Combining Stated and Revealed Preferences on Typical Food Products: The Case of Dry‐Cured Ham in Spain

An extensive body of research concerns the valuation of EU certification schemes of quality based on the origin of food products. This literature focuses mainly on stated preferences (SPs) and reported behaviours by the consumers. We combine consumers’ SPs, obtained through a conjoint ranking experiment, with revealed preferences (RP), obtained through a retail scanner database. We evaluate SPs as predictors of RP, and investigate whether SPs and RPs are consistent. Dry‐cured ham in Spain is chosen as the anchor product, mainly because of its broad customer base and long history of origin certification. A ‘trick’ nested logit model with non‐identical and identical samples of consumers is estimated to answer each of the objectives. Results show that, irrespective of the analysed samples, SP can predict general market trends and choices but not accurately predict market shares, and that consumers’ actual behaviour is partly consistent with their SPs. We find that consumers prefer ham produced in Teruel, compared with unspecified Spanish origin. Quality Certification and a Distributor’s Brand are preferred over the alternatives of no quality label or identified with a brand owned by the producer. Interestingly, SPs for the Quality Certification and the distributor’s brand lead to an over‐ and under‐estimation, respectively, of the market share.     

Agricultural Exports and Economic Growth in Developing Countries: A Panel Cointegration Approach

This paper quantifies the contribution of agricultural exports to economic growth in developing countries. We estimate the relationship between GDP and agricultural and non‐agricultural exports for 42 countries using panel cointegration methods. Results show that a long‐run relationship exists, the agricultural export elasticity of GDP is 0.07 whereas that of non‐agricultural exports is 0.13, and total exports Granger‐cause GDP, which supports the export‐led growth hypothesis. Structural differences exist in the relationship by broad income group. Balanced export‐promotion polices are implied for the poorest countries, but, for those with higher incomes, higher economic growth is achieved from non‐agricultural exports.     

On the impossibility of representing infinite utility streams

We introduce a new Pareto-type criterion for social welfare functions over infinite utility streams that is not necessarily sensitive to increments in just a finite number of components. We show that there is no social welfare function that satisfies both this criterion and Diamond’s equity condition simultaneously. With our result, we extend the impossibility theorem of Basu and Mitra. Moreover, we show that, even under a weaker version of equity related to Zame’s intergenerational equity condition, the impossibility results are obtained as well.     

Pro‐Poor Tourism as a Strategy to Fight Rural Poverty: A Critique

Pro‐poor tourism (PPT) is a development methodology that aims to use tourism as a tool for poverty reduction. PPT has been adopted by multilateral institutions, official development agencies and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). PPT assumes an absolute definition of poverty that is based on net income. This definition allows the consideration of a tourism initiative as ‘pro‐poor’ even though the income earned by the poor population may be marginal. This paper analyses whether PPT's concept of poverty adequately addresses the issues in rural poverty. We analyse one case of unequal distribution of income generated from tourism in the 1990s (Amantaní Island, Perú). The paper concludes that PPT's concept of poverty circumvents the fact that an unequal distribution of income could imply a loss in the quality of life for the majority of a rural population: the high‐income social sector tends to increase its economic and political power to the detriment of other social sectors.     

Agricultural Intensification, Common Property Resources and the Farm-Household

This paper evaluates the impact of agricultural price and intensification policies for common property resources and welfare of rural communities in developing countries. In doing so we develop a new model for the farm-household that has analytical advantages over the traditional one and that has significant potential for empirical application. The major findings are: Technical assistance that increase productivity of land-intensive agricultural outputs (cereals, livestock, etc.) cause degradation of the communal resources and may cause immiserization. Policies that increase the prices of these goods cause identical effects. By contrast, similar policies applied to labor-intensive outputs (vegetables, tubers, etc.) contribute to improve the common resources and to increase the welfare of the rural communities.     

