Understanding the Motivation and Travel Behavior of Cycle Tourists Using Involvement Profiles

Bicycle tourism is a growing niche tourism market which has potential economic, social, and environmental outcomes for individual participants and host communities. However, there has been a lack of research into heterogeneity of this market and their respective motivations and behavior. This article applies the concept of enduring involvement, in conjunction with tourist motivational theory, to segment and better understand cycle tourist behavior and intentions. A total of 564 completed questionnaires was collected from an online survey of bicycle club members in Australia. Respondents were segmented into five initial clusters by their level of enduring involvement. A number of significant differences were found on their travel motivations, travel behavior, and behavioral intentions, as well as their sociodemographics and cycling behavior. The results lend support to the application of enduring involvement in a tourism context to better understand the behavior of niche markets which include popular leisure pursuits. Recommendations as a result of the findings are made for product development and marketing communication, while future research opportunities are also outlined.     

Regulator flexibility and the administrative allocation licensing of 3G spectrum

Globally, most nations assign radio spectrum to provide 3G mobile services during the period 1999–2007. While there is consensus among most economists that auctions are the preferred assignment mechanism, the assignment mode is split, more or less, equally (in terms of the number of licences issued) between administrative allocations and auctions. With auction procedures tending to raise more revenue for governments (Cartelier, 2003) the question that naturally arises is: why are administrative allocations so popular a method to assign spectrum? McMillan (1995) conjectures that administrative allocations provide additional ‘flexibility’. Accordingly, this study examines the performance of 3G assignments in terms of an econometric analysis of a unique sample of national 3G spectrum administrative allocations. These outcomes are modelled as depending on spectrum package attributes, and post-award network deployment requirements.     

Sport sponsorship,team support and purchase intentions

This research assessed the influence of team support and perception of sponsors on the purchase intentions of sport consumers. In a case study of a not‐for‐profit, membership‐based Australian professional football club, 1647 respondents reported their perceptions of team support, sponsor integrity and purchase intentions for the sponsor's products. Results revealed that the key pathway to purchase intention is associated with fan passion and a perception of sponsor integrity. This implies that the best mechanism for sponsor return on investment comes in the form of activities to bolster both passion for the team and perceptions of sponsor integrity.     

Estimating the economic benefits of acidic rock drainage clean up using cost shares

This paper reports the results of a stated preference study that estimates the economic value for cleaning up acid rock drainage in Colorado's Snake River watershed. In contrast to much of the existing literature, the present study emphasizes benefit estimation for three implementing projects rather than benefit estimation for general changes in water quality or large scale water quality policy. The focus on implementing projects delivers information that is specifically relevant to current decisions being faced in the watershed. While valuation questions in most stated preference studies present costs that have no relation to actual project costs, this study presents a new cost share approach. Project costs are estimated and then valuation questions present different local cost shares to subjects. This approach facilitates stated cost variation necessary for estimating the mean of the distribution of project values without resorting to experimentally designed, fictitious stated costs. In addition to estimating the mean value, which facilitates benefit cost analysis, the study also provides median value estimates, which provide insights into the political feasibility of these projects. Study results suggest that local cost shares on the order of 20%-40%, depending on the project, are politically feasible.     

Managing the Intangible Aspects of a Project: The Affect of Vision,Artifacts, and Leader Values on Project Spirit and Success in Technology‐Driven Projects

Successful projects are often characterized by a unique spirit. Phase one results, based on 193 employees partaking in 60 projects across organizations, support a model positing that leader building activities affect employees' emotions, attitudes, and behavioral norms that are focused on expected project outcomes, termed project spirit. Spirit affects employees' contextual performance behavior, which in turn affects success as proposed. Phase two cases, designed to ground these results in technology‐driven project contexts, highlight the value of managing the project's intangible aspects captured by spirit. Quantitative and qualitative findings imply that leaders can be coached to execute behaviors that generate a project's spirit, which boosts contextual performance behavior and increases project success.     

Leadership and group size: An experiment

Our experimental results suggest that the effectiveness of leading by example decreases with group size. The discrepancy between the leaders' and followers' incentives increases with group size. Thus, as group size increases, followers more often refuse to follow their leaders.     

Sampling Minority Business Owners and Their Families: The Understudied Entrepreneurial Experience*

We here review and critique prior research on minority entrepreneurship, paying particular attention to the contributions and limitations of deployed sampling techniques and research methodologies. As based on this review, we then introduce the 2003 and 2005 National Minority Business Owner Surveys—a comprehensive and primary data collection effort that used varied methodologies to secure in‐depth information about random national samples of African American, Korean American, and Mexican American populations as well as a comparison sample of nonminority business owners. We present the initial business ownership profiles developed with these recent data, in part, as a benchmark of the U.S. entrepreneurial experience, and compare the profiles with those presented in prior research. These profiles document similarities and differences across the four groups and provide an empirical foundation for understanding the origin of those similarities and differences. No longer can we ignore the in‐depth study of minority businesses and their owning families nor can we simply assume that all businesses are the same, regardless of minority status or ethnicity.     

EVALUATING SOCIAL POLICIES: PRINCIPLES AND U.S. EXPERIENCE

Invariably, studies, proposals, and plans for social programscontain a strong recommendation for evaluation and monitoring.Reliable information about what works and why is clearly vitalfor improving existing programs or designing future ones. Makingsuch assessments requires effective methods of evaluation. Policymakerswho use these evaluations need to know about the methods—the pitfalls to watch for and the relative advantages and disadvantagesof different techniques in different situations. This articledescribes these evaluation methods and the experience accumulatedin the United States in applying them in practice.