Vicious advice: Analyzing the impact of TripAdvisor on the quality of restaurants as part of the cultural heritage of Venice

Venice is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. In Venice, as in other middle-sized heritage European cities, strong tourism pressure is trapping the city in a vicious circle that is eroding the quality of its tourism attractions. This development is related to the growing numbers of excursionists who lack the time to make informed decisions about the quality of goods. Consequently, suppliers reduce the quality of their offerings and instead focus on market share. Consumer-generated media (CGM) may help resist this development by providing excursionists with aggregated, up-to-date information on the quality of tourism offerings as perceived by customers. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of TripAdvisor in helping tourists to make informed decisions and in increasing the popularity of restaurants offering a higher expected quality. Our findings suggest that, although TripAdvisor's algorithm is designed to reward quality, it does not adequately meet these goals.     

Mobile Advertising: A Framework and Research Agenda

Mobile advertising allows retailers, service providers, and manufacturers to provide consumers with increasingly relevant offers. The success of such campaigns depends on an ever better understanding of environmental, consumer, and technological context variables; a strong focus on advertising goals; accounting for market factors related to the nature of stakeholders and market environment; and the use of appropriate mobile ad elements to improve relevant outcome metrics. This article provides an overarching framework to synthesize current findings in mobile advertising, as well as a research agenda to stimulate additional work in this nascent field.     

Using quantitative influence diagrams to map natural resource managers’ mental models of invasive species management

Despite the significant effect that invasive species have on natural values, the number and extent of invasions continue to rise globally. At least three dominant reasons explain why policy development and implementation can fail: differences in managers’ mental models of invasive species management; cross-agency responsibility; and poor planning and management (i.e., planning–implementation gap). We used a case study of cross-agency management of gamba grass (Andropogon gayanus) in Australia to explore the differences in organizational staffs’ mental models of management. The gamba grass invasion in northern Australia is continuing to expand and associated effects are increasing; coordinated action across agencies is needed to manage the expansion. Our aim was to examine how staff would represent their mental models as a diagram that we could compare between individuals and groups. We used cognitive mapping techniques to elicit models of 15 individuals from across 5 organizations, represented as an influence diagram, which shows the interrelationships that define a system. We compiled the individual influence diagrams to create a team model of management that captures the common connections across participants’ diagrams. The team model revealed that education, science, legislation, enforcement and property management plans were perceived to be the most important management tools to control or eradicate gamba grass. The Weed Management Branch was perceived to have the most central role in gamba grass management, while other organizations were perceived to have specific roles according to their core business. Significant positive correlations (i.e., shared perceptions) were observed across half of the participants, indicating that the some participants have shared models that could be used as a starting point for discussing the team model, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and potentially building consensus around a shared model. Dominant opportunities for improvement identified by participants were better use of management tools, namely education and enforcement, better coordination and collaboration between agencies and increased resourcing. Our research demonstrates the value and validity of using influence diagrams to explore managers’ mental models and to create a team model that could serve as a starting point for improved cross-agency natural resource management.     

Ramshackle farmhouses,useless old stables,or irreplaceable cultural heritage? Local inhabitants’ perspectives on future uses of the Walser built heritage

Social and economic developments in rural regions call for a discussion of strategies of dealing with redundant traditional buildings. Using a social science approach, our study examines how the local population in two rural regions perceives the built heritage and which factors are underlying these perceptions. People’s attitudes towards maintaining the cultural heritage vary considerably and are partly influenced by the socio-cultural and economic context of the region. The present article discusses some of the core regional socio-cultural influences on attitudes towards the rural built heritage. Following from qualitative interviews, the article concludes that the scale of perception of the built heritage is related to the “liveliness” of the local culture: The more original and distinctive the local culture is, and the more the local economy is still based on agriculture, the wider the scale of perception of the traditional cultural landscape and built heritage. In a region with local traditions that are alive and followed in everyday life, and a local economy that is mainly based on agriculture, the entire settlement structure is perceived as cultural heritage. In such areas, alternative uses should be found for redundant buildings. In contrast, in regions where the culture is less visible and alive nowadays and where the local economy has changed, people tend to perceive single buildings as representing their cultural heritage, and they often wish to preserve and conserve such remaining houses, barns and stables. In the study, we show that from a social science point of view, there is no universal perception of the maintenance of built cultural heritage. Rather, we see different views and opinions that are important to consider when it comes to developing heritage protection strategies together with public authorities.     

