Guangdong,Hong Kong and Macao Initiate Cross-Region Cooperation in Protecting Intellectual Property

wenty senior officers of Twenty senior officers of intellectual property administrations from Guangdong Province, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereinafter called Hong Kong) and Macao Special Administrative Region (hereinafter called Macao), gathered in Guang Zhou for the first time ever, jointly discussed the intellectual property issues involved in the communication and cooperation of science and technology and trade among the three regions and reached a preliminary consensus in establishing coordination mechanism for the protection of intellectual property.     

Hang Seng and HSBC Predict Economic Growth in Hong Kong

Following Bank of China (Hong Kong) and Federation of Hong Kong Industries' heightening the predicted economic growth in Hong Kong, on July 1 HangSeng Bank declared that the local GDP of Hong Kong in this year is predictedto raise from 5.5% to 6%, and it further estimated that the economic growthof Hong Kong in the     

Examining the Effects of Moral Development Level,Self-Concept,and Self-Monitoring on Consumers’ Ethical Attitudes

This study investigates the possible effects of self-concept, self-monitoring, and moral development level on dimensions of consumers’ ethical attitudes. “Actively benefiting from illegal activities,” “actively benefiting from deceptive practices,” and “no harm/no foul 1–2” are defined by factor analysis as four dimensions of Turkish consumers’ ethical attitudes. Logistic regression analysis is applied to data collected from 516 Turkish households. Results indicate that self-monitoring and moral development level predicted consumer ethics in relation to “actively benefiting from questionable practices” and “no harm/no foul” dimensions. Actual self-concept is also a predictor variable in relation to “no harm/no foul” dimension. Age and gender make significant differences in consumers’ ethical attribute dimensions.     

Stakeholders’ Perceptions and Future Scenarios to Improve Corporate Social Responsibility in Hong Kong and Mainland China

Globalisation has accelerated economic development in emerging economies through the outsourcing of their supply chains and at the same time has accelerated the degradation of environmental and social conditions. Society expects corporations to play an essential role in creating economic, environmental and social prosperity beyond their country of origin. In order to regulate outsourcing activities in the supply chain, many multinationals are constantly searching for ways to manage their indirect environmental and social impacts accordingly, as well as to meet their stakeholder expectations. Because expectations of stakeholders vary widely across different regions, this study intends, by engaging with major stakeholders, to identify what are the local and regional supply chain stakeholders’ perceptions and expectations. The findings would help in building consensus, strengthening the implementation and establishing the future corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework. This study collects and analyses data from 21 major stakeholders in Hong Kong and Mainland China. The results indicate that local and regional stakeholders perceive that CSR is fairly significant to largely export-oriented businesses, but it is lagging behind the West due to the fact that most local/regional companies only become involved in CSR when this is a client requirement. They see responsible corporations as meeting the local legislative requirement; going beyond this requirement is unnecessary. A voluntary approach favours multi-party partnership initiatives with pilot trust programmes aimed at managers’ and workers’ capacity building. Most stakeholders favour the proposed regional partnership initiative, supply chain task forces aimed at bringing together relevant organisations and people with different sets of skills. Distinct roles of different organisations are identified to assist suppliers to understand CSR, and only this will bring about long-term sustainable change.     

Investigating the Effects of Gender on Consumers’ Moral Philosophies and Ethical Intentions

Using information collected from a convenience sample of graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with a Midwestern university in the United States, this study determined the extent to which gender (defined as sex differences) is related to consumers’ moral philosophies and ethical intentions. Multivariate and univariate results indicated that women were more inclined than men to utilize both consequence-based and rule-based moral philosophies in questionable consumption situations. In addition, women placed more importance on an overall moral philosophy than did men, and women had higher intentions to behave ethically. The marketing and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and the limitations of the research are presented along with several suggestions for future inquiry, which could advance current understanding of consumer ethics.     

Learning Approaches and Outcome‐Based Teaching and Learning: A Case Study in Hong Kong,China

Outcome‐based education is a pedagogical process which focuses on the achievement of certain specified results. Outcome‐based teaching and learning (OBTL), therefore, is concerned with curriculum design and ensuring that the contents, delivery, activities, and assessments are all aligned to help facilitate students to attain specific intended learning outcomes. This study explores whether and how outcome‐based teaching impacts on the learning approaches of one cohort of undergraduate business students at a university in Hong Kong, China to undergo outcome‐based teaching, newly introduced as part of a university‐wide policy to adopt OBTL. The learning approaches of these business students were measured using John Biggs's (1987 Biggs, J. 1987. Student approaches to learning and studying, Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.  [Google Scholar]) Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) to determine whether these students tended to favor surface learning approaches, deep learning approaches, or achieving learning approaches upon initial entry into the university. Changes in learning approaches were tracked, after a semester's exposure to OBTL, through survey and focus group interview methods. Findings indicated a significant amount of transference between learning approaches deployed by these students, demonstrating a high level of adaptability.     

