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In a globalized economic system, the role of agrifood production is to ensure at the same time both the population's livelihood and environmental resource conservation. The present study aims at expanding the debate on the potentials of the fair-trade in terms of environmental sustainability.

The research presents a methodology divided into three phases: (1) the identification of the water footprint values associated with the production of bananas, cocoa and coffee imported from developing countries to Italy; (2) the calculation of the virtual water volumes used to produce the crops imported from developing countries to Italy through fair-trade; (3) the analysis of the economic water productivity, obtained by the fair-trade premium, for bananas, cocoa and coffee.

The results of this study identified and measured the amount of virtual water flows and water savings or losses deriving from the fair-trade of bananas, cocoa and coffee. The average virtual water flow related to the fair-trade imports in Italy amounts to 7.27 million m³ for bananas, 22,275 m³ for cocoa and 14,334 m³ for coffee. The research findings also highlight that fair-trade and the related premium ensures at the same time the achievement of social and institutional purposes but also the remuneration of virtual water used within the life cycle of the imported crops.

Previous scientific literature showed that fair-trade premium has commonly been used to finance environmental protection. No study has evaluated the environmental impacts associated with fair-trade, nor the monetary value associated with the natural resources exploited to produce crops to be exported. This empirical paper fills a literature gap in terms of identification, measurement and evaluation of virtual water flows along the supply chain processes of some fair-traded crops, also providing, through the economic water productivity approach, a useful tool for decision-makers.

This paper aims to present arguments about how a complex concept of privacy labeling can be a solution to the current state of privacy.

The authors give a precise definition of Privacy Labeling (PL), painting a panoptic portrait from seven different perspectives: Business, Legal, Regulatory, Usability and Human Factors, Educative, Technological and Multidisciplinary. They describe a common vision, proposing several important “traits of character” of PL as well as identifying “undeveloped potentialities”, i.e. open problems on which the community can focus.

This position paper identifies the stakeholders of the PL and their needs with regard to privacy, describing how PL should be and look like to address these needs. Main aspects considered are the PL’s educational power to change people’s knowledge of privacy, tools useful for constructing PL and the possible visual appearances of PL. They also identify how the present landscape of privacy certifications could be improved by PL.

The authors adopt a multidisciplinary approach to defining PL as well as give guidelines in the form of goals, characteristics, open problems, starting points and a roadmap for creating the ideal PL.

One of today’s major problems in the field of e‐learning is that the creation of high‐quality content is still rather time consuming and expensive. In the past, many efforts have been made to produce educational content on the fly, but the results were mainly static blocks of recorded lecture lacking sophisticated navigation facilities. Facing this challenge the authors developed the concept of hyper‐presentations. During the live presentation content‐ and time‐based metadata is captured and stored in a lightweight and player‐independent format. With this metadata powerful navigation facilities like real time navigation and full text search in audio or video data can be generated automatically. This improves flexibility and interoperability of technical solutions, which are both key factors in the emerging rapid e‐learning market.

The purpose of this paper is to assess and explain the trust situation in EU agri‐food supply chains in the context of the assumption that the existence of well‐functioning trust‐based supplier‐buyer relationships enables a secure and safe food supply.

Using structural equation modelling (SEM) and survey data (n=1,430) on supplier‐buyer relationships from six different countries, two commodity supply chains (meat and cereals) and two supply chain stages (farmer‐processor and processor‐retailer), main trust determinants are identified and discussed. By simultaneously covering two supply chain stages the analysis adopts a perspective beyond the dyad.

The SEM results indicate that trust in supply chain partners can be significantly improved by effective communication and by positive past collaboration. The existence of personal bonds (ties) between partners does not seem to play a direct role in the retailer‐processor relationship but is important when dealing with farmers. In both supply chain stages positive past collaboration as well as the existence of personal bonds also indirectly enhance trust by promoting effective communication which in turn positively impacts on trust levels, thus proofing communication to be a powerful mediator variable.

This study's findings can be used by practitioners to learn how to improve trust in their supply chain relationships and how to communicate effectively.

The results provide large‐scale empirical evidence on trust drivers in European agri‐food supply chains thus confirming earlier studies on the topic from other industries.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors which influence the sustainability of selected German agri‐food chains.

The paper is composed of a literature review, qualitative and quantitative expert interviews, and structural equation modelling.

Effective communication, the existence of personal bonds and equal power distribution between buyers and suppliers are key determinants of sustainable vertical business relationships. The relevance and significance of the determinants differ across the investigated chain stages (farmer‐processor versus processor‐retailer), the use of formal versus non‐formal relationship types and the maturity of a relationship.

Further research needs to empirically apply the analysis to agri‐food chains other than the investigated pig‐meat and cereal ones.

