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This study aims to investigate the effects of memorable dining experiences (MDEs) in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 530 valid survey responses were collected in the USA. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM) was used to estimate inner and outer models. A two-stage approach was applied to test the moderating effects of restaurant safety measures. Additional analyses were conducted to compare electronic word of mouth (eWOM) intention and actual eWOM behavior.

All five dimensions contributed to the overall memorability of a dining experience, with affect being the primary factor. Overall memorability was positively related to subjective well-being and actual eWOM behavior. Restaurant safety measures were positively related to the overall experience but did not moderate the relationship between any dimension and overall memorability.

Findings provide empirical support for the conceptualization of MDEs during a pandemic and underscore the importance of actual eWOM behavior in restaurant research.

Results offer guidance for restaurant managers in designing MDEs.

The restaurant industry is evolving from simply providing products and services to creating experiences. Yet the impacts of crafting MDEs are not well understood, especially during a pandemic. This study filled this gap by investigating MDEs and their effects on subjective well-being and eWOM behavior.

This study investigates Hong Kong “consumers” sake tasting preferences, willingness to pay and how information commonly found on the bottle or menu affects these attributes.

This study took place inside a four-star hotel lobby restaurant. Convenience sampling was used to collect 184 valid responses from Hong Kong residents. Respondents were given four sakes two blind and two with common information found on the bottles and asked to rate each one independently.

The results suggest that alcohol content is the most crucial attribute in assessing the overall liking for consumers. In addition, information currently provided by producers and brewers has a negative effect on all assessment attributes and overall liking, but a positive effect on willingness to pay.

Sake producers, brewers, marketers, and hotel food and beverage managers should reconsider marketing strategies and the type of information provided to send better signals, increase “consumers” assessment and their overall liking. The results of this study suggest that sake brewers may want to advertise the alcohol content better to achieve higher satisfaction.

Consumers taste preferences for sake are not well understood. By applying the signalling theory the study results filled an information gap by examining how sake information commonly found on labels affects hotel guests tasting preferences and willingness to pay.

This study aims to identify key factors that affected US respondents’ dining behavior at restaurants during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Due to the lack of a prior framework or model to test customers’ perceptions of dining-out behavior during this unprecedented time, this study used a mixed-methods approach, conducting two focus group discussions to generate potential restaurant attributes, followed by a US-based survey using an online panel. Using structural equation modeling, this study tested eight developed propositions.

The findings of this study indicated that the three key factors (i.e. restaurant dining environment, communication and hygiene and contactless features) made customers feel comfortable dining in the restaurant during the pandemic. Out of these three factors, only the restaurant dining environment and communication and hygiene were essential predictors for customers’ perceived trust toward the restaurant, leading to their willingness to pay more. This study used two moderators, customers’ perceived risk and support for restaurants to examine how they affected customers’ perceived trust and willingness to pay, respectively.

This study provides both theoretical and practical implications to the current body of knowledge in customers’ dining-out behavior and the development of operational strategies for restaurants to accommodate customers’ changing dining-out behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To develop a holistic conceptual framework, this study incorporates two COVID-19-focused measurement items, perceived risk and support of the restaurant, to identify their moderating roles in the relationships among the five proposed measurement items. This study provides restaurant operators with insights into the altered dining-out behavior of their customers due to the COVID-19 pandemic and prepares them for the post pandemic environment.

During the unprecedented pandemic situation, few customers are willing to dine in restaurants. As local and national governments lifted the mandated COVID-19 protocols, restaurants opened their business slowly to cater to customers in compliance with the centers for disease control’s health and safety regulations. It is of utmost importance for restaurant operators to accommodate their customers’ needs when they dine in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a paucity of research that has examined customers’ comfort level when dining in restaurants and customers’ preferred dining environment during the pandemic.

Forest insurance is a popular way to reduce the loss of forest disasters, so it is necessary to actively involve stakeholders. In the multi-agent simulation model, the government, insurance companies and forest farmers participate as three main stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to mainly simulate the behavior of forest farmers under different environmental variables in order to find the important factors affecting the coverage of forest insurance, so as to improve the ability of forest farmers to resist risks in the face of disasters.

In the simulation process, the decision-making rule of a forest farmer’s purchasing behavior is a binary selection chain, which is created at random. Forest farmer agents who adapt to the environment will remain; on the contrary, those will be eliminated. The eliminated agents will renew their behavior selection chains through learning others’ successful behavior based on genetic algorithm. The multi-agent mode is set up on the Eclipse platform by using Java language.

