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Homestay is an alternative product to mass tourism where tourists are accommodated with local family allowing the tourist to learn local culture and lifestyle. The changing tourists' preferences influence the phenomenon of this accommodation trend for unique experiences, increasing competition in the market, and the rapid development in communication technology. This paper aims to observe the current state of the homestay situation in Brunei. This research utilized qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with a total sample of 23 respondents consisting of homestay operators, local community and tourism officers. The findings are that homestay in Brunei experienced issues with licensing and standards due to unending bureaucracy and unclear instructions, an elusive search of successors for long-term sustainability, and issues on participatory management within the community. This paper contributes valuable insights to developing strategies for the sustainability of homestay tourism, particularly for the stakeholders involved, such as homestay operators, policymakers and tourism practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of farm-to-table (FTT) activities in agritourism towards sustainable development based on three agritourism farms in Brunei.

The study is based on qualitative data using semi-structured interviews with 23 participants involved in the management of the farms. In-depth interviews are considered the most appropriate approach to gain the unexplored perspectives of the agriculture community at the three agritourism farms.

The study found that FTT activities imparted in agritourism contribute towards sustainable development economically, socially and environmentally. FTT leads to the establishment of small medium and micro enterprises, which, in turn, creates employment for the local people. It also plays a part in preserving the ethno-culinary heritage of indigenous food, promoting food localism and sustainable agriculture. These findings suggest that FTT activities play an important role in revitalizing the local community. The outcome of this empirical research may enable planners to better formulate regional policy based on a balanced approach taking into account the three dimensions of sustainability towards agritourism development. From a theoretical standpoint, this study adds value to the literature by identifying the contributions of FTT activities towards sustainable development emphasising on the consumption of local ethnic food and food localism.

The contributions of agritourism for local farms has not been extensively discussed especially in Brunei’s local agriculture industry. This study will provide evidence that FTT activities contribute towards a moderate form of food activism; one that re-forges the disrupted linkages between people, nature and cultural heritage.

在农业旅游可持续发展中农场到餐桌活动的作用

本文的目的是利用三个汶莱农业旅游农场来评估农场到餐桌 (FTT) 活动在发展农业旅游可持续中的作用。

该研究基于对参与农场管理的 23 名参与者进行半结构化访谈的定性数据。 深入访谈被认为是获得三个农业旅游农场农业社区未探索观点的最合适方法。

结果表明, 农业旅游中的 FTT 活动有助于经济、社会和环境的可持续发展。 FTT 导致中小型企业的建立进而为当地人民创造就业机会。 它还在保护民族烹饪文化遗产的土著食品、促进食物本地化和可持续农业方面发挥作用。 这些发现表明 FTT 活动在振兴当地社区方面发挥着重要作用。 这项实证研究的结果可使规划者能够更好地制定基于平衡方法的区域政策, 同时考虑到农业旅游可持续性发展的三个维度。 理论来说, 本研究通过确定 FTT 活动对可持续发展的贡献, 强调当地民族食品的消费和食品地方主义, 为文献增加了价值。

农业旅游对当地农场的贡献尚未得到广泛讨论, 尤其是在文莱当地的农业产业中。 这项研究提供的证据表明 FTT 活动有助于适度形式的食物激进主义; 一种重建人、大自然和文化遗产之间被破坏的联系的方法。

El propósito de este documento es evaluar el papel de las actividades de agroturismo «de la granja a la mesa» (FTT, por sus siglas en inglés) hacia el desarrollo sostenible con base en tres granjas de agroturismo en Brunéi.

El estudio se basa en datos cualitativos mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas con 23 participantes involucrados en la gestión de las granjas. Las entrevistas en profundidad se consideran el enfoque más apropiado para obtener las perspectivas inexploradas de la comunidad agrícola en las tres granjas de agroturismo.

Los resultados sugieren que las actividades FTT impartidas en el agroturismo contribuyen al desarrollo sostenible desde el punto de vista económico, social y medioambiental. Estas actividades conducen a la creación de pequeñas y medianas empresas y microempresas, lo que a su vez crean empleos para la población local. También desempeña un papel en la preservación del patrimonio etno-culinario de los alimentos indígenas, promoviendo el localismo alimentario y la agricultura sostenible. Estas conclusiones sugieren que las actividades FTT desempeñan un papel importante en la revitalización de la comunidad local. El resultado de esta investigación empírica puede permitir a los planificadores formular mejor una política regional con base en un enfoque equilibrado que tenga en cuenta las tres dimensiones de la sostenibilidad hacia el desarrollo del agroturismo. Desde un punto de vista teórico, este estudio agrega valor a la literatura al identificar las contribuciones de las actividades FTT al desarrollo sostenible, haciendo hincapié en el consumo de alimentos étnicos locales y el localismo alimentario.

