Openness,Lobbying, and Provision of Infrastructure

Casual empirical evidence suggests that infrastructure provision is higher in economies that are open to world trade. We develop a model of imperfect competition to show that open economies are likely to provide more infrastructure than closed economies. If infrastructure is financed by taxing a producer lobby, the open economy will overprovide while the closed economy will underinvest; an open economy approaches optimal provision when this lobby group is small in size. If financing of infrastructure is done by taxing the whole population, the closed-economy outcome may be preferred relative to that of the open economy.     

Destination choice model for transitional travel: College students in China

The current study examines the phenomenon of transitional travel by college students in China. The transitional travel takes place during that period when students are graduating and about to embark on a new phase of their lives. A conceptual model of destination choice for such travel is developed. The data was derived from personal interviews with 14 college students by telephone with both prescribed and open-ended questions. The model consists of five components: 1) barriers to transitional travel, 2) motivations for transitional travel, 3) internal inputs, 4) external inputs, and 5) destination selection.     

A Socioecological Examination of Observing Littering Behavior

Despite evidence of the negative health, environmental, and economic impacts, littering continues to be a problem and therefore warrants ongoing research attention. Guided by a Behavioural Ecological Framework, this study observed individual-, social-, and environmental-level factors on littering behavior across three different parks in Saudi Arabia. A total of 362 individuals were observed over 12 days. Approximately half of all disposals were improper, with litter left on the ground. The most commonly littered object was nuts (29.4%). The findings revealed that environmental factors had a significant impact, including the amount of existing litter, beautification efforts, and distance to rubbish bins, and that the only significant individual factor to have any impact on individual littering behavior was group size. Implications for litter prevention are discussed. Future research opportunities are outlined.     

Businesspeople: Academics need your help to make business research relevant

In the last two decades, industry-university collaborations (IUCs) in research and development in the hard sciences have become increasingly more successful and common. In contrast, successful IUCs in softer social sciences, such as business, remain relatively uncommon. But business research requires an even higher degree of collaboration than research in the hard sciences if its results are to be relevant to businesspeople. Fortunately, business academics are becoming more and more interested in collaborating with businesspeople. The purpose of this article is to motivate businesspeople to collaborate as well. We do this by showing the businessperson the historical origins of business research’s irrelevance, by describing the benefits the business world could receive from collaborative research, by showing why collaboration is especially needed in social sciences such as business, and by showing why academics cannot do relevant business research without practitioners’ help. Specifically, we will show that the businessperson’s help is needed to ensure that their priorities are met, to formulate the right research questions, to provide relevant data, and to contribute their problem-solving inventiveness.     

An Essay on the Origins of Entrepreneurial Opportunity

In this article, we apply a process of logical inference to draw conclusions about the origins of entrepreneurial opportunity from existing conversations in the field of strategic management. We equate the execution of a competitive strategy – as described in the strategic management literature – to the exploitation of an entrepreneurial opportunity – as described in the entrepreneurship literature. Given this assumption, we survey five extant theories of strategy in an attempt to categorize and describe the circumstances that define how and with what consequence entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation results in future opportunity. Given this review, we characterize the `outcomes’ of strategy execution as a function of the ‹match’ between strategy and environment in an effort to extend and refine Holcombe’s [Holcombe, Randall, 2003, Review of Austrian Economics 16(1), 25–43] position that entrepreneurial opportunity is born of prior entrepreneurial action.

‘Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.’ Ovid, A.D. 17

     

Shaping safe drinking cultures: evoking positive emotion to promote moderate‐drinking behaviour

Social marketing by Western governments that use fear tactics and threatening information to promote anti‐drinking messages has polarized ‘binge drinking’ and ‘moderate drinking’ through a continuum that implies benefits and harms for both individuals and society. With the goal of extending insights into social marketing approaches that promote safer drinking cultures in Australia, we discuss findings from a study that examines alcohol consumers' moderate‐drinking intentions. By applying the theory of planned behaviour and emotions theory, we discuss survey results from a sample of alcohol consumers, which demonstrate that positively framed value propositions that evoke happiness and love are more influential in the processing of an alcohol moderation message for alcohol consumers. The key limitations of this study are the cross‐sectional nature of the data and the focal‐dependent variable being behavioural intentions rather than behaviours. Research insight into the stronger influence of positive emotions on processing an alcohol moderation message establishes an important avenue for future social marketing communications that moves beyond negative, avoidance appeals to promote behaviour change in drinkers. These research findings will benefit professionals involved in developing social change campaigns that promote and reinforce consumers' positive intentions, with messages about the benefits of controlled, moderate drinking.     

M(Art)Worlds: Consumer Perceptions of How Luxury Brand Stores Become Art Institutions

Through an ethnographic study of how consumers perceive and experience Louis Vuitton flagship stores, we show that luxury stores are becoming hybrid institutions, embodying elements of both art galleries and museums, within a context of exclusivity emblematic of luxury. We create the term “M(Art)World” to capture the essence of this aesthetically oriented strategy. Participants take note of the company's sleekly elegant architecture, interior design, and adroit use of lighting that are modelled after those of museums housing world-class exhibits. The store's merchandize is artisanal, often produced in collaboration with artists. Objects for sale are displayed alongside actual art, rendering both products equivalent. Employees function as curators, offering guidance and knowledge, as well as goods for sale. We analyze how luxury consumers experience and evaluate the ways in which luxury stores operate as contemporary art institutions, and extrapolate those insights into managerial implications for other retail venues.