New measuring stick on sharing accommodation: Guest-perceived benefits and risks

As an emergent phenomenon fueled by advanced technology, the sharing economy enables people to capitalize on underutilized physical assets that would otherwise be wasted. Despite the rapid growth, existing empirical studies are limited to the adoption of scales from other disciplines, although collaborative consumption differs from commercial consumption. The purpose of the study is to examine guests’ perceived risks and benefits of sharing accommodation. Using three folded studies, this research attempts to yield key theoretical contributions by developing a scale for perceived benefits and risks in the context of sharing accommodation. Furthermore, this study provides initial insights into why consumers would avoid sharing accommodations while at the same time identifying potential benefits and risks in relation to attitude and behavioral intentions. The findings from this research will enable sharing accommodation hosts to understand consumers’ perceived benefits and risks and thus provide enhanced experiences to users.     

Government and social trust vs. hotel response efficacy: A protection motivation perspective on hotel stay intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study conceptualizes a research framework to explain and examine customer intentions regarding hotel stays during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 700 U.S. consumers via a crowdsourcing website in July 2020. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data for testing proposed hypotheses. The analytical results showed that the level of threat perceived by customers significantly reduced their intention to stay at a hotel. On the contrary, individual customer response efficacy significantly enhanced their intention to stay at a hotel. Additionally, both government and social trust, as well as hotel response efficacy, were found to significantly increase hotel stay intention by mediating the effects of threat perception and individual response efficacy. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to apply PMT to explain customer hotel stay intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Ground Roasted Coffee Consumers’ Ability to Determine Actual Quality: The Use of Attributes and the Role of Education Level in Mexico

This study contributes to the understanding of the consumer’s ability to distinguish levels of quality of a product comparing it to an objective evaluation. Also, it was hypothesized that a higher level of education would lead to a better ability to discriminate quality. Perceived and objective quality are compared using a semi-experimental design with subjects evaluating coffee attributes. Objective values are provided by certified expert coffee cuppers, whereas perceived values are obtained from regular coffee drinkers. Results suggest that the importance placed on each attribute (aroma, flavour, body, and residual flavour) by the consumer is different from that placed on each attribute by the experts. Furthermore, the most relevant attribute for the consumer (flavour) is distinct from the one most relevant for experts (residual flavour). Additionally, the consumer is unable to distinguish quality levels as an expert can do, regardless of his education level.     

Anticipated guilt and pleasure in a healthy food consumption context

Recognizing the increasing importance of healthiness in food-related businesses, this study attempted to investigate the role of consumers’ affective responses in a healthy food consumption context. To achieve its objectives, this study incorporated anticipated emotional constructs in a decision-making model and investigated the relationships among perceived healthiness, anticipated guilt and pleasure, and behavioral intentions (e.g., purchase, spreading positive word-of-mouth, and recommending the food) in a quick service restaurant setting. The results of this study suggest that anticipated pleasure positively influenced behavioral intentions and mediated the relationship between perceived healthiness and behavioral intentions, whereas anticipated guilt did not influence behavioral intentions. Additionally, this study investigated the moderating role of dietary concerns in consumers’ decision-making processes and found that the low dietary concerns group was more susceptible to anticipated pleasure compared to the high dietary concerns group. Further findings and implications are provided in the main body of the paper.     

财政支出差异性对创业活动的激励效应分析

经济新常态下，创业是推动中国经济发展、改善民生的重要途径。创业过程的风险性、不确定性及正外部性需要政府给予积极支持。基于2007-2015年中国内地30个省市（除西藏外）数据，运用动态面板模型，考察地区财政支出和创业活动的关系。研究结果表明：财政支出规模对创业活动数量及创业活动质量具有滞后的积极作用；财政支出规模的滞后效应源于财政支出结构的滞后效应，不同财政支出结构对创业活动质量影响的差异较大；同时，创新是提升创业活动质量的重要手段。因此，政府应积极支持“大众创业、万众创新”，各地区财政创业扶持资金应该从规模和结构上进行调整，重点优化有利于创新的支出结构，为创业提供良好的公共环境。     

Refining e-shoppers’ perceived risks: Development and validation of new measurement scale