Agribusiness and farm managers can enhance the sustainability of their business relationships by effective communication by fostering personal bonds with their suppliers and/or buyers, and by employing – and retaining – key staff who fit culturally and/or socially with those with whom they transact. Finally, managers also need to be aware of the fact that a business relationship can be negatively affected by abusing a more powerful market position.

A model for measuring the sustainability of vertical business relationships is presented and empirically tested. In addition, factors influencing the sustainability of these relationships are identified for the case of selected German agri‐food chains.

For team leaders or supervisors (functional coordinators (FCs)) warehouses are one of the most difficult places to supervise and manage subordinate workers. FCs themselves can be supervised by their bosses in different ways, either semi-autonomously or in a traditional authoritarian manner. However, different supervision environments for FCs may affect the performance of the warehouses they work in. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkages between different supervision environments; FCs’ trust in and satisfaction with their bosses, warehouse service quality and company growth.

Structural equation modelling (path analysis) is applied to a randomly drawn data sample (n=95) of dairy warehouses from the UK.

The results show that semi-autonomous supervision has a strong positive impact on FCs’ trust and satisfaction and on warehouse service quality which positively affects company growth. In addition, FCs’ trust and satisfaction are found to be important antecedents of warehouse service quality and they also directly enhance company growth. In contrast, traditional supervision does not build trust nor creates satisfaction and has a negative direct impact on warehouse service quality.

While conducted based on a small sample, the study examines important performance determinants and thus enhances the understanding of how to better manage warehouses in particular in a logistically challenging industry.

This study empirically analyses the linkages between supervision environments, warehouse service quality and company growth and thus contributes to determine a best-practice approach for modern warehouse management.

Expert wine awards are commonly used by consumers to reduce complexity in wine choice but little is known about expert vs non‐expert perceptions of sensory wine quality. This paper aims to examine if expert ratings are suitable quality indicators for consumers and whether there are certain groups of consumers that find expert awards more useful than others.

The paper compares German consumer ratings obtained in a sensory laboratory with German Agricultural Society's quality competition awards. it tests for the correspondence between expert and non‐expert ratings and for the concordance within the non‐expert group. Estimation of a linear mixed model serves to identify consumer‐side variables with an influence on individual rating distance.

Correspondence between expert and non‐experts and concordance within the non‐expert group were found to be insignificant. Experienced wine consumers with sufficient specific knowledge and superior self‐reported sensory skills better replicated expert ratings.

With 216 wine ratings obtained from 36 German consumers, the number of observations is small. Future research should verify above findings by considering more consumers and the stability of ratings across time.

The findings suggest that although some consumer segments may find expert awards to be useful decision cues, for a large portion of the market, there is demand for a more consumer‐orientated system of sensory quality evaluation and labelling.

This paper is the first to address the usefulness of expert ratings to novice and experienced wine consumer populations. The statistical procedures employed (including linear mixed modelling) are shown to be useful techniques to handle the repeated measurement nature of the data.

Unconscious biases against certain groups aid in forming assumptions which may be promulgated in the USA via popular news media linking rare but memorable violent acts with specific groups. However, the relationship between marginalized group association, assumptions regarding the motive for violent acts and individual media consumption has never been directly examined. This study aims to directly examine this relationship.

In the present study, individuals read a vignette of a mass shooting in which the perpetrator’s implied religion (i.e. Islam or unknown religion) was manipulated. Participants then indicated their assumptions regarding motive (i.e. terrorism or mental illness) and personal media consumption habits.

Contrary to hypotheses, differences in assumed motive based on implied religion were not found; participants were not more likely to associate an assumed Muslim perpetrator with terrorism as a motive or consider the assumed non-Muslim perpetrator to be mentally ill.

These unexpected findings are discussed in the context of the data-collection period, which coincidentally overlapped with a well-publicized act of domestic terrorism that led to a unique national debate regarding biased news coverage and associations between religion, ethnicity, terrorism and mental illness.

In this paper, after an elucidation of several central concepts of the topic, the author focuses on the sales channels in tourism and clarifies the role retailers play in the market. He shows that the existence of institutional travel retailers is generally based on transaction costs, and that thanks to the automation the level of dependence on transaction costs can be reduced. This thesis induces the question to what extent the retailers' performances can be automated. In answer to this question the author creates a list of criteria including the following aspects; the general and occasional suitability of retail products (e g tickets, travel packages), the availability of technical equipment and information necessary for the automation at the points of sale and in the households (buyers), the level of complexity and acceptance regarding the handling of automated travel services. The paper comes to the conclusion that the automation of travel services will probably be used mainly by business travelers, whereas private customers will more likely keep their affinity for conventional retailers.

To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education.

This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals’ learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding.

The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding.

The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals’ learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.