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The purpose of this paper is to combine multidimensional welfare analysis and entropy metrics to derive not only the best relative weights but also substitution degree among different attributes to construct multidimensional indices of well-being with Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002 data.

The authors follow Maasoumi’s two-step measures of multivariate inequality to calculate the inequality for three social groups in China, urban residents, migrants, and rural residents. The two-step approach provides an aggregation formula which is numerically identified in this paper based on a metric entropy distance measure between the distribution of the aggregate well-being functions, on the one hand, and the distribution of the self-reported “happiness” indicator. The authors compare the differences in relative weights and substitution degree for the three groups, and link them to some institutional factors.

The authors find that incorporating substitution among attributes, and taking into consideration group heterogeneity are very important in multidimensional analysis of well-being.

The two-step approach provides an aggregation formula which is numerically identified in this paper based on a metric entropy distance measure between the distribution of the aggregate well-being functions, on the one hand, and the distribution of the self-reported “happiness” indicator.

This paper aims to explore surprising facets of consumer delight behavior. The study is the empirical juncture of three studies based on consumer survey on the Indian television market. Study 1 traces the existence of greenies in India among brownies prevailing around the globe by using the surprise-delight model. Study 2 is a pre-intervention research design confirming greenies preferences to television attributes such as screen technology, annual energy cost saving, screen resolution, screen size and free gifts. Study 3 signifies a price intervention design by allowing customers to include their preference by replacing the annual energy cost saving with price.

This paper is a harvest of studies based on discriminant analysis for identifying green and brown customers and a two-level conjoint analysis for identifying attributes contributing to green behavior.

The empirical generalization of a study comes out with unique findings of the greenies and brownies and their preference and attitude toward green attribution and substitution. A “preferential green shift” appeared as a vital output owing to knowledge–attitude–practice from these consecutive studies. This gap exists because of the price factor. The authors suggest the measures for improvement in product offering by targeting and positioning green products from the findings and the preferential green shift.

Future research may focus on other segments of products such as automobiles, i.e. cars. Despite the availability of the non-probabilistic sampling technique, the probabilistic sampling technique can be used. Finally, a larger sample size could have given a better generalization of results.

The gap in knowledge–attitude–practice was evident. This gap was caused by the presence of “price” concern. The study revealed that heavy consumer durable buyers are aware of the benefit of green, but the reality of price cannot be ignored and finally make a purchasing decision on the basis of price criteria. Hence price is recommended as another criterion to be considered in the technology acceptance models.

The paper examines several measures of multidimensional inequality, analysing their properties and majorisation criteria. Moreover, it presents a new measure which generalises Bourguignon (1999) and includes Tsui measures (1999), while preserving the advantages of Maasoumi's method (1986) of explicitly acknowledging the role of parameters relevant to multivariate settings. Finally, an application to Argentine data is provided in order to illustrate the decisions involved in the process of applying these measures and the usefulness of having appropriate criteria when making those decisions.

After reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature on currency substitution, a model is used in this chapter to empirically examine the state of dollarization in Middle East and North African countries, using Lebanon and Egypt as case studies. For Lebanon, despite the decline in inflationary expectations, the expectations of currency depreciation, and an increase in real interest rate differentials between domestic and foreign currencies, dollarization did not decline by the anticipated amount. For Egypt, unlike many Latin American Countries, currency substitution was successfully reversed for a period when the government managed to peg the value of the Egyptian pound to the dollar.

While prior studies have explored the relationship between visual appeal and purchasing decisions, the role of bookmarking has largely been underemphasized. This research aims to address this gap by focusing on the impact of bookmarking on consumer behavior, guided by the cognitive load theory and dual-system theory.

The authors executed a controlled experiment and analyzed the results using a two-stage regression method that linked visual appeal, bookmarking and purchase intent. Further empirical analysis was conducted to authenticate the authors' proposed model, utilizing real-world mobile commerce data from a clothing company.

This study's findings suggest that visual appeal influences purchase intent primarily through the full mediation of bookmarking, rather than exerting a direct influence. Furthermore, an increase in colorfulness corresponds positively with visual appeal, while visual complexity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with it.

This study provides novel insights into the choice-set formation process through the theoretical lens of dual-system theory. Additionally, the authors employed an image processing technique to quantify a product's visual appeal as depicted in a photograph. This study also incorporates a comprehensive econometric analysis to connect the objective aspects of visual appeal with subjective responses.

The research aims to study the feasibility and acceptability trials of fructooligosaccharide (FOS) substituted popular Indian foods.

Four Indian food items namely chapati, thepla, dhokla and patra were prepared. Wheat flour in chapati and thepla was substituted with FOS at four levels, i.e. 3 g, 5 g, 8 g and 10 g. Bengal gram in dhokla and patra was substituted with FOS at 3 levels, i.e. 5, 8 and 10 g. Ten semi‐trained panel members evaluated the recipes in triplicates using ten point numerical scoring test and difference test.

A significant reduction in all organoleptic attributes of chapati and thepla (p<0.001) was observed with the increase in level of substitution up to 10 g. A non‐significant increase in all the attributes was observed with the increase in level of FOS substitution in patra. For chapatis the most affected attribute were chewability, breakability and overall acceptability. For thepla there was 8.13 percent reduction in the overall acceptability. Dhokla and patra were acceptable at all the three levels of substitution. Using difference test a significant difference (p<0.05, p<0.01) was observed in the color and taste of chapatti. For thepla significant difference was observed in the organoleptic attributes like color and overall acceptability. However, no significant difference was noticed for dhokla and patra substituted with FOS.

