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Evidence suggests that a growing number of consumers across the world are becoming more environmentally responsible in terms of their personal habits and lifestyles. In this paper, the authors aim to use both parametric and non-parametric econometric models to estimate Kuwaiti consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection in Failaka island.

Contingent valuation methods based on log-logistic and log-normal regression models revealed that consumers in Kuwait are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 40 Kuwaiti dinars for environmental protection in Failaka island based on the double-bound dichotomous choice model.

Socio-economic variables have no significant influence on the respondent’s WTP. As expected income has a positive relationship with WTP and bid price has negative relationship with WTP to protect the environment in Failaka island.

This study highlight the fact that understanding consumers’ environmental-friendly behaviors may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or environmental degradation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate low-wage retention using a survival analysis approach.

Variables explaining low-wage retention take into account the characteristics of the employee, such as education, age, tenure with the company, gender and nationality, and the characteristics of the job and the company such as industry affiliation, number of employees, age of the company and location.

Female workers and workers with low level of education, older ones, those with more seniority in the company and those of Asian origin remain longer in a low-wage situation. Also, workers in smaller and older companies located outside the Lisbon region are more likely to stay in a low-wage situation.

The policy implications are clear. Education plays a prominent role: the higher the level of education of the individual, the higher the probability of him/her leaving low pay. Training programs may help employees in Portugal to leave the low-wage situation. Furthermore, policies must address the different mobility rates of different nationalities and different activities. Training programs are more urgent for hotels and restaurants and transports and communication. The findings also indicate that those initially working in younger firms and larger firms have a higher probability of leaving the low-wage situation. This is a stimulus for decision makers to stimulate employment in the younger firms or in the larger firms.

Despite low-wage retention being a well-known field of research, to our knowledge this is the first research paper using survival analysis to explain the duration of a low-wage situation.

The rising uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment exacerbate the challenges firms face in the export market. This study aims to explore which strategy is suitable for export enterprises to develop sustainably under COVID-19.

Based on the sample data of China’s A-stock listed manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2020, this study applies a survival analysis method to explore the impact of strategic flexibility on export firm survival. Furthermore, this study uses the difference-in-difference model to test the relationship between strategic flexibility and firms’ profits in the context of the pandemic.

The results show that strategic flexibility can increase firms’ survival time, improving dynamic production and innovation capabilities, which is favorable for their sustainable development. Meanwhile, after the spread of COVID-19, firms with strategic flexibility have higher profits than those without. This influence mechanism mainly involves exploring new markets that can improve the company revenue and the coordination capabilities of the supply chain; this reduces corporate costs.

This study expands relevant research on the factors affecting the survival of export enterprises and supplements research on the economic consequences of firms’ strategic flexibility; this also enriches the dynamic capability theory. Additionally, it provides important implications for firms to enhance strategic flexibility and recommends government implementation of policies that encourage the domestic sales of commodities originally produced for exports under COVID-19.

Tax risk refers to the uncertainty of future corporate taxation. Tax reform is a key issue in major current tax system adjustments that seriously affect a firm's tax risk. In response to changes in the economic environment, many countries are actively executing tax reform. Long-term reforms implemented for a smooth transition may instead increase corporate risk. This study examines the relationship among tax risk, tax reform and investment timing.

Selecting the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange A-share listed companies' panel data from 2008 to 2017, the paper used survival analysis and the propensity score matching-difference in difference models.

The results show that a higher corporate tax risk results in more deferred investments, which are further examined using the latest Chinese value-added tax reform as a natural experiment.

The conclusion serves as an important reference for governments to balance reform time and to support enterprises in effectively identifying and managing tax risk under tax reform.

Although the adoption of lean inventory management for performance improvement has been widely recognized, sticky inventory management is still a stopgap measure for new small and medium enterprises (SMEs) against survival risks. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the nonlinear relationship between new SMEs inventory stickiness and venture survival by focusing on the moderating effects of environmental dynamism and financial constraints.

Classical moderating model is employed to investigate the effects of environmental dynamism and financial constraints on the relationship between inventory stickiness and venture survival. This study uses the accelerated failure time model for survival analysis and tests the relationships based on a large set of new manufacturing SMEs in China over the period from 1999 to 2007.

The main finding is that inventory stickiness has an inverted U-shaped impact on the likelihood of survival. However, the inflection point of this inverted U-shaped relationship lies at the end of the sample. Further moderation analysis indicates that environmental dynamism positively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory stickiness and venture survival, while financial constraints negatively moderate this relationship.

Most new SMEs have great potential to increase the likelihood of survival by improving inventory stickiness before achieving effective lean inventory management. Sticky inventory management can help new SMEs achieve better survival in a dynamic environment. However, new SMEs that are financially constrained should prudently implement sticky inventory management.

This paper contributes to the existing understanding about the likelihood of SMEs survival by addressing the role of sticky inventory management. It may be the first study to empirically demonstrate the moderating effect of environmental dynamism and financial constraints on the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory stickiness and venture survival.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of operational stickiness, and explores the relationship between operational stickiness and the likelihood of survival. Furthermore, the authors investigate this relationship in different manufacturing industries.

