Predicting tourists' behavioural intentions at the destination level

Using structural equation modelling, the formative model was tested on a sample of 703 tourists who visited six coastal destinations in Montenegro. It relies on the complex relationships between five constructs – perceived quality of a destination's offerings, tourist satisfaction, perceived equity, perceived benefits and behavioural intentions – simultaneously incorporating the emotional and rational self-regulatory mechanisms. The empirical results supported the hypothesised relationships. The group of eight tourist destination attributes affects perceived quality of a destination's offerings that positively and directly relate to perceived benefits, behavioural intentions and tourist satisfaction, whereas satisfaction is also determined by equity perceptions. Additionally, perceived quality of a destination's offerings also relates indirectly to tourist behavioural intentions, through perceived benefits and tourist satisfaction, while satisfaction also mediates the interaction between perceived equity and tourist intended behaviour. These research results contribute to a deeper understanding of which behavioural processes, and with what strength, lead to the increase in tourist loyalty at the destination level, and ultimately provide better insights into the predictors of behavioural intentions.     

Change in Consumer Patronage and Willingness to Pay at Different Levels of Service Attributes in Restaurants: A Study in India

Consumer patronage and consumer willingness to pay are the two most important criteria for business development. The current study investigates the changing preferences of consumers in a developing economy with respect to three major service attributes from the restaurant industry: food quality, service, and ambiance. Results indicated that consumers give greater preference to quality over service in high-end restaurants and prefer service compared with ambiance in quick-service restaurants. Food quality was found to have strong interaction effect with two other variables. When food quality was improved from low to high, consumer preferences for ambiance and service tended to change accordingly in the same direction, but not necessarily at the same level. Thus, restaurateurs have a strategic advantage when they choose high quality food and an appropriate level of service or ambiance. Consumer expectations are significantly different for high-end, full-service restaurants and quick-service restaurants in service attributes.     

Service Failure,Tipping Behavior,and the Effect of Service Industry Experience

The relationship between tipping and the service provided is not always linear. Factors such as demographic profile of the consumer, industry norms, and social norms affect the amount of tip. Results from the current study reveal that tipping varies when service failure occurs due to servers’ fault or organizational failure. Consumers with prior professional experience in the restaurant industry can distinguish between causes of failure, and tip accordingly. Consumers with prior professional restaurant experience were found to tip significantly more than those consumers that do not have prior hospitality experience. Tip rates for service failure due to organization failure tend to be higher compared with the service failure due to servers’ mistakes indicating that consumers do not penalize a server when the organization has caused the service failure.     

BEVQUAL: a tool for measuring performance quality in beverage operations

The main objective of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of performance quality in beverage establishments. This study was based on a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. Interviews with beverage managers and customer focus groups were conducted to create an initial instrument. After that, 405 customers were surveyed, and the final BEVQUAL instrument was developed, including six dimensions that were measured with 23 items. Atmosphere, service quality, and pricing were shown to be good predictors of customer satisfaction, while ambiance, beverage quality, and location did not affect customer satisfaction.     

Determinants of corporate hedging decision: Evidence from Croatian and Slovenian companies

This paper presents the research results on determinants of corporate risk management decisions in large Croatian and Slovenian non-financial companies. Research has revealed that the explored hedging rationales have little predictive power in explaining corporate risk management decisions both in Croatian and Slovenian companies. The evidence based on both univariate and multivariate empirical relations between the decision to hedge in Croatian non-financial companies and financial distress costs, agency costs, costly external financing, taxes, managerial utility and hedge substitutes, fails to provide any support for any of the tested hypotheses but one - costly external financing measured by investment expenditures-to-assets ratio. The same analysis conducted for the Slovenian companies has shown that there is no statistically significant explanatory variable for the decision to hedge; therefore it is not dependent on any of the predicted theories of hedging.     

Green SPACs

We examine the structural characteristics of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) focused on green causes. We explain their ecosystem, primary determinants of initial public offering (IPO) size, and speed of going public, and we calculate their returns around merger announcements and subsequent acquisition. Green SPAC size depends on CEO characteristics, choice of exchange and specialisation of respective stakeholders. The speed to IPO is related to the respective concentration of legal counsel. Green SPACs exhibit cumulative market-adjusted returns in the range 6%–12% around the merger announcement. Merger returns are positive at the merger date but quickly become negative (−1% to −9%) and decline further with time.