Evaluation of risk communication for rural water supply management: a case study of a coastal area of Bangladesh

Consumption of safe drinking water is an important public health issue. In this study, we considered the risk communication topic of human health concerns related to unsafe water consumption in rural coastal areas of Bangladesh, where potable water is scarce. Our objective was to investigate the level of knowledge that rural residents had concerning safe water consumption and to evaluate the effects of risk communication on knowledge and behavior changes. We considered four rural villages of southwest coastal areas of Bangladesh as sample. This study was based on the results of a questionnaire survey administered before and after risk communication. The pre- and post-survey were conducted during August 2009 and March 2010, respectively. Data were collected from 120 women aged 18–60 years. Two format presentations, with and without water quality information, were used to convey the risk messages. In the present study, indicator bacterial (Escherichia coli) contamination levels in drinking water sources were considered as water quality information since absence of E. coli is the safety margin for the detection of disease-causing organisms. Analysis of the survey data revealed that risk communication can be vital to changes in water consumption knowledge and behavior. Overall general knowledge scores were almost same in the pre-survey for without- (mean score 3.16) and with-information (mean score 3.10) villages. However, after risk communication, there were detectable increases in the mean scores (mean scores, 3.54 and 3.64, respectively, on a 4 point scale) for both groups. Furthermore, risk communication with water quality information appears to be a more effective method of risk communication. Dissemination of risk messages was also higher in with-information villages. Seventy four percent of the participants from with-information villages reported that they had discussed the risk messages with family members and neighbors, compared to 59% of those from without-information villages. The results of this study revealed that age, education, and distance of water sources influence changes in consumption and maintenance behavior. These findings suggest that, in addition to installation of water supply facilities, there is a need to address the low levels of knowledge about safe water consumption in rural coastal communities of Bangladesh. Location specific water quality information may be more useful to convey health risk messages concerning unsafe drinking water consumption.     

Tests of Weak‐Form Efficiency of the Dhaka Stock Exchange

Abstract:   Conflicting evidence on weak form efficiency of the Dhaka Stock Market appears to stem from the use of monthly versus daily data, structural changes after the 1996 market crash, and the use of tests with or without heteroscedasticity adjustment. Heteroscedasticity‐robust tests indicate short‐term predictability of share prices prior to the crash, but not afterwards. Although a heteroscedasticity‐robust Box‐Pierce test was used by Lo and MacKinlay (1989) in their simulations, our study appears to be the first to apply this test to stock prices. Typical rejection of weak‐form market efficiency by the usual autocorrelation tests may be reversed by a heteroscedasticity‐robust test.     

REGIONAL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS: ESTIMATES FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA

A regional model, be it computable general equilibrium or partial equilibrium in construct, which is based on the national parameters would certainly provide misleading results if the regional economy or sector is significantly different from its national counterpart. For a credible and useful quantitative analysis of the regional impacts of changes in, say, government policies or international events, one thus needs an empirically based economic model that reflects the key features of the regional economy or sector concerned. This is the motivation for this paper, which estimates a disaggregated agricultural production system for Western Australia (WA): a key farming State of Australia. The paper uses a profit function approach that explicitly recognizes jointness in agricultural production and various climatic zones in WA, and an estimation procedure that involves the Diewert–Wales decomposition technique. It presents estimates of elasticities of supply responses and input demands in WA agriculture, and compares these with the national estimates.     

Mexican integration into the North American free trade zone

Mexican integration into the North American free trade zone is modeled as removing the tariff on Mexican imports of manufacturing goods. Using a theoretical model, it is shown that this increases welfare through production, consumption and employment gains. The results are derived by nesting the theory of customs unions, and the Harris-Todaro type intersectoral labor migration model into a unified framework.     

Ethically Questionable Negotiating: The Interactive Effects of Trust, Competitiveness, and Situation Favorability on Ethical Decision Making

This study explores the direct and interactive effects of individual differences in interpersonal trust and negotiation style on ethical decision-making processes across commonly faced negotiation situations. Individual differences influence basic ideas about legitimate negotiating behaviors, affect behavioral intentions directly, and interact with the favorability of negotiating situations, resulting in direct, indirect, and interactive effects on ethical decision-making processes. Using a sample of 298 participants in executive education workshops, the study analyzes the relationship between interpersonal trust, competitiveness, moral judgment, and behavioral intentions in different negotiating conditions through a series of structural equation models and regression analyses. Our results suggest that individual difference variables exert a significant influence not only on how managers assess the morality of ethically ambiguous negotiation practices but also directly on their behavioral intentions, and that this effect changed across specific negotiation situations. We discuss these results in terms of their usefulness in explaining ethical decision-making processes in negotiations.     