Third-Party Certification,Sponsorship, and Consumers’ Ecolabel Use

While prior ecolabel research suggests that consumers’ trust of ecolabel sponsors is associated with their purchase of ecolabeled products, we know little about how third-party certification might relate to consumer purchases when trust varies. Drawing on cognitive theory and a stratified random sample of more than 1200 consumers, we assess how third-party certification relates to consumers’ use of ecolabels across different program sponsors. We find that consumers’ trust of government and environmental NGOs to provide credible environmental information encourages consumers’ use of ecolabels sponsored by these entities, and consumers do not differentiate between certified versus uncertified ecolabels in the presence of trust. By contrast, consumers’ distrust of private business to provide credible environmental information discourages their use of business association-sponsored ecolabels. However, these ecolabels may be able to overcome consumer distrust if their sponsors certify the ecolabels using third-party auditors. These findings are important to sponsors who wish develop ecolabels that are more credible to consumers, and thus encourage more widespread ecolabel use.     

Green Leather for Ethical Consumers in China and Korea: Facilitating Ethical Consumption with Value–Belief–Attitude Logic

Using an innovative fabrication technique, eco-friendly faux leather (EFFL) has been newly developed as a green leather alternative for the Chinese and Korean markets. Value–belief–attitude logic drawn from the heuristic-systemic model (Zuckmand and Chaiken in Psychol Mark 15(7):621–642, 1998) and value–belief–norm theory (Stern et al. in Environ Behav 27(6):723–743, 1995) is proposed to explicate the consumer acceptance attitudes toward the EFFL product. The findings from the multi-group structural equation modeling analysis of online data (n = 600) support the relevancy of VBA logic in which utilitarian and hedonic value motivate pro-environmental belief, and the EFFL product attributes significantly mediate belief and positive attitude toward the EFFL product. The discrepancies across two countries and two age cohorts are noteworthy when pro-environmental belief and product-related information lead to different consumer VBA processes in specific market segments. This study presents insights which provide novel opportunities for managerial implementations and theoretical advancements in eco-friendly related subjects and issues.     

Consumers’ preferences,attitudes and willingness to pay for bio-textile in wood fibers

The bio-textile products made from certified wood fibers are an important product innovation able to diversify the wood product portfolio of enterprises and to increase environmental sustainability. In this paper, we estimate Italian consumers' willingness to pay for three bio-textile products made from certified wood (socks, T-shirt and shirt). Data were collected face-to-face to a sample of 696 consumers through Contingent Valuation. The results from the Cameron and Huppert model show a significant premium price, ranging from 64% to 128% depending on the products, and that respondents with a higher environmental concern are more willing to pay for bio-textile products. Nevertheless, the price turned out to be a key determinant, evidencing how it can constitute a barrier to a more sustainable consumer behaviour. These results are important for the European wood-based industries’ businesses, currently based on stagnant market of traditional wood products, since they indicate there is room for a profitable diversification in bio-textile products. An increased market of bio-textile products can contribute to reduce the fossil fuel dependency of the European Union economy.     

Labour–Intensive Industrialization in Hong Kong, 1950–70: A Note on Sources and Methods

This research note critiques published quantitative sources on employment in manufacturing enterprises during a crucial epoch of rapid industrialization, and uses newly discovered archival sources to investigate organizational dualism, the co-existence of labour and capital-intensive modes of production. New quantitative data demonstrates that a high proportion of the industrial workforce was employed in small enterprises, notably workshops using labour-intensive techniques. New surveys of two ‘traditional’ Hong Kong industries (rattan ware furniture and basket ware; and umbrella making) show that factory, workshop, and home-based production co-existed within the same sector across the whole period, 1950–70.     

