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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the competing effects of brand community participation, which should enhance loyalty to both the brand and to already-owned products, against switching costs, which should make consumers sensitive about the financial costs associated with new products.

Using the participation and weekly adoption data from 7,411 members in two brand communities and one product category forum over a six-month period, switching costs were computed for each member using 10 years of product release and pricing data.

Consistent with prior research, switching costs had a significant effect on reducing product adoption. Brand community participation also had a significant effect on overcoming switching costs. However, these main effects were qualified by an interaction, such that the most active participants were more likely to buy the new product when switching costs were higher.

Most importantly, these findings provide unique insights into financial switching costs and demonstrate ways in which brand community participation provides a way to mitigate switching costs for consumers who would most be affected by them.

The costs and benefits of patient/public involvement in health, social and political settings are important determinants of whether people and organisations participate. However, actual costs and benefits of public participation are rarely measured other than as proxies or as only “measuring the measurable”. This paper aims to examine whether economic analysis poses a threat or an opportunity for future public participation.

This inquiry is based on original research by INVOLVE (literature review of participation costs/benefits; qualitative interviews with “think tanks”, participants and managers of participation projects) that examined the options for measuring monetary costs and benefits of public participation.

The case against measuring includes: mainstream economic theory is unable to explain participation; mainstream economic models are unsuitable for appropriately assessing participation costs and benefits; participation benefits are beyond economic value; and, economic values of participation may be misinterpreted and misused. Conversely, the case for measuring includes: economic measurement is necessary because public participation constitutes investments of public resources; there is a need to improve the evidence base on which participation decisions are made; the lack of economic information about participation causes problems; and neo‐classical economics is not the only available option for measuring participation costs/benefits.

The limitations and implications for granting bodies, researchers/health economists, evaluators/administrators, and donor‐commissioned evaluations are discussed.

There is a need for innovative indicators that capture the costs and benefits of public participation, as well as appropriate resources for the economic analysis of such initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers derive value and switching costs from their own participation conditional on their perceived efficacy of themselves (self-efficacy) and their advisers (adviser-efficacy) in financial services.

Student interviewers approached customers exiting banks with a skip interval of two. The respondents received the questionnaire items translated into Chinese. The final survey sample consists of 220 respondents.

Empirical results confirm that customer participation influences switching costs through customer value. The synergistic effect of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy moderates the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs. The incongruent levels of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy can increase customer value and switching costs.

This study looks beyond self-efficacy to demonstrate that the synergistic roles of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy significantly influence the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transactional costs on smallholder avocado farmers’ participation in the export market and the extent of participation in Murang’a County, Kenya.

Data was collected from 384 avocado farmers in Murang’a County, following stratified sampling. The Heckman two-stage model was used for analysis.

Results showed that the cost of information search was an important variable that impedes smallholders’ participation in export marketing while harvesting costs inhibits the extent of participation in export marketing.

This study used data at the farm level. Therefore, insights on transaction costs among other marketing agents in the export market value chain would be an issue for future studies.

Following the debate on transaction costs and market participation among farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa, this paper models transactional costs and export market participation among avocado smallholders and measures the extent of participation with the inclusion of harvesting costs, negotiation costs, monitoring costs and information search costs that are not common in previous studies, thus contributing to the development of literature.

This study aims to identify the benefits and costs of participation in small group consumption communities (SGCCs), and understand how benefits and costs experienced in these communities differ from those experienced in large group consumption communities (LGCCs).

Thematic analysis of data collected through multi-method approach comprising depth-interviews, participant observation of community events and online community forums was used to identify benefits and costs of SGCC participation.

Eight benefits and three costs of SGCC participation were identified. While some benefits and costs were found to be similar to those identified in LGCCs earlier, their experience and manifestation was found to differ significantly in SGCCs.

Data were collected from SGCCs located in India (collectivist culture). Hence, findings may not be reflective of individualist cultures.

Understanding that benefits and costs of community participation are experienced differently in SGCCs and LGCCs may be useful input for managers wanting to seed/nurture consumption communities. By increasing benefits and reducing costs, managers can transform communities into vibrant social systems, and thereby improve members’ engagement and involvement.

Of the eight benefits identified in the study, two benefits – Escape and Meaningful Engagement are identified for the first time. The study also explores costs of SGCC participation (an area hitherto under explored) in detail. In addition, the study illustrates how some of the benefits despite being seemingly similar in SGCCs and LGCCs are inherently different.

The authors explore the outcomes of health-care professionals' participation in a vendor-hosted online community by combining qualitative and quantitative data collected in two separate studies. The authors aim to shed light on the potential value outcomes of community participation covering the reduction of service costs by professionals' community participation.

