The Relationships Amongst Emotional Experience,Cognition, and Behavioural Intention in Battlefield Tourism

The objective of this study was to identify the hypothesized relationships amongst emotional experience, cognition, and behavioural intention in battlefield tourism. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was administered and 655 valid questionnaires were collected at heritage site related to the Sino-French War in Keelung, Taiwan. The results revealed significant positive relationships between emotional experience and cognition as well as between cognition and behavioural intention. Structural equation modelling verified that cognition fully mediated the effects of emotional experience on behavioural intention. Moreover, this study suggests that cognition may be an accurate predictor of behavioural intention, particularly in regard to battlefield tourism.     

Asymptotic comparison at optimal levels of reduced‐bias extreme value index estimators

In this article we are interested in the asymptotic comparison, at optimal levels, of a set of semi‐parametric reduced‐bias extreme value (EV) index estimators, valid for a wide class of heavy‐tailed models, underlying the available data. Again, as in the classical case, there is not any estimator that can always dominate the alternatives, but interesting clear‐cut patterns are found. Consequently, and in practice, a suitable choice of a set of EV index estimators will jointly enable us to better estimate the EV index γ, the primary parameter of extreme events.     

“省直管县”财政体制如何促进经济增长——基于江苏省2004-2009年数据的实证分析

近几年来,"省直管县"财政体制在各省陆续实施,其主要目的在于克服既有的市管县体制存在的各种弊端。可以预期,这项改革措施有减少行政管理成本、解决县乡财政困难、促进县域经济增长等多种潜在作用。但可能存在的问题是,该财政体制如何促进经济增长?文章利用江苏省51个县(市)2004-2009年的空间面板数据进行分析发现,"省直管县"财政体制对经济增长的作用主要是通过县(市)扩权而产生的"政府竞争效应"实现的。     

Quantitative Analysis of Foreign Trade and Environmental Efficiency in China

This article analyzes the relationships among trade, the economy, and environmental quality in China. First, in the context of these relationships, the Super-SBM model is used to calculate the environmental efficiencies of thirty Chinese provinces and cities to obtain the degrees of regional disparity. Second, China’s provincial panel data from 2003 and 2012 are used to establish an influential factor indicator system of environmental efficiency. A section-weighted fixed effect model then provides insights about influential factors such as spatial heterogeneity. Third, the article establishes a variable coefficient model to identify the relationships among the objects of the study and divides the Chinese regions into four types. The suggestions include enhancing environmental and business regulations to ensure equilibrium between trade, the environment, and local economies.     

Raising the bar (4)

This editorial summarizes and comments on the papers published in issue 11(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper deals with common factors and spatial dependence in the error term specification of a production function model. The second paper sets forth a New Economic Geography (NEG) model with production activities that vary in their complexity, so as to analyse the impact on specialization patterns across different regions. The third paper measures the efficiency of local public investments using a relatively unknown econometric technique in which the time span over which the variables in the regression equation are measured is increased by one time period every run. The fourth paper adopts a conditional quantile regression approach to determine the impact of people employed in informal jobs on the wage distribution in Colombia and five of its regions. Finally, the last paper proposes and tests two new Bayesian variable selection approaches for spatial econometric models.     

New insights into an old problem – enhancing student learning outcomes in an introductory statistics course

Many students enrolled in first year introductory statistics courses believe learning statistics is a waste of time and fear they will fail. In this study, we explored the impacts on learning outcomes for students in an introductory statistics course by allowing students to arbitrarily choose their own sequence of learning from three key learning activities, namely tutorials, Peer-Assisted Study Sessions and Computer-Managed Learning quizzes. Unlike the old regime where the learning activities followed a strict, rigid sequence, a new regime allowed students to freely choose when, where and how they engaged with the course learning activities. This allowed increased opportunities for students to receive relevant and timely feedback. Using a total of 1187 students enrolled in semester 2 of 2011, 2012 and 2013, data were collected on students’ scores from 7 assessment tasks. Our experimental design ensured as many course features as possible remained constant between the control cohorts (of 2011 and 2012) and the experimental cohort (2013), thereby avoiding potential sample selection problems. The findings showed student learning outcomes in the new regime improved significantly. Interestingly, the effects were found to be greatest in the lower percentile of the score distribution.     

Spatial Pattern and Spatiotemporal Evolution of China＇s National Historic Cities

基于地理信息系统空间分析技术,从微观、中观、宏观三个尺度对我国国家历史文化名城的地域分布差异和发展演变特征进行分析探讨,结果表明：在微观的市县级范围内,县级及以下名城的分布相对分散,地级及以上名城在我国东部和中部县市相对集中;在中观的省域范围内,1982年以来的一、二、三批名城在省域覆盖范围内具有较为明显的东南部、北部、中西部重心格局演变的特征;从全国范围来看,国家历史文化名城空间上总体表现为由东到西数量递减的非均衡分布特征,时空演变总体表现为由大中城市向中小城市,由中心城市、中部城市向边缘城市、地域特色城市,由直辖城市、省会城市向地级城市、县级城市、甚至城市的一个行政区扩展的特征。国家历史文化名城的批复发展在考虑各尺度区域范围内的等级差异和不均衡分布的基础上走向了科学化、细致化。     

广州市外来人口的空间分布变动分析

利用第三、四、五次人口普查资料,对广州市外来人口空间分布进行分析。1980年代以来广州市外来人口在数量急剧增长的同时,其空间分布格局也发生了根本变化,即由原来主要集中于中心区转向主要集中于近郊区,并逐渐向远郊区延伸。针对外来人口的空间变化规律,提出了加强城市人口管理和城市规划建设的建议。     

农业旅游空间布局研究

农业旅游是农业与旅游业的交叉行业,也是一种新兴的专项旅游活动,由于具有贴近自然、参与性强等诸多优点,深受城市旅游者的青睐。通过对农业旅游空间布局的理论基础进行探寻,分析影响农业旅游空间布局的因素,提出农业旅游空间布局模式及其演化规律,并对农业旅游空间布局的优化提出了建议。     

乡村旅游主题下休闲农业发展研究——以山西省100个3 A级乡村旅游示范村为例

以山西省首批100个3A级乡村旅游示范村为研究对象,运用最近邻指数、地理集中指数、核密度分析等空间分析方法及建立乡村旅游资源分类体系,对其空间结构和分类特征进行测度。结果表明:样本点空间分布为集聚型,分布高密度区域主要在山西省中东部、东南部和南部,北部和西部分布密度较低。山西省休闲旅游资源丰富,为乡村旅游提供了大量资源,五种乡村发展类型中,特色文化型村庄占比最大,休闲农庄和城郊发展型村庄相对较少。最后根据研究结果提出相关建议。