Which accessible travel products are people with disabilities willing to pay more? A choice experiment

Despite the rapidly increasing number of tourists with disabilities, which is known to have a strong nexus with senior travel market, tourism industry has paid little attention to the distinctive preferences of these tourists for accessible travel products. Using a sample of Koreans with mobility disabilities, this study aims to better understand how they make decisions to choose optimal accessible travel products. The results of the choice experiment indicate that respondents place the heaviest weight on the accessibility of accommodation facilities for their maximization of travel satisfaction. The results also suggest that tourists with disabilities show higher willingness-to-pay values on particular tour buses equipped with more accessibility devices. Based on study findings, this study provides several management implications that help tourism professionals develop appropriate accessible travel products for their clientele with disabilities.     

Random regret minimization for consumer choice modeling: Assessment of empirical evidence

This paper introduces to the field of marketing a regret-based discrete choice model for the analysis of multi-attribute consumer choices from multinomial choice sets. This random regret minimization (RRM) model, which has recently been introduced in the field of transport, forms a regret-based counterpart of the canonical random utility maximization (RUM) paradigm. This paper assesses empirical results based on 43 comparisons reported in peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, with the aim of finding out to what extent, when, and how RRM can form a viable addition to the consumer choice modeler's toolkit. The paper shows that RRM and hybrid RRM–RUM models outperform RUM counterparts in a majority of cases, in terms of model fit and predictive ability. Although differences in performance are quite small, the two paradigms often result in markedly different managerial implications due to considerable differences in, for example, market share forecasts.     

Does buffet choice architecture affect intake? The effect of relocating butter at a breakfast buffet on food intake

The aim of this study was to investigate if a changed default reduces the intake of butter among students at a breakfast buffet. Students were divided into two groups and served themselves from a breakfast buffet. The control group was offered a buffet where the butter was easily accessible, whereas the intervention group was offered a buffet where a request had to be made for butter. Single packed portions of butter taken from each part of the buffet, the number of students, and the number of habitual users in each group were recorded. At the regular buffet, 67 of 115 students were habitual butter users and 81 packs of butter were taken. At the buffet with the changed default, 16 of the 56 students were habitual butter users. Seventeen packs of butter were taken from the buffet. Slightly displacing butter at a breakfast buffet and forcing students to ask for that option significantly reduced uptake.     

Demand for ecolabeled seafood in the Japanese market: A conjoint analysis of the impact of information and interaction with other labels

The use of seafood ecolabels is expanding in the world marketplace, but so are labels indicating other product attributes, such as country of origin and wild vs. farmed. The interactive effects of these labels and attributes in evaluating consumers’ preferences for ecolabeled seafood are relatively unexplored. In this paper we investigate (1) the direct and interactive effects of seafood ecolabels with other common fish labels, and (2) how consumers’ perceptions about the state of marine stocks and the valuation of ecolabels may be affected by different information. We find moderate interactive effects between ecolabels and country of origin labels, whereas the valuation for seafood ecolabels is fairly high. In terms of information, we find that consumers’ perceptions about fish stock levels changed (negatively) after receiving information on declining stock levels, and more sensationalized information led to increased change. However, valuation for a seafood ecolabel increases only when the information was perceived positively (credible/interesting); whereas exaggerated information (which was also perceived less credible) had insignificant effects on WTP.     

Debt sustainability in emerging market countries: Some policy guidelines from a fan-chart approach

This paper uses a probabilistic approach to simulate the medium-term public debt trajectories of several major emerging market countries. We extend the standard debt sustainability analysis framework so as to more faithfully reproduce these countries’ economic reality in two aspects. First, we allow them to differ in the cyclical stance of their fiscal policy and in their degree of fiscal responsiveness to debt. Second, we explicitly integrate the specific risk premium paid by each country when borrowing in foreign currency. It allows us to evaluate the impact of alternative policies that the government may consider to improve sustainability. The results lead to three policy recommendations: i) a country should consider decreasing its exposure to currency risk only in extreme cases (like Argentina); ii) on the contrary, greater fiscal responsiveness (i.e. stronger fiscal tightening whenever there is a debt increase) could enhance sustainability to a much greater extent; iii) countries with low responsiveness to debt or a poor fiscal consolidation track record should be cautious with countercyclical fiscal policies, as they may trigger an unsustainable debt trajectory in the trough of the economic cycle.     

