Objective: Due to the significant higher prevalence, yet less attention of mental health problems among Asian college students, we decided to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of mental health services and help-seeking behaviors in Vietnamese universities. By conducting this study, we hope to contribute to current literature on the factors that contribute to professional mental health taking behavior of college students in Vietnam as well as suggest strategies to reduce possible barriers that prevent them from seeking professional help. Design: We first conducted a pilot study to test the reliability and validity of our measurements. We then made necessary adjustments and distributed the final questionnaires to a university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Collected data was analyzed through exploratory factor analysis.   Results: Among the three measurements of psychological openness, help-seeking propensity, and indifference to stigma, results indicated that the model explains students’ help-seeking intention reasonably well than others. Conclusions: Using theory of planned behavior, this study aims at examining predictors of professional mental health seeking behavior among college students in Vietnam. Our findings indicate that help-seeking propensity significantly influences Vietnamese students’ intention to seek professional healthcare. Through this study, we suggest some guidance to the school administrators the factors that encourage students to take professional mental care.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China, spread nationwide and then onto many other countries between December 2019 and early 2020. The implementation of strict quarantine measures in Vietnam has kept a large number of people in isolation and has eventually put the disease under control. Social and physical distancing turned to be an efficient way of slowing the spread of disease and stopping chains of transmission of COVID-19 as well as preventing new ones from appearing (World Health Organization, 2020). Analyzing the World Health Organization (WHO) data, we could see a clear difference in the reported numbers between Vietnam, a developing country, and the USA, one of the leading developed countries in the western hemisphere. We tried to address the question if there are factors that helped local governments to implement helpful rules. We argue that Eastern Asian cultural traits played a role in reducing the spread of COVID-19. We recommend to take this commentary paper, and further research those cultural factors that positively affected the slowdown of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam.

Despite the seriousness of shoplifting, consumers’ evaluations, judgements, and intentions toward shoplifting remain underexplored by scholars from business ethics, marketing, retailing, and consumer behavior. We propose a new shoplifting ethics model, which integrates Hunt and Vitell’s theory of ethics with Nadeau, Rochlen, and Tyminski’s typology of shoplifting, by incorporating the moderators of consumers’ personal characteristics (i.e., age, gender, marital status, income) and shoplifting motives (i.e., social, experiential, economic, emotional) onto the relationships among deontological evaluation, teleological evaluation, ethical judgment, and intention. Based on a two-by-two randomized experimental design, two shoplifting cases (i.e., swapping price tags, stealing products) are investigated in four scenarios (i.e., deontologically unethical condition with positive consequences, deontologically unethical condition with negative consequences, deontologically ethical condition with positive consequences, deontologically ethical condition with negative consequences). We discover that age, marriage, and income enhance the relationship between consumers’ deontological evaluations of shoplifting and ethical judgments of shoplifting; that employment strengthens the relationship between the ethical judgments of shoplifting and shoplifting intentions; and that marriage enhances the relationship between consumers’ teleological evaluations of shoplifting and shoplifting intentions. Nevertheless, the economic factor weakens the relationship between consumers’ deontological evaluations of shoplifting and ethical judgments of shoplifting. We find that ethical judgments of shoplifting mediates the relationship between consumers’ deontological/teleological evaluations of shoplifting and shoplifting intentions. The results imply that younger, single, unemployed, and low-income consumers engage in more shoplifting activities compared to their older, married, employed, and high-income counterparts. Moreover, even though acknowledging the inherent wrongness of shoplifting and its negative consequences, consumers can still be impelled by economic reasons to participate in shoplifting. We contribute to the ongoing debate on whether economic reasons change consumers’ ethical judgments of shoplifting and whether economic disadvantage motivates consumers to shoplift. Contrary to conventional wisdom, negative consequences and punishment do not fully deter consumers from shoplifting. Under the contingencies of personal characteristics and shoplifting motives, shoplifting intention is influenced directly by ethical judgment and indirectly by deontological and teleological evaluations. Theoretical and practical insights are discussed to help policy makers and store managers prevent shoplifting behavior.

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