Rate My Professor David Webb

David Webb is an Associate Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the UWA Business School, University of Western Australia. He earned his PhD in Expectation Psychology from the University of Wales in 1995, exploring the antecedents of customer expectations through a role theory perspective, and holds an MBA. His academic career began with positions at Cardiff Business School, University of Wales, including ESRC Management Teaching Fellow in Strategic Management (1991-1994) and Lecturer in Strategic Marketing (1995-1997). Prior to academia, he worked in industry as Regional Sales Representative for Bose Corporation across Germany, the USA, and Asia (1985-1990) and held an executive position at Insight: Consultants in Customer Satisfaction Management in Johannesburg, South Africa (1994-1995). Since joining UWA around 1997, he has held key roles such as Associate Director of UN PRME (United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education) from 2013 to 2017 and Convenor of the UWA Modern Slavery Research Cluster from 2021 to 2023. He is also Co-Founder and Co-Manager of the UWA FABLE Modern Slavery Research Cluster since 2019 and founded the Informal UWA Modern Slavery Network in 2017. Webb teaches courses including Ethics and Sustainability, Principles of Responsible Management, Marketing and Society, and Consumer Behaviour.

Webb's research interests encompass regenerative business and planetary health, societal and quality of life marketing at the intersection of marketing and wellbeing, self-determination theory applications in behavioral contexts such as energy management and sustainability, sustainable consumption, applied business ethics, modern slavery and human trafficking, macro-marketing, pro-social and pro-environmental behavior, moral self-regulation, happiness, life satisfaction, and environmental marketing. He has received the Distinguished Research Fellow award from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies in 2010 for contributions to quality of life research, the 2015 JPPM/Kinnear Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing (2011-2014), a highly commended paper award in 2013, and the best paper award for the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing in 2007. Notable publications include 'Examining the effectiveness of a tourism–agriculture co-marketing alliance: an empirical study of fit and fit priming' (2025, Tourism Recreation Research), 'Unlocking motivation for energy saving: A study of German electricity consumer segments' (2025, Energy Research and Social Science), 'An application of the new visitation paradigm to ecotourism in China' (2024, Journal of Ecotourism), 'Can agrifood products generate tourist desire to visit a place? An empirical study of image transfer and self-congruity' (2023, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management), and 'Exploring the psychological characteristics of style and fashion clothing orientations' (2023, Journal of Consumer Marketing). His work supports multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals, including decent work, responsible consumption, and partnerships for the goals, and he has secured funding from the Australian Research Council and other grants. Webb serves on several editorial boards, collaborates internationally with institutions like the University of Leeds and E.ON SE in Germany, and contributes to policy submissions on modern slavery.