Adapting to a retail environment: Modeling consumer-environment interactions

This paper extends current thinking on the relationship between consumers and the retail environment by assessing a theory of consumer-environment interaction that reinterprets arousal and dominance, two dimensions of the PAD model (Mehrabian, Albert, Russel, James A., An approach to environmental psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974.), as appraisal dimensions (affective expectations). According to the new account, the more specific the task, the less tolerant consumers are about discrepancies between expected and experienced arousal and dominance. The study evaluated the effects of matching or mismatching appraisals on judgments of emotional dimensions as participants shopped within a virtual store environment. Appraisals were manipulated by combining two goal conditions (goal specificity vs. goal ambiguity) with two levels of store arousal (high vs. low) to produce four separate hypothetical states: hedonic fit (ambiguous goal and high arousal), utilitarian fit (specific goal and low arousal), rational control (ambiguous goal and low arousal), and emotional submissiveness (specific goal and high arousal). When perceptual and cognitive appraisals matched (i.e., hedonic or utilitarian fit), participants judged pleasure to be significantly greater than when expectations mismatched (i.e., rational control or emotional submissiveness). Affective expectations concerning arousal and dominance thus are a strong determinant of consumer predisposition toward the environment.     

Family Formation and the Divisions of Labour in Belgian Couple Households

In this chapter the authors describe how a quantitative analysis resulted in a proposal for a qualitative research. The aim of the quantitative research was to analyse the impact of family formation on the division of labour in couple households, based on data from the Panel Study on Belgian Households.In a first step a typology was made based upon data of 1224 Belgian couple households (1995). The second step consisted of a longitudinal analysis for the period between 1992 and 1995. The analysis of the impact of birth on the division of labour gave evidence of the revocability of equal patterns of division of labour.Based on these findings the authors concluded that the classic concept of emancipation does not allow us to understand the empirical phenomena. Hence, the authors proposed a new (qualitative) investigation aimed at clarification and empirical validation of different contents of the concept of emancipation.     

Regulation and Access Pricing: Comparison of Regulated Regimes

The statutory duties of regulators of British utilities include both the encouragement of competition and protection of consumers (through price caps). Competition depends on the terms on which new entrants can gain access to the monopolist's network. Where the incumbent in the retail market also owns the network, the regulator may determine prices in the capped and access markets separately or may make the price cap explicitly dependent on entry in the uncapped market. Contrary to the received wisdom that access charges should be separately regulated we show that higher welfare can be obtained in some circumstances by allowing the incumbent to determine access charges. This is achieved by permitting the incumbent to choose from a menu of retail prices which the regulator makes conditional on the extent of entry in the retail market.     

The Distributional Impact of Health Financing in Europe: A Review

This article summarises, extends and updates previous empirical work on the distributional implications of alternative health care financing arrangements in a selection of European countries and the US. On the one hand, total health care payments are almost proportional to ability to pay in most countries. This is predominantly driven by a high reliance on public financing. On the other hand, private payments – out‐of‐pocket payments as well as private insurance premiums – are highly regressive. More extended reliance on private financing may therefore endanger the equitable nature of financing systems. In addition, private payments put a heavy burden on unfortunate households.     

Who is at Greatest Risk of Work-Related Discrimination—Women, Blacks, or Homosexuals?

This study was developed to examine whether bias against women, blacks, and homosexuals emerges in predictable patterns when raters are presented with hiring scenarios. We instructed the research sample to hire six of eight candidates for an accounting position. Eight candidates were necessary to offer the full range of gender, race, and sexual orientation combinations. Requiring the research sample to select six of the eight candidates meant that each respondent would have to discriminate by eliminating the two candidates they considered the least desirable. We found that a black, male homosexual is the most likely target of discrimination and the white, female heterosexual is the least likely to be discriminated against. If it develops that these findings hold across a wide range of work-related decisions and samples, such results would support the argument for maintaining affirmative action for blacks and extending civil-rights protection to gays and lesbians.     

植物纤维复合包装材料缓冲性能模型研究

根据农作物秸秆纤维复合材料静、动态测试数据,对该材料的缓冲性能进行分析;利用S—F本构关系框架,考虑到材料密度、形状函数、应变及应变率等影响因素,建立了复合包装材料的静态压缩本构模型和非线性动态压缩本构模型;并利用实验数据成功识别模型参数。结果表明,该本构模型和实验数据有很高的一致性,为解决农作物秸秆缓冲包装材料的缓冲包装设计、深入研究其缓冲性能、进一步开发利用农作物秸秆提供了重要的理论依据。     

A meta-analysis of community-based studies on quality protein maize

Biofortification, or the improvement of nutritional quality in food crops, is a promising strategy to combat undernutrition, particularly among the rural poor in developing countries. However, traditional methods of impact assessment are inadequate for biofortified crops, as they do not consider their nutritional benefits. Evidence for the nutritional impact of maize varieties with improved protein quality, collectively known as quality protein maize (QPM), was evaluated using meta-analysis of randomized, controlled studies in target communities. A new and generalizable effect size was proposed to quantify the impact of QPM on a key outcome, child growth. The results indicated that consumption of QPM instead of conventional maize leads to a 12% (95% CI: 7–18%) increase in the rate of growth in weight and a 9% (95% CI: 6–15%) increase in the rate of growth in height in infants and young children with mild to moderate undernutrition from populations in which maize is the major staple food. The proposed effect size and use of bootstrapping to determine statistical significance addressed some methodological limitations in the existing studies.     

Structuring On-the-job Training: Report of a Multiple Case Study

Structured on-the-job training (OJT) has gained the attention of the business world as well as of researchers. The project discussed in this article contains a series of case studies of on-the-job training programmes in seven Dutch firms. Several dimensions are found to be useful in discriminating between types of OJT activities and between ways of structuring OJT. Trainee activities are either of a preparatory nature or a real work character. Assignments may be focussed on skill application, individualised study, or experiential learning. Jobs may be broken down to a greater or lesser extent and supervisors may have either a directive or a coaching role.     

Corporate Groups in Australia: State of Play

While a number of studies and reports (for example, CASAC 2000 ; Clarke and Dean 2007 ; Ramsay and Stapledon 1998; 2001 ) have identified the importance of corporate groups on the commercial landscape, both in Australia and internationally, little is known about the nature, incidence, composition or rationale for commercial enterprises to adopt specific types of group structures. Understanding the differences in the accounting for each separate company within a group and the process of consolidated group enterprise data used in most empirical works is a prius for researchers undertaking large‐scale empirical work. It underpins the ability to generalise about findings based on samples of publicly listed companies, arguably randomly selected from the population of listed corporate groups. This paper reports findings of an extensive empirical study using 2007 data in order to illuminate the current situation in relation to the nature, incidence and composition of corporate groups in Australia. It adopts a similar structure to that used by Ramsay and Stapledon (1998; 2001) . The current data will allow tests of stability regarding the way corporate groups are structured.