Use of social media across the trip experience: An application of latent transition analysis

Recent advanced technologies have enabled travelers to communicate, interact, and form relationships with destinations, businesses, and other travelers through social media. However, the nature/patterns of use of social media by travelers varies substantially between travelers and across the trip experience (e.g. pre-, during, and post-trip); consequently, travelers develop their own idiosyncratic strategies (i.e. media repertoires) for information searching, communicating, and storing memories. There are four distinct and dominant repertoires of social media use across the three stages of the trip experience. As such, the findings clearly indicate that destination marketers should target the respective groups very differently.     

A Note on Imperfect Monitoring of Agri-Environmental Policy

In this note the impact of imperfect compliance monitoring on the implementation of agri-environmental policy is analysed. A principal-agent model is used to demonstrate how imperfections in the monitoring process lead to higher levels of incentive payments to ensure compliance. This means that less accurate compliance monitoring results in higher social costs from policy implementation. Technical enhancements in the accuracy of compliance monitoring will therefore lead to a reduction in social costs. This is an important result with significant implications for the design and implementation of agri-environmental policy.     

Pricing and Investment Decisions for a Tollway With Possible Route Substitution onto Alternative Congested Roads

Socially optimal pricing and investment decisions are analysed for a tollway that experiences competition from unpriced, congested roads. The resulting 'second-best' problem has a simple qualitative structure: optimal tolls are set lower than they would be without the unpriced congestion. The impact of such low tolls would be to induce higher levels of tollway traffic demand than would occur without route substitution possibilities. However, such demands are offset by installing less capacity than would be installed without route substitution.     

On the Flexibility of Optimal Policies for Green Design

Several recent papers show that different combinations of taxes and subsidies can achieve the social optimum for green design and household waste management when there are various market failures. This note shows that such policy flexibility exists only if all relevant actions by individual agents can be properly targeted by economic instruments. If the household can make a private effort to reduce waste, then an optimal policy is shown to be a unique combination of given economic instruments.     

Compliance Monitoring and Agri-Environmental Policy

This paper examines the issue of compliance monitoring in agri-environmental policy when a farmer is risk-neutral and risk-averse. The optimal contract model presented here significantly extends and generalises the results and conclusions of Choe and Fraser (1998). In this paper the environmental agency explicitly chooses monitoring accuracy and monitoring costs as well as rewards for farmers. It is found that, by modelling the environmental agency as being cost-conscious optimal monitoring accuracy may or may not be higher for a risk-averse farmer than for a risk-neutral farmer. Essentially, the environmental agency faces an explicit trade-off between monitoring costs and incentive payments as a means to ensure the desired behaviour from the farmer. The importance of the results derived are discussed in the context of agri-environmental policy design and implementation     

Block versus nonblock trading patterns

We investigate the relationship between the number of block (20,000 shares) and nonblock (<5,000 shares) trades over the trading day and across exchanges. In general, for each day of the week, the ratio increases from the first to the second period, declines through the period ending at 3:30 p.m., and increases for the last 30-minute period. Periods with increased small trading activity experience a more than proportionate increase in block trades. Differences across exchanges in the intraday pattern of block trades in relation to smaller trades are reported.     

Do Foreign Direct Investment and Gross Domestic Investment Promote Economic Growth?

The paper attempts to show causal relationships between economic growth and FDI and GDI in 80 countries over the period 1971–95, by using a panel VAR model. The results show that FDI Granger–causes economic growth, and vice versa; however, the effects are rather more apparent from growth to FDI than from FDI to growth. Also, GDI does not Granger–cause economic growth, but economic growth robustly Granger–causes GDI. These findings suggest that strong positive associations between economic growth and FDI inflows or GDI rates do not necessarily mean that high FDI inflows or GDI rates lead to rapid economic growth.     

The impact of IT use on migration intentions in rural communities

The main goal of this study is to identify potential factors that close the urban-rural digital gap, as well as to determine how one's ‘degree of personal IT use’ enhanced through digital gap bridging efforts affects rural-urban migration intention. To accomplish the goal, an integrated structural model was established. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to residents in rural areas in Korea. Of 302 responses collected, 272 were usable. PLS (Partial Least Squares) were used for analysis. Main effects and moderating effects were both investigated. Perceived usefulness for job and perceived playfulness turned out to be the strongest variables influencing personal IT use in the rural area. However, influence of interpersonal norm and social norm were not significant. Elder people having positive perception of IT use are less likely to leave for urban areas. More educated people tend to more optimistically evaluate the value of IT use; however, they are more likely to leave for urban areas. Lower income families tend to have less negative perception of IT use as their degree of IT use increases. The findings stress the importance of rural adult education and extension, as well as IT infrastructure construction. The contribution of this study is to provide the ground work for a government or policy maker with the purpose of closing the digital gap and minimizing rural-urban immigration in selecting which group to target.     

Holding or not holding a mega-event: case of the F1 Korea Grand Prix

This study aims to estimate visitors’ consumption benefits using the double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method. The results of this study show that the per capita consumption benefit of the F1 Korea Grand Prix, a study context used in this study, were approximately US$307 and then, the total aggregated economic value generated by the event was US$49,262,301 in 2011. These results indicate that visitors of the F1 Korea Grand Prix perceive huge economic benefits from their visitation and activities during the event. In addition, the results show that prior visit experience and a sport identification are significantly associated with visitors’ perceived consumption benefits while other variables (e.g. age, gender, nationality, automotive club membership) are not. Several theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of this study are discussed.