Predictors of the Intention to Be Vaccinated against COVID-19 in a Sample of Italian Respondents at the Start of the Immunization Campaign

COVID-19 vaccines are the most promising means of limiting the pandemic. The present study aims at determining the roles of several psychological variables in predicting vaccination intention in Italy. An online questionnaire was disseminated between 9 March and 9 May 2021. The sample included 971 participants. Results showed that most of the participants were willing to vaccinate. Acceptance rates were correlated with age, marital status, and area of residence. Intention to be vaccinated was positively correlated with perceived risk, pro-sociality, fear of COVID-19, use of preventive behaviors, and trust in government, in science, and in medical professionals. Intention to be vaccinated was negatively associated with belief in misinformation. The degree of acceptance is likely to be a result of the campaign tailored to address people’s negative attitudes towards vaccines. Trust in government and trust in science were among the strongest psychological predictors of vaccination intention. Fear of COVID-19, but not perceived risk, was associated with increased vaccine uptake, suggesting that the affective component of risk perception was more important than the cognitive component in predicting participants’ behaviors. Belief in misinformation was associated with reduced vaccination intention. Future studies will take into consideration these variables, to better understand the multifaceted process underlying vaccination intention.

Investigating Business Potential and Users’ Acceptance of Circular Economy: A Survey and an Evaluation Model

Circular economy is gaining attention in business and society to advance sustainability. This paradigm is particularly relevant for energy-consuming products such as washing machines, where alternatives to linear economy such as pay-per-use and refurbishment are gaining ground. To succeed, these business models should achieve consensus and acceptance among users. However, little attention has been paid to customers’ interest for circular economy business models so far. This paper aims to compare the economic and environmental impacts of pay-per wash and refurbishment business models, while investigating the degree of users’ acceptance and factors influencing it. A survey has been designed to collect users’ data regarding washing machine consumption patterns and acceptance rates of the circular business models. An evaluation model was developed to assess the economic and environmental impacts of pay-per-wash and refurbishment against a traditional linear model, fed with data from 279 Italian households collected through the survey. Finally, logistic regressions were carried out to investigate the influence of different customer, product, and usage factors on the acceptance rates of the two circular business models. Results show that, on average, pay-per-wash business models and washing machine refurbishment can guarantee environmental savings. However, only refurbishment generates economic savings for users. Moreover, only around half of the users’ sample shows a positive degree of acceptance of such alternatives. Respondent age has been found as a significant factor influencing the interest towards a refurbishment model, while the washing machine failures experienced by users and the relevance of the environmental gains achievable influence the acceptance rate of pay-per-wash models. Thus, when offering pay-per-wash schemes, suppliers should emphasize the information on the environmental benefits of this alternative, and that with such models they take over the responsibility and costs for maintenance and repair. On the other hand, providers of refurbished products should target younger consumers, who are less affected by a bias against second-hand goods.

“Spanish Palliative Care Nurses’ Degree of Acceptance of a Proposal for Nursing Competencies in Palliative Care”

Background In Spain, palliative care (PC) nursing is not a recognized specialization and PC nurses do not receive systematic specialized academic training in PC. To ensure the quality of PC in Spain, the Spanish Association of Palliative Care Nursing has been working since 2011 to design a model of competencies for PC nurses. Objective: Verify whether a sample of Spanish PC nurses accepts the proposed model of PC nursing competencies describing their work. Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional observational study based on an ad-hoc questionnaire about 98 proposed competencies, which participants rated for whether they belong to the purview of PC nurses and for their degree of concordance with their own practice and their degree of importance in PC nursing. Competencies receiving approval by more than 75% of participants for the three dimensions were considered to have been accepted by consensus. Mixed logistical models were developed to study the association between demographic variables and the responses. Results: Sixty-two out of 98 proposed competencies were accepted by more than 75% of participants. We therefore considered these competencies to have been accepted by consensus. Thirty-six proposed competencies failed to meet the threshold of 75% acceptance. For competencies that were accepted overall, participants with more than 10 years of experience in PC and participants with specialized training in PC were more likely to report that these competencies were part of the purview of PC nursing. Participants age >50 were less likely to report that competencies related to research concorded with their practice. Participants accepted the importance of all 98 proposed competencies. Conclusion: The variables of experience, training and age had a statistically significant relationship with the acceptance or rejection of the proposed competencies on the basis of purview and concordance. Further research is necessary to understand more fully these relationships to eventually arrive at a consensus model for the competencies of PC nurses.

Analysis on the Influencing Factors of Acceptance Willingness of Advertisement in WeChat Moments based on Theory of Planned Behavior

In the era of the Internet, advertisements in WeChat moments hold been pouring in and favored by businesses. But as the number of advertisements in WeChat moments increases, the quality is uneven. Users have different attitudes towards it, and some users even loathe it. How to meet the needs of users, accurately capture the interests of users and improve the acceptance of users is still an urgent problem to be discussed. Based on the theoretical framework of planned behavior and questionnaire survey, this paper explores the influencing factors of acceptance willingness of advertisement in the information flow of WeChat moments. Research shows that control belief has the most significant impact on users’ acceptance willingness. Different age and income levels also have impacts on users’ acceptance willingness. Young and middle-aged users and middle-income groups have a higher degree of acceptance of WeChat advertisement. Therefore, opinion leaders can be used to positively guide users to accept the subjective norms of advertisements in WeChat moments. In terms of the content and form of advertisement, researchers can enrich the content of advertisement and simplify the participation steps to improve users’ belief in control. In addition, developers can use big data to identify target users and implement precise delivery. Moreover, they can capture users’ behavioral willingness to enhance users’ acceptance of advertisements in WeChat moments.

