Impact of commuting by workers on household dietary diversity in rural India

Drawing insights from the literature on transformation of rural non-farm employment, pathways from agriculture to nutrition, and linkages between migration and nutritional status of household, we seek to understand differences in dietary diversity across three mutually exclusive types of rural Indian households: where all members work in rural areas, at least one member commutes to urban areas, at least one member has no fixed place of work. Our analysis is based on a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2009–10 and we use propensity score matching methods. We find that as compared to households with no commuters, households with rural–urban commuters have higher dietary diversity; whereas households with no fixed place workers have lower dietary diversity. We also find differences in dietary diversity across households which differ by their primary source of income.     

How much can we trust China’s investment statistics?

Abstract

Building upon recent research into the underestimation of China’s official final consumption expenditure, this paper investigates the quality of China’s investment data. We strictly follow the official method to estimate the annual gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) expenditure from 2004 to 2012, and the resulting figures are significantly different from the official statistics. This implies that the ‘total investment in fixed assets’ data, which are the primary source for the estimation of GFCF, grossly exaggerate actual investments, and that the official GFCF figures are not, strictly speaking, independently estimated, as they are purported to be. We deduce that the official gross capital formation figure is more or less a residual item obtained by subtracting final consumption and net exports from the official GDP figure that is calculated based on the production-cum-income approach. As a result, the underestimation of China’s consumption expenditure automatically translates into overestimation of investment expenditure. We conclude that China’s official consumption and investment statistics cannot be trusted as the basis for policy discussions and academic research.     

An empirical investigation of water consumption forecasting methods

Many regions on earth face daily limitations in the quantity and quality of the water resources available. As a result, it is necessary to implement reliable methodologies for water consumption forecasting that will enable the better management and planning of water resources. This research analyses, for the first time, a large database containing data from 2 million water meters in 274 unique postal codes, in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, which faces issues of droughts and overconsumption in the hot summer months. Using the R programming language, we built and tested three alternative forecasting methodologies, employing univariate forecasting techniques including a machine-learning algorithm, with very promising results.     

Non-stationary additive utility and time consistency

Within a continuous time life cycle model of consumption and savings, I study the properties of the most general class of additive intertemporal utility functionals. They are not necessarily stationary, and do not necessarily multiplicatively separate a discount factor from “per-period utility”. I prove rigorously that time consistency holds if and only if the per-period felicity function is multiplicatively separable in $t$, the date of decision and in $s$, the date of consumption, or equivalently, if the Fisherian instantaneous subjective discount rate does not depend on $t$. The model allows to explain “anomalies in intertemporal choice” even when the agents are time consistent and various empirical regularities. On the other hand, the model allows to characterize mathematically the “effective consumption profile” of naive, time-inconsistent agents.     

The role of accelerators in firm survival: An fsQCA analysis of Italian startups

Accelerators are a recent yet rapidly growing phenomenon within entrepreneurial ecosystems. The distinctive characteristics exhibited by accelerators, relative to previous incubation models, imply that accelerators may play a different role and have a different impact on the survival rates of participating firms. In this study, we explore the relationship between participation in an accelerator program and firm survival using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with key variables related to firm survival. We analyze 38 accelerated startups from five Italian accelerators and a control group of 38 non-accelerated Italian startups. Our findings support the business accelerator literature that regards accelerators as a new and distinct generation of business incubators. Our results suggest that participation in accelerator programs on its own does not influence firm survival. However, we found a relationship between firm survival and accelerated technology-based firms that do not export and between firm survival and accelerated firms in the service sector with a small team that do not export. We conclude that factors affecting the survival of accelerated firms are different from factors affecting the survival of incubated firms, providing further evidence of the characteristics that distinguish accelerators from incubators.     

