Using the travel cost method to value visits and stigma in connection with ARV adherence in Uganda

This article uses the travel cost method to value both client visits to collect antiretroviral therapy (ARV) and stigma, which prevents ARV adherence. Using a representative sample for Uganda initiated specifically for this study, we found a willingness to pay (WTP) valuation for visits made in the range of US$14–US$17 and a willingness to accept (WTA) valuation of US$25 for visits missed. The valuations for stigma based on a novel measure of stigma using a new estimation method were close to the valuations for visits. These valuations can be used to estimate the benefits to carry out cost–benefit analyses (CBAs) of interventions aimed at increasing ARV coverage and adherence.     

Infrastructure Disruption in ‘Silicon Savannah’: Exploring the Idea of the Creative Class and their Relation to Quality of Place in Nairobi,Kenya

Debates around urbanization, infrastructure disruption and the creative class rarely appear alongside each other in research on African cities. This article connects these different narratives, which are currently exerting their influence on the future direction of these cities. The economic value of the creative class is that their work centres on innovation—a quality seen as essential to ‘new-economy’ urban growth. Quality of place (that which makes ‘New York New York’) is said to attract the creative class to certain cities, as lifestyle amenities are valued as much as employment opportunities. Nairobi is an example of an African city currently attracting both Kenyan and expatriate creative class workers, particularly in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. In this article we take Richard Florida's creative class theory as a departure point to offer insights into why this group chooses to live in Nairobi and to describe Nairobi's quality of place, with a particular focus on infrastructure disruption. The case study reveals that Nairobi's quality of place differs fundamentally from the normative attributes prescribed by creative class theory and, in some instances, it is considered to be highly frustrating and unattractive.     

A guide to the seen costs and unseen benefits of e-commerce

As consumer shopping preferences shift from traditional retail channels toward e-commerce, the negative effects of e-commerce are easy to see and are often noted in the popular press. Yet, the benefits of this shift are often unseen. In this article, we first consider empirical evidence that suggests technological innovation is generally a net positive for society. We look at the unseen benefits along with each of the seen costs of e-commerce growth to fully understand the impacts on society. To do this, we consider packaging and waste, traffic and emissions, and energy and resource consumption—all considered costs of e-commerce. Based on this evidence, we propose that policymakers should exercise caution before developing policies that may alter this shift and limit innovation.     

Benchmarking therapists: furthering the benchmarking method in its application to clinical practice

Psychotherapy research has been interested in understanding the variability observed among therapists with regard to their treatment effectiveness. An important initial step towards understanding the source of the differences is to reliably identify therapists that are effective. The current paper thus proposes a method for benchmarking therapists against predetermined criteria of effectiveness which could be conducted using any standard statistical package. Basic steps include (a) creating benchmark(s), (b) determining a prior the numerical criteria that constitute as ??effective?? based on the benchmark(s), (c) calculating pre-post effect sizes as an indicator of effectiveness at the case level using statistical adjustments so as to best match clinical (and other) differences among cases, and (d) statistically benchmarking the therapists using a random-effects hierarchical linear modeling. An example is provided that highlights the number of therapists who would be classified as effective based on various numerical criteria and confidence levels.     

Manager impacts on worker performance in American football: Do offensive coordinators impact quarterback performance in the National Football League?

Ample research in nonsports labor markets suggests that managerial quality significantly impacts worker productivity; however, studies using sports data have been less likely to find such evidence supporting the importance of managers/coaches. We examine the impact of offensive coordinators on quarterback performance in football. While we find that various offensive coordinator characteristics have little impact on quarterback performance, we show that individual offensive coordinators do seem to play a role in quarterback development. Consistent with research on manager effects outside of sports, this suggests that elite and poor offensive coordinators do significantly impact the productivity of the quarterbacks they manage.     

