Comparing levels of resident empowerment among two culturally diverse resident populations in Oizumi,Gunma, Japan

While resident empowerment has been a central aspect of the sustainable tourism literature, difficulties of putting the concept into practice have been noted given the heterogeneous nature of communities. “Community” is often divided by kinship, age, gender and ethnicity, and such division may influence the perceptions of empowerment. The goal of this study was to better understand heterogeneous perceptions of empowerment by administering the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale within the community of Oizumi, Japan. Oizumi has the highest concentration of Brazilian immigrants in Japan, and the town has embraced “ethnic neighborhood tourism” centered on Brazilian culture as a strategy for economic development. Oizumi's demographic makeup allowed for testing differences in perceived empowerment between members of the dominant ethnic group (Japanese) and members of the ethnic minority group (Japanese Brazilians). Analysis of 650 completed questionnaires revealed that Brazilians felt more psychologically and socially empowered than Japanese residents, indicating a shift in the balance of power between the ethnic groups. Results also revealed that the political dimension of empowerment was rated relatively low among both groups, suggesting a general lack of opportunities to participate in the planning process. Implications for both practice and theory are presented.     

Implications of Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Nontradable Goods for International Policy Cooperation

This paper investigates the welfare consequences of international policy cooperation by simultaneously introducing the following three elements in a standard two-country general equilibrium model: (i) general degrees of exchange rate pass-through, (ii) nontradable goods and their sector-specific productivity shocks, and (iii) general weights on goods in Cobb–Douglas consumption indices. There are two channels for possible mutual welfare gains from policy cooperation: First, cooperation can compensate for insufficient changes in the terms of trade when the degree of exchange rate pass-through is intermediate. Second, countries can cooperate in reaction to shocks in the nontradable goods sectors. This second channel is revealed by deriving an analytical condition for welfare gains under full pass-through and this condition is characterized by the weights in the consumption indices and the variances of sector-specific productivity shocks. Numerical evaluation demonstrates that when the two countries are symmetric and equal weights on consumption goods are assumed, welfare gains from cooperation increase as symmetric pass-through elasticity increases, which implies that the second channel dominates the first, whose effect on welfare gains is nonmonotonic in pass-through elasticity.     

Effect of agglomeration on technical efficiency of small and medium‐sized garment firms in Egypt

This study investigates the effect of agglomeration on technical efficiency of small and medium‐sized garment firms in Egypt. Using a sample of 502 firms, we estimated a translog stochastic frontier production function with inefficiency components. We also applied a switching regression model to address self‐selection in choice of agglomeration. Results confirm that agglomeration enhances technical efficiency of sampled firms through development of industrial linkages and accumulation of human capital. Given the increasing importance of cluster‐based development policies, we underscore the need to promote agglomeration of garment firms, and thereby foster forward and backward linkages to improve their efficiency and to develop global value chains.     

Factors affecting customers’ continued intentions to use Islamic banks

No study has concurrently verified the religious motives and attitudes that affected the customers’ continued intentions to use Islamic banks along with the importance of other factors and attributes associated with conventional banking services. This study examines factors affecting customers’ attitudes toward Islamic banks based on data obtained from interview surveys conducted in Jordan. The findings show that customers’ religious motives, their evaluations of a bank's compliance with Islamic law as an indication of the customers’ religious attitudes toward Islamic banks, and the ease of access to credit had a positive effect on the customers’ intentions to continue using Islamic banks. More specifically, the findings suggest that customers who continuously transact with Islamic banks more strongly emphasize religious attitudes, rather than credit constraints (such as the degree of access to credit) and religious motives. This study further reveals that religious attitudes, rather than mere religious motives, were the primary criterion for the customers’ continued intent to use Islamic banks, especially when considering the strong effect of their religious attitudes toward Islamic banks.

     

Incorporating emotion into social exchange: considering distinct resident groups’ attitudes towards ethnic neighborhood tourism in Osaka,Japan

While numerous studies have utilized SET to examine the residents’ attitudes towards tourism, relatively scant from the literature is a discussion regarding the influence of emotion generated through SET among residents on their attitudes towards tourism. In addition, past studies mainly explored the social exchange between visitors and locals, while neglecting the social exchange within a local community. The goal of this study is to examine the influence individuals’ emotions toward their ethnic counterparts within a community can have on residents’ (i.e., members of the dominant ethnic group—Japanese and members of the ethnic minority group—Koreans) attitudes toward ethnic neighborhood tourism within the Korean neighborhood of Ikuno, Osaka, Japan. Ikuno has the highest concentration of Korean residents in Japan, and the town has become a destination of cultural tourism centered on Korean culture. Analysis of 640 completed questionnaires revealed while attitudes of Korean residents, who are more likely to perceive economic benefits from tourism have more favorable attitudes towards tourism, Japanese residents form their particular attitudes towards tourism based on the emotional solidarity they experience with their Korean neighbors. These findings indicate both utility of economic approach of social exchange theory and significant role of emotion in social exchange.     

