How do environmental knowledge,environmental sensitivity,and place attachment affect environmentally responsible behavior? An integrated approach for sustainable island tourism

Previous studies have explored tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) from the perspectives of individual commitment, attractiveness, and involvement. This study approaches from the standpoint of environmental knowledge (EK); it probes tourists’ behavior to facilitate sustainable tourism development, and constructs a sustainable island tourism development model by integrating EK, environmental sensitivity, place attachment, and ERB. Four hundred and seventy seven tourists visiting the Penghu Islands, Taiwan, were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the relationships among the variables and the mediating effects. Results indicate that higher levels of tourists’ EK about the Penghu Islands are associated with stronger environmental sensitivity; environmental sensitivity which tourists have for island tourism is positively associated with place attachment. The extent of place attachment of Penghu as perceived by tourists is also positively associated with stronger ERB. When tourists are highly sensitive to the attraction, they are more likely to exhibit ERB. Environmental sensitivity and place attachment were found to exert significant effects in mediating the relationships between EK and ERB. This study pioneers the integration of all four constructs in a sustainable tourism behavior model for tourists to island tourism destinations. Suggestions for marketing and implementation of sustainable tourism, and their managerial implications are proposed.     

The Irish Newspapers and the Residential Property Price Boom

There has already been some academic discussion of the role of the Irish newspapers in fuelling the country's residential property boom that crashed in 2008. Several academic commentators have argued that the newspapers intentionally talked up the Irish market because of the conflicts of interest that they faced, particularly arising from advertising and their organisational linkages. This paper argues that these factors have only limited explanatory value, and that the key determinant in the economics sections of the newspapers was their reliance on external expertise to augment their analyses. The article presents quantitative data demonstrating the enormous prevalence of articles written by and citing private-sector economists from organisations with direct stakes in the property market. These commentators were very unlikely to issue unreserved warnings about a crash, and in many cases made unduly positive forecasts with little empirical justification. The article argues that the key fault of the newspapers therefore lay in the failure of management to prevent the tone and coverage of the market from being skewed by external interests. The article contributes to the broader international literature on media bias and the role of external experts.     

Go west!

Zusammenfasung  Pflegekarriere in den USA — Die M?glichkeit, im amerikanischen Pflegesystem Karriere zu machen, ist für Pflegende aus Deutschland immer eine Option. Doch welche Ausbildungsm?glichkeiten gibt es dort und wie kommt man von Deutschland aus an einen Arbeitsplatz?     

The political economy of housing prices: Hedonic pricing with regression discontinuity

This paper uses hedonic pricing to empirically estimate the value of publicly provided local goods and services in the constituencies of the ruling party relative to those of the opposition parties. To improve control for omitted variables that change smoothly over space, we use a regression discontinuity design to restrict the sample to houses that are near the electoral boundaries. Using resale market prices of public flats in Singapore, in some cases we find a moderate but highly statistically significant difference in housing prices across the electoral boundaries that separate the constituencies of the ruling party and the opposition parties.     

Mandatory Retirement Rules and the Retirement Decisions of University Professors in Canada

We examine the impact of mandatory retirement on the retirement decisions of professors in Canada using administrative data. Estimation of a discrete time hazard model indicates that faculty members at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have exit rates at age 65 that are around 30 to 38 percentage points higher than those of their counterparts at universities without mandatory retirement. This overall difference in exit rates is found when the sample is restricted by discipline, professional rank and type of university. Similar results are found for both men and women; however, the magnitude of this effect is somewhat smaller for women. Restricting the analysis to include faculty members who received their highest degree at age 34 or older does not affect the magnitude of the difference in exit rates between faculty at universities without mandatory retirement and those at universities with mandatory retirement. The estimated survival probabilities indicate that only 22.7% of faculty members employed at age 64 at universities without mandatory retirement will continue to be employed at the same university at age 72.     

Problems in planning tropical tree crop projects and possible solutions

Abstract

This paper considers whether top‐grade diary beef produced in Japan and high‐quality beef imports from the USA are components of the same product market. In addressing this issue an approach is used for defining the nature and extent of a product market relying on the concept of instantaneous causality. The results, for selected cuts of beef, suggest that the markets are in fact separate.     

The influence of the introduction of accounting disclosure regulation on mandatory disclosure compliance: Evidence from Jordan

This paper examines the influence of accounting disclosure regulation, governance reforms and ownership changes, resulting from privatisation, on mandatory disclosure compliance of a sample of 80 non-financial, listed Jordanian companies for the years 1996 and 2004. Employing two checklists based on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) extant in the years 1996 and 2004, we find that disclosure compliance with the IFRS is significantly higher in 2004 than that in 1996. Our multiple regression results indicate that disclosure regulation reforms produced the most significant influence on mandatory disclosure compliance. Further, governance reforms through the mandate of audit committees emerged as a significant determinant of compliance with mandatory disclosure requirements.     

Quality of life,firm productivity,and the value of amenities across Canadian cities

We estimate quality‐of‐life and productivity differences across Canada's metropolitan areas in a hedonic general‐equilibrium framework. These are based on the estimated willingness‐to‐pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities, which differ in their wage levels, housing costs, and land values. Using 2006 Canadian Census data, our metropolitan quality‐of‐life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings, yet find Canadians care more about climate and culture. Quality of life is highest in Victoria for anglophones, Montreal for francophones, and Vancouver for allophones, and lowest in more remote cities. Toronto is Canada's most productive city; Vancouver is the overall most valuable city.     

Economic Effects of Risk Classification Bans

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, to compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby to reduce asymmetric information. Permitting risk classification may reduce informational asymmetry-induced adverse selection and improve insurance market efficiency. It may also have undesirable equity consequences and undermine the implicit insurance against reclassification risk, which legislated restrictions on risk classification could provide. We use a canonical insurance market screening model to survey and to extend the risk classification literature. We provide a unified framework for analysing the economic consequences of legalised vs banned risk classification, both in static-information environments and in environments in which additional information can be learned, by either side of the market, through potentially costly tests.     

International perspectives on tourism‐led development: some lessons for the SDIs

The concept of tourism‐led socio‐economic development is neither new nor peculiar to South Africa. This study draws on the international experience of the Malindi‐Mombasa coastal development corridor in Kenya, the Goa Coast of India, the Kulu Valley and Bhutan in the Himalayas, the Gambia, Dominica, Belize and the Maldives. It assesses the results achieved in these tourism programmes against the strategic objectives of those South African SDIs that place a heavy emphasis on the country's tourism potential. The SDIs, as described elsewhere in this collection, represent a new paradigm adopted by the South African government, aimed at moving away from a protected and isolated approach to economic development, towards one in which international competitiveness, regional cooperation and a more diversified ownership base are paramount. The key objectives of the tourism‐led development corridors, including the Wild Coast and Lubombo SDIs, are to generate sustainable economic growth and development; generate sustainable long‐term employment creation; maximise the extent to which private sector investment and lending can be mobilised into the process; change the ownership base of the industry so that people previously excluded from the mainstream of the economy by discriminatory practices can play a meaningful role as workers, managers and owners of new tourism enterprises; and to exploit the opportunities that arise from new tourism and ecotourism developments for the creation of upstream and downstream business opportunities, especially small businesses owned by previously marginalised groups.