The constraints of Chinese tourists to visit Korea caused by THAAD using Q-methodology

The recent deployment of the THAAD system to South Korea has resulted in complex and controversial issues, particularly in the political, diplomatic, and economic relations between Korea and China [Perlez, J. (2017, May 31). China woos South Korea’s new leader, but the U.S. left behind a spoiler. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/world/asia/china-south-korea-xi-jinping-moon-jaein-thaad.html?_r=0]. To minimize its negative impact on international tourism, the underlying psychological mechanisms of Chinese tourists associated with this complex political issue should be determined. As an attempt to resolve the current crisis, this study identified the subjective characteristics of Chinese tourists who cancelled visits to Korea using Q-methodology and classified Chinese tourists’ attitude towards the THAAD issue. Based on respondent’s evaluations on Q-sample statements, four types of Chinese tourists were articulated, namely, patriotism, risk awareness, external dependency, and Lotte sanctions. By delving into tourists’ subjectivity, Q-methodology seems powerful to elicit intrapersonal constraints, which are deeply embedded in an individual’s psychological state. The results showed that the THAAD issue greatly influenced Chinese tourists’ personal values, beliefs, and identities.     

An experiment on the role of tourist attribution: Evidence from negative nature-based incidents

More so than previously, in recent years tourists have been exposed to unexpected adverse situations, such as political instability, caused by the destination. Many aspects of the destination experience do not involve service delivery and product consumption; thus, such an experience needs to be treated uniquely. Acknowledging that the effects of tourists’ inner psychological processes in this context are crucial, this study applies attribution theory to examine how tourists make sense of negative incidents caused by the destination’s natural incidents. The results show the crucial effects of globality attribution in predicting the levels of satisfaction.     

Neighbour-Immiserizing Growth: The Asian Crisis

This paper investigates the effects of population growth and China's entry into the world trading regime on the North and the South. In the absence of the terms of trade effect, population growth reduces the standard of living and causes a decline in welfare. Unilateral trade liberalization of China will worsen the terms of trade for other countries in the South, but will improve those for the North. Thus, population control is an important means to close the gap in per capita income between developing and developed economies. Trade liberalization by developing countries may not necessarily induce income convergence. JEL Classification Number: F1.     

Microstructure-based manipulation: Strategic behavior and performance of spoofing traders

We examine how investors strategically spoof the stock market by placing orders with little chance of being executed, but which mislead other traders into thinking there is an imbalance in the order book. Using the complete intraday order and trade data of the Korea Exchange (KRX) in a custom data set identifying individual accounts, we find that investors strategically placed spoofing orders which, given the KRX's order-disclosure rule at the time, created the impression of a substantial order book imbalance, with the intent to manipulate subsequent prices. This manipulation, which made use of specific features of the market microstructure, differs from previously studied forms of manipulation based on information or transactions. Roughly half of the spoofing orders were placed in conjunction with day trading. Stocks targeted for manipulation had higher return volatility, lower market capitalization, lower price level, and lower managerial transparency. We also find that spoofing traders achieved substantial extra profits. The frequency of spoofing orders decreased drastically after the KRX altered its order-disclosure rule.     

Corporate Risk Management under Information Asymmetry

This paper examines the financial and operational hedging activities of US pharmaceutical and biotech firms that are subject to a high level of information asymmetry stemming from R&D investments during 2001–2006. We find evidence in support of the information asymmetry hypothesis à la Froot, Scharfstein and Stein (1993) that hedging helps mitigate the under‐investment problem. Specifically, we find that the use of financial derivatives is associated with greater firm value and that the value enhancement is larger for firms subject to greater information asymmetry and better growth opportunities. There is a synergy between financial hedging and operational hedging where the latter is used to counter product development risk. The results are robust with respect to alternative performance measures, industry‐specific growth measures, and the endogeneity problem. Our work is differentiated from existing studies that examined commodity‐based industries without addressing information asymmetry.     

Sorting it out: pile sorting as a mixed methodology for exploring barriers to cancer screening

We discuss a mixed methodology for analyzing pile sorting data. We created a list of 14 barriers to colon cancer screening and recruited 18, 13, and 14 participants from three American Indian (AI) communities to perform pile sorting. Quantitative data were analyzed by cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Differences across sites were compared using permutation bootstrapping. Qualitative data collected during sorting were compiled by AI staff members who determined names for the clusters found in quantitative analysis. Results showed five clusters of barriers in each site although barriers in the clusters varied slightly across sites. Simulation demonstrated type I error rates around the nominal 0.05 level whereas power depended on the numbers of clusters, and between and within cluster variability.     

An acceptance model for an Internet protocol television service in Korea with prior experience as a moderator

This study examines the effect of users' prior experience on the adoption behaviour in the Internet protocol television (IP TV) service domains. This article proposes a new acceptance model for an IP TV service considering the moderating effect of experience and verifies the model with an empirical study. Respondents are classified into either experienced or inexperienced groups according to their prior experience with the IP TV service. The results indicate that motivational factors used in our study affect behavioural intention. In addition, this study shows that the influence of extrinsic motivational factors on the behavioural intention are stronger for the experienced group than the inexperienced group and the influence of intrinsic motivational factors on the behavioural intention are stronger for the inexperienced group than the experienced group. This article concludes with study implications, as well as limitations and future research directions.     

Service Orientation: Its Impact on Business Performance in the Medical Service Industry

From the viewpoint of internal marketing, employees who are content in their job may be motivated to satisfy their customers better than ones who are not content. Another relevant premise is that the content employees, because of their work motivation, would eventually help improve the performance of their firm. To verify these relationships, some previous studies looked into the effects of organisational service orientation on employee's satisfaction. But only few of them investigated the mediating effects of variables such as service value and customer orientation for their role in linking service orientation to business performance. This study examines how an organisation's service orientation had an effect on its performance at hospitals. For this purpose, verification of the mediating role of service value perceived by employees as well as the role of customer orientation on the firm's performance was attempted. For this study, a total of 292 usable questionnaires were collected from hospital staffs located in metropolitan cities of Korea. The hypotheses concerning relationships among service orientation, service value, employee satisfaction and customer orientation were verified by covariance structural modelling, using SPSS 10.0 and AMOS 4.0 programs. The result is as follows. First, organisational service orientation had a positive effect on both employee satisfaction and service value perceived by hospital staff. Second, employee satisfaction had a positive impact on service value and customer orientation. Finally, service value as well as employee's customer orientation were found to exert positive influence on the medical firm's performance.     

Uncertainty in foreign policy making: A Bayesian game analysis of Korea

Bayesian games are used to analyze situations where at least one player is uncertain about the other's preferences. For the past decade or so, the Bayesian models have been rigorously applied to various aspects of international relations involving uncertainty. These models have contributed to our understanding of international relations by uncovering complicated strategic interactions through deductive reasoning and by generating many empirically testable hypotheses. Apart from these efforts for general theory developments, however, scholars rarely applied Bayesian models to analyze real‐world international events, although many of them involve situations where one or more players are uncertain about the other's preferences. Some of these events are interesting and important in their own right, given their potential impact on regional security and the amount of attention paid by scholars and politicians alike. Therefore, these cases warrant independent studies utilizing Bayesian models. In this paper, we have developed two Bayesian models for the changing relationships North Korea has with South Korea and the United States. We also discuss another interesting aspect of North‐South Korea‐United States relations where North Korea is simultaneously playing similar, but separate, games with South Korea and the United States.