Linking Customer Engagement to Trust and Word-of-Mouth on Facebook Brand Communities: An Empirical Study

Given the rise of social networking sites, particularly Facebook, companies have started engaging with customers in this newly emerged digital space. This study explores the role of customer engagement in enhancing trust and word-of-mouth on brand communities over Facebook. The effect of customer involvement on customer engagement is also checked. This study also investigates the direct relationship of customer involvement with trust and word-of-mouth. A pen-and-paper questionnaire survey of 450 Facebook account holder students was used. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results reveal that a higher level of involvement with the brand community leads to a higher level of customer engagement. Customer engagement leads to customer trust and word-of-mouth activities. The results further suggest a direct positive relationship of customer involvement with trust and word-of-mouth, but the mediation of customer engagement strengthens the mentioned effect.     

The direct and indirect effects of economic wealth on time to take-off

Our objective is to decompose the influence of the economic wealth on the time to sales take-off into a direct effect and an indirect effect through time to introduction. We use a traditional regression based and an advanced counterfactual framework for our analysis, based on adoption data for four generations of mobile phone from 172 countries. Our study extends the sales take-off literature by better understanding how the commercialization stage (time to introduction) affects the confirmation stage (time to sales take-off) in innovation diffusion while controlling for local market structure, socio-economic, demographic and cultural variables suggested in the literature. We show that economic wealth exerts: a positive direct effect by shortening sales take-off time; a negative indirect effect by shortening time to introduction which tends to extend time to sales take-off. The uncovering of this relationship is achieved by treating time to introduction as a mediating variable, departing from previous studies where it is treated as an exogeneous variable. We further show that the negative indirect effect is diluted in the case of high income countries but not in the case of upper middle-income countries. A sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of our findings. Our findings will help firms develop optimal market entry strategies considering the resources available.     

The Bilateral J‐Curve in Australia: A Nonlinear Reappraisal

Since the introduction of error‐correction and cointegration techniques, the J‐curve effect implies an initial short‐run deterioration of the trade balance, followed by improvement later due to currency devaluation. In a previous study of Australia’s bilateral trade, with each of her 23 partners, using the linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach we found the J‐curve effect in the model with the United Kingdom only. However, after incorporating the ARDL model that allows for nonlinear adjustment of exchange rate changes, we found the effect on four more partners – all asymmetrically. Furthermore, we document short‐run asymmetry in exchange rate changes in almost all models; short‐run adjustment asymmetry, and impact‐asymmetry in almost half of the models.     

The influence of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship factors in Egypt

The purpose of this article is to study the effect of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship factors, and determine which factors are the most important for the alumni to become entrepreneurs. A questionnaire had been developed and distributed online using Google Forms. Data were collected from 314 hospitality alumni. All the hypotheses have been supported, proving that the investigated demographic characteristics have a significant effect on entrepreneurship factors, particularly motivation, innovation and personal skills. The study’s sample was limited to alumni of faculties of tourism and hotels in governmental universities only. Policy-makers implication, practical implication, and social implication are discussed based on the results of this study. This is one of the first studies in Egypt to study the effect of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship. Moreover, it provides significant findings that can enhance the overall status of entrepreneurship in Egypt’s hospitality industry.     

Corporate Disclosure in Relation to Combating Corporate Bribery: A Case Study of Two Chinese Telecommunications Companies

This paper investigates the association between global community concerns about bribery activities and anti‐bribery disclosure practices by two Chinese telecommunication companies operating internationally, namely China Mobile and ZTE. Based on content analysis of annual reports and global news media articles over a period of 16 years from 1995–2010, the findings suggest that the changes in the level of disclosures by the two major Chinese telecommunications companies were closely associated with the level of international concerns over bribery practices within the Chinese telecommunications industry. This finding indicates that the companies adopt anti‐bribery disclosure practices in order to minimise the gap of trust (social capital) between companies themselves and global stakeholders. In this paper we argue that, for domestic companies in China, culturally constructed social capital, such as guanxi, creates a level of trust between managers and their stakeholders, which obviates the need for managers to disclose anti‐bribery performance information. However, for companies operating internationally, as social capital is inadequate to bridge the gap of trust between managers and global stakeholders, managers use disclosures of anti‐bribery performance information as a way to minimise such a gap.