Earnings Smoothing,Cash Flow Volatility,and CEO Cash Bonus

Prior studies generally relate managers’ decisions to smooth earnings to their desire to maximize their overall compensation and to smooth their consumption. However, earnings smoothing could also be driven by the firm's expected benefits from reporting a smooth earnings stream. Our paper provides empirical support for the latter explanation of earnings smoothing. Specifically, we find that while CEO bonus on average increases with earnings smoothing, the increase is larger when the firm's cash flow volatility is higher. Further, CEO bonus is shielded from the negative effects of lower earnings arising from the need to report a smoother earnings stream.     

Sensitivity of Systematic Risk Estimates to the Return Measurement Interval Under Serial Correlation

This paper analytically and empirically investigates the sensitivity of the return measurement interval to the market beta estimate and suggests a market beta estimation method incorporating the investment horizon through a vector autoregressive (VAR) model when there is serial correlation in returns. The analytical relation between the beta estimate and the return measurement interval is obtained. Based on the analytical relation, a decision function for the intervalling effect is provided. It is found that the intervalling effect is mostly caused by January returns.     

Inflation and the finance–growth nexus

This paper re-investigates whether there exist inflation thresholds in the finance–growth linkage. By applying the Caner and Hansen's (2004) instrumental-variable threshold regression approach to the dataset of Levine et al. (2000), we find strong evidence of a nonlinear inflation threshold in the relationship, below which financial development exerts a significantly positive effect on economic growth, while, above which, the growth effect of finance appears to be insignificant. Furthermore, we also find a positive and significant relationship between finance and productivity for inflation rates below the threshold level, but no such relationship is detected for inflation rates above the critical level. This result suggests that finance influences growth mainly through the productivity channel.     

Intention to pay conventional-hotel prices at a green hotel – a modification of the theory of planned behavior

Numerous studies have employed the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand customers’ behaviors in various fields, but none has tested and extended the theory to explain customers’ decision formation to pay comparable regular-hotel prices for a green hotel. This is the first study designed to test and modify the TPB by including environmental concerns, perceived customer effectiveness and environmentally conscious behaviors, which are critical in explaining eco-friendly consumer behaviors. Salient belief items were identified using an elicitation method (focus group and open-ended survey). A survey obtained 389 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that measurement items for all study variables had an adequate level of reliability and validity. The findings from the structural equation modeling showed that the proposed model had a satisfactory fit to the data and better predicted hotel customers’ intention than the original TPB. The results also indicated that all antecedent variables of intention significantly contributed to forming the intention to pay conventional-hotel prices for a green hotel. Respondents were happy to have minor inconveniences, e.g. reusing towels and using recycled products, and were keen to learn about the positive environmental attributes of green hotels. Benefit awareness was shown to be important in customer decision-making.     

Understanding how consumers view green hotels: how a hotel's green image can influence behavioural intentions

As the public is increasingly concerned about environmental issues, green management is rapidly becoming a strategic tool that can enhance a hotel's competitive advantage. This study explores how to develop the image and branding of a green hotel using the concepts of cognitive, affective and overall images. The study, based on a survey of 416 hotel users, also investigates how a green hotel image can affect behavioural intentions (i.e. intention to revisit, intention to offer positive recommendations to others and willingness to pay a premium). The findings confirm that cognitive image components (namely value and quality attributes) can exert a positive influence on a green hotel's affective and overall images. The affective image is also found to positively affect a green hotel's overall image. A green hotel's overall image, in turn, can contribute to more favourable behavioural intentions. Quality attributes were found to be more powerful than value attributes. The importance of the concept of selfish altruism and obtaining a feeling of wellbeing from a purchase were shown to be very strong. A range of theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Consequences of Customer Dissatisfaction in Upscale and Budget Hotels: Focusing on Dissatisfied Customers’ Attitude Toward a Hotel

It is important to understand customer dissatisfaction in order to maintain a sustainable business, given that the negative effects of customer dissatisfaction in service businesses may be even greater than the positive effects of satisfaction. This study investigates customer dissatisfaction and its consequences by focusing on the mediating role of attitude toward a hotel according to different hotel classes related to customer expectation level. The results show a mediating role for attitude in the relationship between customer dissatisfaction and specific negative behavioral intentions. This study broadens our knowledge of customer dissatisfaction and the role of attitude toward a hotel in the relevant literature. The empirical findings demonstrate that regardless of hotel type, customer dissatisfaction significantly affects their attitude and their consequent negative behavioral intention.     

Online Group-Buying of Tourism Products: Effects of Value and Trust on Site Attachment,Altruism, and Loyalty

Although online group-buying is increasing rapidly, little theoretically based research has been conducted on behaviors of online group-buyers of tourism products. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop and test a theoretical model examining the relationships among value, trust, site attachment, altruism, and loyalty in the context of online group-buying of tourism products. The results indicate that the six hypothesized relationships among value, trust, site attachment, altruism, and loyalty are significant and thus validate the theoretical model. The findings of this study provide theoretical and practical implications for academics and managers of online group-buying sites.     

Senior Travelers and Airport Shopping: Deepening Repurchase Decision-making Theory

Despite the importance of the seniors market, little is known about international senior tourists' post-purchasing behaviors in the airport-shopping industry. The aims of this study were to attain a better comprehension of these customers' repurchase decision formation by employing a Theory of Repurchase Decision-making (TRD) and identify differences in the proposed theoretical framework between senior and non-senior travelers. A field survey was conducted to collect data at international airports. Results of a structural model showed that the TRD has an excellent ability to predict seniors' repurchase intentions; some variables in the model were found to have a significant mediating impact. Additionally, satisfaction was determined to play a prominent role in these decisions. Finally, findings from the test for metric invariance revealed that the proposed theoretical framework significantly differed across senior and non-senior tourist groups, verifying the moderating impact of age. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Query Titles in Travel Forums: Nature and Impacts on Responses

Despite travel forums being an influential source of electronic word of mouth in the tourism context, the nature of interaction between information inquirers and contributors is yet to be appraised. This study attempts to fill the knowledge gap by exploring the inquiry titles in a travel forum in terms of its nature and influence on viewers’ responses. For empirical examination, thread titles for queries on South Korea and Japan that were posted in the Lonely Planet Thorn tree forum between March 2009 and February 2010 were collected (n?=?220) and analyzed. The results reveal that search by location is prevalent when potential tourists post a query in a travel forum. Search by interest is more likely at the city or regional level, while search by general (SBG) topic is prevalent in national-level search. The nature of inquiry title also reflects the intended length of stay at a destination. SBG in title significantly outweighs other categories in terms of the number of views and replies. Implication of findings and directions for future study are discussed.     

Hotel Employees' Perception of Green Practices

This study examined how hotel employees perceive green practices. Data was collected from 220 employees working in eight green certified hotels in Orlando, Florida. Study results from an importance–performance analysis revealed that the surveyed employees rated their hotels' performance in green practices lower than the importance levels. A positive correlation was found between the employees' organizational commitment and their perception on the company's green practices. The relationship between the respondents' key demographic characteristics and their perception of green practices was also investigated. Lastly, implications for hotels are discussed to assist the companies to promote and train green practices among their employees.