社会规范对绿色消费的影响及作用机制

绿色消费是我国推进生态文明建设所倡导的消费行为,本文将社会规范划分为描述性规范、动态描述性规范和命令性规范,探讨了社会规范对绿色消费的影响及作用机制。通过两个实验研究发现,描述性规范、动态描述性规范、命令性规范对绿色消费的促进作用显著,三者对绿色消费的促进作用无显著差异;描述性规范、动态描述性规范会激活消费者的个人规范,个人规范在描述性规范、动态描述性规范影响绿色消费过程中发挥部分中介作用;命令性规范会引发消费者的后果认知,进而激活个人规范,后果认知与个人规范在命令性规范影响绿色消费过程中发挥完全中介作用。因此,可以发挥描述性规范、动态描述性规范对绿色消费的引导示范作用和命令性规范对绿色消费的监督作用,激活绿色消费的个人规范水平,更为有效地促进绿色消费。     

How do customers meet their needs in in-store and online fashion shopping? A comparative study based on the jobs-to-be-done theory

Understanding customer needs is key for fashion retailers to stay competitive and innovative. Surprisingly, however, extant literature mainly explores customer needs in terms of a garment and its attributes rather than viewing shopping as a problem-solving process to meet customer needs. Moreover, these studies fail to address how customers meet their needs in-store (ISFR) and online fashion retailing (OFR). To fill this research gap, we empirically investigate customers' personal and social needs and how they can be met through the jobs-to-be-done theory. Findings reveal that, beyond the purchase of a garment, customer needs can be fulfilled through different ways, such as smart technology or a person's high interaction with social others in ISFR and the online shop experience or a social linkage without social interaction in OFR. Additionally, our findings offer potential service innovations for fashion retailing managers.     

What's on the Menu? Policies to Reduce Young People's Sugar Consumption

Young people in the UK consume far above the maximum recommended levels of added sugar. It is likely that neither they nor their parents fully take account of the future health, social and economic costs of this high sugar consumption. This provides a rationale for policy intervention. The majority of young people's added sugar consumption occurs in the home, where purchases are typically made by parents. This means that understanding the purchase decisions of adults is important for policy design, even if the policies aim to reduce the consumption of young people. We discuss the merits of popular policies, including taxes, advertising restrictions and restrictions on the availability of specific foods, and we identify promising avenues for future research.     

Employing structural topic modelling to explore perceived service quality attributes in Airbnb accommodation

This study employs the structural topic model to extract service quality attributes from 242,020 Airbnb reviews in Malaysia. 22 service related topics were extracted from the corpus and four topics have not appeared in previous Airbnb studies. A widely used modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (MSQ) is cross-validated in this study by comparing its service quality attributes with the results of the topic modelling, which indicates that this MSQ can cover general Airbnb service quality attributes. This study also examines the different preferences of Malaysian and international Airbnb users and the changing patterns of the top six service quality attributes during a five-year period. The findings reveal that Malaysian Airbnb users care more about the appearance and location of the property, and international Airbnb users pay more attention to whether the property can accommodate a group of people. In addition, communication with the host is found to play an increasingly important role in Airbnb users’ lodging experiences.     

Becoming a tree when I will be dead? Why not! Generation X,Y and Z,and innovative green death practices

Within the theoretical field of ethical consumption, the study focuses on consumer behavior and innovative green death practices. While scarcely investigated in the marketing and consumer behavior research domains, at least four main reasons spur to consider the funeral industry as an interesting subject of enquiry: i) the sector boasts of a significant economic relevance; ii) it is extremely impactful from an environmental and social point of view; iii) it is witnessing interesting innovative processes in the direction of social and environmental sustainability; iv) consumer movements are rising all over the world asking for more sustainable death practices. Thus, adopting an augmented version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which includes individuals’ environmentally responsible consumption, and egoistic and altruistic environmental concern, the study investigates behavioral intention to adopt innovative green death practices (a green funeral) of people belonging to three different generations: X, Y, and Z. A purposive sample of 627 Italian people participated in an online the survey. Collected data were analyzed adopting an ordinal logit model. The results confirm the TPB predictive power also in the field of green funeral behavioral intention. Furthermore, environmentally responsible consumption and environmental concern – even though only in its altruistic component – positively influence behavioral intention, and generation exerts a moderating effect among the examined constructs. Overall, the research attempts to enrich the literature on ethical consumption by exploring the underinvestigated phenomenon of buying behavior of unsought and end-of-life products, that of green funerals, and provide managerial recommendations to funeral service sellers.