Fuzzy products

A fuzzy product (FP) has characteristics specified only imprecisely at time of sale. Building fuzziness into its product gives a firm flexibility to exploit favorable supply opportunities that arise between sale and delivery, and so reduce expected costs. While increased competition reduces price, the effect on fuzziness is ambiguous. Socially-optimal fuzziness is characterized. Firms provide goods that are too fuzzy compared to first-best, though entry serves to correct this inefficiency for certain types of goods. Considering competition with a niche good, a FP sells for a lower price, although it captures a larger market share and is more profitable.     

Is green growth relevant for poor economies?

To be relevant to developing countries, green growth must be reconciled with the two key structural features of natural resource use and poverty in these countries. First, primary products account for the majority of their export earnings, and they are unable to diversify from primary production. Second, many economies have a substantial share of their rural population located on less favored agricultural land and in remote areas, thus encouraging “geographic” poverty traps. If green growth is to be a catalyst for economy-wide transformation and poverty alleviation in developing countries, then it must be accompanied by policies aimed directly at overcoming these two structural features. Policies and reforms should foster forward and backward linkages of primary production, enhance its integration with the rest of the economy, and improve opportunities for innovation and knowledge spillovers. Rural poverty, especially the persistent concentration of the rural poor on less favored agricultural lands and in remote areas, needs to be addressed by additional targeted policies and investments, and where necessary, policies to promote rural-urban migration.     

On Economic Space notion

This paper introduces Economic Space notion to expand capacity for economic and financial modeling. Introduction of Economic Space allows defining economic variables as functions of time and coordinates and opens the way for treating economic and financial relations similar to mathematical physics equations. Economic Space allows study of economic models on discreet and continuous spaces with different dimensions. The number of risks measured simultaneously determines Economic Space dimension. We present examples of modeling on Economic Space: option pricing and derivation of Black–Scholes–Merton equation on n-dimensional Economic Space; Markov processes and derivation of Fokker–Plank Equations. Usage of Economic Space allows construing approximations of Economics and Finance similar to physical kinetics and hydrodynamics and derives Wave Equations for Economic and Financial variables.     

Exploring impact factors of shippers’ risk prevention activities: A European survey in transportation

This paper reports results of a survey examining the impact factors for shippers to implement risk prevention activities. A regression analysis illustrates the relations between risk and quality related impact factors and the shippers’ ability to implement risk prevention activities. The study identifies the corporate risk culture and product vulnerability as main impact factors for the implementation of prevention activities in transportation. This paper will be beneficial for transportation managers considering the implementation of risk prevention activities in the transportation field, and will support further empirical research in the transportation management and supply chain risk management research area.     

Price promotion with reference price effects in supply chain

We consider the price promotion in a supply chain comprising one manufacturer and one retailer, who take into account the reference price effects of consumers. The problem is analyzed as a manufacturer-lead Stackelberg game. The results indicate that reference price effects could mitigate “double marginalization” effects, and improve the channel efficiency. We also show that the optimal price promotion benefits the manufacturer, retailer and consumers in consumer promotion model. Furthermore, we provide the conditions under which the retailer has an interest in offering price promotion to consumers. Finally, we employ numerical analysis to demonstrate more managerial insights.     

Making dynamic ride-sharing work: The impact of driver and rider flexibility

We conduct an extensive computational study to quantify the impact of different types of participants’ flexibility on the performance of a single-driver, single-rider ride-sharing system. Our results consistently show that small increases in flexibility, e.g., in terms of desired departure time or maximum detour time, can significantly increase the expected matching rate, especially when the number of trip announcements in the system is small. The insights gained from our study can provide the basis for the design of information campaigns and incentives schemes aimed at increasing the performance and success of ride-sharing systems.