Customer Roles in Self-Service Technology Encounters in a Tourism Context

This paper reports on a study which explored the customer perspective on their roles in SST encounters in a tourism context, through the theoretical lens of service-dominant logic. The study employed short qualitative interviews with airline passengers at an international airport. The findings suggest that customers can assume six roles in an SST encounter which can be viewed as either positive or negative in terms of value creation. Therefore, a key contribution of this paper is the development of a role–experience continuum which depicts the variations in customer experiences of value creation in a tourism context.     

Conditional Effects of Touch on Purchase Behavior

Interpersonal touch has been shown to affect consumer behaviors such as compliance with a request, impulse buying, and tipping behavior. In this study, we examine if the impact of touch on purchase behavior is gender specific, and if it depends on how much the individual likes the product. Findings indicate male consumers are more likely to purchase a product at low to moderate levels of perceived tastiness when they are touched by a female server, whereas females are less likely to purchase. However, the touch encounter doesn’t matter for either gender when a consumer really likes the product.     

PTE,innovation capital and firm value interactions in the biotech medical industry

Unlike previous studies which only focus on the main effect between IC and FV, this research includes PTE with the gap of resource-based view. IC is a key element in creating a competitive advantage, as it has a great influence on FV. A company may put relatively less into IC if it demonstrates higher efficiency. However, previous studies have neglected the fact that relative efficiency and IC affect FV and stock returns directly and indirectly. The research period was from 2006 to 2010 and the main research methods include HRA and DEA. The main research findings include the following. (1) There is a space for improvement in terms of the total technical efficiency. (2) PTE has a significant moderating effect between IC and FV. (3) IC and PTE have a significant influence on FV. (4) Apart from PTE and stock returns, IC and FV show significant differences within the sub-industry.     

Engineering,a civilising influence?

The global environment is increasingly under threat and we face a challenge with little time to respond. Are we prepared to change the actions and attitudes that have led to this parlous situation, and if we are, how do we do it? Is the world ready for a more ecologically benign, less economically driven, peaceful and spiritually oriented way of living? My challenge lies in higher education. How do you encourage such values in a tertiary education system which has spent many years applying and rewarding a ‘respond to the market’ discourse? My responses are grounded in transformative education research with large diverse cohorts of first year engineering students. This paper also uses a critical futures methodology, Causal Layered Analysis, to update my concerns about Australian engineering education and the profession, using two recent reports. The aim is to offer constructive insights that may be transferable to educators in other contexts.     

Diagnostic Tests of Cross‐section Independence for Limited Dependent Variable Panel Data Models*

This article considers the problem of testing for cross‐section independence in limited dependent variable panel data models. It derives a Lagrangian multiplier (LM) test and shows that in terms of generalized residuals of Gourieroux et al. (1987) it reduces to the LM test of Breusch and Pagan (1980) . Because of the tendency of the LM test to over‐reject in panels with large N (cross‐section dimension), we also consider the application of the cross‐section dependence test (CD) proposed by Pesaran (2004) . In Monte Carlo experiments it emerges that for most combinations of N and T the CD test is correctly sized, whereas the validity of the LM test requires T (time series dimension) to be quite large relative to N. We illustrate the cross‐sectional independence tests with an application to a probit panel data model of roll‐call votes in the US Congress and find that the votes display a significant degree of cross‐section dependence.     

La transición de Tailandia en las esferas laboral y sanitaria

La economía de Tailandia ha cambiado rápidamente de la agricultura a la industria manufacturera y el sector de los servicios, pero el ordenamiento del mercado laboral y la representación de los trabajadores son mucho menos consistentes que en los países desarrollados, donde hubo una transición más lenta y gradual hace ya décadas. Los autores estudian el robustecimiento de las políticas y la legislación tailandesas en el ámbito de la seguridad y la salud en el trabajo, que obedece a las normas internacionales y a la nueva Constitución democrática. Por último, identifican los principales retos pendientes, entre ellos el cumplimiento de la ley y una medición mejor de los efectos del trabajo en la salud física y mental.     

Do farmers or governments make better land conservation choices? Evidence from China's Sloping Land Conversion Program

In developing countries with small holdings, targeting payments-for-environmental-services prices to site-specific environmental benefits becomes administratively impractical. Instead, governments fix price and either dictate parcel enrollment or let farmers decide, which might be expected to maximize environmental benefits and minimize opportunity costs, respectively. No paper has actually tested such hypotheses in a developing-country setting. This paper examines China's Sloping Land Conversion Program, with 32 million planting forests, using a unique dataset on 3397 parcels, including farmer-choice and government-choice parcels. Farmers consider similar criteria to local governments but weight land characteristics within the farm (not the landscape) and household characteristics.     

Situational and trait interactions among goal orientations

Regulatory focus theory has been used to describe and explain a wide range of consumer responses. This goal orientation has been examined both as a chronic difference and a situational variable. Yet, it is unclear how a situational manipulation interacts with the individual??s chronic goal orientation. The present research investigates the potential for interactions and suggests that typical outcomes of regulatory focus are likely to emerge more clearly under circumstances in which promotion focus is manipulated. The studies demonstrate asymmetric effects in the interactions of chronic and situational manipulations of regulatory focus using different manipulations and outcome variables. The implications of these findings are significant for any research involving the manipulation of variables that can also be considered as chronic tendencies.