Tourism experiences within an attributional framework

This paper reports on a conceptualization of previously reported data by the authors. Using the critical incident technique, tourists were asked to recount their most positive and most negative tourism experiences. These qualitative data were reduced using the attribution theory. This framework allows researchers to determine which of four causes (ability, effort, task ease/difficulty, and luck) they use to explain their experiences. Results showed an attribution bias where tourists are more likely to use internal (dispositional) attributions for positive tourism outcomes compared to more external (situation) attributions for negative experiences. Tourists perceive less personal control for both positive and negative experiences. Implications for the industry, tourism education, and tourists themselves are discussed.     

Structural Reforms and Labour‐market Outcomes: International Panel‐data Evidence

This paper explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive set of macro‐level labour‐market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, the average wage index, and overall and female employment levels and labour force participation rates. Together, these outcome variables capture the overall health of the labour market and the aggregate welfare of workers. Yet, to our knowledge, there seems to be no other comprehensive empirical investigation in the existing literature of the impact of structural reforms at the cross‐country macro‐level on labour‐market outcomes other than the unemployment rate. After documenting the average trends across countries in the labour‐market outcomes up to 10 years on either side of each country's structural reform year, we run fixed‐effects ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regressions to account for the likely endogeneity of structural reforms to labour‐market outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that structural reforms lead to positive outcomes for labour. Redistributive effects in favour of workers, along the lines of the Stolper‐Samuelson effect, may be at work.     

Bank computing in a changing economic environment: the IBIS project in New Zealand

This paper examines a major bank computing redevelopment attempted in New Zealand in the 1980s - the IBIS project. After the expenditure of some hundreds of millions of dollars this project was not proceeded with and this paper looks at the factors that led to its eventual failure. We find that dreams of banking technology can be as costly as other failures experienced by banks, and that banks must have regard to the competitive environment in building their computer systems.     

Boundary Work: Becoming Middle Class in Suburban Dar es Salaam

Suburban space provides a useful window onto contemporary class practices in Africa, where it is difficult to identify social classes on the basis of income or occupation. In this article I argue that the middle classes and the suburbs are mutually constitutive in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Using interviews with residents and local government officials in the city's northern suburbs, I discuss the material and representational practices of middle-class boundary work in relation to land and landscape. If the middle classes do not presently constitute a coherent political-economic force, they are nevertheless transforming the city's former northern peri-urban zones into desirable suburban residential neighbourhoods.     

Pollution Offshoring and Emission Reductions in EU and US Manufacturing

Between 1995 and 2008, the European Union and the United States raised environmental standards and concurrently experienced important reductions in emissions from manufacturing despite a rise in output. Levinson (Am Econ Rev 99(5):2177–2192, 2009) finds that the offshoring of polluting industries to countries with lower environmental standards played only small role in the cleanup of US manufacturing, which was largely due to improvements in production technique. But there is no evidence of whether US patterns hold in other developed economies. I provide the first analysis of the pollution intensity of EU production and imports to examine which forces drove the EU cleanup. I find that concerns about the effect of pollution offshoring were unfounded in the European Union, not because the effect was small like in the United States, but because the patterns of specialization of EU production and imports were exactly opposite to what pollution offshoring would predict. Starting in the early 2000s, EU manufacturing increasingly produced more pollution-intensive goods while imports became progressively less pollution-intensive, especially from low-income countries. There are two notable exceptions: primary aluminum and electrometallurgical products, except steel, which do provide evidence of offshoring from the EU to lower income countries. The “brown” specialization of EU production is difficult to explain, but about a quarter can be matched by increased demand for EU exports of polluting goods. However, similar to the US cleanup, changes in production and imports were overwhelmed by improvements in production technique, which were the main drivers of the cleanup of manufacturing.     

Recall of Information from Political Advertising

Abstract

Televised political commercials have frequently been criticized for stressing idealized image characteristics of the candidates rather than issues. Content analyses of political advertising, however, have shown that these commercials generally contain both image and issue material. Given both types of content are present in political ads, this study was designed to determine what people recall from these ads in a natural environment. A telephone study during the last week of a gubernatorial election revealed that the amount of free recall exhibited was greater for information from a preferred candidate's commercials than from his opponent's. However, one-third of the respondents were unable to recall anything from either candidates' political commercials. Recall was more highly related to attitude variables than most demographic variables or total television exposure.     

The Role of Interested Groups in England's Emerging Tourism Policy Network

The role of interested groups within English tourism policy development has increased considerably in recent years. There are several possible explanations for this, including changing government policy styles, the perception of the importance of tourism to the national economy, and the developing sophistication of a tourism policy network. This paper reviews the role of interested groups and the nature of tourism policy development in England within the context of a theoretical discussion on public policy analysis, policy styles and policy networks. It specifically reports on the relationship between the tourism interest groups and government, and the mechanisms used by them to influence policy development. The paper shows that the tourism policy network can be characterised as immature. It has government at its centre directing strategic policy, with two sub-networks concentrating on the detail of commercial tourism and tourism resource policy. Within these sub-networks are dominant and secondary players defined as such by the manner in which they use their resources, gain access to decision-makers, collaborate with like-minded groups and work with government bureaucracy.