Consumer Quality Perception in Traditional Food: Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese

Abstract

The paper aims to classify the quality cues and attributes of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, an Italian traditional food cheese, exploring if they affect consumers’ quality perceptions and expectations. Analysis is based on a questionnaire administered in hypermarkets where grated Parmigiano Reggiano is sold. A factor analysis, using varimax rotation, and a cluster analysis, were performed, using the Stata 12 software package. The clusters used were: geographical origin and packaging (cluster 1); price, brand and quality certification (cluster 2); all sensory attributes (cluster 3); and a combination of sensory attributes with price, brand, and quality certification (cluster 4). This is the first study to examine the quality cues and attributes affecting quality perception and expectations of cheese for grated Parmigiano Reggiano from a consumer perspective. It is also the first to classify cheese attributes following a quality approach, encompassing previously studied sensory and other attributes.     

Institutional quality,investment efficiency,and the choice of public–private partnerships

We examine a sample of 625 public–private partnership (PPP) firms from 1980 to 2015 that straddle nine countries with varying degrees of economic development and PPP markets. We find that the motivations of the firms that undertake PPP investments vary. While private sector firms in economies with low institutional quality choose to engage in PPPs to alleviate capital constraints attributed to underinvestment, those in economies with high institutional quality participate in PPPs to solve the problem of overinvestment due to an abundant cash flow. In the long run, the benefits of lower capital constraints through PPP investments are more pronounced in economies with high institutional quality.     

微波加热对叶绿素水溶液的影响

本文通过对叶绿素水溶液进行微波加热,分析微波加热对叶绿素水溶液的温度、色度、叶绿素含量的影响。结果表明,微波加热处理的水溶液温度显著高于对照沸水浴,1~2 min时,1000 W功率下的水溶液温度显著高于200 W(P<0.05)。与沸水浴相比,微波加热显著降低了叶绿素水溶液的绿色程度,且高功率微波加热显著加剧了水溶液亮度的变化。200 W微波加热使水溶液中叶绿素a、b含量降低,但1000 W微波加热则提高了水溶液中叶绿素a、b含量。     

三种不同蒸馏仪器测定食品中二氧化硫含量的对比

目的:比较传统玻璃蒸馏瓶蒸馏装置、二氧化硫测定仪、自动凯氏定氮仪3种仪器测定食品中二氧化硫的效果及适用性,为设备选型提供参考.方法:选取番薯干、咸菜、香菇干,分别用上述3种蒸馏装置测定样品中的二氧化硫含量,分析测定结果和过程控制.结果:使用3种不同蒸馏仪器测定结果无显著性差异,两次独立测定结果的绝对差值小于算术平均值的10%,回收率均在85%~95%.结论:二氧化硫测定仪自动化程度高,安全性高,基本可以替代传统玻璃蒸馏瓶蒸馏,实现大部分食品的批量检测,对于香菇干等蒸馏过程易倒吸食品,可采用自动凯氏定氮仪检测,提高实验的准确性和可靠性.     

超市常见含糖食品中糖含量分析

目的:分析超市含糖饮料的含糖量及种类情况。方法:在人流量大的综合超市,按照随机原则,购买74种含糖饮料,并采用离子交换色谱-脉冲安培积分方法检测各类糖分的含量。结果:各类饮料在葡萄糖、乳糖、果糖、麦芽糖、蔗糖以及总含糖量方面比较均具有统计学差异(P<0.05),总糖含量最高的为咖啡,其次为奶茶,总糖含量最少的为茶饮料。结论:各类含糖饮料在含糖种类和含量方面有所不同,咖啡与奶茶的总含糖量较高。     

Employment quality index for the South African labour market

ABSTRACT

While the South African government specifically set targets on job creation in its numerous economic strategies since the economic transition, various local studies examined the levels and trends in labour force, employment and unemployment to evaluate if these targets were met. However, the quality of employment has not been thoroughly examined. This is the first local study that fills the existing research gap by deriving a composite, multidimensional employment quality index by taking 18 indicators from seven dimensions into consideration: wage, work hours and flexibility, employment security, income security, social benefits, skills and participation. Using the 2010–16 Quarterly Labour Force Survey data, the empirical findings indicated that highly educated, white male workers aged at least 35 years, who lived in urban areas of the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, and were involved in high skilled occupations in the formal, public sector enjoyed significantly better employment quality.     

