Outlying Islands as a Tourist Destination for Local Residents: The Case of Cheung Chau in Hong Kong

Cheung Chau is an outlying island in Hong Kong, which is relatively untouched by the region's rapid economic development. The island provides a dramatic contrast to the cosmopolitan city center, one of the most popular travel destinations in Asia and a major business hub. This makes Cheung Chau a special attraction for local residents seeking to get away from their routine lives. However, no published studies have examined the opinions of residents on sustainable tourism development on Hong Kong's outlying islands and the motivating factors that drive residents to visit those islands. Hence, an exploratory qualitative study was undertaken to develop an understanding of the public's motivation for visiting Cheung Chau. The results of in-depth interviews with 15 residents who had visited the island are presented, along with an examination of the future direction of tourism development in Cheung Chau.     

Positive and Negative Word of Mouth about Restaurants: Exploring the Asymmetric Impact of the Performance of Attributes

This study examines the relationship between attribute performance of a restaurant and customers' positive and negative word of mouth (WOM). We present an analysis of 168,262 customer reviews, which consist of an overall rating of a dining experience, ratings of food, physical environment and employee service, and real expenditure for a meal, totally covering 1,542 Chinese restaurants on a restaurant guide website. The results indicate that the performance of attributes has an asymmetric impact on positive and negative WOM for the restaurant industry as well as for low-end and mid-to-high-end restaurants. Our results also show that, in most cases, there is a combined effect of two attributes on both positive and negative WOM.     

Examining destination images from travel blogs: a big data analytical approach using latent Dirichlet allocation

ABSTRACT

In the big data era, destination images have played an increasingly important role in tourism development. However, seldom tourism research has utilised big data analytics to examine destination images from travel blogs. Therefore, this study proposes and evaluates a big data analytical approach using latent Dirichlet allocation to extract attributes of online destination images from 140,286 travel blogs about 20 cities in China. Results reveal 14 dimensions with 54 attributes of destination images of the studied cities. Interesting findings are discovered between online destination images and tourism cities. This study also summarises the implications for tourism research and practice.     

Social responsibility in youth service organizations: Hong Kong evidence

The paper attempts to investigate the key factors affecting the social responsibility development in social welfare organizations. The study also measures how social welfare organizations are performing towards the social responsibility objectives. This paper focuses on a study undertaken among a number of youth service organizations in Hong Kong. The results showed that youth service organizations perceive they have supportive organizational culture and the management has been showing strong willingness in promoting social responsibility. The people from a senior level see that the motivating factors are more important than the junior people, but they perceive the ‘social pressure’ is less important than the junior people. The big contrast implies that the management people do not take ‘social pressure’ into serious consideration. The study reveals a significant influence from the management on the adoption and implementation of social responsibility activities. This further confirms the importance on promoting social responsibility at the operational level, with the top management providing clear strategic direction, and supportive resources and environment.     

Leader-member exchange,employee performance,and work outcomes: an empirical study in the Chinese context

In this study, we employed the multidimensional view of LMX (LMX-MDM) to develop a model that captured different antecedents and outcomes of task and contextual performance. We tested this model with a sample drawn from subjects from the People's Republic of China. The results indicated that the affect dimension of LMX-MDM was positively associated with task performance and contextual performance. The contribution dimension of LMX-MDM was positively related to the job dedication dimension of contextual performance. Supervisory ratings of the task performance and the interpersonal facilitation dimension of contextual performance predicted the promotability of subordinates, and task performance influenced subordinates' intention to quit. Limitations and future research are discussed.     

Relative importance and combined effects of attributes on customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction with a service experience is often determined by several critical attributes. Prior studies have suggested that food, physical environment, and employee service impose an important effect on diners' satisfaction with restaurant services. Although much research has looked at the direct effect of these attributes individually, little is known about them when they are considered together. This study investigates the relative importance and combined effects of the determinants of customer satisfaction in China's hospitality industry. The results show that food taste, employee service, and physical environment (in that order) all significantly contribute to diners' satisfaction, and that one attribute may substitute for another attribute in the satisfaction formation process. Generally, humanic attributes (employee service) can effectively substitute for less humanic attributes (physical environment).     

Corporate spinoffs and executive compensation

This paper investigates the impact of corporate spinoffs on executive compensation. We find no significant association between executive compensation and stock returns prior to spinoffs, but a significant positive association between the two afterwards. We also find evidence that corporate governance generally improves after the spinoff. In addition, the positive association between executive compensation and stock returns is more pronounced for firms with greater improvements in their corporate governance. Overall, our findings support the notion that spinoffs create value by reducing agency costs.     

关于反洗钱立法中注册会计师法定义务的研究

中国注册会计师协会反洗钱立法研究工作小组不久前召开了第一次会议,就反洗钱立法中注册会计师的权利和义务设定问题进行了研究。现将会议研究的主要内容作一简述。关于注册会计师是否应当报告常规审计过程中发现的客户洗钱嫌疑问题1.年度审计过程当中很难发现洗钱嫌疑。注册会计师的审计对象是财务报告期末时点上的结果,关注的是影响财务报告的交易行为。而洗钱往往会有大的现金流量,但通常对企业的利润并不产生影响,也不会对资产和负债产生影响。因此,在年度审计中发现洗钱行为的可能性很小,报告义务就无从谈起。洗钱是一种特殊的上游犯罪…     

Risk,jumps, and diversification

We test for price discontinuities, or jumps, in a panel of high-frequency intraday stock returns and an equiweighted index constructed from the same stocks. Using a new test for common jumps that explicitly utilizes the cross-covariance structure in the returns to identify non-diversifiable jumps, we find strong evidence for many modest-sized, yet highly significant, cojumps that simply pass through standard jump detection statistics when applied on a stock-by-stock basis. Our results are further corroborated by a striking within-day pattern in the significant cojumps, with a sharp peak at the time of regularly scheduled macroeconomic news announcements.     

Asian researchers should be more critical: The example of testing mediators using time-lagged data

In the past decade, there has been call for Asian researchers to be more confident and not limit themselves to follow only the footsteps of Western studies. In this paper, we follow up the discussion in Western literature about the importance of testing mediators with longitudinal data. The prevailing way of testing mediation is the use of time-lagged models. That is, the predictor or mediator is collected at prior time points than the outcome variable. We believe this is not sufficient. Instead, cross-lagged models, which measure all three types of variables at different time points, are necessary for testing mediation. Unfortunately, Asian researchers have again followed the footsteps of the suboptimal practice of time-lagged models. Using computer simulation data and a real-life dataset collected in China, we show that erroneous conclusions may be drawn even when the predictor, the mediator, and outcome variables are measured at different time waves under the time-lagged model. We propose a more appropriate procedure to use the cross-lagged model to test the exact causal ordering among the predictor, the mediator, and the outcome variable.