Browsing by Author "Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P."
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Item EXTENDING THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR: FACTORS PREDICTING INTENTIONS TO PERFORM HANDWASHING PROTOCOL IN CROSS-CULTURAL FOODSERVICE SETTINGS(2011-05) Burusnukul, Pattarapong; Harp, Shelley S.; Stout, Betty L.; Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P.; Callison, Coy; Binkley, MargaretAnnually billions of consumers worldwide experience foodborne illnesses attributed to sub-standard hygienic practices. A contributing issue often cited is inadequate and improper handwashing by foodservice workers. Handwashing compliance in the foodservice industry has been reported to be sub-optimal and in critical need of improvement. In order to achieve successful behavioral change, a range of personal, social, and environmental factors as well as barriers to performing food safety practices in retail foodservice establishments need to be addressed. Research shows relying on educational training alone is ineffective and likely to produce limited results. Therefore, a comprehensive intervention program that incorporates an educational component and addresses the ecological factors influential to the performance of handwashing behavior in the organizational infrastructure is needed to ensure optimal results. In-depth understanding of the relationships among factors influencing handwashing intention, handwashing behavior, and knowledge about handwashing performance would be useful to foodservice providers for the development and implementation of effective handwashing intervention programs. The purpose of this research was two-fold: (a) to develop a theoretical framework for the investigation of handwashing behavior in the foodservice context and (b) to validate the foodservice handwashing theoretical framework in a cross-cultural context. A research-based model incorporating the psychology-based Theory of Planned Behavior (TpB) was proposed to explain the relationships among ecological variables and to better understand the motivational factors underlying foodservice workers’ handwashing performance in two cultures, the United States (US) and Taiwan, Republic of China (ROC). Data were collected in the Fall of 2009 in the US and in the Fall of 2010 in Taiwan, ROC from a convenience sample comprised of undergraduate university students majoring in Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts programs who had foodservice work experience. For each cultural context, data were analyzed to assess the validity and reliability of the self-administered handwashing survey instrument and to evaluate the utility of the hypothesized TpB based model in examining handwashing behavior in foodservice settings. Further, data analysis was performed to examine the relationships among the multi-item variables including: (a) handwashing behavior, (b) intention, (c) attitude, (d) subjective norm, (e) perceived behavioral control, (f) subjective knowledge, (g) behavioral beliefs, (h) normative beliefs, and (i) control beliefs. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated the handwashing assessment instrument (FS/HB-76) was successfully developed, having validity and reliability in measuring the constructs of the extended TpB to examine handwashing behavior in the foodservice context. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses showed acceptable model fit to the observed data from self-administered surveys suggesting the capability of utilizing the extended TpB in explaining and predicting foodservice workers’ handwashing behavior in both the US and Taiwan, ROC foodservice contexts. However, these findings should be accepted with caution in light of the revealed relationships among various influential factors and handwashing intention and behavior. For US foodservice workers (N = 265), SEM results revealed a non-significant relationship between handwashing intention and previous handwashing performance. Of the basic TpB motivational factors (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control), only attitude influenced handwashing intention. Subjective knowledge, as an extension to the TpB, was found to have significant impact and direct influence on handwashing intention, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. For Taiwan, ROC foodservice workers (N = 297), no significant relationship between handwashing intention and previous handwashing performance was found. However, handwashing performance was directly influenced by perceived behavioral control. Of the basic TpB motivational factors, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control influenced handwashing intention. The proposed subjective knowledge was found to have direct influence on intention as well as indirect influence on intention through subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. While not initially hypothesized, control beliefs were found to have direct influence on subjective norm. For researchers, findings contribute to the body of knowledge pertaining to food safety in the epidemiological literature and provide a replicable theoretical framework for empirical research. For academicians and foodservice practitioners, this research offers practical information that can be (a) incorporated into the development of more effective food safety intervention programs and (b) used in managerial applications for improving handwashing compliance in the foodservice industry. Data for this research were acquired from convenience samples of undergraduate students with foodservice work experience enrolled at two universities in each cultural context. Therefore, caution needs to be taken when generalizing the findings to other foodservice workers. Future research should replicate the study with a sample drawn from the general population of foodservice workers in diverse foodservice formats (e.g., casual and fast-food restaurants; independent, chain, franchised restaurants; and institutional foodservices) to increase demographic diversity in the sample (e.g., educational background, age, ethnic identification, geographic location) and generalizability of research results. Further, pre-intervention and post-intervention assessments should be conducted to establish cause and effect of intervention on foodservice workers’ psychological characteristics regarding motivational factors toward handwashing behavior. In addition, consideration should be given to conducting direct observation in acquiring data on handwashing performance to avoid the effects of social desirability bias and temporal difference of measurement (i.e., between intention and behavioral performance).Item Gratuity purchasing at wineries: The role of gratitude and obligation in purchases by winery visitors(2006-05) Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P.; Dodd, Timothy H.; Laverie, Debra A.; Stout, Betty L.Building on reciprocity theory, the current study investigated the role that gratitude and obligation, along with other consumer characteristics, play in purchasing at wineries. While at wineries, visitors may feel grateful to winery personnel for the quality of services