The Journal of Behavioral Science

Utilizing the COM‑B Model to Influence Low‑Glycemic Dietary Behavior in Urban Thai Adults with Prediabetes

Chavanant Sumanasrethakul — 2026-01-31

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is an escalating public health issue in rapidly urbanizing middle-income countries. In Thailand, working-age adults increasingly develop prediabetes due to sedentary lifestyles, high glycemic diets, and limited access to supportive food environments. Existing research on determinants of low glycemic dietary practices remains fragmented, with few studies applying an integrated behavioral framework.

Objective: This study examined behavioral pathways influencing low GI dietary behavior among urban adults with prediabetes, guided by the capability–opportunity–motivation–behavior (COM-B) model.

Design and Methodology: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 450 adults clinically diagnosed with prediabetes in Bangkok. Data were collected using a COM-B based questionnaire for assessing psychological and physical capability, social and physical opportunity, and reflective and automatic motivation. Path analysis using maximum likelihood estimation in LISREL version 8.72 assessed model fit and structural relationships.

Results: The model demonstrated excellent fit (χ² = .32, df = 1, p = .57; RMSEA = .000; CFI = 1.00; SRMR = .005). Psychological capability (β = .47), physical capability (β = .42), physical opportunity (β = .53), social opportunity (β = .15), automatic motivation (β = .27), and reflective motivation (β = .09) significantly predicted low GI dietary behavior, explaining 77% of the variance.

Conclusion and Implications: Capability and opportunity were the strongest determinants of low GI dietary behavior. Interventions that enhance nutritional skills and strengthen supportive social and physical food environments may be more effective than motivation focused strategies for improving dietary practices among urban adults with prediabetes.

The Effect of Punitive Supervision on Job Burnout Through Serial Mediation of Organizational Injustice and Work Alienation

Hany Mohamed Galal — 2026-01-31

Background/Problem: Job burnout is a critical and costly issue among frontline hospitality employees, often intensified by destructive leadership styles such as punitive supervision. While the detrimental link between punitive supervision and burnout is established, the precise cascading psychological mechanism—a key focus for theoretical refinement—remains underexplored within behavioral Science.

Objective/Purpose: Based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theories, this study examines how punitive supervision impacts job burnout through the sequential mediation of organizational injustice and work alienation.

Design and Methodology: Data were collected from frontline employees working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Egypt using a survey-based design. The responses of 306 participants were analyzed with the PROCESS macro, allowing for the examination of both direct and serial indirect effects

Results: The findings indicate that punitive supervision is a significant predictor of job burnout. Organizational injustice and work alienation sequentially mediate this relationship, suggesting that employees subjected to punitive supervision perceive unfair treatment, experience alienation, and consequently exhibit higher burnout. These results confirm that both organizational-behavioral and psycho-social mechanisms contribute to understanding burnout in hospitality contexts.

Conclusion and Implications: The study highlights the negative consequences of punitive supervision on frontline hotel employees and emphasizes the importance of fairness and engagement-enhancing practices. Managers should adopt supportive supervision, transparent policies, and interventions that reduce employee alienation to enhance well-being, mitigate burnout, and improve overall organizational performance.

Guidelines for Promoting Positive Financial Behaviors to Enhance Thai Middle-Class Pre-Retirees’ Financial Well-Being

Rewadee Panich — 2026-01-31

Background: Nearly half of Thai middle-class employees, aged 40–59 years, lack retirement readiness. They are carrying heavy household debt, postpone saving, underestimate post-retirement expenses, and rely on an underfunded pension system. This gap stems from the common assumption that pre-retirees have already prepared themselves, leading to their needs being overlooked.

Objective: This study explored the key conditions that shaped positive financial behaviors and generated actionable guidelines to promote positive financial behaviors and retirement readiness among Thai middle-class employees.

Design and Methodology: Based on a constructivist qualitative case study approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with financially successful pre-retirees or retirees, using a purposive snowball sampling technique that continued until data saturation. Documentary evidence was also included for triangulation. Verbatim transcripts underwent reflexive thematic analysis, with member checks and an audit trail ensuring rigor.

