Search results

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a fundamental cause of market booms and busts is that investor risk attitudes change during market booms. Specifically, the authors propose that an investor’s risk aversion falls as (s)he attempts to “keep up with the Joneses.” This paper studies changing risk attitudes induced by social interactions, and shows that risk-seeking behavior that is initially successful may induce copycat behavior and lead individuals in the same peer group to reduce their degree of risk aversion to attempt to obtain similar rewards, a phenomenon we call “Gain attraction in the presence of social interactions.”

The authors propose a new theoretical model that incorporates the social interaction term into the value function of prospect theory. The modified value function empowers the standard prospect theory by introducing the idea that people often compare themselves to others and then compare their gains to the gains of others. The model predicts that, if people exhibit some degree of envy, they will treat the observed utility achieved by others as destination points and will reposition themselves to the new reference points, and at that point their willingness to accept risk dramatically increases.

The theoretical model is tested empirically against experimental data and survey data. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, the experimental results suggest that, after subjects observed the behavior of the leading investor in the controlled laboratory condition, there was a significant increase in risk-taking behavior. The survey results further confirm that envy is an emotional force behind the dissatisfaction and disappointment among investors when they miss available opportunities that others were able to take advantage of.

This study provides evidence that investment decisions are not made in a social vacuum by isolated individuals, but rather in social settings in which individuals are influenced by the actions and outcomes of their peers. The study also opens up a new research avenue that the reduction in risk aversion induced by peer effects may be an important element explaining how greed is transmitted across the economy during times of financial boom, thus helping to fuel the flames of financial crises.

Drawing upon Baudrillard’s concept of sign-value, this study aims to investigate consumer behavior and sign perception in visitor attractions.

By adopting netnography, 133 customer-to-customer reviews sourced from TripAdvisor were analyzed regarding visitors’ online post-visit impressions.

The findings reveal that netnography contributes to a deeper understanding of sign consumption and sign promotion and examines how visitors attribute symbolic meanings to their experience in Titanic Belfast.

The findings show that the co-creation and reevaluation of the visitor experience through consumers’ online reviews should be taken into account by both managers and marketers. Furthermore, advertising should avoid creating excessive expectations to visitors to decrease the possibility of negative disconfirmation, which can be easily and instantly spread online. Another implication concerns the winning awards of visitor attractions, hotels and restaurants of a destination which may be used as a basis of co-branding marketing campaigns to enhance destination brand image.

This study continues the debate on the commodification of the visitor experience and the commercialization of visitor attractions.

This paper provides better understanding of sign-value, sign consumption and sign promotion in the visitor attraction sector.

Emphasizing the role of residents as destination advocates, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of residents’ familiarity with, and, favorability of attractions on destination image.

A mixed methods research strategy was employed using 15 individual in-depth interviews and a survey questionnaire with a sample of n=364. The study utilizes an attraction familiarity index to classify respondents into four groups based on high, average, and low familiarity and examines the characteristics of each in the relationship between informational familiarity, experiential familiarity, and favorability and destination image.

The study reveals resident perceptions of attractions within the tourism product assembly framework and illustrates the positive relationship between the residents’ level of familiarity with, and favorability of visitor attractions and destination image. Further, the findings also demonstrate the significant role of demographic characteristics such as gender and length of residency in the area. The study findings suggest that temporary residents can function as destination advocates.

Employees and students from a prominent northeastern university were sampled, representing local residents and temporary residents respectively. While appropriate and fairly representative of the target market for the research questions in this investigation, more work is required to replicate this study utilizing representative samples across different locations.

Evidence from the study indicates the importance of marketing to residents as they serve as destination advocates. In particular, the residents’ familiarity with and favorability of attractions is critical to positive destination image. The research offers insights into the identification of potential segments of residents that require special attention.

Limited existing research investigates the role of residents as destination advocates, especially in the context of destinations that lack a primary tourism attraction but have a well-balanced mix of attractions.

This paper aims to analyse online reviews to explore the experiences of tourists related to cultural attractions. Furthermore, the study identifies similarities and differences between cultural attractions and identifies tourists’ preferences.

Content analysis and principal component analysis are applied to 12.592 online reviews, in Italian, posted on TripAdvisor by tourists who visited 58 cultural attractions of Naples (Italy) between 2011 and 2014.

Findings reveal five critical components of tourists’ experience related to cultural attractions: wonder, authenticity, relaxation, discovery and knowledge. Findings show that tourists can interpret cultural attractions in different ways.

