Effects of time pressure,type of shopping,and store attributes on consumers’ satisfaction with grocery shopping

The aim of this study is to investigate whether satisfaction with grocery stores is affected by type of grocery shopping in conjunction with time pressure, and which attributes are important for satisfaction. Fictitious grocery stores are constructed according to a fractional factorial design by varying access, price level, supply quality/range, and service quality. In an Internet survey, 1023 Swedish consumers rated satisfaction with major vs. fill-in shopping imagining they were under high or low time pressure. The results showed that satisfaction is higher for fill-in shopping than major shopping, that time pressure has no effect on satisfaction, and that price level, service quality, and product quality/range are more important for satisfaction with major shopping, whereas access is more important for satisfaction with fill-in shopping. It is also found that the importance of attributes for satisfaction depends on type of shopping more than on individual characteristics.     

Audit as Leviathan: Constructing Quality Registers in Swedish Health Care

This paper explores the rise of an audit practice: the national quality registers in Swedish health care. Based on actor‐network theory, the study tells the story of an actor‐network formed by physicians in the 1970s who mobilized themselves around a common object; to develop the knowledge‐base of medical professionals. However, over time more actors became persuaded of the potential of the network and associate themselves with it, resulting in reformed registers. The study shows how the network develops into a macro‐actor, a Leviathan in health care, how this macro‐actor comes to affect health care practices and how it contributes towards maintaining a new governance regime.     

Rational Partisan Theory: Evidence for Seven OECD Economies

According to the Rational Partisan Theory of business cycles ("RPT"), ex ante uncertainty about the outcome of elections will generate post-election output growth fluctuations. This paper employs vote prediction equations and opinion polls to compute election win probability estimates for 62 elections in seven OECD economies. The probability estimates are used to calibrate partisan intervention terms entered in output growth regressions. For the UK and, to some extent, Canada and Australia, our results are supportive of the RPT. For the US, the calibrated intervention terms are dominated by a partisan dummy variable turned on after each election.     

Competition between farmed and wild salmon: the Japanese salmon market

This article examines the Japanese market for salmon. This market is of interest, since it is the largest and most diversified salmon market in the world with wild and farmed species, from Europe and South and North America, competing in the same market. In contrast to the European Union (EU)‐ and U.S.‐markets, there have been neither trade conflicts nor trade restrictions. The Japanese market can hence provide information about the impact of bringing substantial quantities of a new product into a market, and the effect of large‐scale aquaculture on traditional fisheries. In this article, market integration between wild and farmed salmon on the Japanese market is examined, using both bivariate and multivariate cointegration analysis. Tests for the Law of One Price are also conducted. The results indicate that the species are close substitutes on the market, and that the expansion of farmed salmon has resulted in price decreases for all salmon species.     

The case for ethical technology assessment (eTA)

New technologies often give rise to previously unknown ethical problems, and it often takes many years to fully integrate them in society. We propose a new form of technology assessment that will focus on the ethical implications of new technologies; ethical technology assessment (eTA). Ethical technology assessment will serve as a tool for identifying adverse effects of new technologies at an early stage. It should be undertaken in dialogue with technology developers and have the form of a continuous dialogue rather than a single evaluation at a specific point in time. eTA can be conducted on the basis of a check-list that refers to nine crucial ethical aspects of technology; (1) Dissemination and use of information, (2) Control, influence and power, (3) Impact on social contact patterns, (4) Privacy, (5) Sustainability, (6) Human reproduction, (7) Gender, minorities and justice, (8) International relations, and (9) Impact on human values. Ethical technology assessments should not be committed to any particular moral theory. Instead they should be open to different perspectives and solutions.     

