Comparing levels of resident empowerment among two culturally diverse resident populations in Oizumi,Gunma, Japan

While resident empowerment has been a central aspect of the sustainable tourism literature, difficulties of putting the concept into practice have been noted given the heterogeneous nature of communities. “Community” is often divided by kinship, age, gender and ethnicity, and such division may influence the perceptions of empowerment. The goal of this study was to better understand heterogeneous perceptions of empowerment by administering the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale within the community of Oizumi, Japan. Oizumi has the highest concentration of Brazilian immigrants in Japan, and the town has embraced “ethnic neighborhood tourism” centered on Brazilian culture as a strategy for economic development. Oizumi's demographic makeup allowed for testing differences in perceived empowerment between members of the dominant ethnic group (Japanese) and members of the ethnic minority group (Japanese Brazilians). Analysis of 650 completed questionnaires revealed that Brazilians felt more psychologically and socially empowered than Japanese residents, indicating a shift in the balance of power between the ethnic groups. Results also revealed that the political dimension of empowerment was rated relatively low among both groups, suggesting a general lack of opportunities to participate in the planning process. Implications for both practice and theory are presented.     

TV viewing: application of a formal choice model

Choices of television programs is viewed as a process of deciding among a set of alternative goods with zero prices. A choice model can thus be based purely on individuals' preferences for various characteristics of a set of shows available, incorporating the option of not watching if all shows are too dissimilar to these desires. The shows are first grouped according to salient characteristics and a preferred value for each characteristic is estimated for each potential viewer. A perceived position of each show is similarly estimated and watching is shown to decline as similarity between preferred show and available alternatives declines. The choice model predicts show choice better than simpler models based on aggregate audience measures or on network loyalty, but the explanatory power is weak; some suggestions for improvement are made.     

移动动态安防系统

随着个人私有电子设备日益完善，大量隐私信息存储于这些电子设备中，非法的越权访问导致了这类隐私信息的大量流失，本系统实现了远程监控、监督由于时间和空间阻隔而不能实时操控的电子设备的运行状况。     

Prepayment and future cross-buying: an exploratory analysis

Recent research has provided important insights on consumers’ preferences for prepayment mechanisms and on its impact on consumption of a given product or service. However, little is known about how prepayment influences future purchases of goods and services. We consider this question in a contractual setting within the services industry, involving different purchasing decisions over time. Based on a large-scale empirical test, we find that prepay customers make fewer changes to their cross-buying levels (i.e., the number of different services they buy from the company) from one contractual period to another, and that this effect is more salient for the firm's new customers. We propose possible explanatory mechanisms for this effect. For instance, based on mental budgeting theory, we suggest that prepayment customers may set mental budgets and track expenditures against this budget leading them to resist further investments. Alternatively, prepayment customers may be more certain about their consumption behavior leading to fewer changes over time.

     

An empirical analysis of euro cash payments

If the denominational structure of the euro is used in an optimal way, there should be no preferences for certain coins and notes when making cash payments. In Kippers et al. [2003. An empirical study of cash payments. Statistica Neerlandica 57, 484-508] it is documented that the Dutch public did have certain preferences concerning the Dutch guilder in the sense that a few notes and coins were used less often than they should have been. With the advent of the euro, which changed the denominational structure from 1--5 (guilder) to 1-2-5 (euro), it is of interest to examine whether there are any preferences for euro coins and notes. In this paper we use a unique dataset for the Netherlands to empirically examine if the euro range is used in an optimal way. We find that there are no preferences for certain euro denominations.