The role of perceived costs and perceived benefits in the relationship between personality and risk‐related choices

This paper considers how perceptions of costs and benefits can influence the association between personality and risky choice behaviour. We assessed perceptions and behaviours in six domains (ethical; investment; gambling; health and safety; recreational; social) using the DOSPERT and measured personality using the NEO PI‐R. Results from structural equation modelling showed that personality had a direct effect on risky choice behaviour in four domains (social, ethical, gambling and recreational risk‐taking). In addition, perceived costs and benefits mediated the relations between personality and risk‐taking in the five domains (social, ethical, gambling, recreational and investment risk‐taking). Evidence for a mechanism that integrates both direct and indirect effects of personality on behaviour is discussed.     

Should Independent Directors Have Term Limits? The Role of Experience in Corporate Governance

We examine the role of independent directors with extended tenure in board‐level governance, monitoring decisions, and advising outcomes. These directors exhibit a higher level of commitment as they attend more board meetings and take more committee memberships. Firms with a higher proportion of these directors have lower chief executive officer (CEO) pay, higher CEO turnover‐performance sensitivity, and a smaller likelihood of intentionally misreporting earnings. These firms also restrict the expansion of resources under the CEO's control as they are less likely to make acquisitions, while the acquisitions they do make are of higher quality. Efforts to impose term limits on directors may, therefore, be misguided.     

Geopolitical Maize: Peasant Seeds,Everyday Practices,and Food Security in Mexico

This paper draws from research on small-scale maize production in Mexico’s Central Highland region to discuss the geopolitical implications of everyday agricultural practices. An overwhelming majority of maize farmers in this region, as well as in the country more broadly, continue to cultivate locally adapted maize varieties they have bred themselves – criollo maize is the vernacular term – despite decades of concerted government attempts to effect the widespread adoption of commercially bred and licensed hybrid varieties. This state effort to restructure agricultural systems and food security according to nationalist and capitalist priorities is one tactic in a long and violent struggle for control over peasant land and labour in Mexico. By integrating feminist scholarship in geopolitics and in political ecology, I am following the lead of geographers who regard the materialities of everyday life as a foundation for political tensions and conflicts that are constantly unfolding along intersecting lines of difference. Though geopolitics has rarely turned its attention directly to theories of intimate socio-ecological relations, I argue that the field has much analytical and political leverage to gain by engaging with political ecology, and that feminist geographic imaginaries provide a crucial space in which to do so. This approach allows for an analysis of how a dominant geopolitics of land and agriculture is being undermined through the routine production of criollo maize, revealing new potential for creating broad political alliances with social movements that are currently working toward alternative visions of agriculture and food security.     

Maintaining the Common Pool: Voluntary Water Conservation in Response to Varying Scarcity

Studies of voluntary conservation response to changing information about an environmental problem have traditionally been synonymous with studies of information campaign effectiveness. As such, they have not been able to capture the response to actual changes in the environment. This paper takes a novel approach to identifying voluntary conservation by studying the impact of changing storage levels on urban water usage in the context of a prolonged drought and a highly ’water aware’ community. Our results suggest that voluntary conservation increases substantially when water is scarce and the public value of the savings is greatest. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of environmental information campaigns in general, and urban water demand management in particular.     

Large economies and two-player games

We characterize the core and the competitive allocations of a continuum economy as strong Nash equilibria of an associated game with only two players.     

Applying conjoint analysis in economic evaluations: an application to menorrhagia

The increased demand for health care, coupled with limited resources, means that decisions have to be made concerning the allocation of scarce health care resources. This paper considers how conjoint analysis (CA) can be used to aid this decision making process. It is shown how the technique can be used to estimate marginal rates of substitution between attributes, willingness to pay (WTP) if cost is included as an attribute and overall utility scores for different ways of providing a service. The technique is applied to consider women's preferences for two surgical procedures in the treatment of menorrhagia: hysterectomy and conservative surgery. The results suggest conservative surgery is preferred to hysterectomy, as indicated by higher utility scores for the former and a marginal WTP of 7593 to have conservative surgery rather than hysterectomy. The internal validity of CA was also shown. It is concluded that CA is a potentially useful instrument for policy makers. However, numerous methodological issues need addressing before the technique becomes an established instrument within economic evaluations.     

Real indeterminacy of equilibria and manipulability

In this paper, we analyze the indeterminacy of equilibria in financial markets and propose a selection mechanism. We suggest that there is one equilibrium that prevails over the others, as a result of the market power of the agents that some states of nature become monopolists of certain commodities. Given a financial assets model, we define a price game and show the existence of mixed strategies equilibria. Then we purify these equilibria by considering a price game with incomplete information.     

Ma(r)king memories: exploring embodied processes of remembering and forgetting temporal experiences

Based on in-depth interviews with nine tattoo consumers, participant observation at a tattoo studio, a tattoo consumption diary, and photography, we investigate embodied processes of remembering and forgetting temporal experiences. We unpick participants’ experiences of combatting the fragility of memory, negotiating which temporal experiences to remember or forget, and constructing temporal order through their tattooed bodies. These insights are enriched theoretically with reference to Ricoeur’s ideas concerning time, narrative, and memory. By focusing upon the embodied dimensions of memory work, we contribute fresh insights into the underexplored relations between bodies, time, and consumer culture. Furthermore, we indicate the continuing significance of temporal continuity, durability, and the past in accelerating Western cultures. Finally, we elucidate the importance of also attending to “absences” in consumer research. We conclude by considering the wider implications of our findings for better understanding an accelerating, liquid, and unstable consumer culture, beyond the context of tattooing.     

To Centralise or Disperse – A Question for Interpretation: A Case Study of Interpretive Planning in the Brecks

The connections between interpretation and sustainable tourism are gradually being realised and it is now generally accepted that interpretation, if planned carefully and sensitively, can contribute in a variety of ways to sustainable tourism development. This paper reports on a case study of sustainable interpretive planning in the Brecks countryside straddling the Norfolk–Suffolk border in the UK. The key question raised is: if interpretation is to be fully accepted as a mechanism in developing sustainable tourism practices should interpretation be planned and implemented in a dispersed or in a centralised fashion? A review of several projects undertaken in a variety of UK destinations illustrates that this question is far from straightforward, and that the results are far from conclusive. The paper discusses the way in which this question was addressed in the Brecks and why the dispersal option was adopted.     

Towards typologies of virtual maltreatment: sport,digital cultures & dark leisure

Abstract

A changing technological context, specifically that of the growth of social media, is transforming aspects of leisure behaviour, especially in terms of negative interactions between followers of sport and athletes. There is a growing body of research into the maltreatment of adult athletes, exploring issues such as abusive acts or behaviours against the individual, including acts of physical and/or psychological violence to the person. Existing research, however, focuses upon face-to-face behaviours, and to date the nature of abuse in online spaces has been overlooked. It is becoming ever more apparent that virtual environments create optimal climates for abuse to occur due to the ability for individuals to communicate in an instantaneous, uncontrolled and often anonymous manner in virtual worlds. Using a netnographic approach, an analysis of a popular social media platform (Twitter) was conducted to examine the types of abuse present in online environments. This paper presents a conceptual typology, identifying four broad types of abuse in this setting; physical, sexual, emotional and discriminatory; examples of each form are presented. Findings highlight how online environments can pose a significant risk to individual emotional and psychological safety.