Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.     

Competition under revenue-cap regulation with efficiency benchmarking: tariff related incentives for gas transmission system operators in merged markets

Journal of Regulatory Economics - In Europe, gas market mergers aim at reducing restrictions on gas wholesale markets. Market mergers also allow network users to book transport capacity at...     

Towards developing financial management strategies for land reform beneficiaries in the Bloem‐fontein/Thaba Nchu area of the Free State province of South Africa

This article is based on research that was carried out to design financial management strategies for emerging farmers, and examines the financing problems anticipated for the beneficiaries of land reform in the Free State province. Discussions focus on criteria for detecting impending financial problems, in particular liquidity problems, and are based on the analysis of data gathered from emerging farmers by means of interviews and a questionnaire.     

Consuming apart,together: the role of multiple identities in sustainable behaviour

Although consumers’ awareness of the environmental and ethical consequences of their behaviour has grown, research on the role of multiple consumer identities in sustainability behaviours is scarce. The aim of the current study was to explain sustainable behaviour from a social identity perspective. We conducted a longitudinal cross‐national within‐subjects design consumer study in six countries (T1, N=3083; T2, N=1440). The results indicate that environmental sustainability can comprise several distinct yet overlapping sustainable behaviours. Multiple social identities seem to play different roles in these different behaviours. Therefore, efforts to enhance different sustainability behaviours are challenging yet promising. Once consumers incorporate a sustainable behaviour, it becomes part of their own identity and could lead to spill over effects on other closely related sustainable behaviours.     

Using Product Bundling to Facilitate the Adoption Process of Radical Innovations*

Generally, radical innovations are not easily adopted in the market. Potential adopters experience difficulties to comprehend and evaluate radical innovations due to their newness in terms of technology and benefits offered. Consequently, adoption intentions may remain low. This paper proposes bundling as an instrument to address these problems. More specifically, this paper examines how consumer comprehension, evaluation, and adoption intention of radical innovations may be enhanced by bundling such products with existing products. In addition, it is argued that the proposed effects are contingent upon the level of fit perceived to exist between the radical innovation and the product that accompanies it in the bundle. Furthermore, consumers' prior knowledge may affect the influence of bundling on the innovation adoption process as the interpretation of the meaning of new products may be strongly related to prior knowledge. This study therefore investigates whether consumer prior knowledge has such a moderating effect. Hypotheses are tested by means of an experimental study with three different radical innovations and distinguishing among offering the radical innovation separately, offering the radical innovation in a bundle with moderate perceived fit between the products, and offering the radical innovation in a bundle with high perceived fit between the products. Results show that product bundling enhances the new product's evaluation and adoption intention, although it does not increase comprehension of the radical innovation. Moreover, the results show that comprehension, evaluation and adoption intention of the innovation significantly decrease when consumers perceive a moderate fit between the products in a bundle. Taken together, these findings contribute to the bundling literature by showing not only that product bundling may indeed be an effective instrument to introduce a radical innovation but also that product bundling may be counterproductive when ignoring the critical role of perceived product fit as core characteristic of a product bundle. In addition, the notion that product bundling helps to enhance the evaluation and purchase intention of new and relatively complex products suggests a suitable strategy for new product managers to enhance benefits and reduce learning costs for radical innovations. Moreover, the effects of bundling on consumer appraisals of radical innovations are also shown to depend on the level of knowledge respondents possess regarding the product category of the radical innovation. More specifically, if bundled with a familiar product, novices tend to evaluate the innovative product more positively, but for experts no such effect can be detected. As such, these results provide additional specific implications for managers when introducing radical innovations in the market. Offering a radical innovation in a product bundle could be a fruitful strategy for companies that target customers with little or no prior knowledge in the product domain.     

Tourism-conservation enterprises for community livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in Kenya

Tourism-conservation enterprises (TCEs), such as eco-lodges, are a relatively new strategy of the African Wildlife Foundation for enhancing community livelihoods and wildlife conservation in wildlife-rich areas outside state-protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa. This article investigates the extent to which TCEs succeed in meeting these objectives by focusing on two enterprises in Kenya: the Sanctuary at Ol Lentille and the Koija Starbeds. Empirical data were gathered between October 2010 and March 2013 through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, literature review and document analysis. Both TCEs demonstrated significant contributions to employment, education, healthcare and security. Compared with the Starbeds, the Sanctuary realised a much larger conservation area and more pronounced biodiversity recovery. The analysis showed that the contribution of TCEs to livelihoods and biodiversity conservation depends on the nature of the partnership arrangement, as well as the local, national and international contexts in which they operate.     

Does Public Service Broadcasting Serve The Public? The Future of Television in the Changing Media Landscape

The media landscape is subject to substantial technological change. Given these changes, we assess whether a case for public service broadcasting (PSB) can still be made. The analysis leads to conclude that this is increasingly difficult. The main reason for this conclusion is that, due to technological developments, many market failures in the broadcasting industry are no longer relevant. The broadcasting market thus functions more and more like a normal market. This implies that the allocation tends to the efficient outcome, as long as consumer valuation is properly accounted for. This is not the case when there are externalities and possibly not when it comes to valuing quality. In the presence of these market failures, an efficient allocation is not warranted in the broadcasting industry. It is these remaining market failures that could potentially provide a rationale for a future PSB.Richard Nahuis: It is with great sadness that we have to inform you that Richard Nahuis suddenly passed away in December 2005 at the very young age of 34. This article is one among many of his last research efforts. We will miss him, as a colleague and as a person.This paper benefited from comments by two anonymous referees and Marcel Canoy. The paper builds on insights from Nahuis et al. (2005) but focuses on the role of the PSB and is more European oriented.     

Consumer innovativeness and its correlates: A propositional inventory for future research

This article summarizes the results of a systematic review of the literature on consumer innovativeness and its correlates and provides a propositional inventory for future research. The authors identified seventy-nine relevant empirical articles from international journals through a search of multiple databases using specific search terms, a manual search of marketing and consumer behavior journals and a cross-reference search. The results show that innovativeness consists of different levels of conceptualization and operational processes. Based on these different conceptualizations, the authors offer propositions for further empirical exploration on consumer innovativeness.     

Vertical Unbundling in the EU Electricity Sector

In its September 2007 package of energy policy proposals the European Commission has expressed a clear preference for ownership unbundling as the most effective way of separating transmission from other stages of the value chain, which is regarded as necessary in order to promote infrastructure investment, fair network access and market transparency. The welfare effects of this measure are, however, still hotly debated. The following articles highlight the pros and cons of ownership unbundling. * Thanks are due to Alberto Prandini for earlier discussions on this topic and to Hieu Tran for excellent research assistance. Funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. ** The contribution of this author is on personal title and does not bind the NMa in one way or another.     

Making explicit in design education: generic elements in the design process

In general, designing is conceived as a complex, personal, creative and open-ended skill. Performing a well-developed skill is mainly an implicit activity. In teaching, however, it is essential to make explicit. Learning a complex skill like designing is a matter of doing and becoming aware how to do it. For teachers and students therefore, it will be helpful to make the design process explicit. In this paper, a conceptual framework is developed to be more explicit about the design process. Based on research of the design process, on differences between novices and expert designers, and on personal experience in design education practice, five generic elements in the design process are distinguished: (1) experimenting or exploring and deciding, (2) guiding theme or qualities, (3) domains, (4) frame of reference or library, (5) laboratory or (visual) language. These elements are generic in the sense that they are main aspects and always present in the complex, personal, creative and open-ended design process.