Climate Change and Asset Prices: Are Corporate Carbon Disclosure and Performance Priced Appropriately?

This paper empirically assesses the relevance of information on corporate climate change disclosure and performance to asset prices, and discusses whether this information is priced appropriately. Findings indicate that corporate disclosures of quantitative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, to a lesser extent, carbon performance are value relevant. We use hand‐collected information on quantitative GHG emissions for 433 European companies and build portfolios based on GHG disclosure and performance. We regress portfolios on a standard four factor model extended for industry effects over the years 2005 to 2009. Results show that investors achieved abnormal risk‐adjusted returns of up to 13.05% annually by exploiting inefficiently priced positive effects of (complete) GHG emissions disclosure and good corporate climate change performance in terms of GHG efficiency. Results imply that, firstly, information costs involved in carbon disclosure and management do not present a burden on corporate financial resources. Secondly, investors should not neglect carbon disclosure and performance when making investment decisions. Thirdly, during the period analysed, financial markets were inefficient in pricing publicly available information on carbon disclosure and performance. Mandatory and standardised information on carbon performance would consequently not only increase market efficiency but result in better allocation of capital within the real economy.     

Quantitative and qualitative insights into consumers’ sustainable purchasing behaviour: a segmentation approach based on motives and heuristic cues

The present study draws on the concepts of motives and heuristics to thoroughly understand consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviour in the context of personal care products. The mixed-methods approach combines real purchasing data with in-depth qualitative data to generate insights with a high external validity. In the first section of the study, quantitative analysis is applied to actual purchasing behaviour (n = 10,772,477) to identify market trends. Three main groupings, along with specific heuristic cues, are established. In the second step, a qualitative study (n = 21) provides deeper insights into consumers’ motives and decision-making processes. By synthesising the quantitative and qualitative research findings, a segmentation approach is developed. Relevant motives and values, and corresponding specific heuristic cues are identified for each consumer segment. Analysis suggests that consumers are motivated by self-interest and environmental motives, and that they use simple heuristic cues to make quick and satisfying purchasing decisions. Both retailers and manufacturers can leverage these insights to seize the opportunities of the developing market for sustainable personal care products.     

Beyond choice: investigating the sensitivity and validity of measures of strength of preference

Many experiments investigating different decision theories have relied heavily on pairwise choices between lotteries. These are easy to incentivise, but often yield only limited dichotomous information. This paper considers whether respondents’ judgments about their strength of preference (SoP) for one alternative over another can usefully supplement standard choice data. We report extensive evidence that such judgments show sensitivity to variations in question format and parameter values in the directions we should expect, not only within-subject but also between-sample. We illustrate how such judgments can usefully supplement standard pairwise choice data and enrich our understanding of observed behaviour.     

The Success Factors of Food Events: The Case Study of Umbrian Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Gastronomic events are an important part of the “Made in Italy” and a vital tool for rural development. The aim of the study is to identify the complexity of the factors that determine the success of a food event. The authors, after state-of-the-art analysis of the event marketing, formulate the hypothesis of a causal model and form a data collection during the “open oil mills” in the Umbria region. Through in-depth interviews the participants were asked to express themselves about the importance and interest attributed to some aspects directly related to the theme of the event, and finally to indicate the degree of satisfaction and the likelihood of some of their future behavior. Statistical analysis based on structural equation models allowed the authors to highlight which aspects are significant in order to confirm the assumptions made. Results provide guidance for management decisions and organization of food and wine.     

A Market and Spatial Perspective of Health Tourism Destinations: The Hungarian Experience

Since health tourism is one of the most popular and most dynamically developing products of modern tourism, this paper aims at studying the characteristic features of health tourism destinations from a regional and spatial perspective. Accordingly, the authors would like to introduce a new approach of spatial and product analysis of tourism where the market and spatial relations and relevance of health tourism were analysed through the example of Hungary. Although the classic medical tourism centres were established on natural medical water basis, by today, due to product diversification, continuous innovation and the involvement of medical services into health tourism, the geographical embeddedness seems to disappear, thus basically restructuring the market. The methodological novelty of the research is that exceeding the classic supply–demand algorithm, we compiled a complex viewpoint system adequate to the specialities of the given product characteristics. In our study, the authors intend to survey the special characteristics of health tourism focusing on medical destinations through Hungarian examples since the country's leading position in the global market is well recognized, including medical services. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An empirical investigation into the gravitation and convergence of industry return rates in OECD countries

Tests are offered for the hypotheses that sectoral average profit rates and incremental return rates are gravitating around or converging towards a common value. We study data for various OECD countries relying on an econometric method able to account for residual autocorrelation and cross‐sector correlation. Our null hypotheses receive only a mixed empirical support. This is interpreted as the result of various kinds of limitations to capital mobility. Policy implications are discussed.     

Measurement of organizational investments in social capital: The service employee perspective

This paper describes the development and validation of a measure of organizational investments in social capital (OISC). The scale development process is carried out over three stages (item generation, scale purification, scale validation), with two separate data collection phases involving a total of 735 working adults from multiple and diverse service-related workplace settings. As such, the data provide evidence for the face, content, discriminant, convergent and nomological validity, dimensionality and reliability of the OISC measure. The OISC measure is a concise, unidimensional scale that has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of theory, as well as practical application in retail and other service provision contexts.     

NEW ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS IN EUROPEAN LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT: FROM MYTH TO REALITY*

ABSTRACT: The Europeanization of public services is frequently considered to have created pressure for Member States to progressively converge towards a new dominant organizational model, based on deregulation, de‐integration and privatization. However, while in some sectors European directives played a crucial role in boosting a common evolutionary path, in other cases, mainly related to local public services, this influence remained feeble and more uncertain. The empirical insight on EU Local Public Transport Services carried out in this paper aims at investigating if and to what extent this new dominant paradigm actually emerges, or if and to what extent more fragmented and heterogeneous outcomes prevail. The main outcome is that the public role in Local Public Transport is still widespread and that a major theoretical and analytical focus should be directed to the ability of the principal‐competent public administration to play its role in an effective and sound manner, while often too much attention is paid to the characteristics of the agent‐operator (public‐private, big or small, foreign or national, etc.).     

Relational paths in business network dynamics: Evidence from the fashion industry

This paper addresses the topic of business network dynamics. Starting with a review of the IMP literature, it aims to shed light on potential relational paths by which a firm may reconfigure its business network. To this end, two main emerging paths are described: integration and substitution. Methodologically, the paper presents and discusses the data collected during a longitudinal case analysis of four Italian textile producers. The main implications for business networks stemming from these emerging relational paths are described. In particular, the main findings from the cases analyzed suggest that business network dynamics should be interpreted in terms of the processes of both business network change and consolidation.