Effects of the risk sources and user involvement on e-commerce adoption: application to tourist services

Past research has focused on the dimensions (consequences) of perceived risk and the effect of global risk on e-commerce adoption by consumers. This paper uses a new approach to examine the influence of perceived risk on e-commerce adoption and, on the basis of the Theory of Planned behaviour (TPB), develops an integrative model that includes the effect of three risk sources (i.e. technology, vendor and product) on the attitude towards the website use and online purchasing intention of users. In addition, this study examines how involvement, one of the main determinants of consumer behaviour, affects the role of these sources of perceived risk in e-commerce adoption. The results obtained in a sample of 1083 users of tourist services suggest that technology risk is the main determinant of online purchasing intention, which is also influenced by the variables from the TPB model. For its part, the technology risk and vendor risk have a negative influence on attitude towards the website use. In addition, both types of risk have a higher negative effect on attitude in the case of high-involvement users, supporting the moderating influence of involvement on e-commerce adoption. From a practical point of view, the findings of this research help managers to implement actions aimed at reinforcing the users’ trust in their websites and, consequently, at fostering the online purchase.     

Bond Ratings and Income Smoothing in Brazil

ABSTRACT

In this article we use the variables proposed by Eckel (1981 Eckel , N. ( 1981 ). “The Income Smoothing Hypothesis Revisited.” Abacus , Vol. 17 , No. 1 , pp. 28 – 40 . [Google Scholar]) and Leuz et al. (2003 Leuz , C. , Nanda , D. , and Wysocki , P. ( 2003 ). “Earnings Management and Investors Protection: an International Comparison,” Journal of Financial Economics , Vol. 3 , No. 69 , pp. 505 – 527 . [Google Scholar]) as proxies to measure income smoothing and find that Brazilian companies that engage in this behavior receive better ratings in their public bond issues. Using data obtained from the National Bond Registration System and the Economatica, we evaluated public bond offerings. The results of univariate and multivariate analyses and robustness tests attest to the significance of the income smoothing factor, regardless of the rating agency. The results support the notion that income smoothing is an information-signaling mechanism and has an impact on bond ratings.     

Adaptation of Agroforestry Systems in South-Eastern Mexico through Integration of Farmer and Bioeconomic Evaluations

Agroforestry systems have been promoted as sustainable land-use systems for regions where shifting agriculture is the traditional predominant land-use. Although environmentally sustainable, agroforestry systems require investment to establish that may affect their economic sustainability. In the southern Yucatan Peninsula 47 agroforestry plots of two timber and 10 fruit tree species were established with 22 farmers in three communities covering two rainfall zones and five soil types. Some fruit trees had wide adaptability to different soil, rainfall and management conditions, e.g. Manilkara zapota; others were restricted to the best soil, rainfall management conditions, e.g. Persea americana. The Meliaceae timber trees responded little to rainfall and soil, but stem borer attack was markedly lower in less intensively managed systems. Level of system maintenance greatly affected costs, but also opportunities for intercropping and obtaining immediate income. All levels of managements had negative net present value (NPV) for the three-year establishment phase, but so does traditional maize production. Farmers preferred to inter-crop their agroforestry systems, but were often limited by site quality. Determining sustainable agroforestry options for farmers requires multiple decisions related to species adaptability to the site, farmer production objectives and farmer capacity to invest in different management strategies. One production technology did not fit all.     

How to support the management of intangibles

The main objective of this work is the application of the concept of intellectual capital to management for business development and innovation. Concretely, we propose strengthening the ‘Intellectus’ model of intellectual capital by combining it with a multicriteria methodology called the ‘analytic hierarchy process’. The proposed methodology seeks to facilitate decision making by managers in focusing actions and resources to innovate and improve the value of their services to their clients. In particular, an application was made to the banking service sector in Chile, to identify the intangibles of greater importance in loyalty-building of clients. We identified technological capital, human capital and business capital as the intangibles with the highest priorities.     

Searching for latent class segments in technological services

The focus in this article is on uncovering segments that describe mobile phone users and on investigating the nature of these segments to get some relevant information. We use a phased approach to reach this objective. First, two segmentation bases have been compared in order to select the best variables for the identification of groups. This is done using a latent class modelling approach. Second, two different segmentation techniques are examined looking for the best model fit. Finally, the model that achieves the best results is applied to the most significant segmentation variables with the purpose of uncovering segments that describe mobile phone users.     

Irregular Connections: Everyday Energy Politics in Catalonia

While questions of energy and energy transition have become hotly contested, the abstract and fetishized conception of energy that dominates contemporary political debates occludes connections to everyday life. By tracing the activities of Catalan activist network Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética (Alliance against Energy Poverty or APE), this article seeks to excavate the political possibilities opened up by a more everyday energy politics. The article addresses the practice of illegal utilities connections among the urban poor of Catalonia, arguing that this constitutes a form of makeshift urbanism resonant of that conceptualized from within ‘Southern’ cities. These ‘irregular connections’ to urban infrastructure networks are then distinguished from the ‘irregular connections’ formed between people within the collectivized social infrastructure of APE. APE, I argue, translate ‘energy’ as social reproduction, framing their struggle for the right to energy around the right to sustain life with dignity. This, I suggest, is the starting point for a feminist praxis capable of creating new and unruly subjectivities, reconfiguring reproductive relations in more caring and collective directions, and ultimately challenging the violence of the commodity form.     

Conceptualising ‘shadow landscape’ in political ecology and rural studies

This paper develops the concept of ‘shadow landscape’ in order to describe the essential otherness and seemingly distinctive if ever contingent properties of in-between rural places characterised by historical depopulation and cultural marginalisation. It does so first of all through a critically sympathetic assessment of how these areas have been portrayed in the fields of political ecology and rural studies. In political ecology, reference has long been made to ‘depopulated areas’ whereas in rural studies there has been recently talk of ‘marginal cultures’. The result tends to be a ‘pre-given socio-spatial container’ (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003) that often obscures more than it reveals about these distinctive locations. The paper thereafter outlines the concept of shadow landscape as a means by which to understand these areas, and does so via a discussion of marginality, scale, socio-nature and ‘cultures of depopulation’. In the process, some of the key material and discursive issues that surround these ‘imagined communities’ are brought into focus. The conclusion considers a future research agenda based on an understanding shaped by the concept of shadow landscape.     

The links between active cooperation and eco-innovation orientation of firms: A multi-analysis study

The environmental orientation of companies is key for firms to gain a competitive advantage against peers. However, the high level of novelty and uncertainty involved with eco-innovations requires additional knowledge and capabilities that go beyond the firm and that can be achieved through cooperation. Thus, it is crucial to analyse how cooperation affects the elements that drive eco-innovation. This study tests the impact of cooperation on the environmental orientation of companies while innovating using structural equation modelling with partial least squares and multigroup analysis and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis for a sample of Spanish companies. Results suggest that companies that do not cooperate are less eco-innovation-oriented and show lower dependence on external information sources, although their impact on the orientation to product and process innovation is higher. This work leads to some theoretical conclusions and implications for researchers and practitioners.