Transcending Emotional Community: A Qualitative Examination of Older Adults and Masters' Sports Participation

This qualitative study examined meanings of community as they developed among older adults who participate in Master's sports. Four themes emerged through data analysis that described what a sense of community meant to study participants: a shared sporting interest, comrades in continued activity, relevant life purpose, and giving back. These themes each lend general support to the four elements that constitute McMillan and Chavis' (1986) McMillan, D. W. and Chavis, D. M. 1986. Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14: 6–23. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] sense of community construct. The findings of this study counter the claims that leisure-related experiences of community are largely episodic, emotional and fleeting, and do little to provide sustained experiences of community. This paper concludes with recommendations for further research.     

Park Usage,Social Milieu,and Psychosocial Benefits of Park Use Reported by Older Urban Park Users from Four Ethnic Groups

Structured interviews were conducted with African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American and Caucasian-American park users (N = 463) during one of their visits to a large urban park. The participants varied from 55 to 93 years of age. Most (77%) of the interviews were conducted by interviewers of the same ethnicity as the interviewee, and interviews were conducted in Spanish or Chinese when that was the preferred language of the interviewee. A stratified quota sampling plan was established to ensure that interviews were conducted in all areas of the park, at all times of the day and on both weekdays and weekends. Preliminary analyses indicated that neither gender nor age differences accounted for a meaningful percent of the variance in the dependent variables. Consequently, chi-square analyses and analyses of variance were performed with ethnicity as the independent variable. Significant differences were found among the ethnic groups in their use of park facilities, the social milieu within which they visit the park, and their ratings of the psychosocial benefits of park use.     

The benefits of and constraints to participation in seniors’ online communities

Participation in seniors' online communities is a significant trend in elders' leisure use of the Internet. Based on an online survey of 218 members of 16 communities, this study explored the experience of participation in such communities. Results identified seven psychological benefits resulting from participation, the most salient being ‘Joyfulness’, ‘Stimulation’ and ‘Companionship’. Analysis also revealed various positive impacts on members' offline social life, interests and activities, as well as instrumental contribution. Negative experiences and several constraints to participation were discovered as well. Still, the findings suggest that the communities offer various mechanisms for enhancing seniors' well-being and promoting successful ageing.     

Emotion,affect, and risk communication with older adults: challenges and opportunities

Recent research suggests that emotion, affect, and cognition play important roles in risk perception and that their roles in judgment and decision‐making processes may change over the lifespan. This paper discusses how emotion and affect might help or hinder risk communication with older adults. Currently, there are few guidelines for developing effective risk messages for the world's aging population, despite the array of complex risk decisions that come with increasing age and the importance of maintaining good decision making in later life. Age‐related declines in cognitive abilities such as memory and processing speed, increased reliance on automatic processes, and adaptive motivational shifts toward focusing more on affective (especially positive) information mean that older and younger adults may respond differently to risk messages. Implications for specific risk information formats (probabilities, frequencies, visual displays, and narratives) are discussed and directions for future research are highlighted.     

Examining older consumers’ loyalty towards older brands in grocery retailing

This paper compares the buying behaviours of older and younger consumers of older and newer brands in grocery retailing. We analysed 88,000 purchases of 60 brands from six categories. Behavioural loyalty measures for different consumer age cohorts were calculated and compared relative to each brand's launch date. Results showed older consumers do not buy older brands more often than newer brands. Older consumers also do not principally buy older brands. Therefore, brands of all ages compete for consumers of all ages. Findings indicate that for newer brands, older consumers should not be ignored as a market for growing the brand. For older brands, despite the default advantage of long-term exposure of older consumers, such advantage will fade if these brands fail to maintain a competitive presence in the market, as older consumers trial and become loyal to newer brands.     

