Search results

Recognizing that crowding in a restaurant waiting area forms a first impression of service and sets service expectations, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of crowding in the effective control of the waiting environment. The study seeks to examine the impact of crowding on customers' emotions and approach‐avoidance responses and to examine the mediating role of emotion and the moderating role of desired privacy in the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses.

Using real‐scale, interactive virtual reality (VR) technology that allows high‐fidelity representations of real environments, the authors created a navigable, photo‐realistic three‐dimensional model of a restaurant waiting area. Through an experimental study which manipulated crowding levels in the VR restaurant, they surveyed the subjects' responses toward crowding conditions.

The study found significant effects of crowding on emotions including arousal and dominance, but not pleasure, and on approach‐avoidance responses. The impact of crowding on approach‐avoidance responses was more direct than indirect, without having emotion as a mediator. It was also found that the desire for privacy as a psychological trait moderated the relationship between crowding and affiliation.

The findings of this study offer restaurant managers insights toward the effective management of the pre‐process service environment during the waiting state that minimizes the negative consequences of waiting/crowding. This study provides three courses of management actions that can make unavoidable crowding in the restaurant waiting situation more enjoyable and comfortable.

By using VR simulation, this study adds a new approach for crowding studies. Theoretically, this study broadened the scope of crowding studies by adding a potential mediating variable, emotions, and a moderating variable, desired privacy, in examining the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses. Also, by focusing on a restaurant waiting area, the authors were able to explore the pre‐process service expectations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of electrical and thermal stresses on the void formation of the Sn3.0Ag0.5Cu (SAC305) lead-free ball grid array (BGA) solder joints and to propose a modified mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) equation when joints are subjected to coupling stress.

The samples of the BGA package were subjected to a migration test at different currents and temperatures. Voltage variation was recorded for analysis. Scanning electron microscope and electron back-scattered diffraction were applied to achieve the micromorphological observations. Additionally, the experimental and simulation results were combined to fit the modified model parameters.

Voids appeared at the corner of the cathode. The resistance of the daisy chain increased. Two stages of resistance variation were confirmed. The crystal lattice orientation rotated and became consistent and ordered. Electrical and thermal stresses had an impact on the void formation. As the current density and temperature increased, the void increased. The lifetime of the solder joint decreased as the electrical and thermal stresses increased. A modified MTTF model was proposed and its parameters were confirmed by theoretical derivation and test data fitting.

This study focuses on the effects of coupling stress on the void formation of the SAC305 BGA solder joint. The microstructure and macroscopic performance were studied to identify the effects of different stresses with the use of a variety of analytical methods. The modified MTTF model was constructed for application to SAC305 BGA solder joints. It was found suitable for larger current densities and larger influences of Joule heating and for the welding ball structure with current crowding.

Problem 1 of the International Workshops for Eddy Current Code Comparison is a hollow cylinder with axis perpendicular to a uniform field. A total of 17 solutions are described and compared with experimental results. Many kinds of codes, both two‐ and three‐dimensional, were found to give satisfactory solutions.

This paper aims to study the influence of the Cu-Al₂O₃ film-coated Cu substrate as a thermal interface material (TIM) on the thermal and optical behaviour of the light-emitting diode (LED) package and the annealing effect on the thermal and optical properties of the films.

A layer-stacking technique has been used to deposit the Cu-Al₂O₃ films by means of magnetron sputtering, and the annealing process was conducted on the synthesized films.

In this paper, it was found that the un-annealed Cu-Al₂O₃–coated Cu substrate exhibited low value of thermal resistance compared to the bare Cu substrate and to the results of previous works. Also the annealing effect does not have a significant impact on the changes of properties of the films.

It is deduced that the increase of the Cu layer thickness can further improve the thermal properties of the deposited film, which can reduce the thermal resistance of the package in system-level analysis.

The paper suggested that the Cu-Al₂O₃–coated Cu substrate can be used as alternative TIM for the thermal management of the application of LEDs.

In this paper, the Cu substrate has been used as the substrate for the Cu-Al₂O₃ films, as the Cu substrate has higher thermal conductivity compared to the Al substrate as shown in previous work.

This paper evaluates the economic, political and institutional determinants of variation in public investment in emerging Europe.

Panel econometrics (panel-corrected standard error, generalized least squares and the two-stage least squares) methods have been applied using annual data from 2000 to 2017 for 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Public investment was procyclical in relation to output and negatively associated with the level of public debt. Austerity episodes triggered a significant drop in public investment. Positive drifts in public investment during election periods and the negative impact of the number of cabinet seats held by left-wing parties have been captured. While no firm evidence on the impact of EU membership was found, the results show that arrangements with the IMF were strongly associated with lower public investment. Political factors were of greater importance in Central Europe and the Baltics, while institutional factors had a more significant impact in South Eastern Europe.

To foster public capital formation, it is necessary to: 1) strengthen the countercyclicality of public investment policy and to keep public debt at a low level; 2) adjust the fiscal criteria for EU membership in a manner that would enable countries to use the EU structural fund more effectively, while maintaining fiscal sustainability; 3) put a stronger emphasis on structural features of fiscal policy when designing country-level arrangements with the IMF.