Findings: The findings indicated that positive financial behaviors supported daily needs, debt management, emergency savings, and life-goals planning. The determinants of these behaviors included attitudes, personal traits, socioeconomic context, and financial knowledge. Actionable strategies involved cultivating self-awareness, learning from role-models, using financial tools, implementing tailored programs, providing hands-on training, and maintaining ongoing tracking and evaluation.

Conclusion and Implications: The study’s originality stems from integrating practitioner perspectives to generate strategic behavioral guidelines. These guidelines provide direction for policymakers and educators to design financial programs that clos the intention-action gap and address financial behavioral biases, ultimately enhancing the retirement readiness of Thai pre-retirees and supporting the development of sustained positive financial behaviors.

Customer Incivility and Deviant Behavior Directed at Customers: Burnout and the Customer Orientation Paradox

Aritsara Thawornprasert — 2026-01-31

Background: Customer incivility has become a pervasive stressor in hospitality. Repeated exposure to rude or disrespectful customer behaviors depletes emotional resources, increasing burnout and deviant behavior directed at customers. However, the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions remain unclear.

Objective: Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the customer orientation paradox, this study examines whether burnout mediates the relationship between customer incivility and deviant behavior directed at customers and whether customer orientation moderates this mediation.

Design and Methodology: Using a cross-sectional survey design and purposive quota sampling, data were collected from 548 hotel employees in medium- and large-sized hotels in a southern province of Thailand. Structural equation modeling with latent moderated mediation was employed to test hypotheses.

Results: Customer incivility was positively associated with employees’ deviant behavior directed at customers through burnout (standardized indirect effect = .06, 95% CI [.03, .10]). Customer orientation strengthened the relationship between customer incivility and burnout (standardized interaction effect = .10, 95% CI [.02, .18]). The indirect effect via burnout was stronger among employees with high customer orientation (standardized indirect effect = .14, 95% CI [.03, .26]) but nonsignificant among those with low customer orientation (standardized indirect effect = .01, 95% CI [-.04, .07]).

Conclusion and Implications: The findings highlight emotional resource depletion and cognitive dissonance as key mechanisms explaining why highly customer-oriented employees are vulnerable to customer incivility. Organizations should complement customer-oriented service values with emotion regulation training, supervisory support, and clear boundary-setting policies to protect employee well-being and prevent deviant service behaviors.

A Mental Health Model of Students in State Universities and Colleges and Local Universities and Colleges in Negros Occidental, Philippines

Cye Sartiga — 2026-01-31

Background: The Philippine mental health act of 2018 reshaped the nation’s mental health care. Despite its global relevance, few studies examine factors affecting college mental health outcomes.

Objective: Based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, this study aims to develop a structural model illustrating the direct and indirect relationships between variables and mental health.

Design and Methodology: The study surveyed 510 randomly selected students from state and local universities in Philippines, employing a path model to examine relationships among the variables.

Results: The study found that mental health was significantly influenced by social support (β = .22, p < .001), academic stress (β = .21, p < .001), service accessibility (β = .18, p < .001), and campus policies (β = .16, p < .001). Mental health literacy directly influences help-seeking (β = .42, p < .001). Campus policies were influenced by mental health literacy (β = .16, p < .001) and service accessibility (β = .66, p < .001). Campus culture (β = .23, p < .001), service accessibility (β = .14, p < .001), academic stress (β = .15, p < .001), and mental health literacy (β = .13, p < .001) also influenced social support. Mental health literacy was negatively correlated with stigma (β = -.34, p < .001), while campus culture was positively linked to service accessibility (β = .39, p < .001). Mediator effect of campus policies and social support was confirmed.

Conclusion and Implications: These findings underscore the need for a systemic approach to mental health promotion in state universities, offering a framework to guide the development of supportive, well-being–oriented academic environments. Educational institutions are encouraged to promote mental health literacy programs aimed at reducing mental health stigma and actively promoting students’ willingness to seek help.

Behavioral Dimensions of Learning and Transmitting Conservation Laws among the Urak Lawoi Community in Southern Thailand: A Qualitative Research

Panuwat Pankaew — 2026-01-31

Background: The Urak Lawoi ethnic group in Koh Lanta, Thailand, maintains a close bond with nature but faces challenges due to strict conservation laws that conflict with their traditional livelihoods. Limited formal education and communication gaps have led to misunderstandings and difficulties in legal adaptation. While awareness of conservation exists, the community lacks a structured learning process to integrate these laws into their daily practices effectively.