Las contribuciones del agroturismo para las granjas locales no se han discutido ampliamente, especialmente en la industria agrícola local de Brunéi. Este estudio proporciona pruebas de que las actividades FTT contribuyen a una forma moderada de activismo alimentario que restablece los vínculos perturbados entre las personas, la naturaleza y el patrimonio cultural.

This study aims to evaluate the contributions of agritourism towards the local food system (LFS) by studying three small-scale agritourism farms in Brunei. More specifically, it looks at the role of farm agribusinesses and heritagisation efforts of indigenous farmers.

This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews to collect data. This method is widely seen as more suitable to gain the unexplored perspectives of the agriculture community at the three agritourism farms.

The results suggest that the agritourism farms contribute to mild local food activism through their small-scale production of sustainable food products. Another significant finding affirms that these farms also contribute to preserving ethno-culinary heritage through heritagisation of indigenous food and their ancestral agriculture knowledge. The farms’ involvement in agribusiness and efforts in food heritagisation contributes towards a more sustainable LFS and stimulates the rural area as a reinvigorated space for agritourism transactions.

There are lack of research on the contributions of agritourism towards the LFS, especially in Brunei. This study will provide evidence of the overlooked significance of agribusiness and heritagisation efforts conducted by the local farms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP), as the findings on the relationship have been inconsistent and have led to calls to further examine this relationship. However, instead of investigating the connection between CSR and CFP, academics have stated that a contingency viewpoint must be used for uncovering the context and conditions which catalyse the relationship between both constructs.

This study acquired the CSR data from 100 companies listed in Fortune’s most admired US companies between 2007 and 2016. These data were used to investigate the CSR–CFP link with the help of the dynamic panel data system, which is the generalised method of moments (GMM) estimator.

The results indicate that CSR and CFP have a neutral relationship which characterises the effect between CFP and CSR. However, this study found that financial slack positively affected the CSR–CFP relationship, implying that companies will only benefit from CSR activities if they have excess financial resources.

This study offers a very distinctive perspective regarding the CSR–CFP link according to the financial slack perspective.

The centralized processes of today’s power trading systems are complex and pose a risk of price tampering and hacking. The decentralized and unmodifiable nature of the blockchain technology that has recently been highlighted offers the potential to improve this power trading process. The purpose of this study is to implement a system to apply the blockchain technology to the problem of power trading.

The authors modeled the power trading problem as the interaction between admin, producer and consumer nodes. And a power trading scenario has been created for this model using a blockchain platform called Multichain which is both fast and highly scalable. To verify this scenario, they implemented a trading system using Savoir, a Python-based JsonRPC module.

Experimental results show that all processes, such as blockchain creation, node connectivity, asset issuance and exchange transactions have been correctly handled according to the scenario.

In this study, the authors have proposed and implemented a power trading method that determines price according to the pure market principle and cannot be manipulated or hacked. It is based on the nature of blockchain technology that is decentralized and cannot be tampered.

Both issuing firms and underwriters shall benefit from the associations in underwriting contracts for seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). Issuing firms that are offered underwriting contracts with clustered gross spreads do not have strong incentives to switch away from the firms' prior SEO underwriters, and thus these existing underwriters are able to maintain or gain greater market share. This study investigates how the clustering of percentage gross spreads affects the likelihood of underwriter switching.

Using the investment bank-underwritten SEOs in Hong Kong, the authors find that the percentage gross spreads of 40% of these SEOs are clustered at 2.5%. The seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model, Weibull survival mixed model and trivariate probit model are applied to analyse this phenomenon.

The authors' study provides first direct evidence that the clustering of percentage gross spreads lowers the likelihood of underwriter switching. Investment banks as underwriters can explicitly price underwriting contracts at a clustered level, more likely in periods of greater market volatility, and intentionally retain the banks' client firms using pricing arrangements. The authors' finding and approach offer more direct and distinct support that the issuer–underwriter association can be relationship-based.

Whilst the clustering of fees is interpreted as a type of anticompetitive price sitting, the authors contribute to literature by providing new empirical evidence on why percentage gross spreads as a price dimension are clustered. On top of contract efficiency and collusion, this study's new evidence provides a third view for the clustering of gross spreads.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between tourism development and urban housing prices in Chinese cities. Specifically, the study aimed to explore whether there is a relationship between the two variables in tourist and non-tourist cities and whether there is a non-linear relationship between them.