Using a large sample of more than 200,000 new manufacturing small and medium enterprises between 2000 and 2013 in China, the authors use the survival analysis method to investigate the non-linear relationship between operational stickiness and the likelihood of survival.

The authors demonstrate the existence of operational stickiness, such as inventory stickiness, property, plant, and equipment (PPE) stickiness, and labor stickiness. Next, the authors find the inverted U-shaped relationship between operational stickiness and the likelihood of survival. Furthermore, the authors document the differential effect of operational stickiness on the likelihood of survival in different industries.

Managers can improve the firm’s likelihood of survival by maintaining a moderate inventory stickiness and PPE stickiness. However, managers should not adopt sticky labor management in manufacturing industries.

This paper may be the first study to demonstrate the existence of operational stickiness, and confirm the inverted U-shaped relationship between operational stickiness and the likelihood of survival.

Properly planned road illumination systems are collectively a public wealth and the commissioning of such systems may require extensive planning, simulation and testing. The purpose of this simulative work is to offer a simple approach to facilitate luminance-based road lighting calculations that can be easier to comprehend and apply to practical designing problems when compared to complex multi-objective algorithms and other convoluted simulative techniques.

Road illumination systems were photometrically simulated with a created model in a validated software platform for specified system design configurations involving high-pressure sodium (HPS) and light-emitting diode (LED) luminaires. Multiple regression analyses were conducted with the simulatively obtained data set to propound a linear model of estimating average luminance, overall uniformity of luminance and energy efficiency of lighting installations, and the simulatively obtained data set was used to explore luminaire power–road surface average luminance characteristics for common geometric design configurations involving HPS and LED luminaires, and four categories of road surfaces.

The six linear equations of the propounded linear model were found to be well-fitted with their corresponding observation sets. Moreover, it was found that the luminaire power–road surface average luminance characteristics were well-fitted with linear trendlines and the increment in road surface average luminance level per watt increment of luminaire power was marginally higher for LEDs.

This neoteric approach of estimating road surface luminance parameters and energy efficiency of lighting installations, and the compendia of luminaire power–road surface average luminance characteristics offer new insights that can prove to be very useful for practical purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between inventory leanness and venture survival, and demonstrate the role of organizational environments in moderating this relationship from three dimensions: environmental complexity, dynamism and munificence.

Using a large panel data of more than 150,000 new Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises between 2000 and 2007 in the manufacturing sector, the authors employ the method of survival analysis via an accelerated failure time model to explore the non-linear relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival. Moreover, the moderation model is applied to examine the moderating role of organizational environments.

At its core, this paper demonstrates the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival. Furthermore, the authors find that environmental complexity and dynamism can negatively moderate this relationship, whereas environmental munificence acts the exact opposite.

Managers need to realize the trade-off between inventory leanness and venture survival. Collectively, more than 90 percent of new Chinese ventures have great potential to improve the likelihood of survival by implementing inventory leanness management. In addition, firms ought to be fully aware of the internal management and the external environments.

This is the first study to confirm the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival, and empirically verify the moderating role of environmental complexity, dynamism and munificence on this relationship.

First, the income elasticities are calculated for different levels of income, for both the decision to spend money on sports and the amount of money that is spent. Second, the study researches whether different operationalisations of income (i.e. family versus personal) result in different elasticity values. Third, the effect of sports-specific and non-sports leisure variables on sports participation is investigated.

A representative dataset of 3,775 adults is used containing a wide variety of leisure characteristics, gathered by means of a face-to-face survey. By means of a Tobit regression model both the determining factors of sports expenditure and the income elasticities are analysed.

For lower income individuals, a rise in income has a relatively bigger influence on the probability to spend money on sports participation, than is the case for higher income individuals. A positive relationship is found with sex (male), education, number of minutes and disciplines of sports and membership of a socio-cultural organisation, while age, watching TV and attending cultural events have a negative effect.

The study provides evidence that income-based segmentation of sports participants could turn out to be an efficient policy tool. By lowering the monetary-burden for lower incomes, it can be expected that participation rates can be raised efficiently.

For the first time the relationship between income and expenditure is explored for different levels of income and for two operationalisations of income. Moreover, the inclusion of non-sports leisure variables allows investigating relationships between sports consumption and other leisure activities.

This paper explores the relationship between inventory productivity and the likelihood of venture survival and then examines how financial constraints moderate the inventory productivity–survival linkage.

Accelerated failure time (AFT) model is employed to study the link between inventory productivity and venture survival by using small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) data from Chinese Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (CASIF) database over the period 1999–2007.

The paper demonstrates a converse U-curve relation between inventory productivity and venture survival. Additionally, financial constraints as the moderator weaken the marginal effect of inventory productivity on venture survival.

Managers should pay more attention to the important inventory performance indicator: inventory productivity. In the context of prominent financing difficulties, managers should be rapid to adjust the competitive strategy and optimize the internal production process according to the inherent nature of risks in a friction environment, and thus generate resources that enterprises cannot raise in the financial market.

This study may be the first to practically investigate the role of inventory productivity on venture survival and the moderating effect of financing constraints on this relationship. It adds to abundant articles as regards the interface between operation management and venture survival by exploring how financial constraints moderate the inventory productivity–survival linkage.