The present study has opened a new avenue for preparation of commonly consumed FOS incorporated Indian food products.

This is original research which can benefit general and specific population.

The purpose of this original research is to explore whether firms redeploy the resources that were withdrawn from existing businesses and use them to enter an emerging product market. We studied 244 firms that have exited from at least one business and analyzed whether the firms entered the emerging product market as a new business. The inducements of resource redeployment vary with information cues in media rhetoric about emerging and shifting threats of substitution between the firm’s existing businesses and the new one. Through our hazard rate analysis of entries of firms that exited existing businesses, we examined the hypotheses that resource redeployment through exit and entry may be driven by an interaction of the volume of substitution rhetoric with the resource commitments that the firm had made in the domain of the new business as well as the market relatedness between the firm’s existing businesses and the new one. Our study makes conceptual and methodological contributions to the research on inducements, by theorizing how performance advantages of new over existing businesses vary with product evolution and by characterizing emerging and shifting threats of substitution with content analysis of media rhetoric. Our study suggests that prior work investigating corporate diversification provides an incomplete picture of the contribution of resource relatedness to firm value and firm decision-making.

A growing polarization of society accompanied by an erosion of the middle class is receiving increasing attention in recent German economic and social policy discussion. Our study contributes to this discussion in two ways: First, on a theoretical level we propose extended multidimensional polarization indices based on a constant elasticity of substitution (CES)-type well-being function and present a new measure to multidimensional polarization, the mean minimum polarization gap, 2DGAP. This polarization intensity measure provides transparency with regard to each single attribute, which is important for targeted policies, while at the same time respecting their interdependent relations. Second, in an empirical application, time is incorporated, in addition to the traditional income measure, as a fundamental resource for any activity. In particular, genuine personal leisure time will account for social participation in the sense of social inclusion/exclusion and Amartya Sen’s capability approach.

Instead of arbitrarily choosing the attribute parameters in the CES well-being function, the interdependent relations of time and income are evaluated by the German population. With the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and detailed time use diary data from the German Time Use Surveys (GTUSs) 1991/1992 and 2001/2002, we quantify available and extended multidimensional polarization measures as well as our new approach to measuring the polarization of the working poor and affluent in Germany.

There are three prominent empirical results: Genuine personal leisure time in addition to income is an important and significant polarization attribute. Compensation is of economic and statistical significance. The new minimum 2DGAP approach reveals that multidimensional polarization increased in the 1990s in Germany.

A humanoid intelligent robot (HIR) possessing a human-like appearance can undertake human jobs, interact, communicate and even transmit emotions to human beings. Such robots have gradually been integrated into people's daily life and production scenarios. However, it is unclear whether and by what mechanism HIRs can stimulate people’s risk perception and its impact on consumption attitudes. Based on the risk decision theory, this study aims to take the social value substitution attribute of a HIR as the incentive and analyzes the influence of social value substitution and risk perception on the customers’ consumption attitudes.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the related questions about the social value substitution attribute of a HIR, its impact on risk perception and the customers’ consumption attitudes.

The results reveal that physical labor, intellectual labor, friendship, kinship and the ego constitute the hierarchical elements of social value substitution. Among them, physical labor and intellectual labor pertain to the dimension of social function value substitution, while friendship, kinship and ego pertain to the dimension of social presence value substitution; social function value substitution and social presence value substitution affect the subjects’ risk perception positively, but the latter arouses a stronger risk perception; the 2 (risk perception of social function value: security/danger) × 2 (risk perception of social presence value: security/danger) condition corresponds to diverse consumption attitudes.

The results enrich the theories of the “cha-xu pattern” and “uncanny valley” and provide reference for the healthy development of the HIR industry.

This paper aims to examine whether the substitution of employee stock options (ESOs) for debt occurs for firms with different tax status classifications throughout the conditional distribution of interest expense before and after the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 123R (SFAS 123R).

This study uses Censored Quantile Regression (CQR) to assess whether the substitution effect is dependent on firms' position in the conditional distribution of interest expense. Our sample firms are categorized into two groups: one group (tax‐sensitive) that is sensitive to additional deductions due to a moderate income level and the other group (tax‐insatiable) that is not sensitive because of very high income level.

The substitution effect is not present for firms with below medium level of interest expense. Only tax‐sensitive firms substitute at medium levels of interest expense while both tax‐sensitive and tax‐insatiable firms substitute at high levels of interest expense. Tax‐insatiable firms with very high levels of interest expense also substitute; however, tax‐sensitive firms with very high levels of interest expense only substitute after SFAS 123R required firms to report ESO expense in financial statements. We attribute the substitution patterns revealed by the CQR analysis to a positive relationship between interest expense and cost of debt.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to analyze firms' tax status classification impact on the substitution of ESO expense for interest expense across different levels of interest expense. Our application of CQR should benefit researchers who are interested in examining explanatory variables' impact at various points in the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. This study also refines the conjecture that ESOs are substitutes for debt by demonstrating that such relationship is dependent on the level of interest expense and tax status. Furthermore, the finding of firms substituting ESOs for debt provides accounting standard setters a reason to begin requiring firms to re‐measure the value of ESOs after the grant date until the exercise date.