Understanding consumption behaviours for fair trade non‐food products: focusing on self‐transcendence and openness to change values

Using the Schwartz value system, this study explored the personal values of consumers related to fair trade product consumption. This study further investigated how the values determine beliefs, attitudes and purchase intentions associated with fair trade non‐food products. Data were collected using an online survey from a random sample of 1824 nationwide consumers. The results of this study revealed that fair trade purchasers show a higher level of self‐transcendence (universalism, benevolence) and openness to change values (self‐direction, stimulation) than non‐purchasers. These values also have positive effects on the formation of beliefs, attitudes and purchase intentions pertaining to fair trade non‐food products. Fair trade purchasers were also found to possess distinctive socio‐demographic characteristics concerning age, education and income. Findings can offer marketers specific information regarding consumers' motivations to purchase fair trade goods, which can improve targeting of products and ultimately increase the business and benefits of fair trade.     

A metacultural approach to predicting self-employment across the globe

Drawing from neo-institutional theory, we examine the relationship between preference for entrepreneurship and actual entrepreneurship behavior across multiple countries and cultures. We elucidate how multiple societal-level cultural models, namely Hofstede, Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE), and Schwartz affect the individual-level process connecting expressed preference for self-employment and actual behavior. Our hypotheses were tested using a multilevel technique on a sample of 20,755 individuals across 24 countries. The findings indicate that the moderating effect of predominant cultural cognition is partially supported. Contributions and implications for theory and practice are also discussed.     

House Price Dynamics with Household Debt: The Korean Case*

This paper revisits the long‐run determinants of house prices, and analyzes the house price dynamics using Korean data taking into account the close relationship between house prices and household debt. The results of cointegrating regression indicate that the major portion of the rise in house prices in Korea over the last 15 years can be explained by changes in macro variables such as household income, the demographic structure, the user cost of home ownership and the housing stock supply. The results also confirm that house prices are, indeed, closely linked to the steep increase in household debt seen over this period. Estimation of an error correction model shows that the extent of convergence of actual house prices to their long‐run equilibrium path has weakened somewhat since the global financial crisis while the speed of convergence has slowed, indicating structural changes in the Korean housing market. Finally, a forecast for house prices over the next several years suggests that they are unlikely to rise as sharply as they did in the 2000s, given the likely changes in the macro‐financial environment, and that their future path will be closely associated with that of the household debt‐to‐income ratio.     

SPATIAL INTEGRATION OF URBAN WATER SERVICES AND ECONOMIES OF SCALE

This research attempts to analyze economic effects of spatial integration of urban water service markets in Korea, employing the notion of economies of scale in terms of cost-effectiveness. The economies of scale are measured by the elasticity of supply with respect to the production cost from the translog cost function of urban water supply enterprises. It was found that the economies of scale in most urban water utility firms of Seoul Metropolitan region have continuously increased during the period 1989–1994. While the economies of scale would be hardly influenced by the changes in population density, they would tend to decrease marginally in response to the rise in employment density. If the urban water markets of the Seoul Metropolitan Region were consolidated into a single water service market without any changes to the current spatial network of water supply and regional economic attributes, the production cost would be reduced up to 47.1 percent of the actual cost in 1994. Those savings would be enough to make up for the financial deficit of the water production of the Seoul Metropolitan Region.     

Organizational Work‐Family Culture and Working Mothers’ Affective Commitment: How Career Expectations Matter

The research undertaken here examines how an organizational work‐family culture affects the attitudes of working mothers. This research extends the existing findings by examining two separate mediation processes: work‐family conflict and career expectations. The cases of 1,308 working mothers were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that career expectations mediated the effect of an organizational work‐family culture on affective commitment while work‐family conflict did not. As an additional analysis, working mothers’ perceptions and attitudes were compared with those of 288 peers. Results disclose that working mothers were no less committed to their organization, and were even more committed than their peers early in their careers. Working mothers’ career expectations, however, were consistently lower than their peers’ expectations. Implications of these results are included. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Green indoor and outdoor environment as nature‐based solution and its role in increasing customer/employee mental health,well‐being,and loyalty

The present study was an empirical endeavor to explore the effect of nature‐based solutions (NBS) on the customer and employee loyalty generation process by considering the role of mental health and well‐being in the hotel industry. A quantitative approach was employed. A survey methodology with a convenience sampling technique was used to collect the data. A total of 303 responses and 301 responses for customer and employee groups, respectively, were used for data analysis. Our results of the structural analysis indicated that green indoor and outdoor environment as NBS helps customers and employees improve mental health perception, emotional well‐being, and loyalty. In addition, the prominent role of emotional well‐being in building customer loyalty and of mental health perception in building employee loyalty was uncovered. The developed conceptual frameworks for customers and employees contained a satisfactory ability in predicting loyalty. Mental health perception and emotional well‐being were mediators. Moreover, the relationship strength among study variables differed between customer and employee groups. Overall, our findings significantly increased our understanding of NBS and its critical role in the hotel industry.     

A general equilibrium assessment of COVID-19's labor productivity impacts on china's regional economies

Journal of Productivity Analysis - This study introduces a database for analyzing COVID-19’s impacts on China’s regional economies. This database contains various sectoral and regional...     

Real exchange rate shocks and new product margins in the export market

This study examines the impact of industry real exchange rate (RER) shocks on plant and product exports using a comprehensive dataset for South Korea from 1990 to 1996. We find that RER changes have heterogeneous effects on real exports of existing exporters in terms of their productivity, and the positive RER depreciation effect on exports is more pronounced for less productive plants. At a product level, we find new evidence that a weak home currency prompts exporters to introduce new products to the export market, especially more remarkable for low-productivity plants. In contrast, a strong home currency leads to product exit with less significance.     

National culture and the revenue-expense matching

Prior studies on the link between country-level cultural aspects and firms' arbitrary accounting practices are scant, and they show mixed results. To gain more insight about the impact of national culture on earnings characteristics, we exploit the matching concept between revenues and expenses, which well reflects managerial estimation and discretion in earnings quality. Using a large sample of 57 countries over the period 1989–2012, we find that (1) the economic association between revenues and expenses becomes stronger in firms from collectivistic and high uncertainty-avoidant countries, (2) the impact of these dimensions of national culture on the matching is more salient for firms from countries characterized by a higher level of accrual accounting, a greater proportion of special-items, and limited openness, and (3) the cultural impact on matching is mainly driven by the correlation between revenue and discretionary expense (i.e., selling, general, and administrative expense). These findings are consistent with the view that national culture plays an informal governance role to influence firms' discretionary accounting choices.     

What you touch,touches you: The influence of haptic attributes on consumer product impressions

The present research builds upon the touch literature to show that the salience of haptic product attributes related to product surface texture (smooth, rough) and weight (light weight, heavy weight) influence consumer product impressions. We propose that haptic cue congruity across texture and weight drive consumer product impressions depending on a consumer's need for touch (NFT). We show that high autotelic‐NFT consumers who touch for sensory pleasure enjoyed the incongruity between smooth texture and heavy weight haptic cues, and consequently showed favorable evaluations towards exciting brands. In contrast, low autotelic‐NFT consumers prefer the anticipated match between smooth texture and light weight haptic cues, which conformed to their expectation about the nature of a sophisticated brand personality. Further, we show how the interactive effect of haptic attributes and a consumer's autotelic‐NFT on willingness to purchase is mediated by product personality. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.