Ecotourism experiences reported online: Classification of satisfaction attributes

This study proposed a quantitative method for evaluating ecotourism experiences reported online by U.S. travelers to Costa Rica. The user-generated content (UGC) used in this study was 373 reviews extracted from TripAdvisor^®. By applying the content analysis technique, 26 attributes that influence ecotourists’ satisfaction with their ecolodge stays were identified and further aggregated into seven categories: ecolodge settings, room, nature, service, food, location, and value for money. A two-step non-parametric statistical procedure was developed to quantitatively support the classification of attributes into satisfiers, dissatisfiers, criticals, and neutrals, the typology first proposed by Cadotte and Turgeon [(1988). Dissatisfiers and satisfiers: suggestions from consumer complaints and compliments. Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, 1(1), 74-79]. The proposed procedure is considered an original contribution of the article to the literature. The authors hope that the results from this study can be useful to ecolodge managers to evaluate performance in critical areas and develop strategies to maximize customer satisfaction through better utilization of limited resources.     

The price of sanctions: An empirical analysis of German export losses due to the Russian agricultural ban

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the vivid political discussion on the consequences of the Russian agricultural import ban on the German export market by quantifying export losses that German agri-food exporters encountered on the Russian market due to the agricultural import ban of 2014. A gravity-type approach is used to measure the sanction effect in a panel of German agri-food exports covering the period from January 1999 to June 2018. The ban effect is disentangled from a sequence of different geopolitically- and economically driven episodes. Once macroeconomic developments of the Russian economy as well as individual stages of decreasing trade cooperation in the preban period are accounted for, the import ban reduced German agri-food exports significantly but was not the major cause. Therefore, a simple elimination of the ban will not be enough to restore trade to the presanctions level.     

Individual and contextual predictors of team member proactivity: what do we know and where do we go from here?

Contemporary organizations are placing greater emphasis on team work in order to meet the challenges of an increasingly turbulent business environment. In this context, the relationship between team member proactivity and overall team performance has been the focus of growing interest among management scholars and practitioners alike. Whereas extant scholarship acknowledges that team member proactivity is different from other forms of proactivity (i.e., individual and organization member proactivity), there is still only limited understanding of the factors that predict team member proactivity. Therefore, this paper extends current scholarship by identifying the individual and contextual predictors of team member proactivity and explaining how, taken together, they jointly influence team member proactivity. Building on these findings, the paper also identifies gaps in the current literature and proposes a model of team member proactivity to be tested in future research.     

Competition and Industrial Organisation in Transition Markets: What Can We Derive from Empirical Studies?

Competition is the basic concept for both industrial organisation theory and institutional economics. Transition economies, including Russia, are natural laboratories allowing us to trace the emergence of competition, the influence of competition on the conduct of market participants, the relationship between competition and market structure and the institutional foundation of competition. This article provides a summary of the results of empirical studies in the above area. We try to explain some puzzles concerning the influence of competition on the conduct of Russian market participants and interpret the results in the framework of institutional and industrial economics. Overall, the results of empirical studies can be generalised as follows. Competition in Russian markets has been gaining momentum over the last 15 years. The results of empirical studies have confirmed the assumption that competition is an incentive for active restructuring of privatised enterprises. Many of the data collected are evidence in favour of the endogenous market structure approach. From the institutional viewpoint, the history of the evolution of Russia's transition economy shows interdependence between private property and competition: better protection of property rights is a precondition for the development of competition. At the same time, the model of corporate governance that allows the property rights of private owners to be protected in the Russian institutional environment restricts organisational diversity and therefore competition in Russian markets.     

New evidence on factors affecting the level and growth of US health care spending

The dual problems of high and rising medical care expenditures and substantial differences in spending across geographic regions have long plagued the US health care system. We provide new evidence to explain why some states and regions of the country spend much more on medical care than others, and why health care spending for the nation as a whole has been growing rapidly over the last several decades. To do this, we estimate a health care spending panel data model using annual data on all 50 states for the period 1993–2009. Our model includes a number of socio-economic, health care provider, lifestyle and environmental variables that past studies indicate may affect the level or growth of aggregate health care spending. We exploit the time effect component of our model to obtain an upper-bound estimate of the effect of advances in medical technology. Our findings indicate that the most important factors influencing the level of spending are availability of providers, income, excessive alcohol consumption, Medicaid coverage, HMO health plans and the proportion of the population elderly and African-American. The principal drivers of growth have been the continual introduction of new medical technologies, and the growth of providers and income.