Ethical consumer behaviour has been receiving much attention in recent times, due to heightened social issue on sustainability, corporate social responsibility and ethical consumption from the community. Integrated with the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory, this study investigates the influences of altruistic, biospheric, and hedonic values on ethical buying behaviour under the mediating mechanism of behavioural beliefs, personal norms, and subjective norms. Moreover, the present research also explores the moderating effects of perceived product quality and social stigma in the relationship between subjective norms, personal norms and ethical buying behaviour. A cross-sectional survey design approach was employed where data were gathered from students studying in India. The findings indicate that altruistic, biospheric, and hedonic values have an indirect impact on ethical buying behaviour via related behavioural beliefs, personal norms, and subjective norms. The moderating roles of quality and stigma show some interesting counteracting influences. Product quality was found to enhance the subjective norms and ethical buying behaviour relationship while undermining the relationship between personal norms and ethical buying behaviour. By contrast, stigma reduced the influence of subjective norms but enhanced the effect of personal norms on ethical buying behaviour. The work adds to the ethical consumption literature by combining theoretical perspectives and emphasising the complexity of how these moderating variables function in ethical decision-making. The findings provide both theoretical implications from the perspective of the psychological mechanism of ethical behaviour and managerial implications for firms looking to motivate ethical consumption.

In the modern ever-changing organizational environment, where hybrid workplace arrangement is becoming increasingly common, and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been used widely, employees tend to face a situation characterized by ambiguity of work and it is difficult to perceive an understanding of role, expectations, and employment. The paper explores the interrelationship between task ambiguity, risk-taking by managers, AI-induced job insecurity, and employee outcomes in a hybrid working environment. This is based on Social Information Processing Theory where we advance a theoretical model that explores how workforce members actively learn and process information in their social context to get through ambiguity and foster resilience. The evidence of the proposed relationships is substantiated by three studies. Study 1 focuses on the way task ambiguity influences active lurking and also job engagement. Study 2 explores with the moderating factor on the relationship among the variables of task ambiguity, active lurking, and job engagement on managerial risk-taking. Study 3 examines how AI-induced job insecurity can moderate the link between task ambiguity and active lurking and job engagement. The results emphasize the need to ensure clear task specification, active lurking, management risk-taking and proactive efforts to reduce the issue of AI-induced job insecurity as factors that enhance employee engagement. The implications of the study are given and recommendations to conduct further research are outlined.