This study makes advancements on the relationships between tourists’ experience and cultural attractions. Research limitations are related to the geographical context and to the database, which presents a strong standardisation of evaluations, almost never negative. Furthermore, the analysis is limited to online reviews written in Italian language. Future studies will be dedicated to explore reviews in other languages and on other cultural destinations.

The study draws managerial implications at local and general level. Locally, findings provide suggestions and practical implications to support the tourism policies and marketing of Naples. At general level, the paper provides implications for destination manager organisations and policy makers to strengthen the attractiveness of cultural attractions, develop destination marketing strategies and offer more satisfying cultural experiences.

This is one of the first studies that uses online reviews to explore the experiences of tourists who visit cultural attractions.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Sourtoe Cocktail, a custom in Dawson City, Canada’s Yukon, in which participants drink a shot of alcohol with a dehydrated human toe in it. Springing from a local legend, the thrill-inducing Sourtoe Cocktail has attracted the attention of tourists. The paper reveals insights from this particular case study in order to discuss potential future tourism trends within the Arctic, especially in regard to the development of a sustainable tourism industry. Additionally, it illustrates how local communities can avoid negative effects of “Arctification.”

The case study is deconstructed through Dean MacCannell’s (1976) framework of sight sacralization. The Sourtoe Cocktail is analyzed based on the five stages of the framework, which helps to reveal the various elements at play at the local level. The framework specifically highlights linkages between society and the Sourtoe Cocktail as a product in order to understand how it became a tourist attraction.

The use of MacCannell’s sight sacralization framework reveals the intricate relationship of the Sourtoe Cocktail to both the Arctic and the local folklore of the Klondike Gold Rush. In addition, it is argued that the activity can serve as an example of avoiding “Arctification” processes for northern communities.

The originality of the study lies in the application of the sight sacralization framework to an ordinary object – a toe – instead of an object of inherent historical, aesthetic or cultural value. The paper proposes a complementary study to the recommendations provided in the Arctic Tourism in Times of Change: Seasonality report (2019) for the development of sustainable Arctic societies.

The challenges of both community-based and heritage tourism result in significant impacts that have occurred in many tourist areas. These negative effects are the main problems that damage indigenous communities and are involved with cultural heritage preservation and economic development. This study aims to apply a qualitative method to scrutinize the problems and their causes in a community.

This study applied a qualitative method to scrutinize the actual data. The 50 informants from the relevant stakeholder groups of Ban Wangka village were interviewed with 22 themed questions based on the indicators of sustainable cultural heritage destinations.

Results indicate that tourism development at Ban Wangka village faces significant challenges due to the conflict between economic development and cultural heritage preservation.

The limitations also exist. First, the Mon people use their own language which resulted in the need for an interpreter during interviews. Therefore, sometimes it was impossible for the researcher to access the informants’ actual emotions. Second, this study is based on the concept of sustainable tourism development, which is an abstract idea to the local people, and thus Mon people understand it but are never concerned. Finally, this study focused only on the Mon community, which is not enough to fully achieve sustainability. Therefore, the community from the Thai side of the river must also be involved.

Such challenges have a direct impact on the sustainability of tourism operations. This indicates that the problems will lead to serious conflicts in the future unless they are resolved gently. The Ban Wangka Mon village is faced with problems that are not very different from other tourist attractions in Thailand, especially the intense growth during this time, which has brought significant changes to the destination. Subsequently, conflicts arose easily and quickly because of the motivational power of income. To overcome these problems, the community needs to be strong in fighting against the influence of tourism income.

The challenges of the destination have a direct impact on the sustainability of tourism operations. This indicates that the problems will lead to serious conflicts in the future if they are not resolved. Ban Wangka Mon village is faced with problems that are not very different from other tourist attractions in Thailand, To overcome these problems, the community needs to be strong in fighting against the influence of tourism income. In addition, good tourism planning that places importance on all stakeholders equally and providing a balanced income management plan and a fair share of income will surely eliminate many of the conflicts.

This case study of Ban Wangka Mon Village is based on the theory of sustainable tourism development, which contains three dimensions: environmental, economic and social and ethical. All impacts from tourism at Ban Wangka Mon village can be summarized into four challenges consisting of severe tourism growth, economic growth conflict, identity deterioration and behavioral changes. Some of these challenges are similar to other destinations such as the Vlorë Region.

In complex buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs), contracts are always incomplete and many of the exchanges non-contractual. Because they occur over a long period of time and include unspecified obligations, non-contractual exchanges might be asymmetrical. The purpose of this paper is to examine BSRs with the aim of identifying the mechanisms that lead to asymmetry in exchanges.