The next frontier in tourism emotion research

Emotion is emerging as a central concept in tourism research, critical for the delivery of memorable tourism experiences. However, existing approaches in tourism do not adequately explain the process by which emotions are elicited. Recent advances in cognitive and neuropsychology demonstrate that emotions are elicited through an appraisal process, which occurs in the cortex of the brain. These processes produce chemical monoamine neurotransmitters that lead to bodily feelings, which in turn enable our brain to recognise emotions. This research note draws on Lövheim’s Cube, a self-report scale that provides a proxy indicator of the likely presence of monoamine neurotransmitters of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. Six images of the Great Barrier Reef were used as a stimuli in an online panel survey (n?=?1249). Results demonstrate that images used by tourism stakeholders are likely to produce stronger neurological reactions than images from an environmental non-governmental organisation. Combining recent advances in self-report methods with a neurocognitive approach has the propensity to offers additional insight into emotional reactions to visual stimuli. Further research should focus on the efficacy of utilising self-report measures with cutting edge psychophysiological techniques, such as ambulatory electroencephalography (EEG) to open the door to the next frontier in tourism emotion research.     

The coexistence of tourism and mining: a strategic framework for cross-sectoral interaction

The tourism and resources sectors are often observed to come into conflict. Yet little research has examined the complex interactions between the two sectors, specifically the strategies for building resilient rural regions. Consequently, this research explores the coexistence of the tourism and resources sectors in the Gladstone and Roma regions in Queensland, Australia. A total of 78 in-depth interviews revealed a complex network of interactions between the tourism and resource sectors, outlining deficiencies in previous theoretical premises on sectoral interaction. Key findings revealed three key synergies including resources sector investment, resources sector multipliers and induced travel, and formal and informal partnerships. Strategies to enhance the coexistence also emerged focused on reducing the negative impacts of the co-evolution process, improving industrial tourism products and developing trust, partnerships and a joint vision between the two sectors. A theoretically informed management framework for future interaction is subsequently proposed for testing and application in other contexts.     

Internal information quality and patent-related innovation

This study investigates how the quality of information available within a firm affects patent-related innovative activities. Relying on recent theoretical and empirical research, we use externally observable information attributes to proxy for the quality of internal information. Our empirical results indicate that firms with higher internal information quality generate more patents and patent citations. Cross-sectional analyses show that this positive effect is greater when firms are susceptible to greater internal information frictions due to firm decentralization, short management team tenure, and long product development cycles. We also document that firms experience an increase in patents and patent citations following an improvement of internal information quality proxied by internal control weakness remediation. Overall, our results suggest that the positive relation between internal information quality and task performance extends to patent-related innovation, a non-routine type of task that may rely on information originating from sources other than firms’ formal internal information systems.     

Taxation,redistribution, and observability in social dilemmas

In the presence of social dilemmas, cooperation is more difficult to achieve when populations are heterogeneous because of conflicting interests within groups. We examine cooperation in the context of a nonlinear common pool resource game, in which individuals have unequal extraction capacities and have to decide on their extraction of resources from the common pool. We introduce monetary and nonmonetary mechanisms in this environment. The two monetary mechanisms are tax extraction and redistribution of the tax revenue. These include a Pigovian per‐unit tax mechanism and an increasing block tax that only taxes units extracted above the social optimum. Another mechanism varies the observability of individual decisions. We find that the two tax and redistribution mechanisms reduce extraction, increase efficiency, and decrease inequality within groups. In contrast, observability impacts only the baseline condition by encouraging free‐riding instead of creating moral pressure to cooperate.     

From college to the NBA: what determines a player’s success and what characteristics are NBA franchises overlooking?

Considering NBA players who were drafted between 2006 and 2013, the author analyses the determinants of draft position, playing time and player productivity. By comparing these factors simultaneously, one is able to consider if there are some factors that correlate with players’ draft positions, but fail to correlate with on-court performance. For example, the results reveal that a player’s college turnover rate does not predict his draft position or his playing time in the NBA despite evidence that turnover-prone college players are less effective in the NBA. These results can be used to improve draft-day decisions for NBA executives.