Motivations behind Consumers’ Organic Menu Choices: The Role of Environmental Concern,Social Value,and Health Consciousness

This study aimed to examine underlying motivations of consumers’ intention to visit a restaurant featuring organic menu items and willingness to pay (WTP) for organic menu items. In particular, this study incorporated environmental concerns, social value, and health consciousness as key motivators. An online survey was conducted with a self-administered questionnaire, and a total of 473 responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that environmental concern was the strongest predictor of WTP, followed by social value and health consciousness, whereas health consciousness was the most influential factor on intention to visit, followed by social value and environmental concern.     

Exploring the comparative importance of online hotel reviews’ heuristic attributes in review helpfulness: a conjoint analysis approach

Online travel reviews have become increasingly important as a result of the intangible and heterogeneous characteristics of the tourism industry as well as the recent diffusion of social media. This exploratory case study intends to examine the comparative importance of the six heuristic attributes (reviewer location, reviewer level, reviewer helpful vote, review rating, review length, and review photo) with respect to review helpfulness in the online hotel review context. Moreover, the salience of the individual levels within each review attribute and the importance of the attributes in positive and negative review-rating groups are compared. In total, 1,158 reviews of a hotel on TripAdvisor were collected and analyzed through conjoint analyses. This study found that the review rating and reviewer helpful vote attributes are the two most important factors. Finally, three major propositions are suggested based on findings of the study, and several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

RV Traveler’s Pull Factors to Campgrounds in Leisure Tourism

The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying structures of RV traveler’s pull factors to campgrounds and confirm the results by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with multiple data sets. The results identified the following five dimensions of the campground traveler’s key attributes: Activity, Amenity, Essentials, Price, and Store. The “Essentials” factor had a grand mean of 4.47, which was the highest among the five factors. Therefore, campground owners and managers should pay extra attention to maintaining a high quality on those essential attributes first, before considering adding or promoting any other items.     

Pregnancy outcomes for medicaid patients in mandatory managed care: The Pennsylvania HealthChoices program

A number of states have adopted mandatory managed care to provide health services to Medicaid patients, raising concerns that the care provided may be of lower quality than care provided under traditional fee‐for‐service arrangements. In this article, we study the effect of Pennsylvania's mandatory managed care program, HealthChoices, on health outcomes and the cost of care for pregnant Medicaid patients. Using difference‐in‐differences, we find evidence that the adoption of managed care resulted in fewer preventable complications, particularly for more severely ill mothers, but no general reduction in costs except in the highest decile of the cost distribution.     

Assessing Macroprudential Policies: Case of South Korea*

In this paper, we develop methods for assessing the sensitivity of capital flows to global financial conditions. We use these methods to assess the impact of macroprudential policies introduced by South Korea in 2010. Relative to a comparison group of countries, we find that the sensitivity of capital flows into South Korea to global conditions decreased in the period following the introduction of macroprudential policies.     

Capital Flows During Quantitative Easing: Experiences of Developing Countries

A potentially important side effect of quantitative easing (QE) by the United States Federal Reserve was the expansion of capital flows into developing countries. As a result, there were widespread concerns that reversing QE might trigger financial instability in those countries. The central objective of our article is to empirically investigate this important issue by (1) examining the effect of QE on capital flows into developing Asia and (2) identifying the most significant factors that influence the effect of a QE taper tantrum on exchange rate instability. We find that capital flows into developing countries during QE were at least comparable to those before the global financial crisis. We also find that capital flows during QE and the symptoms of those capital flows such as high inflation, credit expansion, and the deterioration of the current-account balance accounted for much of the destabilizing effect of a QE taper tantrum. While there is no evidence that macroprudential policies directly reduce the destabilizing effect, they can nevertheless be useful preemptive measures.     

Welfare implications of international financial integration

Focusing on technology spillover from foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, this paper investigates the welfare implications of financial integration. Calibrations of a neoclassical growth model with international technology diffusion show that when technology catch-up due to FDI inflows is considered, the welfare gains from financial integration substantially increase, which contrasts with the small gains from additional, capital-accumulation effects of financial integration. The estimates suggest that by further enhancing financial integration, emerging Asian economies, such as the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the largest four Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, will experience substantial welfare gains.