What kind of donor are you? Uncovering complexity in donor identity

Identity is a useful lens to understand donation behavior. However, studies have typically conceptualized and examined donor identity as a generic, unidimensional concept. Through in‐depth interviews with 52 blood donors, this study sets out to discover if there is more complexity to donor identity, and what implications this might have for marketing communications, in the context of donation of the self (e.g., blood, organs, time, and effort). We use sentiment polarity and amplification analysis of inductive themes to uncover distinct patterns reflective of four different donor identities. We label these the Savior, Communitarian, Pragmatist, and Elitist, which are underpinned by theories of gift‐giving, sharing, pragmatism, and signaling, respectively. The typology offers a theory‐building mechanism to anticipate the effects of marketing stimuli on donation behavior. We conclude by presenting four theoretical propositions, for which we provide preliminary empirical evidence. The survey data is suggestive of action readiness for donation behavior when a marketing communication message is aligned with its intended donor identity.     

CSR for Happiness: Corporate determinants of societal happiness as social responsibility

Over the past decade, societal happiness has increasingly been considered important to public policy initiatives globally, supported by interdisciplinary scholarly efforts spanning the social sciences, economics, and public health. Curiously, despite for‐profit corporations being core social institutions of modern societies, scant attention has been given to the social role and responsibilities of corporations in relation to societal happiness. In this article, we review and integrate research from positive psychology and related disciplines to examine happiness as a social outcome of corporate activity. We propose that corporations have a social responsibility to respect, preserve, and advance people's right to, and experience of, happiness—which we term CSR for Happiness. Within the existing literature, stakeholder happiness has generally been narrowly conceptualized in hedonic terms and has failed to consider the broader impacts of corporate activities on societal happiness. Drawing on advances in psychological theory and research, we provide a holistic conceptualization of happiness, which includes objective, subjective, hedonic, and eudaimonic dimensions of happiness. We offer an integrative conceptual framework, which includes the macro‐to‐micro and micro‐to‐macro pathways through which corporations directly and indirectly impact upon societal happiness. Finally, we consider implications of happiness research for the intersections of business and society.     

Understanding Sponsorship: A Consumer-Centric Model of Sponsorship Effects

A crucial component of many marketing programs, sponsorship has not always received the same research attention as other tactical marketing levers. Although research has been conducted to fill that gap in recent years, we lack a comprehensive, rigorous summary of what is known about sponsorship to capture and interpret that learning. Toward that goal, we offer a new definition of sponsorship and describe a three-step consumer-centric model of sponsorship effects. Highlighting a sequence of antecedents, mediators, and consequences for sponsorship, we also detail the prevailing input, output, and process factors identified in past sponsorship research. Finally, based on our analysis, we derive key summary insights and provide a roadmap for future research.     

State-space estimation of rational bubbles in the Yen/Deutsche Mark exchange rate

State-Space Estimation of Rational Bubbles in the Yen/Deutsche Mark Exchange Rate. — This paper considers a series that uncovered interest parity predicts to be white noise and inspects it for evidence of stochastic rational bubbles. State-space methods are used that specify a bubble component of the series as an unobserved state. The technique’s effectiveness is demonstrated by Monte Carlo experiments. One span of the series is found in which a stochastic rational bubble specification clearly dominates the white noise specification. It coincides with a period of general financial turm-oil in the associated economies, i.e. Japan and Germany during 1989 and early 1990.     

Space matters: the importance of amenity in planning metropolitan growth

Most Australian capital cities require many 100,000s of additional dwellings to accommodate demographic change and population pressures in the next two or three decades. Urban growth will come in the form of infill, consolidation and urban expansion. Plans to redevelop environmental amenities such as parks and open green spaces are regularly being put forward to local councils and State governments. Maintaining parks and reserves represents one of the largest costs to local councils. To aid in the evaluation of some of the different propositions, we report the results of a spatial hedonic pricing model with fixed effects for Adelaide, South Australia. The results indicate that the private benefits of a close proximity to golf courses, green space sporting facilities, or the coast, are in the order $0.54, $1.58, and $4.99 per metre closer (when evaluated at the median respectively). The historic Adelaide Parklands add $1.55 to a property’s value for each additional metre closer. We demonstrate how the estimated model could be used to calculate how local private benefits capitalized in property values change with changes in the configuration of a park.     

POLLUTION AND POLLUTION ABATEMENT IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

Building on the approach of Weitzman, as extended by Hartwick and Mäler, five models of national accounts in a dynamic competitive economy with pollution externalities are constructed: flow pollutants, stock pollutants, fossil fuels and CO₂, living resources and acid rain, and household defensive expenditures. The results measure welfare rather than national product per se . The general conclusions are that abatement expenditures should be treated as intermediate consumption, that adjustments need to be made for both pollution emissions and natural pollution dissipation processes, that marginal social costs should be used to value emissions, and that the level of environmental services must be valued in measuring welfare. Not only should household defensive expenditures not be subtracted from the welfare measure, under plausible assumptions the adjustment to welfare (as opposed to NNP) includes a value greater than the level of household defensive expenditure.     

Progress along the path: evolving issues in the measurement of genuine saving

More than 10 years since a practical linkage between sustainable development and a measure of national wealth—expanded to include natural and environmental resources—was first posited, the empirical estimation of adjusted net savings, dubbed ‘genuine’ saving, has evolved considerably. In this paper we take stock of both progress achieved and the challenges that remain. We begin by recalling the key points made in Pearce and Atkinson (1993, Ecol Econ 8, 103), which presented the first cross-country estimates of savings rates adjusted to reflect depletion and degradation of the environment. We then briefly summarise the evolution of the theoretical argument linking savings and sustainability. However, the main focus of this paper is an aspect that concerned David Pearce greatly, namely the evolution of the measurement of genuine savings. We identify and consider the empirical evidence with regard to two particular measurement issues: the valuation of exhaustible resources and environmental degradation. Common to the both issues are concerns about measuring changes in national wealth in real world economies.      

Genuine Savings Rates in Developing Countries

Augmented measures of savings and wealth in the national accountsare critical to conceptualizing and achieving sustainable development.After developing the theory of genuine savings—traditionalnet savings less the value of resource depletion and environmentaldegradation plus the value of investment in human capital—thisarticle presents empirical estimates for developing countries.These calculations account for resource depletion and carbondioxide emissions, using consistent time series data for 1970–93.The empirical evidence shows that levels of genuine savingsare negative in a wide range of countries, particularly in Sub-SaharanAfrica, and that these countries are being progressively impoverished.Increasing the coverage of natural resources and pollutantsin our calculations would reduce the estimated levels of genuinesavings overall. The use of genuine savings measures suggestsa series of policy questions that are key to sustaining development.These are also explored, specifically the extent to which monetaryand fiscal policies, exports of exhaustible resources, strongerresource policies, and pollution abatement measures boost genuinesavings rates. For policymakers, linking sustainable developmentto genuine savings rates means that there are many possibleinterventions to increase sustainability, from the macroeconomicto the purely environmental.