Nature-based tourism on communal land: The Mavhulani experience

South Africa is experiencing a boom in nature-based tourism in which underdeveloped and previously marginalised homeland areas are not sharing. The aim of this article is to determine some of the crucial constraints which inhibit tourism in these areas, by exploring various tourism development issues based on insights gained from research undertaken at Mavhulani bush camp, a seemingly successful nature-based tourism development project. This venture is run on communal trust land in the former Venda homeland area.     

Under–provision of Inputs in Joint Ventures with Market Power

A joint venture with market power benefits from restricting its output which, in turn, requires the partners to restrict the supply of their inputs. However, since each partner benefits only partially from restricting its input, both over–supply their inputs from the viewpoint of the optimal use of market power. We show that this pecuniary negative externality in the partners' input decisions mitigates the standard under–provision problem that arises in joint ventures. We also show that the degree of this problem declines as demand becomes less elastic.     

Self-construal and feature centrality

The current research investigates the interactive influence of self-construal and product feature centrality on product judgment tasks. Feature centrality refers to the extent to which a feature is integral to the product concept and its network of correlated features, and contributes to the coherence of the product’s conceptual representation. While the categorization literature suggests that central features (versus less central features) are weighted more when consumers make judgments about a product, across two studies we find such effect is bounded by individuals’ self-construal. In particular, whereas independent consumers, adopting an analytical thinking style, rely more on central features than less central features in product categorization and evaluations, interdependent consumers, employing a holistic thinking style, use both features to form their judgments.     

What does “entrepreneurship” data <Emphasis Type="Italic">really</Emphasis> show?

In this paper, we compare two datasets designed to measure entrepreneurship: The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) dataset and the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey (WBGES) dataset. We find a number of important differences when the data are compared. First, GEM data tend to report significantly higher levels of early stage entrepreneurship in developing economies than do the World Bank business entry data, while the World Bank business entry data tend to be higher than GEM data for developed countries. Second, we find that the magnitude of the difference between the datasets across countries is related to the local institutional and environmental conditions for entrepreneurs, after controlling for levels of economic development. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs in developed countries have greater ease and incentives to incorporate, both for the benefits of greater access to formal financing and labor contracts, as well as for tax and other purposes not directly related to business activities.

Size of Financing Need and the Choice between Asset Sales and Security Issuances

We study the effect of the size of financing need on a firm's choice between selling assets and issuing securities to finance its investments. The balance sheet effect predicts that a firm prefers to sell assets when the financing need is relatively small as there is less information asymmetry regarding the value of a (small) subset of its assets. When the financing need is large, a firm prefers issuing securities to selling assets. We find evidence supporting the prediction. Our findings remain unchanged when we employ measures of financing need that are relatively independent of the actual amount of financing raised.