Bivariate almost stochastic dominance

Univariate almost stochastic dominance has been widely studied and applied since its introduction by Leshno and Levy (Manag Sci 48:1074–1085, 2002). This paper extends this construction to the bivariate case by means of suitable two-attribute utility functions. After having confined correlation aversion and correlation loving to some acceptable levels, bivariate almost stochastic dominance rules are introduced for the preferences exhibiting confined correlation aversion and confined correlation loving. The impact of a change in risk in terms of bivariate almost stochastic dominance on optimal saving is analyzed as an application, as well as the effect of envy and altruism on income distributions. Finally, alternative definitions of bivariate almost stochastic dominance are discussed, as well as testing procedures for such dominance rules in financial problems.     

The marketing effectiveness of UK environmental charity websites compared to best practice

All nonprofit organisations need to give attention to their marketing strategies in order to maximise the funding and support they receive and the numbers using their services. The web offers a new communications medium with which to achieve this. This paper compares suggested best practice approaches to web marketing using the websites of UK environmental charities as a type of nonprofit organisation. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

“You can try to press different emotional buttons”: The conflicts and strategies of eliciting emotions for fundraisers

In a competitive climate in which charities must increasingly rely on fundraising with the public, emotions such as hope, guilt, and fear are powerful tools that can be used strategically to secure donations or participation. This paper explores data from interviews with 23 fundraisers and voluntary sector workers, managers, and officials, to argue that decisions around how, why, and when to invest in the elicitation of emotion in fundraising are often difficult and conflicted, with some identifying a battle between ethics and effectiveness. We identify 3 key levels of conflict that must be negotiated: at the level of the charity sector, where the emotional ethics particularly of larger charities have been met with some resistance from the public and press; at the level of the organisation itself, where the ethics of representation are often a subject of conflict between fundraising and other departments such as policy; and, finally, at the experiential level of individual fundraisers themselves, who report being routinely internally conflicted around the rights and wrongs of using emotion in their work. A strategic approach to eliciting emotion emerges in the data as a useful way to address some of these areas of conflict, with fundraisers making careful “balancing” decisions about how and with whom to mobilise certain emotions at specific times.     

Urban agriculture,gender and empowerment: An alternative view

Studies of urban agriculture (UA) in South Africa, and more broadly in southern Africa, have drawn on quantitative research methodologies to explain the involvement in UA of people from low-income households. Such studies tend to explain UA with reference to the direct economic and monetary gains that are made through agricultural activity. In Cape Town, the contribution of UA to income generation and expenditure substitution is limited. However, UA is important to women of low-income households in ways less directly related to monetary gain. Women use UA in processes of empowerment, to establish social networks, to symbolise a sense of security and to encourage community development. Policy-makers should extend their perception of UA's benefits beyond narrow economistic notions to include these positive social effects.     

Increasing correlations or just fat tails?

Increasing correlation during turbulent market conditions implies a reduction in portfolio diversification benefits. We investigate the robustness of recent empirical results that indicate a breakdown in the correlation structure by deriving theoretical truncated and exceedance correlations using alternative distributional assumptions. Analytical results show that the increase in conditional correlation could be a result of assuming conditional normality for the return distribution. When assuming a popular alternative distribution – the bivariate Student-t_r – we find significantly less support for an increase in conditional correlation and conclude that this is due to the presence of fat tails when assuming normality in the return distribution.     

Opportunities for Air Pollutant and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction through Local Transport Planning

This paper has three main objectives: firstly, to provide quantitative information on the potential greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions reductions resulting from a number of future road transport scenarios; secondly, to illustrate the emission reduction measures available to local transport planners; and thirdly, to highlight the potential for these measures to be integrated into strategies that deliver other transport priorities. The results are drawn from a case study of Norfolk in the UK. We conclude that while technology can play a large part in reducing emissions of air pollutants, demand management is crucial to the delivery of long term greenhouse gas emission reduction and ultimately of air pollutant emissions too.     

Exploring supermarket loyalty card analysis to identify who buys fairtrade

The aim of this paper is to show how supermarket loyalty card data from a panel of over 1.7 million shoppers can be analysed to provide insights to profile the fairtrade shopper in order to enhance making targeted marketing decisions. The paper demonstrates the huge marketing potential that loyalty-card-based shopper segmentation can bring to objectively describe who buys fairtrade products, compared to profiling shoppers through a claimed/reported behaviour data-set. A paired-samples t-test is used to test the degree of appeal of fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, drinking chocolates, banana and sugar categories in Tesco to life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments in terms of their retail sales values over 104 weeks. The results show that analysing loyalty cards based on actual behaviour provides a more detailed picture of how specific fairtrade food product categories appeal to the various life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments.     

Testing servers' roles as experts and managers of tipping behaviour

This article studies the ability of servers to predict their own tips. A distinction is made between the two roles of servers with regard to tipping behaviour: the role of expert and the role of manager. As experts, servers understand the relations between several predictors and tip size, and are able to predict the tip they are about to receive. As managers, servers designate certain tip amounts, and then manage the service encounter so that their predictions are realised. This study maps the necessary conditions for an expert position and outlines the process for managing a service encounter. Empirical testing suggests that servers have an impressive predictive ability. The findings also offer some support to the view of the role of the server as manager.