How do Mainland Chinese travelers choose restaurants in Hong Kong?: An exploratory study of individual visit scheme travelers and packaged travelers

The introduction of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), which allows Mainland Chinese travelers (hereafter called Chinese travelers) to visit Hong Kong on an individual basis, has been beneficial to the fast recovery of the local economy in Hong Kong from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The IVS travelers, together with the packaged travelers who visited Hong Kong by joining packaged tours, are presently forming the largest segment of inbound travelers to Hong Kong. Despite the significant economic contributions of Chinese travelers to Hong Kong in general, and to the foodservice sector in particular, there has been an absence of prior studies on IVS travelers’ behavior of selecting restaurants in the existing hospitality and tourism literature. This paper reports on an exploratory study that investigated the perceived importance of attributes that pertain to the selection of restaurants from the perspective of IVS and packaged travelers from Mainland China. Empirical findings of a questionnaire survey with 230 Chinese travelers, including 127 IVS travelers and 103 packaged travelers, showed that the respondents in general viewed the included attributes as relatively important. In addition, only two attributes exhibited significant differences between IVS and packaged travelers. Findings of this research would be useful for hospitality and tourism practitioners to better prepare for receiving the growing number of Chinese travelers.     

Risk and evolution

Summary. I examine a Knightian (1921) model of risk using a general equilibrium model of investment and trade. A population of agents with various preference types can choose between a safe production technology and a risky production technology. In addition, the distribution of types of agents changes through a standard evolutionary dynamic. For a given population distribution, the equilibrium is in general inefficient, however, by allowing the population distribution to change in response to market generated rewards, the population will converge to one where the equilibrium is efficient and where the population as a whole behaves as if all agents were risk neutral. Received: November 7, 1996; revised version: October 20, 1997     

How does customer motivational orientation affect satisfaction?

This study examines the link between customer motivational orientation and customer satisfaction in the Chinese context. The customer motivational orientation–satisfaction model was tested on 349 Chinese bank customers in Macao, China. Results of structural equation modelling indicated that task-oriented and interaction-oriented customers were not equally responsive to the financial services provided. Specifically, task motivational orientation was directly and indirectly related to customer satisfaction through customer perceived service quality, whereas interaction motivational orientation only linked to customer satisfaction through customer perceived service quality as a mediator. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Determinants of Competitiveness： Observations in China＇s Textile and Apparel Industries

This paper attempts to explore key determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparel industries, with special reference to Chinese Mainland. The authors conduct a survey that is designed to use productivity, supply-side and demand-side determinants to measure enterprises＇ competitiveness. The collected survey data is then analyzed using factor analysis to capture the related determining factors indicative of competitiveness at the enterprise level. The findings demonstrate that government policies and related industry infrastructure are the most important determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparel industries, followed by domestic demand. This suggests that the improvement of industry infrastructure can foster industry performance, and that more resources should be endowed to enhance the domestic business competitiveness of local enterprises. The development of domestic demand will foster the competitiveness of the textile and apparel industries on a more sustainable basis.     

INDUSTRY DYNAMICS AND THE MINIMUM WAGE: A PUTTY‐CLAY APPROACH

We document two new findings about the industry‐level response to minimum wage hikes. First, restaurant exit and entry both rise following a hike. Second, there is no change in employment among continuing restaurants. We develop a model of industry dynamics based on putty‐clay technology that is consistent with these findings. In the model, continuing restaurants cannot change employment, and thus industry‐level adjustment occurs gradually through exit of labor‐intensive restaurants and entry of capital‐intensive restaurants. Interestingly, the putty‐clay model matches the small estimated short‐run disemployment effect of the minimum wage found in other studies, but produces a larger long‐run disemployment effect.     

Small-Business Debt Financing: An Empirical Investigation of Default Risk

Unlike much of the existing literature, this paper aims primarily to identify the determinants of the (ex post) risk of default of the corporate borrowings of small business firms. Thus, the explanatory power of forty-three financial and non-financial variables is assessed, using an instrumental-variables approach and logit analysis. Four factors are identified as being significant determinants of the default risk of small-business loans. These are the borrowing firm's total assets at date of loan request, the business's age, the type of loan, and the potential performance of the financed project as assessed by the lending institution. None of the financial ratios examined are found to be significant determinants of default risk. In addition, the three financial institutions studied may be informationally inefficient, since they appear systematically to underestimate (overestimate) the risk of default for high-risk (low-risk) loans. Résumé Contrairement aux études existantes, ce mémoire a pour but d'identifier les déterminants relatifs au risque de défaut (ex post) dans le cas d'emprunts contractés par des petites enterprises. Le caractère explicatif de quarante-trois variables financières et non financières est évalué à l'aide de la méthode des variables instrumentales et de l'analyse logit. Quatre facteurs sont identifiés comme déterminants du risque de défaut des petites entreprises. Ces facteurs sont les suivants: l'actif total de l'entreprise au moment de la demande d'emprunt; le nombre d'années d'existence de l'entreprise; le type d'emprunt et les possibilités de succès du projet, telles qu'évaluées par l'institution prěteuse. L'étude des ratios n'a révélé aucun déterminant d'importance quant au risque de défaut. De plus, il est possible que les renseignements detenus par les trois institutions financières étudiées soient insuffisants puisqu'elles semblent sous-estimer (surestimer) systématiquement le risque de défaut dans le cas d'emprunts à risque (peu) élevé.     

When and why does transformational leadership influence employee creativity? The roles of personal control and creative personality

This study develops and tests a model of the underlying mechanisms linking transformational leadership and employee creativity using a sample of 240 matched middle‐level manager and front‐line supervisor dyads from a large foreign joint‐venture company in China. We propose that personal control and employee creative personality serve as a unique psychological mechanism and an important boundary condition to simultaneously influence the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Results of moderated‐mediation analyses provided support for our conceptual model, showing that transformational leadership was positively related to personal control, which also had a positive impact on employee creativity. Furthermore, creative personality was found to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and personal control, which in turn, mediated the joint effect on employee creativity. Findings of this study provide insights into the research on leadership development and work design in HRM, which can inform human resource managers to design effective strategies and systems that can increase employees' creativity.