SCUBA divers' underwater responsible behaviour: can environmental concern and divers' attitude make a difference?

The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between general environmental attitude and specific SCUBA diving attitude with responsible behaviour among divers underwater. The empirical data were collected from divers (N?=?413) at the five most popular islands for SCUBA diving in Malaysia using the combination of purposeful, quota and convenience sampling. The revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale [Dunlap, R.E., Van Liere, K., Mertig, A., & Jones, R. (2000). Measuring endorsement of the New Ecological Paradigm: A revised NEP scale. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 425–442] was utilised to measure the general environmental concern (attitude) among divers. Measurement of SCUBA diving attitude and underwater responsible behaviour was self-developed based on both literature review and expert opinions. Correlation and regression analyses were employed to examine the relationships among the constructs. Divers are mostly ecocentric and highly responsible underwater and possess a positive SCUBA diving attitude. Divers' behaviour underwater has a direct relationship with both environmental concern and specific SCUBA diving attitude. The latter partially mediates the relationship between environmental concern and responsible behaviour underwater. The cognitive and conative dimensions of specific SCUBA diving attitude are strongly related to skill diving behaviour and safety diving behaviour, respectively. The affective dimension of specific SCUBA diving attitude has a strong relationship with non-contact diving behaviour. Based on the study findings, this paper presents some of its theoretical and managerial contributions.     

A comparison between Asian and Australasia backpackers using cultural consensus analysis

This study tests the differences in the shared understanding of the backpacker cultural domain between two groups: backpackers from Australasia and backpackers from Asian countries. A total of 256 backpackers responded to a questionnaire administered in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Krabi Province (Thailand). Cultural consensus analysis (CCA) guided the data analysis, to identify the shared values and the differences in the backpacker culture of the two groups. The findings revealed that while the two groups share some of the backpacker cultural values, some other values are distinctively different from one another. The study provides the first empirical evidence of the differences in backpacking culture between the two groups using CCA. Based on the study findings, we propose some marketing and managerial implications.     

Productivity growth patterns in US dairy products manufacturing plants

We analyse the productivity growth patterns in the US dairy products industry using the Census Bureau's plant-level data set. We decompose Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth into the scale and technical change components and analyse variability of plants’ productivity by constructing transition matrices. We observe a cross-sectional dispersion in plant-level productivity growth in the industry. Even though the industry aggregate shows a small TFP growth rate ?0.3%, quartile rank analysis shows that while the lowest productivity quartile plants average 1.9% loss in productivity, the highest productivity quartile plants average 1.1% growth annually. Our results show considerable movements of plants in their productivity rank categories overall and across age groups, and we find that the scale effect contribution to TFP growth accounts for about 90% of TFP growth on average in the industry. These plants extract scale efficiencies over technological progress to fuel TFP growth. The youngest plants start with the lowest productivity growth at the initial time period, but they catch up older plants productivity, which present the highest average growth rate through years. This may indicate a ‘learning-by-doing’ process for the industry.     

Small Business vulnerability to floods and the effects of disaster loans

In this paper, we examine the impacts of floods on businesses and the efficacy of small business administration (SBA) disaster loans on mitigating disaster aftereffects. We find lack of business adaptation to extreme events in the short term, indicating their extreme vulnerability to flood disasters. Our results further indicate that subsidized disaster loans are important for businesses, with statistically significant effects estimated for businesses employing fewer than 50 people. At the margin, for every additional dollar spent on disaster loans per establishment in a county, four small businesses survive. Gloomy projections about increasing frequency and severity of disasters imply there will be significant loss in local economic activities because of increased vulnerability of small businesses to these incidents. Moreover, these effects will have implications nationwide, given the vital role small businesses play in creating jobs.     

