Enhancing value for Chinese shoppers: The contribution of store and customer characteristics

This study tested the relationships between store and customer characteristics with perceived value and customer loyalty in retailing in China. Survey data were collected from shoppers in department stores (n=200) and supermarkets (n=200) in the tier 2 coastal city of Tianjin. Data for each type of store were analysed separately using structural models. In supermarkets, value was predicted by quality and price, but for department stores, only the customer orientation of the store was significant, suggesting that customers seek different shopping experiences in each context. In each case, value mediated the links to loyalty and, for supermarkets, choice of merchandise and consumer time pressure demonstrated direct links to loyalty. The paper discusses the implications of the findings, and concludes with possible future research.     

Leisure in Living Local through Food and Farming

This article reflects on aligning leisure research with the local foods movement while placing the local foods movement into the larger framework of sustainability and the fields of leisure and recreation. The local foods movement has persisted during difficult economic times; growth in local foods venues and young people endeavoring to establish small-scale sustainable farms continues to flourish. Given the history of leisure research and its continued success alleviating participation barriers and constraints, the need for leisure researchers to focus on local food systems is imperative and timely. This essay highlights the notion of leisure in living through local foods and the serious leisure aspects of small-scale sustainable agriculture. This article also encourages leisure researchers to explore and assess the relationships between the local foods movement and small-scale farming as embedded in the larger framework of sustainability.     

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF HOUSEWORK ON THE MARKET WAGE,AND CAN IT EXPLAIN THE GENDER WAGE GAP?

Abstract Does housework reduce the market wage, and if so, does it have a similar impact for males and females? In this paper, we survey and evaluate the recent and growing empirical literature on the linkages between housework and the wage rate. The review is motivated by unexplained gender wage gaps across studies, which consider personal and market‐related factors. We focus on this less‐studied aspect of wage determination. We consider the required modelling framework, and provide standardized estimated effects of housework on the hourly wage across studies. We evaluate how this literature has addressed potential estimation problems, in particular, the endogeneity of housework, concavity of the housework–wage function, threshold effects and work effort effects. We conclude that the evidence across ordinary least squares, instrumental variable, fixed effects and two‐stage least squares results casts serious doubt on the idea that the negative female housework–wage relationship is only driven by endogeneity bias or individual‐specific characteristics. Yet, much more needs to be done to address modelling and data requirements, and we point out likely and promising future research directions.     

Above and beyond? How businesses can drive sustainable development by promoting lasting pro-environmental behaviour change: An examination of the IKEA Live Lagom project

Current global changes require new business approaches driving sustainable development on all fronts. To date, most business approaches have focused on sustainable marketing and corporate social responsibility initiatives. In this field study, we examine IKEA's Live Lagom project, a 3-year behaviour change initiative that aimed to explore how to go above and beyond conventional approaches demonstrating how businesses could support sustainable development by supporting their customers' attempts to live more sustainable lifestyles. We examined the effectiveness of the project involving multifaceted behaviour change interventions, testing for behavioural changes both during and after the project period. In addition, we explored changes in participants' attitudes towards the company. Findings show that the extensive set of interventions led to changes in pro-environmental behaviours across all three participant groups with potentially positive impacts on the customer–company relationship. The article thus provides a call for further businesses to engage in similar behaviour change projects that would allow citizens to engage in more sustainable lifestyles and behaviours across contexts.     

Checkmating the Consumer: Passive Consumption and the Economic Devaluation of Culture

Early neoclassical economics embodied a gendered symbolic system that devalued consumption and enabled economists to ignore a basic contradiction underlying their treatment of consumption. According to consumer-sovereignty dogma, the consumer determined which firms would survive by actively pursuing maximum individual utility. While this consumer retained the culturally masculine attributes of initiative and agency, consumption itself was devalued because, from a systemic point of view, it is not important which firms survive. At the macro level, consumption was marginalized through Say's law, which holds that excessive acquisition of commodities for consumption is potentially dangerous, because saving and investment drive the economy. The rise of mass consumption and Keynesian macroeconomics threw into question the cultural gendering of consumption – which had acquired feminine attributes like passivity and frivolity – and rendered the neoclassical devaluing of it increasingly untenable. The postwar, neoclassical synthesis and subsequent developments have reinstated the pre-Keynesian gendering of consumption and devaluation of culture.     

How far does evolution take us? Comment on Elinor Ostrom’s: do institutions for collective action evolve?

Elinor Ostrom’s article in this issue suggests that institutions for collective action evolve, highlights parallels between biological and institutional evolution, and describes an hypothetical example of institutional evolution related to an irrigation system. The article is provocative but not definitive in that it does not demonstrate that evolution is more than a metaphor for institutional change and that institutions actually evolve. This commentary unpacks the concept of evolutionary change and evaluates how well various aspects of institutional change fit within this model of change. The analysis supports Ostrom’s contention that evolution is not just a metaphor for institutional change, but also suggests that not all institutional change can be classified as evolutionary. The commentary highlights the need for further conceptual and theoretical development to delineate various forms and processes of institutional change, distinguish between evolutionary and non-evolutionary change, and draw out the consequences of various forms of change.     

Optimal regulation under imperfect enforcement: Permits,tickets, or both?

Economic activity is often regulated through both permits and tickets (subsequent inspections). We study the effectiveness of such policies where corruption and an underground economy make enforcement imperfect. In the theoretical model, asymmetric information justifies regulatory action which is enforced by corruptible bureaucrats. We find that regulation through permits alone is useless when corruption exists, while tickets still offer some benefit. Surprisingly, we also find that a system with both permits and tickets achieves welfare that is higher than that which can be achieved with only tickets—that combining the two mechanisms has an effect that is greater than the “sum of the parts.”     

Quantifying corruption by a human capital earnings equation

This paper uses a human capital earnings equation to quantify administrative corruption in the public sector. Regression analyses are conducted based on information from surveys administered to public officials in Albania. After accounting for officials’ characteristics, e.g., schooling, experience, gender, type of agency, and public and private sectors’ features, we deduce that the administrative corruption was on average 2.6× the officials’ current salary in Albania, which is equivalent to 16.7% of the country’s GDP.