A Comparison of Ecolodge Patrons' Characteristics and Motivations Based on Price Levels: A Case Study of Belize

Ecolodges are an increasingly popular accommodation form. This study determined the demographic and trip characteristics, as well as the travel motivations of ecolodge patrons at three different price levels: budget, mid-price and upscale. Six ecolodges were studied in the Cayo District of Belize. Of 480 questionnaires distributed at the ecolodges, 331 valid surveys were returned (68.9% response rate). The clients of the Belizean ecolodges had some demographic characteristics similar to those of ecotourists found in other studies: middle-aged, highly educated, and employed with high levels of income. This study found consistency amongst the three groups in the most important travel attraction motives, with tropical forests and wilderness/undisturbed nature ranked highest by all groups. The study also showed consistency amongst the three groups with regards to travel social motives, with learn and explore nature the top-ranked social motive by all groups. The study found significant differences amongst the price levels on many variables, including: age, country of residence, education, employment status, income, party composition, trip length, length of stay at the ecolodge and level of ecolodge experience. There were important differences found in travel motivations and the importance of ecolodge attributes. The mid-price group was the hardest to please; they wanted a lower price, yet desired the quality, services and programmes of the upscale group.     

SUBSIDIES AS OPTIMAL FISCAL STIMULI

Theoretical macroeconomic models typically take fiscal policy to mean tax‐and‐spend by a ‘benevolent government’ that exploits potential aggregate demand externalities inherent in the imperfectly competitive nature of goods markets. Whilst shown to raise aggregate output and employment, these policies crowd‐out private consumption and typically reduce welfare. On account of their widespread use to stimulate economic activity, we consider the use of ‘tax‐and‐subsidize’ instead of ‘tax‐and‐spend’ policies. Within a static general equilibrium macro‐model with imperfectly competitive goods markets, we examine the effects of wage and output subsidies and show that, for a small open economy, positive tax and subsidy rates exist which maximize welfare, rendering no intervention suboptimal. We also show that, within a two‐country setting, a Nash non‐cooperative symmetric equilibrium with positive tax and subsidy rates exists, and that cooperation between governments in setting these rates is more expansionary and leads to an improvement upon the non‐cooperative solution.     

Breaks in the chain of comparative advantage

The chain proposition of comparative advantage states that when factor prices differ between two countries producing many products with two factors, every export of the capital abundant country would be more capital intensive than any of its imports. The present note points out that an economy has the option to break the chain to reach full employment if its factor endowment is not spanned by the production cone of the more intensive products.     

Northeast Asian economic regionalism: A Korean view

State failure is more common than generally assumed and often has distinctly negative consequences that may manifest themselves in neighboring countries. For this reason, it has attracted considerable attention in academic and policy circles alike. The researchers exploring the phenomenon have followed a rather narrow path, however, and there is substantial scope to broaden the breadth of inquiry. While the analytical efforts over the past decade to come to grips with the phenomenon of state failure have borne fruit in terms of identifying the key independent variables, the understanding of the mechanism through which they exert their influence on the dependent variable has not been significantly enhanced. The assertion is particularly valid with respect to adverse and abrupt regime transitions. The purpose of this paper is to examine, in light of the author's experience in grappling with state failure in the Chinese context, the potential for systematically expanding the research agenda in a conceptual/theoretical direction.     

The impact of trade union membership on training in Britain

This article investigates the impact of openness and tariff reductions on the technical inventiveness of selected OECD countries. The results suggest that even these simple forms of trade liberalization may, under certain conditions, favour technical inventiveness or creativity, the most advanced form of technological gain. It is therefore likely that other, more directly relevant kinds of liberalization of exchange, will have some positive effects on less extreme forms of acquisition of technical knowledge. The diversity in outcomes across the range of countries surveyed points to the need to specify the conditions under which these dynamic technological gains can be reaped and serve as a rationale for international trade policy.     

Multivariate cointegration and causality tests of Wagner's hypothesis: evidence from the UK

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of omitted variables in testing the long run validity of Wagner's hypothesis. Using UK data for the period 1948 to 1997, this paper first investigates the secular relationship between public spending and economic development in a bivariate system. In all cases considered, our bivariate cointegration tests indicate the absence of a long run equilibrium condition. However, the introduction of a third variable (money supply) re-establishes a cointegrating relationship between public expenditure and economic development variables. In addition, the results of the Granger's multivariate causality test indicate a unidirectional causality from income and money supply to public spending in the long run, thus providing support for Wagner's hypothesis.     

Servant leadership,organizational identification,and work‐to‐family enrichment: The moderating role of work climate for sharing family concerns

The present study investigates the impact of servant leadership as perceived by followers on their work‐to‐family enrichment (WFE) by focusing on the mediating role of organizational identification and the moderating role of work climate for sharing family concerns. The results from a field survey of 230 married managers in China provide full support for our hypotheses, indicating that perceived servant leadership is positively related to WFE; this relationship is also mediated by organizational identification. In addition, work climate for sharing family concerns attenuates the effects of servant leadership on organizational identification and WFE. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Decreasing advertising interference: The impact of comparable differences on consumer memory in competitive advertising environments

This study investigates the structural alignment processes in reducing memory interference in a competitive advertising context. In particular, an experimental study is carried out to understand how alignable (i.e., comparable) and nonalignable (i.e., noncomparable) attributes influence ad claim recall at differing levels of competitive ads. Findings indicate that recall of alignable attributes is higher than that of nonalignable attributes in the presence of ads for competing brands. Results from the study also suggest that nonalignable attribute recall decreases as the number of ads featuring competing brands increases from zero to two, whereas alignable attribute recall is not affected by increasing the level of competitive ads. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

International Entrepreneurship research (1989–2009): A domain ontology and thematic analysis

This article explores the domain of international entrepreneurship (IE) research by thematically mapping and assessing the intellectual territory of the field. Extant reviews show that the body of IE knowledge is growing, and while notable contributions towards theoretical and methodological integration are evident, the field is described as phenomenally based, potentially fragmented and suffering from theoretical paucity. Premising that IE is positioned at the nexus of internationalization and entrepreneurship where entrepreneurial behavior involves cross-border business activity, or is compared across countries, we identify 323 relevant journal articles published in the period 1989–2009. We inventory the domain of IE to provide a relevant and comprehensive organization of its research. This involves examining the subject matter of IE research, and inductively synthesizing and categorizing it into major themes and sub-themes. In so doing, we offer a reliable, ontologically constructed and practically useful resource. From this base, we discuss the phenomena, issues, inconsistencies and interim debates on which new theory in IE may be built and research may be conducted. We conclude that IE has several coherent thematic areas and is rich in potential for future research and theory development.