Innocents Abroad: Attitude Change toward Hosts

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social distance, prior expectations, and trip experience on post-trip attitudes in multiple destinations. This study is based on surveys conducted with two groups of students: 1) a group participating in a summer study abroad program to the South Pacific or to Europe, and 2) a control group. The results show that attitude changes were positive towards Europeans, negative towards Australians, and mixed towards Fijians. This study supports the expectation value theory, but contradicts the cultural distance theory of attitude change. Further, the results show that experience with non-tourism related services played an important role toward attitude change.     

Information systems project management decision making: The influence of experience and risk propensity

Managing information systems (IS) projects is a notoriously difficult task. The project manager is a crucial player in a successful IS development project. This research examines how a project manager's prior experience and risk propensity influence his or her decision making. An experiment was conducted that showed that both experience and risk propensity have significant influence on the decisions made.     

Liberation wars and tourism development in Africa : The case of Zambia

Development of Africa's immense tourism potential is severely limited for reasons including lack of capital, distance from the large North American and European markets, the cost of travel to Africa, and Africa's poor image abroad. A key factor contributing to this image problem is political instability. Since World War II, almost all African countries have achieved independence. In several countries, this decolonization process has taken the form of long and often bloody liberation wars. This paper examines the impact of Zimbabwe's protracted liberation war on tourism development in Zambia and suggests that a detailed examination of major internal and external political events associated with the decolonization process in Zimbabwe could provide important perspectives on the obstacles to tourism development in other African countries.     

Research note: religious doctrine and its influence on the choice to gamble as a leisure pastime among African American Methodists

This research note examines the relationship between adherence to religious doctrine and participation in gambling as a leisure pastime. In the United States, recreational gambling is a common leisure pastime for many African Americans. Our ideals about the value of gambling are often shaped within families, based on their lived experience with recreational gambling and also within religious communities. Two doctrinal statements from the Methodist strand of Protestantism provide critical assessment of gambling as a leisure pastime. This case study examined African American Methodists’ perceptions about religious doctrine that addresses gambling; their choice to gamble despite their familiarity with the doctrinal position of the Church; and the perception of gambling as a sinful leisure pursuit. Religious doctrine may deter some adherents from participating in gambling as a leisure pursuit but not everyone. Many can be familiar with religious doctrine, may not agree with it and will proceed to gamble. Finally, even if gambling is perceived as a sinful leisure activity, it concurrently can be viewed as a ‘harmless’ vice.     

International Pricing with Costly Consumer Arbitrage

Consumer arbitrage affects international pricing in several ways. If all consumers face the same arbitrage costs, a monopolist's profit increases with arbitrage costs, and world welfare declines with them (if output does not rise). If arbitrage costs differ across consumers, a monopolist may sell in a second country even if there is no local demand—it can use the second country to discriminate across consumers in the first country. Again, world welfare typically falls with arbitrage costs. When there is also local demand in the second country, world welfare may be increasing in arbitrage costs, even if output falls.     

Service quality in restaurant operations in China: Decision- and experiential-oriented perspectives

Using the decision- and experiential-oriented perspectives as theoretical guides, this article reported an empirical assessment of service quality in restaurant operations. We proposed and tested a conceptual model of service quality using structural equation modeling. Using data from a sample of 284 customers from two large full-service restaurants in southern China, we investigated the relationships of service quality, customer satisfaction, and frequency of patronage. The results supported the significant links between service quality and customer satisfaction, service quality and repeat patronage, but not customer satisfaction and repeat patronage. The study has provided important insights into service quality and customer satisfaction in the field of restaurant operations.     

Geographic factors affecting tourism in Zambia

This paper discusses several geographical factors critical to tourism planning and development in Zambia. The paper focuses on the size, seasonality of climate, and population distribution of the country as well as the location of tourism resources and distances between tourist attractions. Individually and collectively, these factors have a major influence on the levels of occupancy in hotels and game lodges, and air and land transportation. The infrastructural development and its utilization for tourism are evaluated, and a number of constraints to tourism development are also examined. A discussion of appropriate tourism policies highlights the delicate relationship between economic and environmental factors. This study concludes that Tourism Master Plans should be more cognizant of geographic as well as economic factors when developing destinations such as Zambia.