The Challenge for Energy Saving in Smart Homes: Exploring the Interest for IoT Devices Acquisition in Romania

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a shift towards a digitally enriched environment that connects smart objects and users, aiming to provide merchants with innovative ways to communicate with customers. Therefore, the aim of this research was to identify the Romanian consumer′s openness to technological autonomy and the degree of acceptance of IoT services and technologies to address the green deal principle of low energy consumption. This article investigated the factors that influence the decision to buy smart IoT devices and customers′ perception regarding the security of the data generated in this process. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this research proposed an alternative model consisting of 18 items measured on a Likert scale in order to identify the factors that contribute to the perceived value of the consumer and the behavioral precursors impacting the decision to purchase IoT products. More and more products have built-in sensors and through the Internet connection generate valuable data from a managerial point of view in relation to the customer. Although these data are expected to be of great value to companies, the way they are used is not always transparent and can affect the purchasing decisions and the behavior of IoT products′ customers. The findings of this paper aimed to better promote Smart Home IoT technologies and devices among Romanian people, making possible the control of consumption and the generation of energy savings.

Critical Success Factors in Accepting Technology in the Classroom

The adoption of technology may be a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient for the digital transformation, seen as the mobilizing challenge to do something new and different. Without a strategic vision, we take the risk of acquiring resources to do the same as before, essentially changing the format. This inability imprisons the school to inconsequential models, resources and strategies. Interdisciplinary, social and project-based learning that augmented and virtual reality, internet of things, robots, and artificial intelligence and digital assistants can bring to teaching, where are they? But also mobile, games, simulators and multimedia can influence the routine by inspiring collaborative creativity. On the other hand, the pandemic, in terms of the adoption of technology, constitutes a kind of insurrection against the fatalism that it is not possible to restart the system, that is, rethink the school. This study aims to investigate the degree of acceptance and use of technology by teachers in middle school and high school education and their approaches in the classroom. As a methodological support to this study, the model “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” (UTAUT)) was used and a questionnaire applied to teachers at our school, ob-taining 90 responses. The investigation revealed that the performance expectancy and the ICT compatibility have a greater significant positive influence on the motivation and involvement of teachers. The study also clarifies that teachers intend to use ICT and that they see in them a different di-dactic tool that allows different approaches, thus increasing the quality of teaching and learning.

Executive Selection Process and Job Satisfaction: The Case of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) in Greece

This paper assesses the impact that the degree of acceptance of the selection process, as conducted by the human recourses management (HRM), has upon job satisfaction in the local tax offices (LTOs) in Greece. Furthermore, it examines the effects that various individual and demographic characteristics have on job satisfaction. The research was performed using primary statistical data by distributing and collecting specific questionnaires, which not only recorded the level of job satisfaction but also noted the degree of acceptance of the selection procedure in the IAPR. The collected statistical data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 26 Fixpack 1 software program. The results showed an average acceptance value of the selection process of 4.89, indicating a high degree of participant consensus with this process. They also showed that age, work experience, and the acceptance of the selection process have a positive and statistically significant effect, whereas educational level has a negative and statistically significant effect on degree of job satisfaction. The added value of the present paper lies in the fact that this kind of research, conducted in the IAPR in Greece for the very first time, measured both the degree of job satisfaction and the effect that the acceptance of the selection procedure has on this attitude.

Pythagorean Fuzzy Digraphs and Its Application in Healthcare Center

The notion of fuzzy set is introduced to deal with uncertainty, whereas the conventional sets are used for certainty. The extensions of fuzzy set theory such as intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) and Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PyFS) were introduced to overcome drawbacks in fuzzy theory. Fuzzy graph structure is used to deal with the uncertainty in a network and describe its relation on the nonempty vertex set. One of the extensions of intuitionistic fuzzy digraph (IFDG) is Pythagorean fuzzy digraph (PyFDG). IFDG cannot handle if the sum of degree of acceptance and degree of rejection for an arc weight exceeds 1. So, we introduced PyFDG to overcome the limitations in IFDG and it deals with the imprecise arc weight involving degree of acceptance and degree of rejection. Pythagorean fuzzy digraph (PyFDG) and its basic operations and score function of PyFDG are defined in this paper. Algorithm is proposed to solve application problem in healthcare center.

Canadian Public Opinion on Official Bilingualism: Ambivalent Consensus and its Limits

With the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Official Languages Act celebrated in 2019, the question of its degree of acceptance by the Canadian public is in order for review. When the national policy on official bilingualism was first advocated by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, it frankly acknowledged that it was highly controversial and opposed by substantial portions of the Anglophone public. Nevertheless, they insisted that the policy was necessary for the survival of the country and maintained that the firm resolve of united political elites at federal and provincial levels eventually would generate political success for the policy. While elite unity was elusive and only partially realized, the essential elements of official bilingualism were adopted, expanded and have survived to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The evolving pattern of public opinion over the past three decades demonstrates that official bilingualism is accepted as an essential component of Canadian political life, but that acceptance is hedged by some important qualifications, and indications that any further expansion would not enjoy public support. Nevertheless, it is firmly established as a core operating principle of Canadian public policy.