Green hotel servicescape: attributes and unique experiences

ABSTRACT

The relationship between green hotel service attributes and consumption experiences remains unclear in the extant research, especially in the context of emerging economies such as India. This work uses a multi-method approach that combines in-depth interviews, word association and two-stage empirical validation to propose a three-dimensional framework for measuring a hotel’s green servicescape, composed of atmospherics, motifs and human encounters. Individual effects of each green servicescape sub-dimension on those of green experiential values, namely utilitarian, emotional, social and altruistic values, are examined. The results reveal interesting findings, some counterintuitive, which are expected to create new insights for academicians and practitioners alike.     

How Task-Facilitative Interactive Tools Foster Buyers’ Trust in Online Retailers: A Process View of Trust Development in the Electronic Marketplace

While there is a sustained interest in research focusing on issues relating to trust development in the electronic marketplace, significant gaps remain in the literature. In particular, little is known of the underlying processes that may be occurring in online trust development. For example, research suggests that factors such as site design and navigability are among the factors that impact trust perceptions. Extant literature, however, is largely silent about why certain trust-related effects are observed in online environments. In this paper, we propose a new process-centric perspective for understanding the formation of online trust—through buyer's assessment of the e-retailer's assistive intent, implicitly embedded in task-facilitative interactive tools. Specifically, we develop and test a model delineating the relationship between seller's provision of interactive product information management and product information comprehension tools, buyer's perceptions of seller's assistive intent, and buyer's initial trust in the seller. The results of two studies provide support for the trust-enhancing effects of task-facilitative informational tools and the mediating role of buyer's perceptions of seller's assistive intent. Importantly, these effects occur without any explicit expressions of seller's intentions. The results also suggest that the efficacy of interactive informational tools in engendering perceptions of seller's assistive intent, and hence trust, varies with the buyer's level of involvement with and knowledge of the product category.     

Drivers and impact of food inflation in India

Average food inflation in India during 2006–2013 was one of the highest among emerging market economies, and nearly double the inflation witnessed in India during the previous decade. In this paper, we analyse the behaviour and determinants of food inflation over the recent past. Our main findings include that recent surge in food inflation in India is a result of various factors. On the cost side, agricultural wage inflation is found to be a universal driver of food commodities inflation, as well as the aggregate food inflation. The contribution of agricultural wages has increased significantly in the post Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act era. Fuel inflation has a moderate impact on food inflation and the effects vary across commodities. Our analysis indicates limited role of fuel and international prices, except for in tradeables. Finally, results suggest significant pass-through effects from food to non-food and to the headline inflation.     

Convergence in Income Inequality: Further Evidence from the Club Clustering Methodology across States in the U.S.

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on inequality convergence by empirically testing convergence across states in the U.S. This sample period encompasses a series of different periods that the existing literature discusses -- the Great Depression (1929–1944), the Great Compression (1945–1979), the Great Divergence (1980-present), the Great Moderation (1982–2007), and the Great Recession (2007–2009). This paper implements the relatively new method of panel convergence testing, recommended by Phillips and Sul (2007). This method examines the club convergence hypothesis, which argues that certain countries, states, sectors, or regions belong to a club that moves from disequilibrium positions to their club-specific steady-state positions. We find strong support for convergence through the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then evidence of divergence. The divergence, however, moves the dispersion of inequality measures across states only a fraction of the way back to their levels in the early part of the twentieth century.     

South Africa’s monetary policy independence: evidence from a Global New-Keynesian DSGE model

We study the response of South African monetary policy decisions to foreign monetary policy shocks. We estimate the extent of foreign monetary policy pass through by augmenting standard Taylor rules and comparing the results within the context of a Global New-Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. The general equilibrium model captures important spill-over effects that would otherwise have been ignored in a single equation set-up. The results show that the relationship between foreign monetary policy shocks and South African interest rates is complicated – South Africa does not import foreign monetary policy directly, but is still affected. Except for the US, an increase in foreign interest rates leads to a decrease in South African interest rates – highlighting the complex channels that the monetary policy authority has to monitor outside of its economy.     

Development of Scale to Measure Objectives-Oriented Investment Behavior

Abstract

While planning for personal finances, researchers recommend investors adapting systematically planned investment behaviors that align investments with their financial objectives; however, they fail to provide a scale for the measurement of such behaviors. Therefore, this study develops a scale, conducts exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and provides evidence of the reliability of the scale measuring objectives-oriented investment behaviors. Examining a cross-sectional data of 448 investors collected through the new scale, the study finds that a majority of the investors’ do not follow objectives-oriented behavior. The results inform that the selection of investment avenues and allocation of funds were not aligned with investors’ financial objectives.     

Are short‐term effects of pollution important for growth and optimal fiscal policy?

We study optimal fiscal policy in a stock‐flow model of the environment within an endogenous growth framework, where some pollutants have a lasting impact on environmental quality which is restored through abatement expenditure, while others dissipate and hence, have a short‐term effect on the environment. All pollutants, however, affect the productivity of a public good negatively. Given that short‐term pollution, although it dissipates, is irreversible in this sense, a government cannot ignore its negative effects since this type of pollution lowers the productivity of all inputs. We find that a larger negative effect of short‐term pollutants as well as a higher congestion effect of private capital leads to corrective fiscal policies with higher optimal income tax and abatement expenditure rates, which have favorable growth consequences. Interestingly, we find that the rate of short‐term pollution does not affect optimal fiscal policy while that of the long‐term pollution does.     

Individualism/collectivism and attitudes towards human resource systems: a comparative study of American,Irish and Indian MBA students

In this study, we collected data from 180 MBA students from the USA, Ireland and India on their individualism/collectivism (IC) orientations and their preferences for human resource management (HRM) practices. Contrary to expectations, the Indian sample tended to be more individualistic than the American or Irish sample. While there were no differences on the preferences for progressive HRM practices across sample, the Americans exhibited a greater preference for paternalistic practices than the Indians and the Irish. Further, the Americans also showed a greater preference for equality in rewards than the Irish and fairness in appraisals/rewards than the Indians. At the individual level, controlling for nationality, age and gender, higher individualism scores on the supremacy of individual goals and self-reliance dimensions were positively related to progressive HRM practices. Higher individualism on supremacy of individual goals was also positively related to procedural fairness in appraisals/rewards and negatively related to paternalistic HRM practices. A higher preference for working alone was negatively related to progressive HRM practices. Further, higher individualism on the supremacy of individual interest dimension was negatively related to progressive HRM practices and positively related to paternalistic HRM practices. Implications are discussed.     

Time varying dynamics of globalization effect in India

Portuguese Economic Journal - The link between globalization and economic growth is getting complex as the propagators of globalization are opting protectionism. The paper attempts to identify the...