Wine Tourism as an Opportunity for Tourism Development: Examples of Good Practice in Slovenia

The authors discuss wine tourism activities in the context of general tourism development in Slovenia. The country’s winegrowing areas have developed traditionally important viticulture, a relatively intensive production of typical grape varieties and in some cases also a distinct entrepreneurial spirit, which consequently reflects in tourism and regional development, based on diverse cultural heritage and natural values. Three Slovene wine regions are divided into nine wine districts with their own identities and more or less distinct terroirs. Despite a several centuries’ long tradition and a rich wine culture, it is evident that in national tourism strategies and development plans, wine tourism still does not occupy the position that it probably deserves, although most of the documents stress its potential for local or regional development. On the other hand, the authors recognize a significant interest among winemakers and tourism professionals for strategic cooperation and systematic approach to develop wine tourism in the selected destinations. The authors therefore focus on some paradoxes and emphasize examples of good practice at the national, regional, and local levels.     

Decision neuroscience and consumer decision making

This article proposes that neuroscience can shape future theory and models in consumer decision making and suggests ways that neuroscience methods can be used in decision-making research. The article argues that neuroscience facilitates better theory development and empirical testing by considering the physiological context and the role of constructs such as hunger, stress, and social influence on consumer choice and preferences. Neuroscience can also provide new explanations for different sources of heterogeneity within and across populations, suggest novel hypotheses with respect to choices and underlying mechanisms that accord with an understanding of biology, and allow for the use of neural data to make better predictions about consumer behavior. The article suggests that despite some challenges associated with incorporating neuroscience into research on consumer decision processes, the use of neuroscience paradigms will produce a deeper understanding of decision making that can lead to the development of more effective decision aids and interventions.     

What Drives Clarity of Central Bank Communication About Inflation?

This paper examines whether the clarity of central bank communication about inflation varies with the economic environment. Using readability statistics and content analysis, we study the clarity of communication on the inflation outlook by seven central banks across three continents during the recent decade. We uncover significant and persistent differences in clarity over time and across countries. However, identifying determinants of clarity that are robustly relevant across our sample of central banks proves elusive. Overall, our findings suggest that a single model for clarity of central bank communication is not appropriate. Rather, when studying clarity of communication, country-specific and institution-specific factors are highly relevant.     

SOA Adoption Phases

The paper argues that attitudes to SOA follow a typical hype cycle from Technological Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, and a Trough of Disillusionment to the more recent realization that SOA is a concept that may offer certain benefits but has several limitations. The main research question studies how the attitude to SOA changes in various phases of the hype cycle, how the SOA implementation cycle and an increase in business process maturity (BPMa) are interconnected and which factors influence the transition between the hype cycle phases. The paper shows that an organization’s success with implementing SOA depends on its ability to match the SOA implementation with an increase in BPMa. The dual purpose of implementing SOA is shown in the first framework: to assure the coherence of IT assets and to assure business/IT alignment. In the second framework, the interconnection of SOA and BPMa and its role in transiting through the hype cycle phases is outlined. The findings are analyzed using a longitudinal case study of a large Slovenian company.     

Posting,quoting, and replying: a comparison of methodological approaches to measure communication ties in web forums

Active involvement in discussion-based communities is nowadays a firm part of people’s online activities. The measurement of communication ties and networks between contributors to such domains is thus becoming a relevant research question in social sciences. However, especially in web forums, very often almost no direct relational information exists that would indicate the presence of communication ties among contributors. In contrast with the reply-to structure of Usenet newsgroup or mailing list conversations that contain explicit relational information created by the contributors, some web forums only enable participants to add new posts to threads or to quote preceding posts in threads. When discussions emerge, it is difficult to identify who is replying to whom. Drawing on the social network studies dealing with the conversational patterns in Usenet and web forums, this paper presents an alternative approach to identifying the ties between authors of posts. Several assumptions are discussed, and different measures are developed and empirically evaluated. The findings provide a starting point for the development of a standardized methodology for studying social networks in online communities where only limited direct information about communication ties is available.     

What Do Central Banks Know about Inflation Factors?

We offer a novel methodology for assessing the quality of central bank monetary policy reports. We evaluate their economic content by comparing verbally reported inflation factors with factors identified from a simple new Keynesian model. Positive correlations indicate that the reported inflation factors were similar to the model-identified ones, marking high-quality inflation reports. Although sample bank reports on average identified inflation factors correctly, the degree of forward-looking reporting varied.     

Sharing product harm information: The effects of self-construal and self-relevance

Product harm information spreading in the marketplace may have profound consequences for companies, public policy makers and consumer well-being. However, limited research is available on what makes consumers share such information with others. This paper examines how self-relevance and self-construal affect the sharing of product harm information and the underlying processes that shape sharing. Five experiments demonstrate that under independent self-construal, highly self-relevant product harm information is less likely to be shared. The reluctance to share highly self-relevant information is attenuated under interdependent self-construal. The differential effects of self-construal are related to self-serving processes and motivations for sharing product harm information with others. The results apply to the sharing of negative information, but not positive information. Companies may use these findings to manage the diffusion of product harm information.     

Advancing consumer neuroscience

In the first decade of consumer neuroscience, strong progress has been made in understanding how neuroscience can inform consumer decision making. Here, we sketch the development of this discipline and compare it to that of the adjacent field of neuroeconomics. We describe three new frontiers for ongoing progress at both theoretical and applied levels. First, the field will broaden its boundaries to include genetics and molecular neuroscience, each of which will provide important new insights into individual differences in decision making. Second, recent advances in computational methods will improve the accuracy and out-of-sample generalizability of predicting decisions from brain activity. Third, sophisticated meta-analyses will help consumer neuroscientists to synthesize the growing body of knowledge, providing evidence for consistency and specificity of brain activations and their reliability as measurements of consumer behavior.     

Three levels of education and the economic growth

The aim of this article is to solve the question how the three main stages of education contribute to the labour productivity growth in selected 125 countries in the period 1999–2014. The model is based on the neoclassical production function enhanced with human capital. The authors draw on the Penn World Tables 9.0 and UNESCO databases. The key benefit of this article is that human capital is characterized according to the returns to education from average number of years of formal schooling at the primary, secondary and tertiary level. Based on the panel data analysis, the contributions of capital and of the three levels of education to the growth of labour productivity are estimated. At the same time, the model allows to estimate the contribution of total factor productivity. The results of the analysis show that tertiary education has the strongest impact on labour productivity across the considered economies. At the same time, the breakdown of aggregate human capital by level of education leads to better clarification of the effects of human capital and physical capital on labour productivity. The conclusions also indicate a tendency towards rising returns to scale induced by the secondary and tertiary education.