The Relationships of Empathy,Moral Identity and Cynicism with Consumers’ Ethical Beliefs: The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement

This study examines the relationships of empathy, moral identity and cynicism with the following dimensions of consumer ethics: the passive dimension (passively benefiting at the expense of the seller), the active/legal dimension (benefiting from questionable but legal actions), the ‘no harm, no foul’ dimension (actions that do not harm anyone directly but are considered unethical by some) and the ‘doing-good’/recycling dimension (pro-social actions). A survey of six hundred Australian consumers revealed that both empathy and moral identity were related to negative beliefs regarding the passive and the active/legal dimensions of consumer ethics and were related to positive beliefs regarding the ‘doing-good’/recycling dimension. Cynicism was related to positive beliefs regarding the passive dimension of consumer ethics and was related to negative beliefs regarding the ‘doing-good’/recycling dimension. The role of moral disengagement in mediating these relationships was examined. Empathy and moral identity were only indirectly negatively related to the ‘no harm, no foul’ dimension of consumer ethics through moral disengagement, while cynicism was indirectly positively related to this dimension through moral disengagement. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Impact of Intrinsic Religiosity on Consumers’ Ethical Beliefs: Does It Depend on the Type of Religion? A Comparison of Christian and Moslem Consumers in Germany and Turkey

Intrinsic religiosity drives ethical consumer behavior; however, previous studies regarding this connection are limited solely to a Christian cultural context. This comparative study instead includes Christian Consumers from Germany and Moslem Consumers from Turkey to determine if a specific religious community moderates the connection between intrinsic religiosity and consumer ethics. The results show that Consumers in the Turkish, Moslem subsample, exhibit an even stronger connection between religiosity and ethical consumer behavior than Consumers from the German, Christian subsample.     

Anger Strays,Fear Refrains: The Differential Effect of Negative Emotions on Consumers’ Ethical Judgments

Although various factors have been studied for their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of incidental emotions has received relatively less attention. Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on various aspects of consumer decision making. This paper investigates the effect of two negative, incidental emotional states of anger and fear on ethical judgment in a consumer context using a passive unethical behavior scenario (i.e., too much change received). The paper presents two experimental studies. Study 1 focuses on the interaction of moral intensity (amount of change) and incidental emotion state in predicting the ethical judgment while study 2 investigates the underlying causal mechanism behind the process, using a mediation analysis. The results reveal a significant interaction between moral intensity and incidental emotion. Specifically, individuals in the state of incidental fear exhibit higher levels of ethical judgment as the moral intensity increases as compared to individuals in the state of incidental anger. Further, perceived control is found to mediate the relationship between emotional state and ethical judgment under higher moral intensity condition.     

Hong Kongers’ cross-border consumption and shopping in Shenzhen: patterns and motivations

The phenomenon that many Hong Kong people cross the border to shop and consume in Shenzhen has recently drawn great public attention in Hong Kong. In an attempt to understand the nature of this phenomenon and to shed further light on cross-border consumption and shopping in general, this paper investigates the patterns and motivations of Hong Kong people's consumption and shopping in Shenzhen. A negative binomial model is developed to evaluate the effects of motivational factors and socio-economic characteristics on the frequency of cross-border trips. Results of the study indicate that Hong Kongers’ cross-border consumption and shopping activities in Shenzhen were both functional and recreational.     

Moral Pragmatism as a Bridge Between Duty,Utility, and Virtue in Managers’ Ethical Decision-Making

Journal of Business Ethics - The decline of empirical research on ethical decision-making based on ethical theories might imply a tacit consensus has been reached. However, the exclusion of virtue...     

Exploring Urban Consumers’ Attitudes and Intentions to Purchase Local Food in Chile

Although local food consumption is growing in importance, there remains a lack of research addressing local food consumption preferences in less developed countries. This article aims to examine the drivers of local food purchase intentions for Chilean consumers. A model of local food behavioral intention was developed from consumer behavior theory. The model was tested using structural equation modeling with data from Chilean shoppers located in Santiago (n = 283). The analysis revealed that Chilean consumers are willing to purchase local food based on their positive attitude toward buying local food and their feelings of connectedness with the environment, but not because they have a desire to support local businesses. These findings have implications for retailers, marketers, and food producers.     

Settlement of the Case of the Enforcement of CIETAC Arbitral Awards Barred in Hebei and Hong Kong

Recently, Under the conduction of HebeiConciliation Center, by fully utilizing the advantages of conciliation, two cases arising outof the impediments to the enforcement ofCIETAC's awards in the Courts of Heibei Prov-ince and Hong Kong have been properly settled. The proper settlement of the two casesdefends CIETAC's honor, manifests the significant role of the Conciliation Center and protects the investment environment of Hebei province meanwhile, for which Mr. Ye Liansong,Secretary…