Perceived Determinants of Well-Being and Enjoyment Level of Leisure Activities

Two facets of leisure, perceived determinants of well-being and enjoyment of common leisure activities, were investigated in 388 participants. For well-being, a principal components (PCA) analysis yielded five components: competence, relatedness and health, wealth, personal values, and freedom of choice. For the enjoyment of leisure activities, another PCA generated seven components: wellness, sedentary leisure, intellectual leisure, social leisure, routine activities, self-realization, and inner peace. Different leisure enjoyment of young adults (18–30 years old) in contrast to adults and seniors was attributed to social transformations as also predicted by several theories of social change. The relationship between the determinants of well-being and enjoyment of leisure activities was statistically significant but meaningfully debatable.     

Equal Life Group Method of Depreciation: Part II Straight-Line Method of Cost Allocation for Integrated Properties

The Equal Life Group Plan (E.L.G.).is the ultimate refinement of the straight-line method of depreciation-rate determination. The straight-line method is designed to spread the cost of property as equally as possible year by year over its useful life. As usually interpreted, this means that an average depreciation rate is intended to be used throughout the life of a group of property units. The trend has been toward more and more groups, until now a group is often a vintage group, i.e., the property of a given class installed in one year.

If one average rate is applied to a vintage throughout its life span, only a part of the cost of short-lived units will be recovered during their lives. The shortage is made up during the life of the surviving units, but it is not fully made up until the year when the last surviving unit of the vintage is retired. What this means is that the depreciation reserve never reaches a ratio to plant in service as the age-to-life ratio of the plant.

The E.L.G. plan is designed to overcome this difficulty. Basically, it is a procedure which has the effect of charging to operations the cost of short-lived units during their life, and of longer-lived units during their life. In short, the cost of each unit is charged to operations during its expected life. Thus the depreciation reserve at all times should have a ratio to plant investment equal to the age-to-life ratio of existing plant.

In practice, the E.L.G. depreciation rate for a vintage of plant is determined very easily if studies are available which provide a sound basis for estimating the age of distribution of retirements for a vintage of plant. Such a distribution means that the vintage is divided into groups, as many groups as there are years expected for the life of the longest-lived unit in the vintage. This breakdown, of course, is statistical, because no one knows which units will have each of these lives-- but the percentage falling into each age group can be estimated accurately enough for this purpose. The depreciation rate for the vintage is simply the summation of the products of these percentages and their respective component depreciation rates. The rate for each component is the reciprocal of its life, modified, if necessary, by its expected net salvage.     

Urbanisation and Food Insecurity Risks: Assessing the Role of Human Development

The phenomenon of rapid urbanisation across the world has become a topic of increased scholarly inquiry. Yet, little attention has been paid to how urban growth affects countries’ food security and whether this association is modified by a country's level of development. The present study aims to fill this lacuna by examining the association between urbanisation and food security applying statistical modelling. The analysis uses country-level data, from the World Development Indicators and the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects. Using a Food Insecurity Risk Index (FIRI) as the outcome variable, the results confirm a significant negative impact of urban growth on food security at the country level. It further finds that rapidly urbanising countries with the lowest levels of human development are most at risk of food insecurity.     

Perceived Greenwashing: The Effects of Green Marketing on Environmental and Product Perceptions

Many firms are striving to improve their environmental positions by presenting their environmental efforts to the public. To do so, they are applying green marketing strategies to help gain competitive advantage and appeal to ecologically conscious consumers. However, not all green marketing claims accurately reflect firms’ environmental conduct, and can be viewed as ‘greenwashing’. Greenwashing may not only affect a company’s profitability, but more importantly, result in ethical harm. Therefore, this research extends past greenwashing studies by examining additional influences on and outcomes of perceived greenwashing. To do so, we conducted two studies, an interview study with consumer product and consulting firms, as well as an experiment examining consumers interacting with a company website. For these studies, we used multiple methods, including interviews, questionnaires, and neurophysiological techniques. We found that perceived greenwashing relates not only to environmental and product perceptions, but also to consumers’ happiness while interacting with the website. We also found that website interactivity relates to perceived greenwashing, environmental and product perceptions, and to the amount of interaction with the website. We conclude by discussing managerial and ethical implications for research and practice.

     

Drivers of Trust: Some Experiences from Hungarian Agricultural Cooperatives

This article examines the drivers of trust in the machinery-sharing cooperation arrangements of Hungarian field crops farms. Our research has focused on the role of 2 factors on the basis of the widely referred trust model: faith in loyalty and capability. The empirical results clearly confirm the hypothesis of the theoretical model, namely, partners will trust each other if their faith is high both in loyalty and in competence. Our research has also pointed out that the level of trust between partners is determined differently by the 2 examined factors: it is statistically proven that the impact of faith in loyalty is higher.     

The Value Relevance and Timeliness of Write-downs During the Financial Crisis of 2007–2009

This study examines the value relevance and timeliness of write-downs reported by North American and European banks during the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Our study extends Vyas (2011), considering the association between write-downs and stock returns to evaluate the performance of fair value standards during the crisis. Specifically, we investigate claims that strict enforcements of standards resulted in write-downs that were excessive or unnecessary due to temporary market price distortions, or conversely, that standards were flexible enough to allow managers to engage in earnings or capital management. Our empirical results show that both fair-value and aggregate write-downs are associated dollar-for-dollar with contemporaneous security returns, suggesting that, on average, write-downs were timely throughout the financial crisis.