Effect of community relationship management,relationship marketing orientation,customer engagement,and brand trust on brand loyalty: The case of a commercial bank in Thailand

Business uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought financial and banking industries under stress. This study examines brand loyalty (BL) in the Thai banking industry by integrating community relationship management (CoRM) (4Cs model), relationship marketing orientation (RMO), customer engagement (CE), and brand trust (BT). It analyzes how a Thai commercial bank used four success factors to create new client acquisition, business efficiency, long-term relationships, and BL. We use quantitative data and structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify variables influencing the BL of 1650 customers of a Thai commercial bank. We found CoRM and RMO's key success factors indirectly affected BL by mediating CE and BT. These results may improve sustained performance effectiveness in the banking industry now and in the future.     

Measuring pesticide overuse and its determinants: Evidence from Vietnamese rice and fruit farms

Pesticides have long been important for the development of agricultural production. However, improper use of pesticides may result in inefficiency with respect to farm profitability, in addition to external effects of pesticide use on environmental and human health. This paper employs a production function that explicitly accounts for the role of damage abatement inputs (i.e. pesticides) in the production process, to examine the optimal use of pesticides. It then investigates determinants of pesticide overuse versus underuse and the intensity of overuse. The empirical application uses data on Vietnamese rice and fruit farms drawn from the 2016 Vietnamese Household Living Standards Survey. Results show about 95% of farmers overused pesticides for both rice and fruit farming systems. The Mekong Delta, also known as the ‘Rice Bowl’ of Vietnam, has higher levels of overuse on rice farms than two other regions. Overuse intensity is lower for female and poorer rice farmers while intensity is higher for those with more income and more family members. For fruit farms, younger farmers or those with more family members were more likely to overuse versus underuse pesticides.     

基于L模量的磁化方向估算新方法

在常规的磁异常处理过程中，可以假设无剩余磁化强度，且自退磁效应可以忽略，故总磁化强度方向与当代地磁场方向一致。然而，由于剩余磁化强度的存在，总场磁化强度方向与感应磁化强度方向可以完全不一样，进而影响磁测资料的处理、反演及解释。基于此，提出L模量与化极磁异常（RTP）互相关法来估算磁化方向，理论模型及实际资料试验证明该方法相比常规的方法估计磁化角度更为准确，具有更强的实际适用性和稳定性。     

Impact of information and communication technologies on fertilizer and pesticide use efficiency of China's grain production

Based on a panel data from National Rural Fixed Point Survey (NRFP), this study explored the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the fertilizer and pesticide use efficiency of China's grain production and the mechanisms using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and two-way fixed-effects model with two-stage least square (2SLS) estimation. The results show that the average fertilizer use efficiency (FE), pesticide use efficiency (PE) and comprehensive fertilizer and pesticide use efficiency (CFPE) of grain production were 0.286, 0.404, and 0.364 respectively during 2003–2011. It should be noted that the CFPE decreased by 48.39% during 2003–2011 and showed a descending trend in all regions. ICTs had significant positive effects on FE, PE, and CPFE which could be explained by providing farmers more sustainable knowledge and hence shifting farming practices from overusing fertilizer towards using farmyard manure as a substitute. ICTs' positive effects were more pronounced for farmers with higher-level education and in central region. Additionally, ICTs had significant spillover effects, extending from users to nonusers within the villages. These results suggest that ICTs could be considered as an effective way to increase the fertilizer and pesticide use efficiency and promote the sustainable development of agriculture in China.     

