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Building on key ideas about the value of savoring in understanding the importance of vacation memories, a sample of Iranians were asked to write a long paragraph (one page) which described a particularly important, happy, and enjoyable vacation occasion. The answers were coded using five categories developed from savoring studies. By benchmarking the scores with data from well-matched samples from other countries (specifically a European sample from Austria, and Chinese and Japanese respondents), the Iranian tourists were shown to be especially appreciative of vacations being grateful, marveling, luxuriating, and having a strong sense of the status value of their time. For Iranians, vacations provide powerful, evocative highlights for their lives.

This study is the first attempt to analyze the effectiveness of recent two major tax policies, the reductions in personal and corporate income taxes and a rise in indirect tax and their combine, under both balanced and unbalanced budget conditions, on the economy and social aspects of Malaysia.

This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to investigate the impacts of all simulation scenarios on the key macro and micro indicators. Further, based on the 2012 Malaysia Household Income and Expenditure Survey, it uses a micro-data with a significant number of households (over 56,000 individuals) to analyze the impacts of tax policies on poverty and income inequality of Malaysian.

Simulation results show that, under the balanced budget condition, personal and corporate income tax reductions increase economic growth, household consumption, and investment, while the rise in indirect tax has adverse impacts on these variables. However, in the unbalanced budget condition, all tax policies, except indirect tax policy, reduce real GDP and investment in the economy and the indirect tax policy has insignificant impacts on all indicators. All policy reforms reallocate resources, especially labor, in the economy. In both budget conditions, the reductions in corporate and personal income taxes, particularly the corporate income tax, decrease poverty level of Malaysian households. Results also indicate that both tax policies are unable to influence income inequality in Malaysia.

This study recommends that the government can increase its revenue by increasing indirect taxes as it does not have any impact on household welfare. In order to increase government revenues, initial increases in personal and corporate income taxes are suggested as they may have small negative impacts on the economy and welfare of households.

One of the significant features of this paper is that it examines both expansionary and contractionary fiscal policies in a country that government budget depends on oil exports. Since the literature on this subject is limited, particularly in the Malaysian context, the authors used Malaysia as a case to show how tax reform policies affect the economy and poverty level of such countries. Distinguishing the Malaysian households into 10 deciles and analyzing the distributional impacts of tax policies on these categories are the most significant contributions of this study.

The aim of the paper is to theoretically and empirically explore the issue of well-being (WB) of female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at higher education institutions (HEIs).

This study is based on both literature studies and explorative empirical research conducted in Poland with the use of snowball sampling. It adopted a questionnaire authored by Parker and Hyett and covered 121 respondents.

Literature studies show that invisibility of work, low level of empowerment, increased stress, workload and expectations, reduced resources, high level of anxiety, fatigue and low level of vitality negatively impact the WB of HEIs’ administrative staff. The presented research provides insight into the internal structure of the administrative staff’s WB. Both the main construct (i.e. employees’ WB) and its subconstructs are on moderate level. Respondents’ age and tasks performed are correlated only with the subconstruct of WB in the form of intrusion of work into private life.

Although the research is not based on large sample, it provides both practical and theoretical implications.

Most of studies discuss the issue of WB of scholars. The paper fills the research gap in terms of examining female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at HEIs.

Social media has transformed communication possibilities for immigrant consumers with their home country in their acculturation efforts. However, the acculturative outcomes of consumer interactions with the home country through social media are largely overlooked in previous research. This study aims to investigate the acculturative processes and outcomes resulting from interacting with the home country through social media.

A netnographic approach is used to collect data from a social media platform that provides an interactive social context in which Iranian immigrants in Australia share their experiences of immigration with non-immigrants who are considering and planning to migrate to Australia.

Findings show how both immigrants and non-immigrant users via social media reflexively contribute to the formation of two competing collective narratives, namely, the dominant, romanticizing narrative and counter, pragmatic narratives. Findings highlight how notions of the home and host countries, and the idea of migrating from home to host, are constructed as the result of the circulation of the dominant and counter narratives. Further findings include how these two collective narratives come into play in the formation of three acculturative outcomes, namely, self-validating, ordinary experts and wellbeing. These insights extend consumer acculturation theory through highlighting the acculturative processes and outcomes of interactions with the home country via a social media platform. This includes, for example, how interacting with the home culture can take on assimilationist properties through the construction of a romanticized representation of the hosting society (i.e. Australia) in the dominant collective narrative.

Implications for ethnic marketing practice, policymakers and non-governmental organisations are advanced, especially regarding using social media as a channel to communicate with current and potential immigrant consumers. Notably, policymakers can use social media to engage with immigrants before and after migration to reduce the potential for cognitive dissonance in recent arrivals. Managerially, brands can advertise on Web-based forums, independent websites and social media platforms to target potential immigrants to sell relevant products immigrants needs after migrating to the host country.

Findings broaden the understanding of the potential acculturative outcomes on social media by moving away from the traditional outcomes, which are restricted to the dichotomy between the home and host cultures.

Scholarly attention is deficient on the role of direct interaction with the home country in immigrant consumer acculturation, especially through social media, which is the focus of this study.

According to estimates, there are approximately 714,000 female prisoners in the world. A considerable proportion are pregnant, of childbearing age at the time of incarceration and may experience numerous reproductive health concerns. The purpose of this study is to examine the demographics and sexual and reproductive history of female prisoners in Iran.