Currency substitution,risk premia and the Taylor principle

This paper studies the equilibrium determinacy properties of a simple interest rate rule in a small open economy subject to currency substitution (i.e., the use of a foreign currency for domestic transactions) and risk premia on foreign borrowing. It shows that if currencies are substitute in the provision of liquidity services the rule׳s response to inflation has to be sufficiently above unity for the equilibrium to be locally determinate. This reinforced Taylor principle requirement appears to be more binding in economies characterized by a larger elasticity of currency substitution, more debt-elastic country risk premia, and intermediate degrees of dollarization in transactions.     

Do currency undervaluations affect the impact of inflation on growth?

In this paper, we investigate how the level of currency undervaluations affects the effect of inflation on growth in a sample of 62 countries over the 1980–2015 period. While previous studies find a positive effect of an undervalued currency, we show that higher currency undervaluations reinforce the contractionary effect of inflation on growth. As an undervalued currency is associated with supplementary inflation pressures arising from a cost-push inflation phenomenon and economy overheating, growth is thus penalized. This result is shown to be robust to the exclusion of currency crises episodes from our sample, and dependent of the development level of countries. Specifically, it holds in the case of emerging countries, but not for developing economies. Consequently, policies based on undervaluations should not be encouraged for emerging economies as they tend to reinforce the contractionary effect of inflation on growth.     

Wildlife viewing: The impact of money-back guarantees

Wildlife sightings are not always guaranteed. To address this risk, tour operators often offer a money-back guarantee as a refund mechanism. However, studies have overlooked the influences of such refund mechanisms on tourists' tour participation decisions and tourism revenue. We conducted choice experiments to examine the impact of such mechanisms using a case of Amami rabbit tourism in Japan. We found that the guarantee significantly influences the tourists’ decision-making and tour revenue. In particular, we found that the expected tourist participation rate and tour guide revenue vary drastically depending on the probability of the rabbit encounter. The maximum expected revenue from the tour with a 90% chance was about 20 times larger than that with a 10% chance. This indicates that conserving wildlife to maintain the sighting probability raises tour benefits, creating a win-win situation by balancing conservation and tourism development.     

How useful is an Asian Currency Unit (ACU) index for surveillance in East Asia?

An Asian Currency Unit (ACU) index is constructed using an alternative procedure which minimizes a basket or portfolio of assets expressed in terms of national currencies. Using this estimated ACU index and an ACU deviation indicator, the main finding of this study based on the current trajectory of East Asian currencies relative to this regional ACU benchmark is that there is a formation of two contrasting groups of countries in the region—one group of strong currencies and one group of weak currencies. We emphasize that this contrasting trajectory in East Asian intra-regional exchange rates implies disturbed competitive trading relationships in the region, which may result in wasteful beggar-thy-neighbor policies. As emphasized in other recent studies (e.g., Kawai and Takagi, 2012), the region needs a framework for exchange rate policy coordination that will promote intra-regional exchange rate stability. We suggest two important ways in which the region can capitalize on using an ACU index for surveillance purposes in the immediate term. One way is to assess “over- and undervaluation” of individual currencies from the regional ACU average. The other is to use it as a monitoring device for excessive flows of international capital within the region.     

The International Politics of Reactive Currency Statecraft: Japan’s Reaction to the Rise of the Chinese Renminbi

This study analyses how a state’s reactive currency statecraft – its strategic reaction to an international currency issued by a foreign state – is shaped, by devoting special attention to its broad foreign policy stance towards the state issuing that international currency, with a main empirical focus on the Japanese case with regard to the Chinese renminbi. This research argues that a state uses its policy related to a foreign international currency as a diplomatic means of managing its political relationship with the state issuing that currency, while also showing that in general most market actors are not greatly interested in their governments’ policies regarding foreign international currencies, especially those that are newly internationalising ones. This study finds as well that the conventional notion of ‘competition’ between international currencies does not necessarily affect a state’s reactive currency statecraft, even if its own currency is a major international one. All of this suggests that the inter-state politics between the state issuing an international currency and foreign states does have a crucial impact on the currency’s international use, especially during its early stages of internationalisation. It also implies that a state’s reactive currency statecraft can be fluid, depending upon the directions of its foreign policy.