The paper contributes to the literature on determinants of public investment policy by adding empirical evidence for emerging Europe countries.

Based on the construal level theory, the purpose of this study is to prove the effect of interaction between construal level and visual crowding on consumers' buying intention. The study tries to explain the reasons behind the different buying intention toward visual crowding among consumers with different construal level.

This study was conducted through two situational simulation experiments. The main data analysis methods are ANOVA and bootstrap analysis.

(1) the matching of construal level and visual crowding has a significant effect on consumers’ buying intention. (2) Perceptual fluency mediates the interaction between the construal level and visual crowding on buying intention.

This study measures consumers' buying intention through situational experiments but does not measure consumers' buying behavior through real scenarios.

According to the study conclusions, consumers prefer visually crowded packaging that matches their construal level. Enterprises should consider the impact of the construal level on the effect of packaging stimulation.

This study enriches the theory related to construal level and highlights the mediating role of perceptual fluency. The addition of perceptual fluency explains the mechanism by which visual crowding affects consumers' buying intention. This extends the research on the antecedents and effects of perceptual fluency.

This study innovatively introduces visual crowding into packaging and matches visual crowding to construal level, explaining why different consumers buy different visually crowded packaging.

The purpose of this study is to determine how self-driven (intrinsic motivators) and monetary incentives (extrinsic motivators) are mediated by an effort to affect fundraising outcomes. This integration sheds light on crowding out between the two types of incentives as well the drivers of fundraising outcomes, specifically effort and donations.

A field experiment is conducted over a two-month period, involving an online fundraising campaign with over 300 volunteers assigned to one of five different incentive conditions. A special website was created to monitor fundraiser efforts. Fundraisers filled out pre- and post-study surveys.

While high monetary incentives result in the greatest immediate increase in funds raised, they crowd out future intentions to volunteer once incentives are withdrawn. Mediation analyzes show that fundraiser effort fully mediates the effect of intrinsic motivators and partially mediates the direct effect of extrinsic motivators on funds raised.

A major limitation of field experiments is the lack of control, resulting in higher variation. However, while a more controlled experiment will reduce this variation, this goes at the expense of lower external validity.

Results indicate that – at least in the short run – monetary incentives can result in higher fundraising outcomes. However, this goes at the expense of a reduction in future volunteering once the incentives are withdrawn.

This study examines whether extrinsic or intrinsic motivators have a greater impact on funds raised and whether extrinsic motivators crowd out future intentions to volunteer. Different from previous research in which effort is a latent variable, the effort is directly observed over time.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the body of literature concerning human factors in retail environments and their influence on consumers. Additionally, the authors identify the research gaps in the literature and suggest directions for future research.

This study uses qualitative approaches to provide a comprehensive review of human factors in retail environments.

The review is synthesised based on two main categories: the effects of other customers and the effects of sales associates. The influence of other customers, including the number of customers and social relations, is a significant source of human‐related environmental cues. In addition, existing studies support the importance of the number of sales associates, sales associates' physical attributes, and their behavioural characteristics observed in stores.

This study suggests that retailers need to effectively manage, control and manipulate human‐related environmental factors in order to generate a positive influence on consumers' perceptions towards stores and their behaviours.

This study provides a conceptual framework that integrates various human‐related factors in retail environments and their significant insights in the effective management of these factors identified for researchers and retailers.

Despite the enormous size of the nonprofit sector, there has been very little empirical research done on the capital structure of nonprofit organizations, and no one has examined the potential effects of borrowing on individual contributions. Using a representative sample of nonprofits, the empirical analysis first determines whether secured or unsecured borrowing by nonprofits influence future contributions. The results for the full sample support a “crowding-out” effect. When the analysis is repeated on a subsample of nonprofits that are older, larger, and more dependent upon donations, the results are more ambiguous: secured debt has little or no effect, while unsecured debt has a “crowd-in” effect. The empirical analysis is then expanded to test whether nonprofits with higher than average debt levels have different results than nonprofits with below average debt levels. The results suggest that donors do remove future donations when a nonprofit is more highly leveraged compared to similar organizations.

Relief item distribution to victims is a key activity during disaster response. Currently many humanitarian organizations follow simple guidelines based on experience to assess need and distribute relief supplies. However, the interviews with practitioners suggest a problem in efficiency in relief distribution efforts. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model and solution methodology that can estimate relief center (RC) performance, measured by waiting time for victims and throughput, for any RC design and analyze the impact of key design decisions on these performance measures.

Interviews with practitioners and current practice guidelines are used to understand relief distribution and a queuing network model is used to represent the relief distribution. Finally, the model is applied to data from the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

The findings identify that dissipating congestion created by crowds, varying item assignment decisions to points of distribution, limiting the physical RC capacity to control congestion and using triage queue to balance distribution times, are effective strategies that can improve RC performance.

This research bases the RC designs on Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines and assumes a certain area and volunteer availability.

This paper contributes to humanitarian logistics by discussing useful insights that can impact how relief agencies set up and operate RCs. It also contributes to the queuing literature by deriving analytic solutions for the steady state probabilities of finite capacity, state dependent queues with blocking.