A comparative study of eight COVID-19 protective measures and their impact on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions

A comparative vignette-based experimental survey design incorporating various socio-psychological factors, linked to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale (DOSPERT) was carried out to test variations in eight travel-related COVID-19 protective measures on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions. Among the tested measures, vaccination passports, surgical masks and quarantining are those that stand out the most, with surgical masks having the greatest acceptance and willingness to adopt while traveling. Quarantining, on the other hand, appears to have a deterrent influence on travel intentions, and vaccination passports have the lowest perceived barriers during travel, but the highest perceived benefits in mitigating the spread of the infection. The discussion of individual differences has specific implications for tourism management against the background of our empirical findings.     

Exploring the factors that drive consumers to use contactless delivery services in the context of the continued COVID-19 pandemic

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the launch of contactless delivery services. This research integrates resource matching, service quality evaluation, and perceived value theories to explore the factors that promote the use contactless delivery services. The data was obtained through questionnaire surveys, and research hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modelling approach. With the exception of convenience, the results show that privacy, reliability, security, and flexibility have a significantly positive effect on consumers' intention to use “contactless” delivery services through consumers' perceived value. This study contributes to the literature by introducing theoretical frameworks from various paradigms and enriches the academic research on existing theoretical structure models. It also helps optimize resource allocation and realize the social environment related to coexisting with the COVID-19 pandemic.     

How and why auditors’ social exchange relationships influence their attitudes and behaviors: Implications for audit quality

External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors’ social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors’ perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors’ consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.     

How household food shopping behaviors changed during COVID-19 lockdown period: Evidence from Beijing,China

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on food shopping behavior. However, changes in food shopping behavior and related decision-making mechanisms remain unexplored. This study conducted a face-to-face questionnaire survey with 900 residents in three communities in Haidian, Beijing, China, to analyze food shopping behavior during the periods of pre-lockdown, lockdown (January–March 2020), and post-lockdown. Our results indicated that the preference for fresh food e-commerce shopping was accelerated by the lockdown with the usage rate increasing by 48%; the wet markets were seriously hit by the lockdown policy and had not fully recovered by the post-lockdown period (with a 75% reduction in the usage rate during lockdown). The psychological mechanisms of changes in food shopping behavior revealed that the context (e.g., community facilities) and the perceived risk of COVID-19 were two significant factors impacting the four shopping choices investigated. Specifically, the context factors affected behavior directly for supermarkets and convenience stores and indirectly for e-commerce and wet markets. The findings are expected to help in guiding emergency responses during a future pandemic as well as the long-term construction of food supply facilities.     

Charity registration and reporting: a cross-jurisdictional and theoretical analysis of regulatory impact

Governments increasingly regulate charities to restrict the number of organizations claiming taxation exemptions, reduce charities’ ability to abuse state support, and detect and deter fraud. Public interest theory arguments suggest that regulation could increase philanthropy through enhancing public trust and confidence in charities. Nevertheless, public choice theory argues that regulators seek to maximize political returns, ‘manage’ charity-government relationships, and reduce potential regulatory capture.

We analyse charity regulatory regimes using these two regulatory theories and the relative costs and benefits of different regulatory regimes. Heeding these should reduce regulatory inefficiency and balance accountability and transparency demands against benefits charities receive from regulation.     

The Bullionist Controversy: Theory and New Evidence

The Bullionist Controversy in the United Kingdom is one of the first debates about the determination of the price level and the exchange rate under a paper money standard. Despite the importance of the debate in the development of monetary theory, there remains little empirical evidence that uses modern, multivariate time series techniques. The evidence that does exist provides support for the Anti‐Bullionist position. The purpose of this paper is to review the debate and develop a dynamic general equilibrium model that is capable of capturing key features of the nineteenth‐century British financial system. The model is estimated using Bayesian procedures to test the competing hypotheses. The paper provides support for the Bullionist position.     

How Do Entry Motives and Institutions Influence the Acquisition Strategies of Multinationals in Foreign Markets? Lessons from Acquisitions of Finnish Multinationals in Global Markets

When acquiring foreign targets, multinationals have an option for partial acquisition, staged acquisition, and full acquisition. This study seeks to understand how the motives of market entry and institutions influence these acquisition strategies in foreign markets. By integrating OLI paradigm and institutional theory with an empirical case study of seven acquisitions of Finnish multinationals in global markets, the study finds that the motives of market entry (i.e., market-seeking, efficiency-seeking, strategic-asset-seeking motives) interact with host country institutions in influencing the choice of partial, staged, and full acquisitions. The study also develops six propositions and recommends areas for future research.     

Review: Chinese public administration and finance—a call for a new theory,research and dialogue

In implementing its national strategy to achieve global leadership, China needs a new public administration theory that integrates political administration, economic management and social regulation. Even so, China has already started to promote its brand of political and economic development abroad. Therefore new comparative research and dialogue is called to explore the universality of Chinese and Western public administration ideas.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

A Kaleckian Perspective on Financialisation and Distribution in Three Main Eurozone Countries before and after the Crisis: France,Germany and Spain

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we examine if, and to what extent, a general Kaleckian analysis of the potential effects of financialisation on income shares in advanced capitalist economies is of relevance for the three Eurozone countries under investigation—France, Germany and Spain—in the period before the recent financial and economic crisis. Second, we study changes in the financialisation–distribution nexus that have occurred in the course of and after the financial and economic crisis. We find that the countries examined here have shown broad similarities regarding redistribution before the crisis, although there are some differences in the underlying determinants. These differences have continued during the period after the crisis and have led to different results in the development of distribution since then.