received. These feelings of gratitude may trigger a desire to buy wine to show appreciation to the personnel. Alternatively, a sense of obligation, rather than gratitude, may be dominant. This sense of obligation may be the result of the free tasting and hospitality offered at the winery. Gratitude and obligation may lead to a perceived need to buy wine in return for services received at a winery. In this research, wine and souvenirs bought out of gratitude and obligation were defined as gratuity purchasing. The study was based on a survey of 357 visitors at six Texas wineries during summer 2005. A new instrument to measure gratitude and obligation was developed. Based on the multivariate statistical analysis of the data, gratitude and obligation were found to be strong predictors of visitors’ purchasing behavior. Product involvement, purchase involvement, and product knowledge also have predictive value for visitors’ purchasing decisions. Additional results indicated that visitors who travel to wineries in smaller groups feel more grateful to winery personnel and more obliged to buy wine than those visitors who travel in larger groups. Consequently, visitors who travel in smaller groups tend to spend more money on wine than larger groups.Item Gratuity purchasing at wineries: the role of gratitude and obligation in purchases by winery visitors(Texas Tech University, 2006-05) Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P.Building on reciprocity theory, the current study investigated the role that gratitude and obligation, along with other consumer characteristics, play in purchasing at wineries. While at wineries, visitors may feel grateful to winery personnel for the quality of services received. These feelings of gratitude may trigger a desire to buy wine to show appreciation to the personnel. Alternatively, a sense of obligation, rather than gratitude, may be dominant. This sense of obligation may be the result of the free tasting and hospitality offered at the winery. Gratitude and obligation may lead to a perceived need to buy wine in return for services received at a winery. In this research, wine and souvenirs bought out of gratitude and obligation were defined as gratuity purchasing. The study was based on a survey of 357 visitors at six Texas wineries during summer 2005. A new instrument to measure gratitude and obligation was developed. Based on the multivariate statistical analysis of the data, gratitude and obligation were found to be strong predictors of visitors’ purchasing behavior. Product involvement, purchase involvement, and product knowledge also have predictive value for visitors’ purchasing decisions. Additional results indicated that visitors who travel to wineries in smaller groups feel more grateful to winery personnel and more obliged to buy wine than those visitors who travel in larger groups. Consequently, visitors who travel in smaller groups tend to spend more money on wine than larger groups.Item How self-confidence and knowledge effects the sources of information selected during purchase situations(Texas Tech University, 2008-05) Barber, Nelson A.; Dodd, Timothy H.; Blum, Shane C.; Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P.The wine market is changing at such a fast pace, wine producers need to competitively market their products and services to consumers. However, consumers bring to the buying decision different types of experiences and expectations. Therefore, it is necessary to target consumers, understand their behavioral characteristics, purchase decisions, and their purchasing needs. Factors affecting how customers make decisions are extremely complex and not all decisions are treated the same. Some decisions are more complex, while others are fairly routine. Information search and self-confidence have emerged as critical and central components of consumer decision making models with situational determinants considered an important attribute to consider. This study investigated the mediating role self-confidence plays with knowledge in the selection of sources of information given different wine purchase situations. The research design was a self administered on-line survey distributed to 1,200 individuals. Based upon multivariate analysis and structural equation modeling, this research found past experience to be the most influential predictor of a consumer’s wine knowledge, particularly their level of subjective knowledge. This research also found consumers with high levels of subjective knowledge likely to have high levels of self-confidence, confirming the mediating effect of self-confidence and suggesting consumer’s are likely to use themselves as a source of information, rather than other sources. Results suggest that subjective knowledge may have other measurable and meaningful components, such as self-efficacy, that play an important part in the consumers’ ability to make a purchase decision.Item Wine education courses: Changes in wine preferences and motivations for attending(2008-08) Taylor, David C.; Dodd, Timothy H.; Kolyesnikova, Nataliya P.; Yuan, JingxueLike art, wine can be an aesthetic product that requires knowledge before it can be fully understood. To dispel this confusion and to develop knowledge about wine, wine education courses are conducted across the globe. This dissertation is the first study to look at what motivates consumers to take wine education courses. Additionally, this dissertation explores what effects wine education courses have on consumer preferences and their knowledge about wine. For the first study, 131 past and current participants in a wine appreciation course were surveyed to understand what motivated them to attend the course. The findings were different than what has been found in other studies for what motivated people to take other continuing education courses and were different than the motivations to go to a wine festivals. The main motivation for the participants was that they were motivated to become better wine consumers. For the second study, a quasi-experimental design was utilized. Participants were given a test and questionnaire about wine at the beginning of the course which gauged both their subjective knowledge, or what they think they know, and objective knowledge, what they actually knew. They were also asked to blind taste wines and rank those wines. At the end of the course, they repeated both the questionnaire and the blind tasting. The results showed that objective knowledge actually increased, but participants subjective knowledge did not. So, they may have known more but they did not think that they did. Further, though it was anticipated that preferences would change for wine styles following the wine course, they did not. Rankings of wines actually did, though, decrease between pre and post-course. Wine appears to continue to be a confusing topic to consumers, even after they attend a wine course. Though participants seemed to have become more discriminating tasters, as evidenced by the lower rankings of the wines in the post-test, they still did not believe that they were any more knowledgeable about wine, so other methods need to be developed which build subjective knowledge.