The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance

Health insurance markets in the United States are characterized by imperfect information, complex products, and substantial search frictions. Insurance agents and brokers play a significant role in helping employers navigate these problems. However, little is known about the relations between the structure of the agent/broker market and access and affordability of insurance. This article aims to fill this gap by investigating the influence of agents/brokers on health insurance offering decisions of small firms, which are particularly vulnerable to problems of financing health insurance. Using a unique membership database from the National Association of Health Underwriters together with a nationally representative survey of employers, we find that small firms in more competitive agent/broker markets are more likely to offer health insurance and at lower premiums. Moreover, premiums are less dispersed in more competitive agent/broker markets.     

Democracy in the neighborhood and foreign direct investment

The determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) have been extensively studied. Even though there is extensive research in the area, most of it is based on analyzing the effects of host country characteristics on FDI flows, and yet there is little research on how neighboring country characteristics play a role in facilitating FDI flows to host countries. This paper analyzes the association between the democracy level in neighboring countries and FDI flows to host countries. Using bilateral FDI flows from the OECD countries, with a large host country sample, we find that countries surrounded by democratic countries attract higher FDI flows. Furthermore, we find evidence that countries that are surrounded by neighboring countries with good institutions tend themselves to have better institutions, experience lower civil conflict, and have higher political stability and hence indirectly attract higher FDI flows. Our findings suggest that if neighboring countries act in such way as to become more democratic, FDI flows to these countries would be higher since not only does improving the quality of democracy attract more FDI inflows, but also being surrounded by neighboring advanced democratic countries will also lead to higher FDI flows to them.     

Consequences of New Product Development Speed: A Meta‐Analysis

Five meta‐analyses previously have been published on the topic of new product development involving the concept of new product development speed. Three of these studies have investigated antecedents to new product development success, of which just one was new product development speed. The other two studies used new product development speed as the dependent variable, and analyzed antecedents to achieving speed. This article extends previous empirical generalizations in this domain by using a meta‐analytic methodology to understand the link between new product development speed and new product success at a more granular level. Specifically, it considers the relationship with different dimensions of success as measured overall or compositely, operationally (i.e., the process measures of decreasing development costs and proficiently managing market entry timing and the product measures of technical product performance and product competitive advantage), and relative to external success outcomes (i.e., customer based and financial success). While the results indicate that, in general, new product development speed is associated with improving success outcomes, those relationships may diminish or even disappear depending upon a number of methodological design decisions and research contexts. A subsequent meta‐analysis of the antecedents of development speed provides a more holistic picture of development speed. These results are broadly consistent with those produced by another recent meta‐analytic investigation of the issue. Together, these findings have important implications for academics pursuing further research in this domain, as well as for managers considering implementing a program to increase new product development speed.     

Using OWA aggregation technique in QFD: a case study in education in a textile engineering department

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic approach that considers customer needs through design, production, marketing, and support stages. Customer needs are the main input for QFD, so voice of customer must be understood well and changes, innovations, and treatments must be held in this view. In QFD applications, determining the priorities of customer needs is a fairly important stage. This is mostly held by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) a multicriteria decision making technique. Nonetheless, Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) is an aggregation technique mostly used in decision making for multicriteria decision problems. So, combining these two techniques will give a different viewpoint for prioritizing the customer needs in QFD applications. The aim of this study is to show the use of Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) aggregation technique in QFD applications. For this purpose a case study in Dokuz Eylül University Textile Engineering Department was held. It was aimed to support the efforts on increasing the education quality by determining the students’ needs and opinions using QFD with OWA.     

Organizational citizenship behaviour: a study of young executives in Canada,Iran, and Turkey

One of the most interesting constructs in organizational studies and human resource management is perhaps the concept of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). OCB emphasizes constructive and cooperative employee behaviours that contribute to the organization, yet do not fall within the domain of mandatory in-role behaviours. While researchers have investigated the role of contextual attitudes and dispositional attributes on the OCB, there is a lack in cross-cultural examination of this concept. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of individuals' job-related attitudes and dispositional characteristics on their OCB in three different societal cultures, that is, Canada, Iran, and Turkey. Data reported were collected from 220 young executives in these three countries. The results reveal similarities and differences among these cultures on cognitive and affective predictors of OCB.