitive bias of self-assessment, where a lack of information can lead to misperceiving one’s performance. This means that people misperceive their actual performance and have the self-perception of behaving “good enough”, or “better” than others while this is not the case. This paper explores the magnitude of these misperceptions, their impact on water conservation intentions and linkages to personal and situational factors. An online survey ( n  = 1013) explored whether individuals under-/over-/correctly estimated their own water conservation performance in comparison with others and examines if personality traits (i.e. intentions to conserve water, moral obligation to conserve water, personal values) and situational factors (i.e. social influence, exposure to media content) can explain the tendency of the individuals’ misperceptions of their self-assessment. The results revealed that people do have misperceptions about water conservation (with at least half of the sample misperceiving to perform better or even worse than the norm). Results also demonstrated that a combination of personal and situational factors is related to the incorrect self-assessment of water conservation performance. The work reveals tendencies and potential explanations for misperceptions, but also potential barriers to promote water conservation.

This paper investigates (1) whether the physical attractiveness stereotype applies to children, (2) whether children’s self-perception is influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, (3) whether children’s attitudes towards an ad and buying intentions for a non-beauty-related product are influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, and (4) whether age affects (1), (2), and (3). Results of two experimental studies with respectively 8–9-year-old ( N  = 75) and 12–13 year old ( N  = 57) girls and boys confirm the presence of the physical attractiveness stereotype in children. The presence of a moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) model has a negative influence on general self-worth for 8–9-year-old boys, but not for girls, nor for 12–13-year-old children. Exposure to a moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) model also has a positive influence on perceived physical appearance of 8–9-year-old girls, but this effect does not occur for boys, nor for 12–13-year-olds. The studies also show that moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) models increase attitudes and buying intentions for 8–9-year-olds, but not for 12–13-year-old boys and girls.

While spending significant time on the internet, children are often exposed to data disclosure requests from e-service providers. However, children are not always aware of the commercial value of their data, and often struggle to understand the associated privacy risks. At the same time, scholars have stressed the importance of such knowledge in the adaptation of privacy protective behavior. This study investigates how a privacy literacy training can increase childrens (9-12) privacy literacy, how it influences their online disclosure behavior and how it affects their privacy concern regarding to different levels of privacy costs (low versus high). Using two online experiments (n = 214 and n = 366 respectively), the study shows that a training enhances childrens general understanding of data practices, and it is effective in helping them to better protect their privacy, including holding back and fabricating personal information, and to identify low privacy risks. Findings also suggest that an enhanced privacy literacy evokes more negative brand responses. Being one of the first studies to investigate actual disclosure behavior among young children, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of how children cope with their online privacy, and it proposes important implications for policy makers and educators.

In both studies, children were randomly confronted with an advertisement using either an attractive or less attractive same-sex model of their own age group. To as sess the \"what is beautiful is good\" stereotype, we asked children to rate the sources on individual characteristics, which were adapted from previous studies and adjusted to the age of our sample on a five-point scale. [...]children completed the SPP-A subscales again.