Too Much of a Good Thing? Visitor Congestion Management Issues for Popular World Heritage Tourist Attractions

World Heritage Sites (WHS) are often popular and primary attractions for a destination for many reasons, in particular the economic benefits they bring in terms of increased visitation and extension of stay. However, without active management to reduce negative impacts, such as congestion, both tourists and the host community can become caught up in a downward spiral of poor visitor experiences and degradation of World Heritage values. Accordingly, this paper examines the nature of congestion and its impact on visitor experience at two popular WHS attractions in Macao. It also provides some insights into Chinese outbound tourist behaviour and visitation patterns. These observations should be of interest to planners and site managers of popular World Heritage attractions elsewhere in the world as China begins to adopt mass international leisure travel.     

Retail ‘Quality Assurance’ Labels as a Strategic Marketing Communication Mechanism for Fresh Meat

Approximately 40 quality assurance labels are in operation throughout the UK, namely for meat, salmon, milk, cereals, eggs, fruit and vegetables. Fresh meat quality labels are the most prevalent, thus requiring consumers to recognize and learn not only about the many nationally organized quality labels, but also the in-house retail labels. This paper identifies the meat purchasing behaviour of consumers and their perceptions, attitudes and knowledge towards the main quality assurance labels. Results indicate consumers' purchase preferences to be more influenced by quality labels co-ordinated by producer-led organizations, and that recognition and knowledge of retail labels are low in comparison. This raises questions regarding the relevance and communication strategies of in-house retail ‘quality assurances’ to consumers.     

Herding behaviour and the declining value relevance of accounting information: evidence from an emerging stock market

This article sheds light on the underlying mechanisms behind the changes in the value relevance of accounting information in the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) during the 1999–2010 period. We find that neither changes in earnings quality nor the earnings lack of timeliness hypothesis can explain the decline in the value relevance of accounting information in the KSE. Based on the stylized facts associated with the growth of the KSE and the broader economics literature, we argue that the reduction in the explanatory power of accounting information vis-à-vis stock returns was caused by herding behaviour. Empirical estimates from state-space model of herding behaviour confirm the existence of herding, and we find that the value relevance of accounting information is significantly lower in periods characterized by herding behaviour. This article is also amongst the first attempts to empirically demonstrate that an expansionary monetary policy and increases in foreign portfolio investment lead to increased levels of herding.     

Entrepreneurial orientation in family firms: the case of the hospitality industry

Research increasingly shows interest in the motives and characteristics of entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry. Small and medium-sized family firms dominate this industry. Learning from the concept of entrepreneurial orientation and family business research, this explorative study aims at analysing entrepreneurial behaviours and their effect on performance as perceived by owner-managers of hospitality family businesses. The authors conduct narrative in-depth interviews to understand the managers' meaning of entrepreneurship and performance, and discuss the results in the light of existing entrepreneurship literature. Results indicate that family firms in hospitality and tourism are peculiar, and their embeddedness in the destinations and regions outlines their entrepreneurial behaviour against Schumpeter's definition of growth-oriented entrepreneurship.     

The antecedents of tourists’ gaming spend: does the brand prestige matter?

This study endeavors to empirically analyse the influential effect among brand prestige, service quality, casino visitor satisfaction and spend. Data from 304 tourists who had travelled to Macau and had participated in gambling activities were used and structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis were employed in hypotheses testing. The findings demonstrated that both brand prestige and perceived service quality are determinants of satisfaction and gaming spend, and that brand prestige also affects service quality positively. Furthermore, past experience moderates the service quality and visitors’ satisfaction relationship, also service quality and visitors’ gaming spend relationship.     