The adjustment simulation experiments of insurance premium, insurance subsidy and forest area were carried out. According to the result, conclusions and suggestions are as follows: at present, government subsidies are necessary for the implementation of forest insurance; in the future, with the expansion of the insured forest area and the upgrading and large-scale operation of forest farms, forest farmers will be more willing to join forest insurance program, and, then, the implementation of forest insurance no longer requires government subsidies for forest insurance premiums.

This paper explores the impact of three important factors on the implementation of forest insurance.

William R. Freudenburg conceived “the double diversion” as the simultaneous process of diverting environmental resources or rights shared by all to a small group of social actors, which was made possible by a second diversion – the acceptance of the taken-for-granted assumption that environmental harms benefit the common good. In doing so, Freudenburg was among the first to note the importance of looking at not only the distribution of environmental harms but also environmental privileges. In this chapter, we extend the conceptualization of the double diversion to include an instance where rather than framing environmental harm as being a public good, environmental action is framed as benefiting the public writ large, while larger issues of environmental injustice are ignored. In particular, we look at the disproportionate distribution of the urban tree canopy in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the framing of the mitigation of the environmental threat of the Asian Longhorned Beetle as a problem for the commons. Through an analysis of media, we demonstrate that organizations and social actors who have tried to address the effects of this particular ecological threat have nonetheless ignored previous disproportionalities in the environment–society relationship.

Chinese housing market has been growing fast during the past decade, and price-related forecasting has turned to be an important issue to various market participants, including the people, investors and policy makers. Here, the authors approach this issue by researching neural networks for rent index forecasting from 10 major cities for March 2012 to May 2020. The authors aim at building simple and accurate neural networks to contribute to pure technical forecasting of the Chinese rental housing market.

To facilitate the analysis, the authors examine different model settings over the algorithm, delay, hidden neuron and data spitting ratio.

The authors reach a rather simple neural network with six delays and two hidden neurons, which leads to stable performance of 1.4% average relative root mean square error across the ten cities for the training, validation and testing phases.

The results might be used on a standalone basis or combined with fundamental forecasting to form perspectives of rent price trends and conduct policy analysis.

Fire Prevention Week takes place during the week of 9 October, the date of the great Chicago fire. Fire prevention in the narrow sense refers to precautionary measures taken to prevent the outbreak of fires. In books, articles, and other materials on the subject, however, fire prevention often encompasses the broader terms of fire science, fire protection, and fire safety.

Introduction The recent approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement will draw more foreign companies to Mexico because of the cheaper labour available, high quality work, and close proximity to the US. New investment regulations came into effect in 1989, and Mexico has attracted US$23 billion in foreign investment, two thirds of which has gone into the local stock market, with a much smaller share going into fixed investment in plant and equipment (Moffett, 1992). Mexico is currently enjoying economic growth and attracting even more foreign investments. However, companies currently located in Mexico have obtained mixed results which create reluctance to expand existing projects or to invest further.

The study is specifically aimed at understanding the extent of fuel wood consumption for cooking and the adoption of improved charcoal stoves as a policy option toward reducing the consumption of fuel wood in urban sectors.

Both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected by use of structured questionnaires, interviews and direct field observation. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data. Based on the research plan, a total of 120 individual households were randomly selected and interviewed.

The results of the analysis suggested that the majority of people still cook using traditional stoves which consume a great deal of wood to the extent of deteriorating forest resources. Since conventional fuels remain remote for the majority, improved charcoal stoves are perceived as a real option for reducing consumption of wood fuel in urban area and thus arresting the rate of deforestation. However, this can only be realized if the improved charcoal stoves are widely adopted within social systems. Adoption itself results from a series of individual or any unit of adoption to begin using the new stoves. Poor quality of the improved stoves, costs, information and education about the stoves are major factors for the failure to adopt improved charcoal stoves in urban Zanzibar.

The need to revive improved charcoal stoves programs and exploration of alternative sources of energy have been recommended in order to reduce the pressure over forest resources induced by the great demand for fuel wood in urban Zanzibar.

This study investigates whether management's choices of adoption timing and transition method are associated with factors influencing their economic incentives in the case of early adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 96 (SFAS 96), Accounting for Income Taxes. SFAS 96 provides an interesting setting for this model because firms needed to make a choice of not only whether to adopt the standard earlier than required, but also of the transition method (cumulative effect versus retroactive restatement). The results support the political cost hypothesis and the debt and compensation contract hypotheses for both the early adoption decision as well as the transition method choice decision. The results also indicate the superiority of the interactive effects models thus confirming the results of Ali and Kumar (1994).