Publications Database
Welcome to the new Schulich Peer-Reviewed Publication Database!
The database is currently in beta-testing and will be updated with more features as time goes on. In the meantime, stakeholders are free to explore our faculty’s numerous works. The left-hand panel affords the ability to search by the following:
- Faculty Member’s Name;
- Area of Expertise;
- Whether the Publication is Open-Access (free for public download);
- Journal Name; and
- Date Range.
At present, the database covers publications from 2012 to 2020, but will extend further back in the future. In addition to listing publications, the database includes two types of impact metrics: Altmetrics and Plum. The database will be updated annually with most recent publications from our faculty.
If you have any questions or input, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Search Results
Vitor Lima and Russell Belk (2023). "Biohacking COVID-19: Sharing Is Not Always Caring", Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 42(4), 326-342.
Abstract
This netnographic study investigates how and why people engage with citizen science initiatives and share insights from them in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this research focuses on biohacking, a form of citizen science in which individuals conduct innovative but controversial self-experiments. In a context of ideological, behavioral, and emotional tensions, biohackers seek to do what they consider to be “the right thing” for themselves and others. Some biohackers believed that governmental “solutions” for the pandemic were not “correct” or “the best” and shared scientifically unproven protocols to develop, for example, homemade vaccines. However, in many cases, biohackers may unintentionally create harm while intending to do good by sharing such “solutions.” In this vein, this research shows that sharing is not always caring, as biohacking related to COVID-19 exemplifies. Although sharing is a form of prosocial behavior, it has different motivations that may invert its epistemic prosocial orientation to an antisocial one. This orientation results in new challenges, as well as strengthening old challenges, for policy makers facing public crises, such as pandemics. The prescriptions for policy makers offered in this article aim to help reduce such an impact on governmental efforts to tackle collective crises.Chandler, V., Noseworthy, T., Pancer, E., and Poole, M. (2019). "How Readability Shapes Social Media Engagement", Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(2), 262-270.
Abstract
We suggest that text readability plays an important role in driving consumer engagement on social media.Consistent with a processing fluency account, we find that easy-to-read posts are more liked, commented on,and shared on social media. We analyze over 4,000 Facebook posts from Humans of New York, a popular pho-tography blog on social media, over a 3-year period to see how readability shapes social media engagement.The results hold when controlling for photo features, story valence, and other content-related characteristics.Experimental findings further demonstrate the causal impact of readability and the processing fluency mecha-nism in the context of a fictitious brand community. This research articulates the impact of processing fluencyon brief word-of-mouth transmissions in the real world while empirically demonstrating that readability as amessage feature matters. It also extends the impact of processing fluency to a novel behavioral outcome:commenting and sharing actions.Belk, R. (2016). "Accept No Substitutes: A Reply to Arnould and Rose", Marketing Theory, 16(1), 143-149.
Abstract
Arnould and Rose raise some interesting issues regarding my sharing paper (Belk 2010). We agree on some points, but I find that most of their contentions are misguided and are based on misunderstandings of the original paper, social science, the extended self, and the theory of the gift. Their alternative offering of mutuality is also perplexingly self-contradictory, romanticized, and illogical. In this reply I point out issues on which we agree as well as reasons for disagreement.Belk, R., Varman, R. and Vikas, R. (2015). "Status, Caste, and Markets in a Changing Indian Village", Journal of Consumer Research, 46(3), 472-498.
Abstract
When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an ethnographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an independent sphere where only money matters, but due to a mix of new socioeconomic motives, they produce new social obligations, contests, and solidarities. These findings call into question the emphasis in consumer research on top-down class emulation as an essential characteristic of status hierarchies. This study offers insights into sharing as a means of enacting and reshaping symbolic power within a status hierarchy. A new order based on markets and consumption is disrupting the old order based on caste. As the old moral order dissolves, so do the old status hierarchies, obligations, dispositions, and norms of sharing that held the village together for centuries. In the microcosm of these gains and losses, we may see something of the broader social and economic changes taking place throughout India and other industrializing countries.Belk, R. (2014). "You Are What You Can Access: Sharing and Collaborative Consumption Online", Journal of Business Research, 67(8), 1595-1600.