The socioeconomic feasibility of greening rail stations: a case study in lisbon

Green roofs and living walls are considered effective solutions for improving the environmental integrity of urbanized areas and the overall performance of buildings. Proposals are emerging not just for buildings but also for existing transport infrastructures that have needs/problems that can be met or addressed by such solutions. However, the economic feasibility of such sustainable solutions has not yet been clarified. This study presents a methodological approach to performing cost–benefit analyses of greening urban transport infrastructures at the separate financial, economic, and socioenvironmental levels. Infrastructure, user, and environmental dimensions are also assessed. Whole life cycle costs and socioenvironmental benefits are considered together. The methodology is applied to one of the main stations in Lisbon, Portugal: Entrecampos Railway Station. Five different case study alternatives for the station’s retrofit with green infrastructures are compared to its current situation. The cost–benefit analysis demonstrated that all five greening alternatives are economically feasible. For a 50-year life cycle and a 3.36% discount rate, the net present value ranged between EUR 734,700 and EUR 7,733,279. A sensitivity analysis was also performed, revealing a high degree of influence of discount and inflation rates, recreation, aesthetics improvement, well-being, and the station noise reduction on the net present value, ranging from 1.5 to 9%.     

Joined-up Government of utilities: a meta-review on a public–public partnership and inter-municipal cooperation in the water and wastewater industries

Private-sector participation in public services delivery has been criticized due to unfulfilled expectations. In response, joined-up government is being introduced as an alternative approach to providing water and wastewater services. This approach involves the establishment of horizontal (i.e. inter-municipal cooperation) and vertical (i.e. public–public partnership) integration. Drawing on a meta-review focused on the water and wastewater industries, this study shows that both arrangements have positive aspects, such as cost savings. However, contractual schemes and inter-departmental coordination efforts must be carefully managed or they will fail. In addition, research on cooperation between public bodies is scarce and must be better coordinated concerning study aims and methods.     

Modelling bullying propagation in Spain: a quantitative and qualitative approach

Bullying in schools can be defined as a category of aggressive behaviour with an imbalance of power, and aggression event is repeated over time. Bullying occurs as a social process in nature, and takes place in groups. Attacks are mostly unprovoked, and can be physical or verbal, direct or indirect. This paper focuses on modelling the propagation of bullying in the Spanish school population aged [12, 18] during the period July 2015–January 2020, and on identifying and quantifying its main drivers. Thus, a population dynamics model is built to forecast and quantify the magnitude of the bullying problem in Spain over the July 2015–January 2020 period by taking into account qualitative and quantitative factors; e.g., demography, economy, socio-cultural behaviour, consumption of drugs and alcohol, social contagion and technology. The study provides recommendations to reduce and prevent the growth of this social problem, but to also mitigate a correlated problem, such as intimate partner violence among adults. In fact one of the main utilities of the built model is that new policies can be simulated and allow their effects to be seen.     

Developing a system of territorial governance indicators for tourism destinations

There have been numerous previous attempts to develop indicator systems of sustainability in tourism destinations, but fewer in terms of territorial governance. The present article addresses the design of a System of Territorial Governance Indicators for Tourist Destinations. The proposed system is based around the roles of the public administration, tourism businesses and the local community. It enables the incorporation of the territorial governance perspective into sustainability and gauges destinations’ evolution over time, whilst also allowing any planning and management problems that require improvements to be easily detected. The paper presents a case study: Conil de la Frontera (Andalusian Atlantic seaboard, Spain). Forty-three indicators are used in a multicriteria decision analysis support method (scoring) with the five sub-system Analytical Hierarchy Process: quality of participatory process; effective policy tools and planning controls; trust in local government; tourism business sector; and growth management and urbanism. Applying this Indicator System can lead to better territorial governance and successful sustainability of destinations.     

Historical blueprints of tourists’ paths from Poland to the former USSR

ABSTRACT

This article is a contribution to the developing body of research on tourism within the region of the Central and Eastern Europe. Our aim is to explore if and how Polish tourists to the former Soviet Union incorporate a historic past in their imaginaries. Sixty interviews carried out between 2008 and 2012 are analysed in order to establish if there are references to the past in tourist accounts although the fact history was not a major travel motivation. We were also interested in how the past co-creates tourist experiences and destination images. We found out that tourists may question dominant versions of historic memory in their straightforward references to the past. We also discovered that sources of memory are multiple and include not only first-hand memory but also family memory as well as non-representational memory. Some tourists purposefully suppressed the past. We suggest that more attention should be paid to ‘traces’ of the past in tourism imaginaries.