Exploring the linkage effects of place attachment in rural areas using the fuzzy analytic network process

ABSTRACT

Though previous research has developed an evaluation measurement for place attachment, it has ignored the interdependence of the criteria and subcriteria associated with that evaluation tool. Because it is challenging for researchers to digest the multi-criteria messages presented in place attachment and to understand the multiple place attachment terms, this study adopts the fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) model to identify the characteristics of place attachment, and categorizes these characteristics into three dimensions, namely personal context, community context, and environment context. Using the FANP model, an empirical survey was conducted that included the collected survey data of 187 respondents from the Meinong region of Taiwan to determine the typical features of place attachment. Our research results demonstrate that, with respect to successful community involvement, familiarity is essential for place attachment. As familiarity establishes social ties with the setting, one’s emotional attachment to the location or environment increases. The ability to define clear priority weights for personal, community, and environment contexts is one of the benefits of using the FANP method to evaluate place attachment. Accordingly, the findings regarding these three contexts raise issues about the role of local government and self-efficacy in place attachment in Taiwanese environments.     

Classification of traditional cultural elements in temple street festivals using the fuzzy Kano model

This study aims to explain consumers’ expectations regarding the culture of temple streets and cultivates an identity system for local culture. The Kano model with fuzzy linguistic concepts was applied to the field observation of temple street festivals and the semi-structured interviews of local cultural directors, scholars of cultural centres, government officials, and cultural industry operators with data on traditional cultural elements. The findings show that “Religious temples”, “Custom activities and events”, “Local cultural industries”, and “Specialty and gourmet food” have a symmetrical impact on both satisfaction and dissatisfaction in proportion to the extent of traditional cultural element fulfilment. “Local stories” do not increase overall satisfaction if traditional cultural elements are exceeded but cause dissatisfaction if they are not fulfilled. Moreover, outer “Tangible”, middle “Behavioural”, and inner “Intangible” factors of attractive, one-dimensional, must-be quality transformed into contemporary image designs are amiably illustrated. These results provide a direction for managing satisfaction and a performance guideline for each activity in the process of creating temple street experiences that can increase satisfaction and reduce dissatisfaction.     

What's your real cost of capital?

In valuing any investment project or corporate acquisition, executives must decide what discount rate to use in their estimates of future cash flows. The traditional approach is to apply the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which has remained fundamentally unchanged for 40 years. But the formula--in particular, its beta element--has long been a source of frustration. In fact, corporate executives and investment bankers routinely fudge their CAPM estimates, say the authors, because experience and intuition tell them the model produces inappropriate discount rates. CAPM has three main problems: First, beta is a measure of both a stock's correlation and its volatility; second, beta is based on historical data; and third, CAPM rates don't take into account the term of the investment. These factors together result in discount rates that defy common sense. As an alternative to CAPM and its beta element, the authors developed a forward-looking approach to calculating a company's cost of capital, the market-derived capital pricing model (MCPM). It does not incorporate any measure of historical stock-to-market correlation, relying instead on estimates of future volatility derived from the options market. This is helpful since investor expectations from the options market are built into a company's current stock price. Using GE as an example, the authors give step-by-step instructions for how to calculate discount rates with MCPM. They also offer evidence from a range of industries to show that MCPM's discount rates are more realistic--especially from the corporate investor's perspective--than are CAPM's.     

Operators for the adjudication of conflicting claims

We consider the problem of allocating some amount of an infinitely divisible and homogeneous resource among agents having claims on this resource that cannot be jointly honored. A “rule” associates with each such problem a feasible division. Our goal is to uncover the structure of the space of rules. For that purpose, we study “operators” on the space, that is, mappings that associate to each rule another one. Duality, claims truncation, and attribution of minimal rights are the operators we consider. We first establish a number of results linking them. Then, we determine which properties of rules are preserved under each of these operators, and which are not.     

Using least squares support vector machines for the airframe structures manufacturing cost estimation

Accurate cost estimation plays a significant role in industrial product development and production. This research applied least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) method solving the problem of estimating the manufacturing cost for airframe structural projects. This research evaluated the estimation performance using back-propagation neural networks and statistical regression analysis. In case studies, this research considered structural weight and manufacturing complexity as the main factors in determining the manufacturing labor hour. The test results verified that the LS-SVM model can provide accurate estimation performance and outperform other methods. This research provides a feasible solution for airframe manufacture industry.     