Risk Perception and Demand for Risk Mitigation in Transport: A Comparison of Lay People,Politicians and Experts

This paper aims at examining risk perception, worry and demand for risk mitigation in transport and to compare judgements made by lay people, politicians and experts. The results are based on three questionnaire surveys carried out during autumn and winter 2004. The first study involved a representative sample of the Norwegian population (n = 1716), the second sample a group of Norwegian politicians (n = 146) and the third a group of experts on transport safety (n = 26). Studies carried out previously (Sjöberg, 1998a Sjöberg, L. 1998a. Worry and risk perception. Risk Analysis, 18(1): 85–93.  [Google Scholar], 1999 Sjöberg, L. 1999. Consequences of perceived risk: demand for risk mitigation. Journal of Risk Research, 2(2): 129–149.  [Google Scholar]) have given support to the idea that consequences are more important for demands of risk mitigation than probability assessments. In the present study it is hypothesised that this may be because they are associated with worry and it is also proposed that worry relates more strongly to demands for risk mitigation than evaluation of consequences. The results of SEM‐modelling showed that worry was a stronger and more significant predictor of demands for risk mitigation compared to consequences and worry mediated the effect of consequences. Probability assessment was a totally insignificant predictor. In accordance with previous studies, the results showed that experts demanded less risk reduction than lay people and politicians. The results indicate that this is because they stress the probability more than the other two groups.     

A systematic literature review identifying associations between outcomes and quality of life (QoL) or healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) in schizophrenia

Aims: There have been no systematic literature reviews (SLRs) evaluating the identified association between outcomes (e.g. clinical, functional, adherence, societal burden) and Quality-of-Life (QoL) or Healthcare Resource Utilization (HCRU) in schizophrenia. The objective of this study was to conduct a SLR of published data on the relationship between outcomes and QoL or HCRU.

Materials and methods: Electronic searches were conducted in Embase and Medline, for articles which reported on the association between outcomes and QoL or HCRU. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to identify the most relevant articles and studies and extract their data. A summary table was developed to illustrate the strength of associations, based on p-values and correlations.

Results: One thousand and two abstracts were retrieved; five duplicates were excluded; 997 abstracts were screened and 95 references were retained for full-text screening. Thrirty-one references were included in the review. The most commonly used questionnaire, which also demonstrated the strongest associations (defined as a p?Limitations: This study included data from an 11-year period, and other instruments less frequently used may be further investigated.

Conclusions: The evidence suggests that the PANSS is the clinical outcome that currently provides the most frequent and systematic associations with HCRU and QoL endpoints in schizophrenia.     

Recreation,cultivation and environmental concerns: exploring the materiality and leisure experience of contemporary allotment gardening

ABSTRACT

Allotment gardening has been identified as eco-leisure and associated with an ideological commitment to nature. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews and observations of the materiality of allotments, this study explores the enactment of allotment gardening as leisure. Findings demonstrate tensions and complexities in this leisure experience. Firstly, it shows that allotment gardening entails both the experience of freedom and enjoyment and a contrasting sense of duty. Secondly, the study suggests that the freely exercised activity of the individual plotter is negotiated within a dependency on the social structures of the allotment community. Thirdly, the study indicates that ecological orientations amongst plotters are expressed through gardening practices rather than articulated as ideologies. Finally, it demonstrates the potential of a material and consumption perspective in explorations of how both environmental concerns and/or materialism is practised through everyday leisure. Overall, the study contributes to multi-faceted understandings of motivations for allotment gardening and dynamics in the garden as a project of self-fulfilment and care for nature.     

The Effect of Animality in the Consumption Experience—A Potential for Disgust

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an experimental study to measure the effect of animality on consumers' disgust. In this study we have demonstrated how the negative emotion of disgust may be formed within meat consumption. While in the current literature animality is used as a broad and vaguely defined explanatory concept, we conceptualise and operationalise three components of animality; Meat Typicality, Vividness, and Personification. We show for each component that the more the meat stimuli can be animalised the more disgust they would provoke. Empirically, this study provides evidence for disgust with meat as being a phenomenon particularly concerning females and young consumers. The results also show a relatively good performance of personality measures as disgust sensitivity in the prediction of disgust with meat.