Due to the rapid expansion of perceived e-shopping risks, and highly isolated and inconsistent presentation of literature about this concept, understanding e-shopper's behavior has become more difficult. In this regard, this study brings together different views, evidences and facts about perceived e-shopping risks from both scholars and practitioners of South-East Asian and Western countries. It then interprets the information in the form of a new scale which offers more adequacy, assemblage and uniformity than the existing models of perceived risks of e-shoppers. The new scale of construct has 11 dimensions comprising a pool of 38 items, which has been empirically validated through the data collected from 537 Malaysian e-shoppers. The dimensions are: high price risk, deception risk, transaction failure risk, dissimilar product risk, incapable service risk, illegitimate product risk, isolation risk, unease risk, displeasure risk, prior-purchase time delays risk, and post-purchase time delays risk. The theoretical and managerial implications and research limitations have also been discussed.     

Determinants of holistic passenger experience in public transportation: Scale development and validation

Transportation literature is shifting its focus from passengers’ perception of transit quality to understanding passenger experience from a holistic perspective. Few studies have investigated passenger experience factors from a holistic perspective; however, they are explored independently. A holistic approach can help the transport service providers to understand the complete journey of the passenger. This study proposes the concept of holistic passenger experience (HPX) and identifies the determinants of HPX in the context of public transportation with specific reference to Indian Railways. The study develops a comprehensive scale that measures the influence of these determinants on HPX to address this gap. Following a systematic scale development process, this study identified and validated (content, construct, convergent, and discriminant validity) a seven factor structure scale that determines HPX. Of these seven factors, four factors (vehicle maintenance, comfort & security, off board service, and travel information) constitute the core services offered by the transport service provider. Interestingly these four factors can be effectively managed by the service provider. The other three factors (social environment, supporting services, and accessibility) cannot be entirely managed by the transport service provider effectively, as these factors fall beyond the scope of the service provider.Nomological validity results are explained by constructing a matrix (holistic passenger experience Matrix) which reveals that most of the constructs that are can be managed by the transport service provider can be mapped to the cognitive component of customer experience, whereas most of the factors which go beyond the scope of the transport service provider could be mapped to the emotional component of customer experience. The findings can assist the transport sector executives to identify the key determinants to deliver superior passenger experiences throughout the journey.     

组织韧性内涵、维度及测量

组织韧性反映组织在面对困难和挑战后的复原能力，是企业可持续成长领域研究的关键问题。近年来,学术界对组织韧性研究逐渐关注，但对于组织韧性内涵、维度及测量方法仍缺乏共识。基于已有组织韧性理论，通过对文献的系统梳理和对企业实践者的半结构化访谈，提炼出组织韧性内涵及维度，并开发相应的测量量表。利用二次大规模问卷调查数据进行探索性因子分析与验证性因子分析，实证结果表明，开发的测量量表具有较高的信度与效度，能够很好地反映组织韧性内涵及维度，弥补已有组织韧性研究测量量表的缺失，为后续开展中国情境下组织韧性研究提供参考。     

The Impact of Career Capital on Expatriates' Perceived Marketability

We examine how the development of three types of career capital (knowing how, knowing whom, and knowing why) during an international assignment affects the perceived marketability of organizational expatriates. Using the perceived marketability perspective and long‐term follow‐up data, we show that knowing how is seen as the most transferable type of career capital, while the development of other aspects of career capital has little impact on perceived marketability. We also show that career capital development is more recognized in the external market than by current employers. Our findings expand our understanding of long‐term career marketability among people who have completed international assignments. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Productivity changes in pre-crisis Western European banks: Does scale effect really matter?

Insofar as the completion of the Single Market for Financial Services, it has presented new challenges for European Banking industries. In this study, we use a recently developed generalized metafrontier Malmquist productivity index (gMMPI) to provide insights on productivity growth. We extend the gMMPI to broaden the index's capacity by decomposing various sources of productivity change in the metafrontier context. The sample contains commercial banks from 12 Western European countries prior to the recent financial crisis. A key advantage of our extension is that it introduces the role of scale effects. The empirical results show that an average bank's productivity growth arises mainly from technical changes and scale effects. Moreover, smaller and larger banks grow faster than medium ones. In addition, conservative banks tend to grow faster. These findings suggest that a more competitive and integrated financial market induced by financial deregulation is indeed able to improve banks’ productivity.