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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance and relevance of social and habitual behaviours of home occupants to the building design process. It argues that introducing quantitative measures such as daylight level alone may not result in a “healthy and functional” kitchen without appreciating or factoring‐in the impacts of the social roles and user expectations of kitchens in high‐rise and compact urban situations.

The study investigated three common types of apartment buildings in Hong Kong. Case studies suggested that it is crucial to include in a design process proper considerations of human behaviours by way of preferred approaches and modes of living, space usage, and weightings of end‐user responses that would influence architectural design in a direct and crucial way.

The study noted that daylight quality of a kitchen is perceived by most families to be not as important as building control officials and designers thought it would. Instead, it is found that social and cultural factors are more important parameters for users. The study observed that designers rely on physical and quantitative approaches such as daylight factor, window size and window‐to‐room area ratio to qualify a design solution and ignore the socio‐cultural parameters.

The paper calls for designers and building control officials to incorporate the study of functionality and socio‐cultural preferences of users groups in the building design process. The study envisages that an integrated design methodology would enhance the living environment.

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

This study compared people’s endorsement of the money ethic across three countries: Taiwan, the USA and the UK. Exploratory factor analysis results for the whole sample suggested that the six‐item money ethic scale had three independent factors, low cross‐loading, and low inter‐factor correlations. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed for the whole sample and for each group. There was a good fit between the six‐item MES model and the data for the US sample and a poor fit for the Chinese sample, the UK sample, and the whole sample. For the whole sample, regression results showed that those who scored high on factor budget tended to have high self‐esteem, display organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)‐altruism, have low strain, and are female. Factor evil was positively related to OCB‐compliance and negatively related to OCB‐altruism. American men considered money as their success, British men considered money as evil. British women claimed that they budget their money carefully. Results are discussed in light of cultural differences and the rapidly expanding literature on the psychology of money beliefs and behaviors.

The study proposes an extended model of the technology acceptance model (TAM) by including Sharia compliance (SC), knowledge of SC and confidence in SC, in addition to perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). This research aims to investigate its impact on satisfaction, applied in e-banking of Indonesian Islamic banking. Also, the authors study the role of SC, knowledge of SC and confidence in all relationships in TAM in explaining customer satisfaction.

Data collecting in this research is a self-administered survey by sending questionnaires to respondents online via e-mail or WhatsApp. The number of collected data are 300 completed questionnaires. Hypothesis testing and analyses in this research use the multiple linear regression model.

This study finds that SC, knowledge about SC and belief in SC have a significant impact on customer satisfaction of Islamic banks using e-banking. The most important finding in this study is that SC, knowledge about SC and belief in SC significantly moderate the relationship between PU and PEOU with customer satisfaction.

The originality of this research is exploring the role of SC, knowledge of SC and confidence in SC in all relationships, and it is expressed in the original TAM to explain customer satisfaction. This study has never been applied in previous studies, particularly studies of Islamic bank e-banking in Indonesia. This study highlights the importance of SC in the extended TAM, as a distinguishing factor between e-banking provided by Islamic banks and conventional banks, as well as the role of knowledge and confidence in SC. The authors propose policies that will be useful for the improvement of the market share of Islamic banking in Indonesia.