Does rice farming shape audit quality: Evidence from signing auditors level analysis

This study examines whether signing auditors from rice planting regions affect audit quality. Using a sample of 12,223 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over the period of 2004–2015, our findings reveal that signing auditors from rice regions are significantly negatively associated with the likelihood of unclean audit opinions, suggesting that signing auditors with rice culture are more likely to succumb to the managers and hamper independence, and thus are more inclined to issue favorable audit opinions, and eventually impair audit quality. Furthermore, audit firm size and industry expertise attenuate the negative relation between signing auditors with rice culture and audit quality. In addition, above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests using different measures of audit quality and signing auditors from rice cultivating areas and our conclusions still stand after using the Heckman two-step approach, placebo test and differences-in-differences method to address the potential endogeneity problem.     

CEO internal experience and voluntary disclosure quality: Evidence from management forecasts

Internally‐promoted CEOs should have a deep understanding of their firm's products, supply chain, operations, business climate, corporate culture, and how to navigate among employees to get the information they need. Thus, we argue that internally‐promoted CEOs are likely to produce higher quality disclosure than outsider CEOs. Using a sample of US firms from the S&P1500 index from 2001 to 2011, we hand‐collect whether a CEO is hired from inside the firm and, if so, the number of years they worked at the firm before becoming CEO. We then examine whether managers with more internal experience issue higher quality disclosures and offer three main findings. First, CEOs with more internal experience are more likely to issue voluntary earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Second, CEOs with more internal experience issue more accurate earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Finally, investors react more strongly to forecasts issued by insider CEOs than to those issued by outsider CEOs. In additional analysis, we find no evidence that these results extend to mandatory reporting quality (i.e., accruals quality, restatements, or internal control weaknesses), perhaps because mandatory disclosure is subjected to heavy oversight by the board of directors, auditors, and regulators. Overall, our findings suggest that when managers have work experience with the firm prior to becoming the CEO, the firm's voluntary disclosure is of higher quality.     

Employing structural topic modelling to explore perceived service quality attributes in Airbnb accommodation

This study employs the structural topic model to extract service quality attributes from 242,020 Airbnb reviews in Malaysia. 22 service related topics were extracted from the corpus and four topics have not appeared in previous Airbnb studies. A widely used modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (MSQ) is cross-validated in this study by comparing its service quality attributes with the results of the topic modelling, which indicates that this MSQ can cover general Airbnb service quality attributes. This study also examines the different preferences of Malaysian and international Airbnb users and the changing patterns of the top six service quality attributes during a five-year period. The findings reveal that Malaysian Airbnb users care more about the appearance and location of the property, and international Airbnb users pay more attention to whether the property can accommodate a group of people. In addition, communication with the host is found to play an increasingly important role in Airbnb users’ lodging experiences.     

Contracting Institutions,Agro‐food Trade and Product Quality

The agro‐food sector has experienced a profound transformation of contractual arrangements along the value chain, coinciding with important technological innovations and product quality upgrading. Our understanding of the impact that this transformation has had on trade flows in the agricultural sector is very limited. In particular, we have limited knowledge about the extent to which the patterns in agro‐food trade have been driven by the quality of contractual institutions. Using existing measures which capture the sensitivity of agro‐food products to contractual imperfections, we show that countries with better contract enforcement specialise in the production of food which requires higher level of relationship‐specific investments. We also find that countries with better contracting institutions and producing contract‐intensive goods specialise in exporting high quality foods. In addition, we show that the quality of contracting institutions might importantly affect the process of product quality upgrading.