Related-party transactions and corporate governance: The evidence from the Taiwan stock market

In this study we explore how corporate governance affects the level of related-party transactions (RPTs) and how it moderates the motives of using RPTs in Taiwan, an ownership-concentrated economy. The empirical results show that good corporate governance is effective in constraining RPTs with the negative relation being sustainable across different measures of RPTs (raw, residual and industry-adjusted RPTs) and across different types of RPTs (related sales, lending and guarantee, and related borrowings). The propping-up hypothesis indicates that the level of related sales is positively correlated with the condition that firms plan to issue seasoned equity next period and the condition of a decrease in the reported earnings. The internal capital market hypothesis indicates that the level of related lending and guarantee (related borrowing) is negatively (positively) correlated with the condition of an increase in capital expenditure and an increase in net working capital. The empirical results lend partial support to the two hypotheses. More importantly, we find that corporate governance moderates the relation between the motives and the level of RPTs.     

Leveraging the benefits of exploratory learning and exploitative learning in NPD: the role of innovation field orientation

Scholars have increasingly noted that firm-level capabilities may be crucial for resolving the dilemmas resulting from either high exploratory or high exploitative learning. However, our current understanding of this issue remains limited. Innovation field orientation is a firm-level capability to strategically structure dispersed innovation efforts and reconfigure resources on them, and may help a firm leverage the benefits of distinctive learning strategies. Based on this idea, this paper investigates innovation field orientation and examines how its capacities (the specification, establishment of focus areas, and stimulation of synergies) influence the performance of high exploratory/exploitative learning. Our findings suggest that the capacities of innovation field orientation moderate the effects of exploratory and exploitative learning on new product program performance, and clarify how innovation field orientation enables organization to leverage the benefits of high exploratory/exploitative learning and address their disadvantages.     

Monetary Policy Rules in an Open Economy with Heuristics: Which Model Is Best?

The choices of policy targets and the formation of agents’ expectation have been critical issues for reconsidering monetary policy management since 2008. The purpose of this article is to evaluate macroeconomic stability in a New Keynesian open economy in which agents experience cognitive limitations. The (im)perfect credibility of various monetary policies (e.g., a Taylor-type rule, strict domestic inflation targeting, strict CPI inflation targeting, exchange rate peg) may lead agents to react according to their expectation rules, and then create various degrees of booms and busts in output and inflation. Therefore, relaxation of the rational expectation hypothesis has potential consequences for policy designs. Our simulations confirm that the business cycles induced by animal spirits are enhanced by strict inflation targeting. Furthermore, a Taylor-type (CPI or domestic inflation) rule or a credible exchange rate pegging system can improve social welfare and stability in an open economy.     

Stock Returns and Volatility under Market Segmentation: The Case of Chinese A and B Shares

In most countries where firms list separate shares for trading by foreign and domestic investors, the prices of the foreign shares tend to be higher. In China, the reverse tends to be true. In this paper, we would like to focus on the information content in lagged premiums of Chinese A over B traded shares. The lagged premiums are found to have certain predictive power over the future returns and volatility of both A and B shares, with some interesting patterns. Specifically, an increase in the premium ratio of A shares will be followed by a rise in the return of A shares and a fall in the return of B shares. It is found that both of the investors in Chinese A- and B-share markets reveal positive feedback trading behavior. Moreover, the liquidity and information availability will affect the magnitude of such behavior especially in B-share markets. By using multivariate GARCH model, it is also demonstrated that the unexpected changes in the premium ratio of A-share price over B-share price contribute to the return volatility of both A shares and B shares. These patterns may provide foundations for the development of pricing models for equity shares under market segmentation.     

Reduction-consistency in collective choice problems

We consider the problem of choosing a subset of a feasible set over which each agent has a strict preference. We propose an invariance property, reduction-consistency, of choice rules and study its implications. The property is a natural expression for the problems of a general principle of consistency having been studied extensively in resource allocation problems. We show that no scoring rule satisfies reduction-consistency, and base a characterization of the top rule on the property. We also investigate the minimal extension of a rule needed to recover reduction-consistency, and identify the minimal extensions of several rules including the Borda and plurality rules.