Fear and anger: antecedents and consequences of emotional responses to mobile communication

Many people fear that exposure to mobile phone base stations leads to severe health effects. In addition to those fears, many citizens are unsatisfied or even angry about prevailing base station site-selection procedures. In the present study, it was investigated how these emotions, i.e. fear and anger, determine risk and benefit perceptions and the acceptance of mobile communication. Using structural equation modeling, we found that benefit perception and the acceptance of mobile phone base stations were primarily determined by anger. Risk perception, in contrast was influenced by both emotions. In addition, controllability and fairness emerged as important cognitive appraisals, or antecedents, of fear and anger, while certainty was not related to these emotions. In sum, our findings highlight that fear and anger have specific influences on risk, benefit, and acceptance of mobile communication. Furthermore, the study provides an in-depth understanding of the antecedents that lead to emotional responses within the context of mobile communication. Implications for risk communication will be derived.     

A Discovery of Early Labor Organizations and the Women who Advocated Work–Life Balance: An Ethical Perspective

The relevance of leader ethicality has motivated ethical leadership theory. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of moral identity for the concept of ethical leadership. We relate ethical leadership incorporating an internalized moral identity to productive deviant workplace behavior. Using qualitative empirical data we illustrate the relevance of critical situations, i.e., situations in which hypernorms and organizational norms diverge, for the distinction of ethical leaders with or without internalized moral identities. Our paper takes a multidisciplinary approach integrating insight from management as well as humanities and social sciences toward a comprehensive sense of ethical leadership.     

Market-Channel Choices of Indonesian Potato Farmers: A Best–Worst Scaling Experiment

We present an empirical analysis of how buyer (and trader) attributes influence decisions of market participation and channel choice among smallholder potato farmers in West Java, Indonesia. We use a best–worst scaling experiment to evaluate the determinants of these decisions and gauge the influence of buyer attributes. Our latent-class cluster analysis reveals that producers have heterogeneous preferences for buyer attributes, which address classic smallholder constraints such as access to inputs, credit, and information. This heterogeneity can be somewhat explained by household characteristics and assets. The broad mass of our sample sought buyers whose attributes imply lower market risk for farmers. Yet roughly a quarter of our sample, a portion that included farmers with large, specialised farms, sought buyers who could provide inputs such as high-quality seeds.     

Is there a business cycle in Singapore? Is there a Singaporean business cycle?

This paper explores the existence and examines the characteristics, if any, of business cycles in Singapore. Specifically, the authors ask: Is there a business cycle in Singapore? Is there a Singaporean business cycle? Unlike earlier studies, this paper investigates whether or not there exists a business cycle in Singapore and employs cross-spectral analysis and factor analysis which have advantages over the time-domain techniques. The study shows that there is a business cycle in Singapore and its frequency does not coincide with the periodicity of the two recessions experienced by the country. However, the business cycle is not in any meaningful way Singaporean, as evidenced by the existence of three international factors explaining about 99 percent of the common variance of the series. The idiosyncratic factor is well below 1 percent in all Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries with the exception of the Philippines. The findings have a number of significant implications both from the theoretical and policymaking viewpoint.     

Testing the sufficiency of the theory of planned behavior: a case of customer dissatisfaction responses in restaurants

This study tested the sufficiency of both the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the extended TPB models by adding the variable of past behavior. In addition, the present study examined the mediating role of the TPB variables on the relationships between past behavior and customers’ intentions to engage in different types of dissatisfaction responses (i.e., voice, negative word-of-mouth communication, and exit). Results of the study demonstrated the strong predictive power of the original TPB mode but the inclusion of past behavior did not significantly improve the predictability of the three dissatisfaction response intentions. Furthermore, the mediating analyses indicated that the influence of past behavior was mediated by TPB variables. In the contexts of negative word-of-mouth communication, the effect of past behavior on intention was mediated by attitude. Meanwhile, both subjective norm and perceived behavioral control mediated the relationship between past behavior and the intention to engage in voice behavior.     

The market premium for the option to close: evidence from Australian gold mining firms

This study shows the market value of gold mining firms contains a premium for the option to close. The sample uses 41 gold mining producers listed on the Australian Stock Exchange from 1987 to 2013. The premium of the market price over the present value of cash flows is isolated and a pooled cross‐sectional regression tests the degree of association between that premium and theoretical option premiums. The results show market prices incorporate a premium reflecting the option to temporarily close operations. The magnitude of the option premium to close depends on whether firms are out or in the money options.     

Limits on the Use of Public Space and Consumer Tactics: A Study on Urban Cycling

Although public space is supposed to be democratic and accessible to all, in reality, such access is inegalitarian and exclusionary. The research aims, therefore, to understand how public space that reflects the imposition of interests of dominant ideologies affects the consumption practices of nondominant ideologies. The qualitative research data were collected in the context of urban cycling through in-depth interviews and observation and are analyzed using a hermeneutical approach. The research explains that, in order to deal with the limits of public space use, these consumers use tactics involving (1) disputes for space, (2) disorganized occupation, and (3) transgressive practices; moreover, there is an overlapping relationship between the agency of consumers and public space.     

A Minimizing Risk Strategy for Brazilian Fixed-Income Portfolios

This study presents various risk immunization strategies for fixed-income portfolios, including not only classical measures like duration, convexity, and dispersion but also modern measures such as VaR (value-at-risk) and ES (expected shortfall). Empirical tests are conducted in the Brazilian domestic and international bond market. Because it has had one of highest interest rates since the 1990s, Brazil offers an interesting case study for fixed-income studies. Our results are different for domestic and international bonds. For domestic bonds, using the highest convexity criterion to choose the best portfolio is better than using minimum dispersion, and there is a coincidence between the optimum portfolio selected by the convexity, historical VaR, and ES criteria. For international bonds, our findings indicate that the minimum dispersion strategy performs much better than the maximum convexity strategy. The overall performance of portfolios chosen by minimum VaR and ES criteria is also good, with satisfactory realized returns and squared errors.