In this study, the entropy method was used to construct the China City Tourism Development Index, which provides a more comprehensive measure of the level of tourism development in different cities. In total, 45 major cities in China were studied using the panel data approach for the period of 2011 to 2019.

The empirical analysis conducted for this study found that tourism development affects urban house prices, and that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship. However, this varies across cities, with house prices in tourist cities tending to be more influenced by tourism development than non-tourist cities. Also, foreign direct investment, population size, fixed asset investment and disposable income per capita were found to have an impact on house prices in both tourism and non-tourism cities.

There are significant differences in tourism development and urban house prices in different cities in China. This study considers these differences when examining the impact of tourism on house prices in 45 major cities in China by dividing the sample cities into tourist and non-tourist cities.

The importance of organizational climates in enhancing employees’ job performance is well studied in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and team climate on job performance, particularly through job engagement, by using a multilevel survey. The study also predicted that only PSC (and not team climate) predicted job resources (i.e. role clarity and performance feedback).

A total of 412 employees from 44 teams (72.6 per cent response rate) in Malaysian private organizations participated in the current study.

Research findings revealed that performance feedback and role clarity mediate the relationship between PSC and job engagement, and that there is no direct effect between the variables, team climate, and job resources. As expected, the study also discovered that job engagement mediates the relationship between PSC and team climate related to job performance.

This paper suggests the importance of PSC as the precursor to better working conditions (i.e. job resources) and to indirectly boosting employees’ engagement and job performance.

The study compared two distinctive organizational climate constructs that affect the different types of job resources using multilevel approach within the Asian context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the house market in Malaysia from 2002 to 2015. Specifically, the macroeconomic determinants on the house price and house demand are investigated.

Structural Vector Autoregressive Regression was adopted to estimate the unexpected changes in both house demand (residential transaction volume) and prices based on economic theoretical reasoning that consider shock from macroeconomic determinants.

The transaction volume and real house prices respond to most of the macroeconomic shocks. While the impact of real gross domestic product (GDP) on house prices appears to be stronger and longer in comparison to other macroeconomic shocks, a 60 per cent change in house prices can be explained by real GDP regardless of whether it is in the short run or the long run. The studies also reveal that a positive effective exchange rate plays an important role when demonstrating the transaction volume. Moreover, monetary liquidity plays a major role in justifying the transaction volume. This implies that mortgage lending may have an impact on housing demand. Meanwhile, movements of house prices cannot be explained by the demand in quantity. This signifies that supply has a strong influence in determining the price.

This study has implications on policymakers of which the interest rate as a cooling measure might not be effective in the short run. The interest rate has very little impact on housing prices. Furthermore, policymakers should address the concerns on speculations, as the results reveal that monetary liquidity and the exchange rate have a strong impact on the housing demand.

This study seeks to provide answers regarding the recent upsurge of Malaysian housing prices. Besides focusing on the house price changes, this study addresses the role of transaction volume while evaluating the house market, as housing prices are usually downwards rigid. Since the price and transaction volume are both related to the transaction activity, this study is significant and could be a good reflection on the actual demand behaviour in the residential market.

The purpose of this research was to develop a new process to bond silicon (Si) chips to low carbon steel substrates using pure tin (Sn) without any flux.

Iron (Fe) substrates were first electroplated with a Sn layer, followed by a thin silver (Ag) layer that inhibits Sn oxidation thereafter. It is this Ag capping layer that makes the fluxless feature possible. Fluxless processes are more environmentally friendly and more likely to produce joints without voids. The Si chips were deposited with Cr/Au dual layer structure. The bonding process was performed at 240°C in vacuum. The Sn joint thickness was controlled by spacers during the bonding. Scanning electron microscopy images on cross sections exhibited quality joints without visible voids. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis was used to detect joint compositions.

It was revealed that the Sn layer was bonded to a Si chip at the Cr–Sn interface and to the Fe substrate by forming an FeSn₂ intermetallic compound (IMC). The IMC is only 1.1 to 1.5 µm in thickness. Thin IMC is highly preferred because IMC deforms a little in accommodating the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between Si and Fe. Shear test results showed that the fracture forces of the samples passed the military criteria by a wide margin.

This new fluxless bonding process on Fe should make Fe or low carbon steel a more likely choice of materials in optical modules and electronic packages.