Office-based and home-care for older adults in primary care: A comparative analysis using the Nash bargaining solution

Three care delivery settings are compared in this study: office-based care, home-care, and mixed-care, i.e., office-based care combined with home-care, in solo, small, medium, and large primary care practices. The objective of this paper is to identify which of these settings better achieves the secondary goals of the so-called quadruple aim, i.e., reducing costs, improving the patient experience, and improving the physician experience. A multi-objective integer programming formulation is developed to capture the elements of strategic health care planning. The formulation considers the minimization of four objective functions: the total cost of care workers, the total number of care workers, the total rejected demand and unsatisfied preferred care location, and the total panel size of the providers. Instead of computing the entire Pareto frontier, we used the Nash bargaining solution to determine a single Pareto optimal solution for the problem. The approach was tested using real world instances, which can be adjusted to any specific primary care practice. The numerical results show that none of the settings provides the smallest values in all objective functions. The choice of a setting for a primary care practice depends on the secondary goals that the practice desires to emphasize, and, in most cases, it is independent of the type of practice size. For the analyzed instances, a calculated overall score for each setting determined that, on average, the settings based on home-care strengthen the achievement of the secondary goals of the quadruple aim more so than in comparison to the office-based physician settings.     

健康信息获取渠道对城市老年人健康信息素养的影响 ——基于我国西部地区三省市的问卷调查分析

基于2017年中国西部三个省市的812份老年人调查数据,利用列联表交叉分析和回归分析方法,探讨健康信息获取渠道对西部地区城市老年人健康信息素养的影响。研究发现:与媒介传播渠道相比,通过人际传播渠道获取健康信息的城市老年人健康信息素养水平普遍要低;通过杂志图书和电视获取健康信息对城市老年人健康信息素养产生正向影响作用;通过杂志图书和电视获取健康信息、受教育水平高、汉族、自评经济状况好、具有慢性病患病经历、主动获取健康知识的城市老年人更有可能具备充足的健康信息素养。     

Costs of complying with quality requirements in meal services for older adults

ABSTRACT

Care of older adults, including meal service to home-dwelling individuals is under pressure for improving its resource utilization. There is concern for potential meal quality impacts of this development – and subsequently for the users’ food intake and nutritional status. The objective of the study is to examine the municipalities’ additional costs of initiatives to improve quality in the supply of meal services for the home-dwelling elderly. An economic optimization model was developed and used to determine the cost-minimizing meal production scheme under alternative specifications regarding production methods, ingredient sourcing, composition of dishes, menu variation, and delivery frequency for each municipality in Denmark, while taking heterogeneity of users into account. Alternative modifications to the quality standards within these dimensions have been analyzed. Results suggest that except for higher delivery frequency, the additional costs of the considered quality improvements are modest (1–5% of the current cost), whereas daily delivery would increase the cost by 10–15% in several municipalities. Despite relatively low additional costs, Danish municipalities may lack the economic incentive to undertake such quality improvements, because the additional costs cannot be passed on to the users; thus, municipalities will need to finance these costs by savings on other municipal services.     

Essential customer service factors and the segmentation of older visitors within wellness tourism based on hot springs hotels

Tourism-related industries have emphasized the wellness tourism market when numerous countries now face an aging population. Many studies have indicated that strong customer service increases competitive advantage. However, customer service-related research from the perspectives of customers and operators is rare. This study adopted a two-phase approach to incorporate the perspectives of older adults and operators in wellness tourism into the service factors. We extracted service factors from face-to-face interviews with senior managers and experienced consultants of the hot springs hotel industry conducted in Phase 1. During Phase 2, we interviewed older adults at hot springs, and performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the reliability and validity of customer service factors. The results highlighted the following seven customer service factors: “health promotion treatments,” “mental learning,” “experience of unique tourism resources,” “complementary therapies,” “relaxation,” “healthy diet,” and “social activities.” According to these service factors, the older adults interviewed were divided into a holistic group, physiocare group, and leisure and recreation group using cluster analysis. Finally, we propose socio-demographic variables for describing the specific characteristics of the three clusters identified.     

Older adults’ parasocial interaction formation process in the context of travel websites: The moderating role of parent-child geographic proximity

This study aims to identify the effects of age identity and innovativeness on parasocial interaction (PSI), and the moderating effect of parent-children proximity between age identity and PSI, and to examine the causal relationships between PSI, well-being and word-of-mouth (WOM). A sample of 271 U.S. residents aged 50 and older were recruited through an online survey company. The conceptual model was developed and tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The results found that psychological and physical age have positive effects on PSI, whereas social age has a negative one. Importantly, innovativeness had a negative impact on PSI regardless of the age identity. The psychological and social age induced PSI to a stronger extent when the children lived out of state. Finally, PSI was found to lead to well-being and WOM, whilst well-being itself had a positive effect on WOM. The managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.