Chinese heritage tourists to heritage sites: what are the effects of heritage motivation and perceived authenticity on satisfaction?

Much of the literature on authenticity is Western-centric, while little work addresses the concept in the Asian environment. The literature relating to authenticity from Asian tourists’ point of view is even underdeveloped. This study therefore aims to fill the knowledge gap by investigating Chinese tourists’ perspective of authenticity. It also examines tourists’ perceived authenticity as a multi-dimensional construct in a consumer-based model, the relationship with heritage motivation and tourist satisfaction. Findings indicate that Chinese tourists’ perceptions of authenticity are closely related to objective and constructive authenticity. The study demonstrates that heritage motivation has a significant positive influence on perceived authenticity and that perceived authenticity has a strong ability to predict tourist satisfaction.     

Optimal surveillance against foot‐and‐mouth disease: the case of bulk milk testing in Australia

Previous foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks and simulation‐based analyses suggest substantial payoffs from detecting an incursion early. However, no economic measures for early detection have been analysed in an optimising framework. We investigate the use of bulk milk testing (BMT) for active surveillance against an FMD incursion in Australia. We find that BMT can be justified, but only when the FMD entry probability is sufficiently high or the cost of BMT is low. However, BMT is well suited for post‐outbreak surveillance, to shorten the length of time and size of an epidemic and to facilitate an earlier return to market.     

Sustainable Tourism or Sustainable Development? Financial Crisis,Ecotourism, and the 'Amazing Thailand' Campaign

Although the issues of sustainable tourism and sustainable development are receiving increasing attention from tourists, government planners and scholars, few studies have examined their overlap, tensions and complex linkages in practice. In southern Thailand, the sustainability of tourism, defined as the ongoing growth and survival of the tourism industry, has compromised the ecological sustainability of key tourism destinations sites. The recent financial crisis has forced the Thai government to sacrifice long-term sustainability for the sake of quick, and desperately needed foreign exchange. The 'Amazing Thailand' promotional campaign, which aims to attract 17 million tourists over 1998 and 1999, promises to exacerbate further the environmental degradation of tourism destinations in southern Thailand by pushing for enhanced tourist numbers. Ironically, by changing the composition of tourist arrivals (and in particular, attracting more European and North American tourists) the currency devaluations associated with the Asian financial crisis may simultaneously boost demand for nature-based tourist activities in southern Thailand while also adding stress to ecologically deteriorating destinations.     

Forecasting the volatility of S&P depositary receipts using GARCH-type models under intraday range-based and return-based proxy measures

We employ four various GARCH-type models, incorporating the skewed generalized t (SGT) errors into those returns innovations exhibiting fat-tails, leptokurtosis and skewness to forecast both volatility and value-at-risk (VaR) for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (SPDRs) from 2002 to 2008. Empirical results indicate that the asymmetric EGARCH model is the most preferable according to purely statistical loss functions. However, the mean mixed error criterion suggests that the EGARCH model facilitates option buyers for improving their trading position performance, while option sellers tend to favor the IGARCH/EGARCH model at shorter/longer trading horizon. For VaR calculations, although these GARCH-type models are likely to over-predict SPDRs' volatility, they are, nevertheless, capable of providing adequate VaR forecasts. Thus, a GARCH genre of model with SGT errors remains a useful technique for measuring and managing potential losses on SPDRs under a turbulent market scenario.     

Revisiting Exports and Foreign Direct Investment in Vietnam

Since 1986, Vietnam has undertaken various reform measures in the trade and foreign investment area. This paper finds significant contributions of world trade, and competitiveness and liberalization effects to Vietnam's export growth over the period 1997–2008. Vietnam's exports became more competitive and better complemented the import demand of Vietnam's trade partners. In addition, dynamic comparative advantage became evident in many products, but significant room remains for improving export competitiveness. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows also increased and helped stimulate Vietnam's exports. FDI inflows have increased in both the short‐ and long‐term, yet are only of a limited magnitude. This necessitates more effective measures to enhance the linkages between FDI and domestic enterprises.     

The drama of interaction within business networks

We propose a dramaturgical approach to the understanding of business networks with particular reference to IMP research. Our purpose is to focus upon immeasurable processes and practices too often neglected by the tangible, variance modeling of business networks (Colville & Pye, 2010; Rinallo & Golfetto, 2006). This paper follows our call to take language and communication more seriously (Ellis, Lowe & Purchase, 2006). The inventive fluidity of communication, in the form of dramaturgy, when added to the rather more entitative IMP model of Actors, Resources and Activities (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995) creates a more processual, theatrical ‘scenario’ of Actor-Characters, Resource Props and Scripted Activities. We employ the dramaturgical approach of Goffman (1956, 1961) which, in keeping with the approach of the IMP Group is centrally attentive to social interaction. In order to illustrate the potential contribution of this approach, we apply this dramaturgical perspective to the interactions described in a published case study (Helander & Möller, 2007, 2008a, 2008b).     

GPs as firms: Creating an internal market for primary care

Outsiders are often amazed at the lack of contact and communication between general practitioners and other members of the primary care team on the one hand, and the rest of the national health service on the other. One way to help close the gap and improve services generally would be to provide GPS with appropriate incentives.     

Diversification evidence from international equity markets using extreme values and stochastic copulas

Tail dependence plays an important role in financial risk management and determination of whether two markets crash or boom together. However, the linear correlation is unable to capture the dependence structure among financial data. Moreover, given the reality of fat-tail or skewed distribution of financial data, normality assumption for risk measure may be misleading in portfolio development. This paper proposes the use of conditional extreme value theory and time-varying copula to capture the tail dependence between the Australian financial market and other selected international stock markets. Conditional extreme value theory enables the model adequacy and the tail behavior of individual financial variable, while the time-varying copula can fully disclose the changes of dependence structure over time. The combination of both proved to be useful in determining the tail dependence. The empirical results show an outperformance of the model in the analysis of tail dependence, which has an important implication in cross-market diversification and asset pricing allocation.