高标准农田建设、农业社会化服务对农药 投入的影响研究 ——基于江西省605户稻农的调查数据

研究目的：探究高标准农田建设对稻农农药投入的影响机理，为协调高标准农田建设与农药减量政策提供参考。研究方法：倾向得分匹配法、分位数回归、中介效应模型。研究结果：（1）高标准农田建设能够使稻农的亩均农药投入降低22.12%;(2)高标准农田建设对农药投入的影响存在异质性，对农药投入位于低分位点的农户和规模户产生的影响效应更加显著；（3）高标准农田建设通过提高农业社会化服务参与农业生产进而促进农药投入减量化；（4）不同类型的高标准农田建设项目产生的农药投入减量效应存在差异性。研究结论：通过继续推进高标准农田建设，针对不同资源禀赋农户采取差异化的农田建设力度，加大土地流转、扩张土地规模实现农业服务规模经营，以强化高标准农田建设的农药投入减量效果。     

When my neighbors matter: Spillover effects in the adoption of large-scale pesticide-free wheat production

We investigate the spillover effects in farmers’ adoption decisions of a novel pesticide-free wheat production system. To this end, we exploit the variability and asymmetry in the social ties among neighboring farmers. We find evidence of spillover effects in farmers’ adoption decisions as well as in farm and farmer characteristics. Our results further highlight the importance of accounting for potentially heterogeneous social ties in farmer networks beyond pure measures of spatial proximity: spillover effects are only robust once we account for the strength of social ties through farmers’ stated tendency to consult peers on agricultural decisions. Our findings highlight the relevance of peer influence in the diffusion of sustainable agriculture practices even in contexts of well-functioned institutions and high interest in environmental protection such as European agriculture. We discuss implications for the design of policies and programs for sustainable agriculture, which are currently in the center of attention in agricultural policymaking.     

Economic importance and structural robustness of the international pesticide trade networks

Pesticides are agricultural inputs that can significantly reduce yield losses, regulate plant growth, effectively liberate agricultural productivity, and improve food security. The availability of pesticides in economies worldwide is ensured by redistribution through international trade, with different economies playing different roles in this process. In this study, we measured and ranked the importance of economies using nine node metrics. We found that the clustering coefficient was negatively correlated with the other eight node metrics, whereas the other eight node metrics were positively correlated with each other and could be grouped into three communities (betweenness; in-degree, PageRank, authority, and in-closeness; out-degree, hub, and out-closeness). We further investigated the structural robustness of international pesticide trade networks proxied by large component size under three types of shocks to economies (node removal in descending, random, and ascending orders). The results showed that, except for the clustering coefficient, international pesticide trade networks are relatively robust under shocks to economies in ascending order but fragile under shocks to economies in descending order. By contrast, removing nodes with a clustering coefficient in ascending and descending order yielded similar robustness curves. Moreover, the structural robustness related to large component size evolved over time and exhibited an inverse U-shaped pattern.     

Exploring the role of pesticide traders in protecting farmers' benefit

Owing to the inadequacy of the public extension services, farmers in developing countries often rely on the suggestions of agricultural input traders. As profit-making agents, these traders, in their turn, may have an incentive to exploit farmers by suggesting relatively expensive inputs. In this study, the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) estimation method is applied to demonstrate that input traders in many ways play the substitute role of the public extension agents in a developing country. In the process, this study relied on primary information collected from 379 farmers in Bangladesh in two seasons (N = 758). Then the ESR estimation procedure is applied to predict farmer's expenditure on pesticides, conditional on whether or not they rely on traders' advice. Findings of this study suggest that pesticide expenditures are not statistically different between the farmers that rely on traders' suggestions and those that do not. The study thus concludes that by providing unbiased, useful information to the client farmers, profit-maximizing agricultural input traders render the services of public extension workers, which corrects possible market failures.     

基于改进的GM_Markon模型对北京创意产业发展的预测

创意产业产值受周边环境因素影响较大，在某些年份甚至出现局部较大畸变，通过相关文献学习，首先通过对灰色模型预测，然后经过残差修正增加模型规律性（采用两次残差累加），最后在残差修正灰色模型基础上应用改进的马尔科夫链提高预测精度，对2005-2014年北京创意产业产值数据验证算法有效性进行研究。此算法优点在于弥补灰色模型数据少，随机性大的缺陷，很好修正畸变数据和提高拟合度。