Discovering India's three levels of luxury consumption: An exploratory research to find a conceptual framework

Luxury marketing research has moved from functional product attributes to a ‘democratized’ view in emerging economies. This seems to be based on the development of interactive and digital communications. Luxury research studies have historically focused on the brand's and marketer's perspectives. Thus, little attention has been given to the consumer's view of what we consider to be the individual drivers, i.e., the ‘inner and outer self’ and how that impacts luxury consumption. This paper presents a framework of luxury and self, using concepts such as interdependent or outer, independent or inner, and a new concept of ‘digital self’. These appear as three levels of luxury consumption, i.e., conspicuous, individual, and interactive. The interdependent self is influenced by the external motives and leads to conspicuous luxury behavior. Individual self is affected by internal motives and thus influences individual luxury consumption. Digital self affects the networks of motive and relationships and thereby impacts interactive luxury consumption and behavior.     

Big data driven cycle time parallel prediction for production planning in wafer manufacturing

Cycle time forecasting (CTF) is one of the most crucial issues for production planning to keep high delivery reliability in semiconductor wafer fabrication systems (SWFS). This paper proposes a novel data-intensive cycle time (CT) prediction system with parallel computing to rapidly forecast the CT of wafer lots with large datasets. First, a density peak based radial basis function network (DP-RBFN) is designed to forecast the CT with the diverse and agglomerative CT data. Second, the network learning method based on a clustering technique is proposed to determine the density peak. Third, a parallel computing approach for network training is proposed in order to speed up the training process with large scaled CT data. Finally, an experiment with respect to SWFS is presented, which demonstrates that the proposed CTF system can not only speed up the training process of the model but also outperform the radial basis function network, the back-propagation-network and multivariate regression methodology based CTF methods in terms of the mean absolute deviation and standard deviation.     

Do firms leverage the FDA nutrient label rounding rules to generate favorable nutrition fact panels or health claims?

The increasing incidence of nutrition related health concerns has made food labeling an important policy issue. Previous work suggests the importance of communicating nutrition information to consumers through product packaging. This paper investigates the role of labeling guidelines, which allow the rounding of calorie and nutrient levels on nutrition fact panels and affects front of package claims. We examine ready-to-eat cereal products as a bundle of nutrient attributes, and estimate the likelihood and magnitude of the rounding of specific nutrients and calories. We find systematic rounding, both up and down, of several nutrients, which affects allowable health claims and may influence consumer product choice and health outcomes.     

The daughter effect: do CEOs with daughters hire more women to their board?

Using a sample of S&P 100 firms, we find that CEOs with a daughter are more likely to hire new women to their board of directors than CEOs without a daughter. Our results provide additional evidence that parents’ attitudes and actions are affected by the gender of their children and that the effect is strong enough to influence important decisions at large corporations.     

生态旅游视域下的岷江上游贫困山区生态安全评价

[目的]构建科学合理的评价指标体系,准确评价生态旅游影响下的区域生态安全状况,是推动少数民族山区实现旅游资源环境与区域社会、经济协同发展的前提和基础。[方法]以岷江上游贫困山区为例,应用灰色系统理论与熵值赋权法相结合,基于压力—状态—响应模型,构建生态旅游视域下的区域生态安全评估指标体系,并将评估指数与经济收入状况及贫困人口分布进行空间耦合。[结果](1)区域当前处于较安全水平,生态旅游开发适度;(2)综合评估指数与城镇居民可支配收入增长率、旅游收入对国民经济增长的贡献率呈正相关,且城镇居民在旅游开发中受益与机会较农牧民多;(3)综合评估指数与贫困人口比重呈负相关,与农牧民纯收入增长率没有必然联系。[结论]区域脱贫能够改善当地的生态安全状况,适度生态旅游开发是区域脱贫的有效手段,但应注重扶持农牧民在旅游业中的参与度,增加其旅游收益。     