Gender and empowerment: assessing discrepancies using the resident empowerment through tourism scale

While gender equality and empowerment are core components of sustainable tourism, most of the literature has approached the concepts from qualitative perspectives, thus limiting the ability to empirically test for empowerment discrepancies between men and women. With this gap in mind, this study sought to test the widely held notion that empowerment discrepancies exist between men and women in tourism development. Discrepancies in psychological, social and political empowerment were tested for using the 12-item Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS). The RETS was administered across five sample populations, with results revealing that gender discrepancies were present, but surprisingly, not in the direction suggested in previous literature. In all three US samples, there was evidence that women were more likely to perceive themselves being empowered than men. The results from the two Japanese samples did not find any significant differences, which is of interest because Japan is traditionally seen a very patriarchal society. Applications of the RETS can be paired with qualitative research to better understand empowerment success stories and then to apply these best practices to other destinations where empowerment discrepancies are present. Future applications of the RETS are suggested to help initiate “gender mainstreaming” within the sustainable tourism literature.     

Perception of authenticity of tourist art among Native American artists in Santa Fe,New Mexico

This study investigated the authenticity of tourist art from the perspectives of Native American artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In‐depth interviews with nine artists revealed that authenticity of art for the artists strongly relates to the traditional manufacturing process. Indeed, the artists alter their art piece's exterior to appeal to tourists while also adhering to the traditional process of manufacture. Rather than connoting a loss of authenticity, they identify the process as an “enlargement” of the culture. The challenge for the artists is to improve understanding of the significance of the manufacturing process among tourists and younger generations of artists. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of a Multi-robot Cafe Based on Service Quality Dimensions

While AI applications are popular in many domains, they should work harmoniously with domain exerts and end users. Furthermore, to develop such harmonious AI applications, we need agile AI platforms for not only developers, but also domain experts. Currently, we have developed PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a user-centric platform to develop integrated intelligent applications. This paper reports on a multi-robot cafe as a practical application of PRINTEPS and evaluates its service quality at a university festival. It is not clear if robotic services are perceived as attractive and/or valuable, and how the concept of robotic services could lead to customer satisfaction. Therefore, the evaluation of the quality of such services is necessary to identify the key factors that could contribute to improving customer satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to identify key factors in improving customer satisfaction in robotic services by evaluating the service quality of the multi-robot cafe. We designed questionnaire items based on SERVQUAL which is one of the service quality evaluation measurement methods and conducted a questionnaire survey at a multi-robot cafe held at a university festival. From the collected data, we modeled and evaluated the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction to identify key factors in robotic services using a Bayesian network. In addition, the experiment confirms the usefulness of PRINTEPS.     

The Japanese Taylor rule estimated using censored quantile regressions

This paper conducts quantile regressions and obtains detailed estimates of monetary policy rules in Japan using a sample that includes recent periods of zero interest rates. Taking into account censoring and endogeneity, we compute censored quantile instrumental variable estimators and compare them with estimates from uncensored quantile regressions. The estimation results indicate that not accounting for censoring of interest rates tends to result in downwardly biased estimates. Moreover, our censored quantile regressions lead to relatively flat coefficients of inflation and insignificant coefficients of the output gap over the conditional interest rate distribution, suggesting that monetary policy in Japan may be well described by a linear rule.     

The Cyclical Properties of Unemployment and Vacancies in Taiwan

This paper examines the quantitative performance of the standard search and matching model in explaining the cyclical behaviour of Taiwan's labour market. Although the model accounts well for the data in some dimensions, simulated volatility is counterfactually very low, as pointed out in Shimer (2005) for the US labour market. Nevertheless, calibrated to Taiwan's data, the model explains a higher proportion of the observed volatility than the Shimer (2005) results, due to a higher parameter value for leisure; if an extremely high value is assumed, the model explains substantially better, but still partially, the volatility in Taiwan.