Generation Y: An Agenda for Future Visitor Attraction Research

This study provides a comprehensive secondary‐based synthesis of previous studies on the profile and patterns of consumption of Generation Y, their consumption experiences and the role of information communication technologies and social media in determining their emerging patterns of behaviour at visitor attractions. The paper concludes by advancing a management‐oriented attraction research framework specific to Generation Y with a set of research propositions proposed to stimulate further research and management action on this specific and highly influential generational cohort. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effectiveness of agricultural water management technologies on rainfed cereals crop yield and runoff in semi-arid catchment: a meta-analysis

Multiple agricultural water management (AWM) technologies are being promoted worldwide in rainfed agro-ecological production systems, such as the Limpopo River Basin, to close the yield gap, enhance food security and reduce poverty, but evidences on yield gains and environmental impacts are varied. This paper conducts a review of the performance of AWM technologies against conventional farmer practices to produce adequate evidence on cereal yield and field runoff changes. With the interrogation of literature from 1980 to 2013 using seven AWM groupings, enough evidence was found that AWM technologies can deliver substantial benefits of increased crop yield and water productivity with reduced environmental impacts. Using random effects model, the standardized mean difference (SMD) of yield between AWM and control was 0.27, while SMD of water productivity was 0.46, indicating the effectiveness of the technologies (SMD?>?0). Subgroup analyses showed greatest yield responses on silty-clay-loam, clay-loam and sandy soils compared to clay and loam-sandy soils, and higher yield increase under low rainfall regime (200–500 mm) than under high rainfall regime (500–800 mm). Large yield change variations for different AWM technologies present a huge opportunity for meeting the existing yield gaps and enhancing coping capacity in dry years and under climate change.     

Learning and equilibrium as useful approximations: Accuracy of prediction on randomly selected constant sum games

There is a good deal of miscommunication among experimenters and theorists about how to evaluate a theory that can be rejected by sufficient data, but may nevertheless be a useful approximation. A standard experimental design reports whether a general theory can be rejected on an informative test case. This paper, in contrast, reports an experiment designed to meaningfully pose the question: “how good an approximation does a theory provide on average.” It focuses on a class of randomly selected games, and estimates how many pairs of experimental subjects would have to be observed playing a previously unexamined game before the mean of the experimental observations would provide a better prediction than the theory about the behavior of a new pair of subjects playing this game. We call this quantity the model’s equivalent number of observations, and explore its properties. This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the USA–Israel Binational Science Foundation. We are very grateful for helpful conversations with David Budescu, Jerry Busemeyer, Gary Chamberlain, Paul Feigin, Dave Krantz, Jack Porter, Tom Wallsten, Wolfgang Viechtbauer, and Richard Zeckhauser.     

The learning style preferences of hospitality and tourism students: Observations from an international and cross-cultural study

This paper reports on a study of the learning style preferences of new entrants onto hospitality and tourism programmes in Australia and the United Kingdom. It suggests that a majority of students on these programmes in both countries have strong learning style preference that present some challenges to educators and the planning of learning experiences in higher education. Typically these students prefer learning styles that are concrete rather than abstract, and active rather than reflective. Furthermore, substantial minorities register low or very low preferences for learning in abstract and reflective styles. The initial learning style of new entrants on to taught programmes, therefore, present substantial teaching and learning barriers for educators who are attempting to develop reflective practitioners. Inappropriate teaching strategies can present some genuine learning difficulties for these students. In Australia, educators face added complexity because students from Confucian heritage backgrounds display learning style preferences at odds with their piers. They are more likely to respond positively to abstract and reflective approaches but negatively to active and concrete teaching strategies. The authors suggest one way of approaching the learning needs of these students is to use Kolb's experiential learning cycle as a way of encouraging the development of ‘balanced’ learning strategies that lead to reflective practice.     

Who Adopts Total Quality Management (TQM): Theory and An Empirical Test

The recent emergence of total quality management (TQM) in the U.S. has spawned a great deal of interest in management circles as well as in the mass media. However, despite the growing number of firms that have adopted this management technique, few formal tests exist concerning the pattern of adoption as well as the changes that accompany the adoption of TQM. This paper contrasts models of production for TQM and non-TQM firms in order to explore reasons why some firms but not others have adopted the TQM approach to quality improvement. Predictions arising from such a comparison are tested using a unique data set that combines data on firms from three different sources. Our findings tend to support the proposed theory of systematic differences between firms that find it advantageous to adopt TQM and firms that do not. We also find evidence that firms adopting TQM experience greater growth in sales, employment, and capital stock.     

Developing a framework for understanding the impact of deskilling and standardisation on the turnover and attrition of chefs

The occupation of cookery has been identified as one sharing a shortage of skilled employees. While the trade attracts moderate numbers of new recruits, the attrition or wastage rate, either before completion of an apprenticeship or soon after, is high. While chefs share many of the traditionally perceived poor working conditions of their hospitality colleagues, well documented in the literature, this paper presents an alternative explanation for their high mobility. It will be argued that labour mobility and attrition rates partly result from deskilling and standardisation. These are often consequences of technological applications in the kitchen, business operators seeking outsourced means of production and the controlled production of menus and recipes. This paper will examine the processes of deskilling and standardisation in the contemporary professional kitchen and their relationship with labour mobility, primarily through intention of labour turnover models. Particular attention will be given to occupational communities in this relationship, since it is widely accepted that creativity and skill are defining features of chefs’ occupational culture. Finally, a model will be proposed that reconciles the unique occupational experiences of chefs with generic, and hospitality specific, intention of labour turnover models.     

DISCOUNTS FOR CASH IN RETAIL GASOLINE MARKETING

Before introducing cash discounting in retail gasoline markets, major oil companies offered proprietary credit cards as an unpriced service to their customers. This paper analyzes the origins of cash discounting in order to determine why oil companies introduced explicit pricing of the credit service in 1982 only to begin discouraging it by the end of the decade. Sharp increases in nominal interest rates and in the real price of gasoline between 1978–1982 spurred a rapid rise in the cost of financing accounts receivable. This increasing cost in part drove the initial decision to discount. By 1990 the discounting trend reversed as the costs of processing credit transactions and of the float associated with non-revolving accounts receivable fell.
Using station data from Delaware in 1983 and Washington in 1989, the paper also provides two separate estimations of the subsidy to credit buyers by cash buyers.