Objective: This study aims to explore the behavioral dimensions of learning, influencing factors, and barriers to adaptation regarding conservation laws among the Urak Lawoi community.

Design and Methodology: This qualitative study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Fifteen key informants, including community leaders, spokespeople, local wisdom teacher and community members, were selected through purposive sampling. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and informal conversations. Content analysis and triangulation were used to ensure the credibility of the findings.

Findings: The study reveals that learning among the Urak Lawoi is fundamentally experiential and socially embedded, relying on direct observation, intergenerational transmission, and a cyclical process of daily survival rather than linear instruction. Key influencing factors include strong community leadership and social role modeling. However, significant barriers hinder adaptation, specifically a lack of government resources, limited access to modern technology, and a generational gap in perception.

Conclusion and Implications: The findings suggest that legal compliance cannot rely solely on enforcement but requires a hybrid learning approach that validates traditional wisdom while integrating modern support systems. Sustainable coexistence requires culturally sensitive interventions, improved access to information, and collaborative policies to empower the community and bridge the gap between traditional practices and modern conservation mandates.

Behavioral Drivers of Digital Innovation in Vietnamese Import-Export Enterprises

Dao Mai Xuan — 2026-01-31

Background: Digital transformation is reshaping global business ecosystems; however, Vietnamese import-export enterprises often struggle to align technological adoption with behavioral and organizational enablers such as culture and leadership.

Objective: Grounded in the organizational learning theory and the behavioral agency theory, this study examines how digital transformation translates into business model innovation through behavioral mechanisms. By linking technology, culture, and leadership, the research addresses the gap in understanding internal drivers of innovation within emerging market contexts.

Design and Methodology: A mixed-method design was employed. Qualitative interviews with five experts refined the behavioral constructs, followed by a survey of 148 import–export enterprises. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesized relationships, while multigroup analysis explored firm-level differences.

Results: Digital transformation positively affects business model innovation (β = .29, p < .001) and digital culture (β = .69, p < .001). Digital culture strongly mediates the relationship (β = .32, p < .001), while digital leadership moderates it (β = .17, p = .01). The model explains 62% of the variance in business model innovation (R² = .62). No significant differences were found in the structural relationships among constructs based on various enterprise characteristics.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings highlight that digital transformation outcomes depend on behavioral change processes rather than technology alone. Managers should cultivate organizational learning, foster shared cognitive frames, and strengthen leadership signaling to align human decision-making with strategic digital initiatives.

Mapping Hedonic Motivation, Digital Influence, and Conspicuous Consumption Behavior: A Bibliometric Analysis

Albrian Fiky Prakoso — 2026-01-31

Background: The rapid development of digital technology has amplified pleasure-driven behavior with socioeconomic implications, positioning hedonic motivation as a key explanatory concept. However, its interpretation remains divided between psychological and sociological approaches. This gap reflects the lack of integrative studies linking classical behavioral theory to contemporary digital consumption dynamics.

Objective: This study aimed to systematically map the intellectual structure of hedonic motivation research by examining publication trends in digital consumption, identifying dominant psychological and sociological themes, and interpreting these patterns through Veblen's classic theory of conspicuous consumption.

Design and Methodology: A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 111 articles from the Scopus database, published from 2004 to 2024, using Biblioshiny. This research combines bibliometric analysis with theoretical interpretation.

Results: The analysis identifies a significant growth in publications over the past two decades, with major contributions from China, the United States, and Indonesia. The findings confirm the enduring relevance of Veblen's theory, revealing its modern embodiment through social media influencers. Identify three main research clusters: impulse buying, the utilitarian-hedonic dualism, and technology adoption.

Conclusion and Implications: This study extends Veblen's theory by linking macro-socioeconomic factors and micro-psychological mechanisms. Specifically, the analysis reveals that hedonic motivation in digital consumption is mediated by social comparison and fear of missing out (FOMO). These findings are useful for: (1) behavioral scientists in designing “digital nudges” that reduce impulse buying; (2) for policymakers in developing digital financial literacy that targets emotional biases; and (3) for educators in creating sustainable consumption awareness curricula.