The author conducts an analysis, based on social exchange theory (SET), of six buyer-supplier dyads using the main SET constructs. From this multiple-case analysis the author develops a set of propositions explaining the exchange asymmetry in complex buyer-supplier relations.

The results indicate that self-awareness of the determinants of attractiveness, use of power-balancing mechanisms, and primacy can explain the exchange asymmetry in BSRs.

The analysis is limited on the explanations for exchange asymmetry that are based on SET.

The study highlights the importance of firms using the power-balancing mechanism in order to gain value from supply chain partners. The results show that firms can use attractiveness strategically to influence supply chain partners, but the author also observe that firms generally are not well aware of the determinants of their attractiveness in BSRs, which ignorance may pose a major obstacle to using attractiveness strategically.

The paper provides the first systematic and comprehensive insight to social exchange mechanism in complex BSR. In this paper the author makes a major effort to clarify the basic assumptions and scope of the useful concepts and theoretical constructs of SET, and through a multiple-case study the author form a piece of substantive theory of SET in BSRs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the drivers of sustainable entrepreneurial practices in SMEs operating in a developing economy. The secondary objectives are to explore the relationship between these drivers and to draw out the implications for policy and practice.

The paper is informed by the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, and on the drivers of pro-environmental practices in SMEs. It reports on the results of an intensive multi-level empirical study, which investigates the environmental practices of SMEs in Pakistan’s leatherworking industry using a multiple case study design and grounded analysis, which draws on relevant institutional theory.

The study identifies that coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphic pressures simultaneously drive sustainable entrepreneurial activity in the majority of sample SMEs. These pressures are exerted by specific micro-, meso- and macro-level factors, ranging from international customers’ requirements to individual-level values of owners and managers. It also reveals the catalytic effect of the educational and awareness-raising activities of intermediary organisations, in tandem with the attraction of competitiveness gains, (international) environmental regulations, industrial dynamism and reputational factors.

The evidence suggests that, in countries where formal institutional mechanisms have less of an impact, intermediary organisations can perform a proto-institutional role that helps to overcome pre-existing barriers to environmental improvement by sparking sustainable entrepreneurial activity in SME populations.

The findings imply that the drivers of sustainable entrepreneurial activity do not operate in a “piecemeal” fashion, but that particular factors mediate the emergence and development of other sustainability drivers. This paper provides new insights into sustainable entrepreneurship and motivations for environmental practices in an under-researched developing economy context.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the simultaneous effects of country of origin (COO) and corporate reputation on initial trust in a transition economy, and to compare these effects across two service industries. The model broadens COO research by incorporating initial trust as a key driver of success in the context of services internationalization. Design/methodology/approach – Poland is the transition economy studied. A total of 184 respondents evaluated different service combinations (high vs low reputation/home country vs foreign country) in two different service categories (high risk vs low risk). Relationships between constructs are tested, employing a between‐subject experimental design. Findings – Both reputation and the risk level of service have a significant main effect on initial trust. Furthermore, results indicate a highly significant interaction effect: a positive COO effect leads to a higher level of initial trust only in the case of a risky service. Research limitations/implications – As with all laboratory studies, external validity is limited. Further research should focus on other instruments for gaining initial trust (e.g. warranties), especially in the case of a negative COO image. Practical implications – International marketers of services must carefully consider COO information as a means of building initial trust. Positive effects only apply in the case of high‐risk services. Originality/value – A major contribution is the introduction of initial trust as an important mediator in COO‐related international service marketing literature. As a second contribution, COO effects were compared across different service categories with respect to perceived risk. Furthermore, investigating COO effects in transition economies is of particular interest, as such markets are gaining attraction for international service providers.

Business Intelligence has gained a significant attraction in the recent past and facilitates managers for efficient business decision-making. Over the years, the attraction toward the cryptocurrency (CC) market has increased. Since the CC market is highly volatile, it is extremely sensitive to shocks and web data related to large events happening around the globe.

This research study provides a business intelligence model to predict five top-performing CCs. In this study, deep learning, linear regression and support vector regression (SVR) are used to predict CC prices. The sentiment of some mega-events is also used to enhance the performance of these models.

The results show that models of business intelligence such as deep learning and SVR provide better results. Moreover, the results show that the incorporation of social media sentiment data significantly improves the performance of the proposed models. The overall accuracy of the model improves approximately twofold when multiple event sentiments were incorporated.

The use of social media sentiment of global and local events for different countries along with deep learning for CC forecasting.