Dysfunctional Customer Behavior Severity: An Empirical Examination

Although many studies assume that customers monotonically act in both a functional and a good-mannered way during exchange, considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that customers routinely behave negatively and often disrupt otherwise functional encounters. However, to date, rigorous empirical evidence of this phenomenon is lacking. This study synthesizes extant literature from a broad range of areas and advances two alternative conceptions of the factors associated with dysfunctional customer behavior severity. That is, after controlling for a variety of factors, the authors suggest that psychological obstructionism, disaffection with service, and servicescape variables are significantly associated with the severity of deliberate dysfunctional customer acts. The results provide insights for researchers interested in the darker side of service dynamics and generate useful implications for services practitioners charged with reducing the severity and the frequency of episodes of deviant customer behavior.     

Hedonic pricing and the spatial structure of housing data – an application to Berlin

Housing prices are largely determined by physical location. By applying the outsample prediction accuracy of rental prices as evaluation criteria, we examine whether the choice of the hedonic model additionally depends on the spatial structure of housing data, i.e. accounting for locational effects by either district fixed effects or spatial econometric modelling. Our results show that a generalised spatio-temporal model outperforms a district fixed effects model only if the spatial density – the weighted mean distance to nearest neighbours – is relatively small. Moreover, we use the required density thresholds to deduce a pseudo indifference curve, thereby showing that the ratio of the weighted spatial distance-to-the mean district diameter increases with the mean sample size per district. This emphasises the role of data structure and district choices for model selection. Differences in data can thereby serve as an explanation for contradictory findings in literature, whether spatial econometric methods or simple district fixed effects are used.     

Technology,market policies and institutional reform for sustainable land use in southern Mali

To identify appropriate interventions that support sustainable land use; a farm household modelling approach is applied to analyze micro-economic supply reactions to various policy measures. The modelling framework links agro-technical and economic data, and takes both production and consumption decisions into account, allowing land use and production technology adjustments in accordance with farm household objectives. Different types of farm households are distinguished on the basis of their resource endowments, savings coefficients and time discount rate. Actual and alternative (sustainable) cropping and livestock activities for different weather regimes are defined for southern Mali. The effects on sustainable land use and expected farm household welfare of adopting alternative technologies and modifying prices, transaction costs, access to credit and land taxes are demonstrated. Even with full information on sustainable technologies, strong policy interventions are required to halt soil degradation. Structural policies proved to be more effective than price policies to reduce soil degradation while maintaining positive income effects. When prices are determined endogenously, structural policy loses some effectiveness as an incentive for sustainable land use due to the effect of additional supply on local cereal and meat Prices.     

An integrated approach for ex-ante evaluation of public policies for sustainable agriculture at landscape level

An integrated methodological framework for ex-ante evaluation and planning of public policies for sustainable agriculture at agro-landscape level is proposed. The components of the framework are to: (1) determine the private, i.e. farmers’, and public benefits associated to agro-landscapes, consisting of an agricultural land-use system, according to its performance for several market and non-market functions. Market forces determine the market benefits and preferences of society the non-market benefits; (2) explore and select potential sustainable agro-landscapes based on the private and public benefits associated with possible land-use alternatives; (3) define efficient public policy mechanisms for improving social net benefit of agro-landscapes.The framework is illustrated with a case study in a small dairy farming dominated agro-landscape in The Netherlands, with gross margin, landscape quality, nature value and environmental health as the analysed ecosystem functions. Alternative landscapes consisting of hedgerow configurations and grassland management practices were explored, yielding a set of alternatives representing the solution space in terms of change in private and public benefits. Policy mechanisms were defined to move from the current to a desired landscape based on changes in social net benefits. Moreover, the necessity of a modification in the current agri-environmental support was analysed for each landscape. The analysis considered all farmers in the agro-landscape jointly. The results for the case study showed potential prototypes of landscapes and their performance compared to the current landscape. Extension was the most efficient policy mechanism to promote the change to the socially optimum landscape alternative.