Four hundred and thirty-four female prisoners (mean age: 39.0 ± 9.9) serving sentences at Qarchak prison, Iran, completed a questionnaire. The participants were recruited between October 2017 and September 2018 using a convenient sampling method. The questionnaire captured sociodemographic characteristics and sexual and reproductive history.

Most respondents had 7–12 years of formal education, were housewives (69.9%), were either married (41.6%) or divorced (41.8%) and were literate (91.3%). History of drug use among the respondents was 34.7%. Most respondents had regular menstruation (63.5%) and were pre-menopausal (86.1%). Natural birth control was preferred (39.7%) compared to other methods, such as condoms (18%) and oral contraceptive pills (8.4%). Spontaneous and induced abortions were reported by 17.8% and 16.4% of respondents, respectively. There was 5.9% of respondents that reported having a history of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) before incarceration, with HPV the most common (12.7%).

This study has limitations, including the problem of following up with prisoners to shorten the average length of their imprisonment, which can leave many issues in the field of women’s health and their follow-up incomplete. Prison health care workers should also follow up on women’s health and pregnancy hygiene after their release because there is usually a high prevalence of STIs in prisoners.

The findings highlight the importance of improving the quality of women’s health care and pregnancy-related care in prisons. Additionally, the importance of having a health protocol for incarcerated women in Iran. Other programs should also be implemented for women prisoners to eliminate the discrimination they may face in prison.

The international community has attempted to develop care guidelines for pregnant prisoners, particularly for prenatal and mental health services. However, currently in Iran no such guidelines have been developed. To date no research has explored the sexual health among female prisoners of this country. The aim of the present study was to examine the demographics and sexual and reproductive history of female prisoners in Iran. A secondary aim was to identify the health care needs of female prisoners in Iran.

Existing quantitative research demonstrates negatively impacted mental health outcomes for people detained in immigration removal centres (IRCs) in the UK. However, there is limited qualitative research on the phenomenology of life inside UK IRCs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychosocial stressors experienced by people in detention, the psychological impacts of being detained and the ways in which people express resilience and cope in detention.

In-depth interviews were conducted with nine people who had previously been held in UK IRCs. Interview transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Participants experienced incredulity and cognitive dissonance at being detained, and found themselves deprived of communication and healthcare needs. These stressors led participants to feel powerless, doubt themselves and their worldviews, and ruminate about their uncertain futures. However, participants also demonstrated resilience, and used proactive behaviours, spirituality and personal relationships to cope in detention. Antonovsky’s (1979) theory on wellbeing – sense of coherence – was found to have particular explanatory value for these findings.

The sample of participants used in this study was skewed towards male, Iranian asylum seekers, and the findings therefore may have less applicability to the experiences of females, ex-prisoners and people from different geographical and cultural backgrounds.

This study offers a range of new insights into how detention in the UK impacts on people’s lives. The findings may be useful to policy makers who legislate on and regulate the UK immigration detention system, as well as custodial staff and health and social care practitioners working in IRCs.

As tourism development is an unquestionable part of every national growth policy, this study aims to introduce an integrated method employing MICMAC analysis for understanding the key strategic variables of Iran's tourism development system.

The structural analysis with MICMAC method was used to determine the classification of variables, aimed at structuring ideas to deal with complex decision-making and help planners and policymakers formulate future-based strategies.

The cross-impact matrix was used to identify the development variables having the greatest impact on the development of Southeast Asian tourism to Iran. The results showed that among 43 variables, 10 have great potential as key variables in the future of Iran's tourism development.

MICMAC, as a structural analysis technique, is regarded as being the most appropriate to identify the key variables in the development of the Iranian tourism system. The limitation was that the other tourism markets, apart from ASEAN tourists, and the tourism demand-side were excluded from this study.

The present study indicates that identifying key factors that influence the supply side of Iran's tourism system is worthwhile. Consequently, the findings show how these key factors can play a vital role in long-range economic sustainability and lead to the development of Iran's tourism market to enhance globally its competitiveness as a destination to attract international ASEAN tourists.

This study is one of the first papers to focus on the development of Iran's tourism market from a supply-side through structural analysis. Its findings are valuable as they can be used by the tourism authorities in the process of developing future tourism scenarios for Iran.

This article aims to analyze the Iranian and American national cultures and to discuss the implications of cultural differences for communication/negotiation styles.

First, the concept of culture is framed and an integrative model of cultural analysis is constructed. Then, building on the extant literature and secondary data, the various traits of American and Iranian national cultures are analyzed and the implications for communication/negotiation are discussed.

It is found that Iran and America portray dissimilar and somewhat opposed cultural orientations that might create substantial obstacles to their bilateral communications/negotiations. Recommendations for more effective communications/negotiations are provided and avenues for future research are pointed out.

Both Iran and the USA are diverse societies and obviously cannot be considered as monolithic cultures. Moreover, any generalization about the national culture is inherently approximate and does not take into account the intra‐country variations. Another major limitation of this study is that it considers culture as static and unchangeable, however, every culture is in constant transformation.

By bringing insights into the American and Iranian cultures, this study provides a better understanding of cross cultural differences and thus it may lead to effective bilateral communications/negotiations.

While this paper provides valuable insights into the Iranian‐American communication patterns, its main originality resides in offering a cross cultural approach to understanding international affairs. Moreover, the results can be extrapolated to other similar situations when Eastern/Islamic and Western cultures are involved.