Tourism as a discipline in light of the non-classical sociology of science

Embedding the issue of the recognition of tourism by the academia in the context of the scientific identity of the researchers of tourism can bring valuable insights into the debate. Moreover, such an approach is aligned with the main assumptions of social constructionism and the non-classical sociology of science (knowledge) stemming from the paradigm theory of science formulated by Kuhn. These concepts served as the foundations for the present research, allowing for the formulation of its main hypothesis: that every academic community has the right to decide whether it accepts tourism as a separate academic discipline or not, and that there is no reason why any opinion on this matter should be imposed on everyone. Another useful piece of information can be gained by adopting an epistemological perspective in the form of the questions: will separating tourism from other disciplines make it possible for us to learn more about it? Or should we continue considering it through the prisms of other disciplines? These were the premises which drove both parts of the present research: literature query and empirical study (which featured results from researchers from all around the world), and were addressed in the conclusion.     

Chinese tourists' views of nature and natural landscape interpretation: a generational perspective

This study investigates Chinese tourists’ views of nature, interest in animal experiences and their preferred natural landscape interpretation content from a generational perspective. Eight hundred and eight self-administered questionnaires were collected at Wulingyuan, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, in China. It suggests that overall Chinese traditional cultural values and beliefs, notably the thinking of tian ren he yi (oneness of nature with humans), still have considerable impacts on Chinese tourists. They were found to have a strong sense of connection with nature and a preference for cultural interpretations of natural landscapes. Meanwhile, Chinese might be reaching a point of convergence in terms of attitude towards nature and animals with their Western counterparts, as reflected by their weak anthropocentric view, and strong ethical and aesthetic appreciation of animals, regardless of generation cohorts. Yet, the study shows significant generational gaps: older generations have a stronger connection with nature, are more concerned about environmental issues and show more support for the Western approach towards nature protection; the younger generations hold weaker anthropocentrism, and are more interested in animals, yet are less likely to learn about nature through tourism interpretation.     

颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型

基于颠覆性创新、创新扩散、创新模糊前端等相关理论，从全流程角度创新性地构建了颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型，包括颠覆性创意产生、颠覆性创新产品开发、侵蚀非主流市场、占据主流市场4个阶段，各阶段之间相互关联、循环往复，并受到技术、市场、政策、竞争等外部环境因素影响。选取液晶电视机和山寨手机作为高端和低端两个颠覆性创新典型案例，通过对其进行验证性分析，构建具体的高端与低端颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型。     

The Neutrality Illusion: Biased Economics,Biased Training,and Biased Monetary Policy. Testing the Role of Ideology on FOMC Voting Behaviour

This research is trying to shed light on two myths that are usually widespread: the first one being the idea of the academic economist as a neutral scientist finding uncontestable consensual truths, thanks to uncontestable empirical methods, the second, the idea of the central banker as a Weberian neutral bureaucrat setting aside personal beliefs to act mechanically for the common good. Deconstructing this ‘neutrality illusion’, this work argues that economics is actually a divided and ideologically marked discipline despite its aim at natural-science-type-legitimacy. It argues in a related discussion that such ideological bias also impedes a purely neutral conduct of monetary policy, undermining the very idea of central bank independence. Linking these two arguments, it argues that graduate training in economics is the first place for the formation of biased preferences, because of the substantial ideological sorting that exists across universities. Using a unique database on FOMC members’ votes and ideology, the paper tests this idea empirically and despite unavoidable caveats, finds robust evidence of a systematic impact of the ideological features of their alma mater on FOMC members’ voting behaviour – impact that we found more important than the other traditional determinants of central bankers’ actions.     

国内外社会资本与旅游研究文献综述

社会资本包含集体社会资本和个体社会资本。通过对Elsevier，Springer link和CNKI等平台上的文献进行梳理发现：在旅游领域，社会资本理论研究主要集中于集体和个体社会资本对旅游发展影响以及旅游对目的地社会资本影响等方面，研究呈现出内容上集中于社会资本对旅游的影响，方法上以案例分析为主的特点，当前仍存在不足，并提出今后研究的趋势，为以旅游创新助力乡村振兴，关注特色小镇发展模式，促进文化旅游可持续等，更好地运用社会资本理论来解释和解决旅游活动中的现象和问题，促进旅游业可持续发展。