Changing laundry habits in Norway

Maintenance is often the most energy‐demanding stage during clothes' life cycle. Therefore, a shift towards more sustainable washing habits has great potential to reduce the consumption of energy, water and detergent. This paper discusses the change in laundering practices during the past 10 years in Norway and suggests strategies to help consumers change their laundry habits to more sustainable ones. Quantitative information of consumers' experiences, habits and opinions concerning clothing maintenance was collected through three surveys in Norway in 2002, 2010 and 2011. The 2010 study was supplemented with qualitative in‐depth interviews of a strategic sample of households. The average washing temperature has decreased slightly during the studied time periods. Some products' washing frequencies remained the same, whereas other products such as jeans were used a few more days before washing. The cotton programme is the most used washing programme, but short programmes are gaining popularity. The laundry sorting processes vary greatly and are influenced by several factors such as washing temperature, colours, fibre type and use area. For some consumers, the use of several different sorting categories made it more difficult to collect a sufficient amount of clothing to fill the machine. They were also afraid that overfilling the machine would result in clothes that were not clean enough or had detergent residues. Detergent dosing practices are far from optimal. In 2010, although the majority of respondents only used eye measure and did not know the water hardness of their area, they still tried to vary detergent dosage based on the amount of laundry and the level of soiling. Different design for sustainable behaviour strategies could be used within detergent dosage systems, care labelling, machine programme selection (such as suggesting lower temperature and eco‐programme), machine filling grade indicators, storage systems for slightly used clothing and textile material choice.     

Political Campaign Advertising: Believe It or Not

SUMMARY

The extent that political advertising in elections is believed by voters' is an important issue for public policy, political marketing, and marketing in general. Much effort and funding is devoted to communicating with voters' during elections via advertising. This study examined political advertising believability and three potential antecedents of believability during an election. The data were gathered via a random sample of voters immediately following an election and the results indicate that believability is influenced by a voters' involvement, perceived control and satisfaction and that party preference plays a key role in believability of competing campaigns.     

Key impact factors of visitors’ environmentally responsible behaviour: personality traits or interpretive services? A case study of Beijing’s Yuyuantan Urban Park,China

The environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB) facilitates the sustainability of tourism destinations. This study aims to identify the key impact factors to promote visitors’ ERB in urban park and examine the impact mechanism. A total of 567 visitors were surveyed in Beijing’s Yuyuantan Urban Park. Structural equation modelling results indicate that personality traits are the most important factors that affect visitors’ ERB, while the effect of how satisfaction with interpretive services plays upon visitors’ ERB using place attachment as a mediator. Openness traits positively affect satisfaction with experiential services and general behaviour. Additionally, implications in urban park management are provided.     

The effects of financial literacy on the borrowing behaviour of Turkish financial consumers

Our research attempts to measure the effects of financial literacy of Turkish financial consumers on the borrowing behaviour. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 550 people in the city of Eskisehir. In‐depth interviews are undertaken with 10 financial consumers to support the findings. Findings of the study indicate differences in the borrowing behaviour of consumers with different levels of financial literacy. Considering the relationship between financial literacy and borrowing behaviour, we suggest that attempts to increase financial literacy of financial consumers may have important implications in the prevention of excessive borrowing.     

Social Position and Behaviour: A Formalization

Modern society has witnessed anever-increasing development in the social sciences;partly due to changes in mentality, and partly due tothe growing requirements of the economic and political world – requirements which frequently takeon the guise of necessity, as for instance in thecases of market research and electoral opinion polls.Such development has produced an increasing paralleldemand for mathematical accuracy and exactitude inthese fields.The intention here is to rationalize the basic logicand methodology of the sociological procedure; anintention, it is hoped, which could be influential inimproving practical sociological work by rendering itmore comprehensible. This requires the employment offairly sophisticated mathematical and statisticalnotions.Section 1 outlines the definitions considered essential for the rationalization of the basiclogic framework previously described.Section 2 discusses the general concept of statisticalvariance. Section 3 introduces the notion of ``heterogeneity'and offers several propositions linked to this concept.Section 5 revolves around the notion of ``inaccuracy'.Section 6 presents a theorem relating to theimmersion of metric spaces in Banach spaces, andshows how the theorem can be used to constructtheoretically satisfactory immersion algorithms.Section 7 together with the material, which ispreviously introduced in Section 4, outlines thecluster analysis and the principal components methodologies.