Water and food in the bioeconomy: challenges and opportunities for development

The world economy is under pressure for greater, more efficient and more sustainable use of natural resources to meet complementary and competing objectives in the food, water and energy sectors. Interactions between these three sectors have become increasingly affected by the bioeconomy—a concept that encompasses economic growth driven by the development of renewable biological resources and biotechnologies to produce sustainable products, employment and income. This article explores how water and the bioeconomy are interlinked, including how the constraints from growing water scarcity—in part caused by development of the bioeconomy—may influence bioeconomic growth. The article describes the impact of biofuel production on water quantity and quality and examines the potential for improved water use through the development of crop biotechnology and improved crop management. Then alternative scenarios for water in the bioeconomy are assessed, and policy conclusions are presented.     

Social-ecological factors influencing tourist satisfaction in three ecotourism lodges in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon

Analysing the factors that influence visitor satisfaction is critical for the appropriate management of tourism, particularly in nature tourism enterprises, which are expected to contribute to biodiversity conservation and the development of local people. In this paper, we investigate the effect of different socio-economic and ecological variables, as well as tourist-operation related factors, on the overall satisfaction of tourists visiting three Amazonian lodges in Peru. We found three typologies of tourists, differing by several socio-economic and cultural factors, and by their motivations. The quality of the lodge was the factor that had the largest influence on overall satisfaction. Only one type of tourists (“true ecotourists”) showed a positive relation between their overall satisfaction and ecological features such as the species observed or cultural features such as operation of the lodge by native communities using local guides. Implications for management are discussed in terms of the potential of nature tourism to contribute to sustainable development in the Peruvian Amazon.     

Equestrian tourism: animal agency observed

There is limited scholarship engaging with equestrian tourism even though this segment of the tourism industry has recently undergone phenomenal growth in both supply and demand. This article will focus on the core element of equestrian tourism, travel on horseback, and will explore the role of equine animal agency in the co-creation of tourism experiences and tourism places. Employing qualitative methods, it will demonstrate how horses assert themselves as subjective agents and active players in the communities that tour groups form, assuming a variety of roles that effect their riders' self-actualization and psychological enrichment. At the same time, they assume an active role in determining their own fate by contributing to a climate of animal ethics specific to equestrian tourism. A predominantly female clientele looks to their equine partners for companionship and inspiration and reciprocates by demanding high standards of animal welfare and horsemanship. On the supply side, equestrian ground operators have established themselves as lifestyle entrepreneurs who place their own and their guests' passion for horses and lifestyle values ahead of business savvy and economic efficiency.     

A web-based multi-agent decision support system for a city-oriented management of cruise arrivals

Cruise tourism represents a strategic sector for the economic growth of several countries, impacting on different direct and indirect markets. The arrival of cruises in a city represents an unmissable opportunity to increment its tourist market penetration. Nevertheless, the management of an unforeseen number of passengers that need to visit a city in a short time may also have a negative impact, so reducing the expected benefits. This is mainly due to the difficulty of taking the right decisions when organizing the dispatching of passengers in different city areas since these decisions depend on several conditions that can also dynamically occur, and may have an impact on different city sectors. Here, a decision support system is proposed to help involved stakeholders to make decisions to plan passengers' transportation in the city and also to evaluate the consequences for the city if the plans are really implemented. The system is designed according to the multi-agent paradigm, so allowing one to easily manage the necessary coordination among different entities and data sources that are usually distributed and need to cooperate to provide useful suggestions. In addition, a prototype of a web-based application is provided to end users, so that it can run on heterogeneous platforms, and it can be easily accessed by different users from different devices, as it is the case for the considered application domain.     

Efficiency and Risk-Taking in Pre-Crisis Investment Banks

Investment banks’ core functions expose them to a wide array of risks. This paper analyses cost and profit efficiency for a sample of investment banks for the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) and Switzerland prior to the recent financial crisis. We follow Coelli et al. (J Prod Anal 11:251–273, 1999)’s methodology to adjust the estimated cost and profit efficiency scores for environmental influences including key banks’ risks, bank- and industry- specific factors and macroeconomic conditions. Our evidence suggests that failing to account for environmental factors can considerably bias the efficiency scores for investment banks. Specifically, bank risk-taking factors (including liquidity and capital risk exposures) are found particularly important to accurately assess profit efficiency: i.e. profit efficiency estimates are consistently underestimated without accounting for bank risk-taking. Interestingly, our evidence suggests that size matters for both cost and profit efficiency, however this does not imply that more concentrated markets are more efficient.     

Performance-measurement system design and functional strategic decision influence: The role of performance-measure properties

Although conceptual research in the accounting literature suggests that the use of performance-measurement systems affects the influence of organizational actors, empirical evidence for this suggestion is largely limited to anecdotal evidence and a few qualitative case studies. Drawing on institutional theory, we develop predictions that link the use of performance measures to the influence of functional subunits in strategic decision making. Our research model tests the effects of two types of performance-measure use on functional strategic decision influence: (1) decision-facilitating use and (2) use for accountability. Moreover, we propose that the effects of using performance measures for these two purposes depend on the reliability and functional specificity of the measures the functional subunits use. We empirically test our hypotheses and a research question with survey data from 192 marketing directors of German firms. We find that the effect of performance-measure use on functional strategic decision influence depends on the two properties of the performance measures. We find no significant effects when these properties are not considered. However, decision-facilitating use of performance measures has a positive effect on functional strategic decision influence when the measures are specific to the functional subunit. With respect to the use of performance measures for accountability we find countervailing effects, as the effect on functional strategic decision influence is positive when the measures are more reliable but negative when they are more specific to the functional subunit. We discuss these findings in light of existing evidence and theory.     

Users’ legitimacy perceptions about standard-setting processes

Standard-setting institutions require legitimacy to survive. Prior research infers their legitimacy mainly from the characteristics of standard-setting processes rather than from the legitimacy judgments of important constituencies. Using a survey of financial analysts, we quantitatively assess users’ perceptions about the characteristics of standard-setting processes, the relationships between these characteristics and legitimacy perceptions, and users’ legitimacy perceptions. Our first contribution is to use a sample of sophisticated financial statement users to empirically examine the theoretical proposition that users’ legitimacy perceptions could be a function of the perceived characteristics of standard-setting processes. We find that users’ perceptions about the characteristics of standard-setting processes affect the legitimacy they attribute to these processes. A combination of pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacies are at play in such legitimacy assessments. Our second contribution is to point out the importance of separately investigating various types of legitimacy, as users’ perceptions about them vary. Lastly, our third contribution is to highlight that the distinction between users’ perceptions of the characteristics of standard-setting processes and their legitimacy perceptions is not always clear-cut and that there are multiple interrelations among these concepts.