The authors explore the outcomes of health-care professionals' participation in a vendor-hosted online community by combining qualitative and quantitative data collected in two separate studies. The authors also introduce GABEK® as a unique method of qualitative empirical content analysis. In the quantitative study, the authors refer to customer survey data and transactional data.

The results show that participation in online communities by professionals emerges as a dual concept, consisting of both help-seeking and help-providing behaviors. These behaviors in turn facilitate the creation of economic and relational value, as well as influencing the perceived usefulness of the online community, resulting in higher satisfaction with the community among the participating professionals. Customer survey data and transactional data were gathered from a major medical equipment vendor hosting an online community, and those data confirm that participation also decreases service support costs to professionals by reducing the number of necessary service visits by the vendor's service technicians.

The resulting model of participation and corresponding benefits in an online community for health-care professionals reflects and informs current developments in the health care industry.

The combination of qualitative as well as quantitative studies relying on the data of a world leading medical equipment vendor hosting an online community provides unique and innovative insights into participation and value creation within B2B communities.

This paper aims to investigate the role of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) within the Canadian public procurement, by seeking to identify barriers and supporting factors of MSMEs’ participation and success in public tenders.

The empirical analysis builds on a unique survey run by the Canadian federal government, which addressed firms either participating or not participating in public tenders. Model estimation on the survey data relies on sample selection methodologies, which allow separating determinants of MSMEs’ decision to participate from determinants of success.

Results provide evidence that costs stemming from asset specificity and uncertainty (e.g. costs of bidding, requirements for participation, bundling of contracts and award rules based on minimum price) affect participation in public procurement. Within MSMEs, micro-firms are the most discouraged from participating. However, after controlling for factors affecting participation, micro-firms emerge as having a higher success rate, possibly because of high specialization and joint participation with larger firms.

Because of the cross-sectional nature of the data used for hypotheses testing, endogeneity may arise if ex post variables affect ex ante decisions. This may apply if participation in procurement feeds on success in past tenders.

Findings may inform policies for the inclusion of smaller firms in the public marketplace.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempting to disentangle determinants of participation in public tenders from determinants of success. Separating the two aspects helps fine-tune SME-friendly public procurement policies, by identifying actions that effectively facilitate success of MSMEs in public tenders.

This paper aims to discuss the cost of e‐participation from the managerial perspective.

The use of digital media to consult and engage citizens and companies in the decision‐making process is a way of improving the design and legitimatization of decisions, as well as potentially increasing the likelihood of successful implementation of policies. This paper discusses if the potential economic benefits from increased or qualitatively improved involvement inherently are long term and have to compete with other activities undertaken by government.

There are great uncertainties regarding the magnitude of the positive effects on governance since there are not only positive, but also negative externalities of e‐participation; thus, there are major challenges in measuring and capitalizing on the e‐participation. Part of the reason for the uncertainty is the lack of explicit awareness of the choice of technology, communication style and institutional approach to implementing e‐participation. Further, there is the need to be aware of the administrative costs in transferring e‐participation practices and techniques.

The perspective on cost of e‐participation is not well explored. The discussion raised emphasizes the urgency of the issue.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role played by the geographic distance between the poor and non‐poor in the local demand for income redistribution and, in particular, to provide an empirical test of the geographically limited altruism model proposed by Pauly, incorporating the possibility of participation costs associated with the provision of transfers.

First, the authors motivate the discussion by allowing for an “iceberg cost” as participation for the poor individuals in Pauly's original model. Next, using data from the 2000 Brazilian Census and a panel based on the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) from 2001 to 2007, the authors estimate the effect of the proximity between poor and non‐poor on the demand for redistribution.

All of the authors' distance‐related explanatory variables indicate that an increased proximity between poor and non‐poor is associated with better targeting of the programs (demand for redistribution). For instance, a one‐hour increase in the time spent commuting by the poor reduces the targeting by 3.158 percentage points. This result is similar to that of Ashworth et al., but is definitely not due to the program leakages. To empirically disentangle participation costs and spatially restricted altruism effects, an additional test is conducted using unique panel data based on the 2004 and 2006 PNAD, which assess the number of benefits and the average benefit value received by beneficiaries. The estimates suggest that both cost and altruism play important roles in the demand for redistribution and might reduce targeting in Brazil. Lastly, the results indicate that “size matters”; i.e. the budget for redistribution has a positive impact on targeting.

Our results suggest that a totally centralized supply of transfers may be more inefficient than local redistribution in terms of targeting, either due to higher participation costs or because of the eventual greater geographical distance between the national median voter and poor individuals. However, a partial role for the federal government, such as providing funds for redistribution, seems to improve targeting.

In particular, the paper provides an empirical test for the geographically limited altruism model proposed by Pauly, incorporating the possibility of participation costs associated with the provision of transfers. The authors motivate this discussion by adding the possibility of distance‐related “iceberg costs” of delivering benefits to poor individuals and show that these two effects of distance may act to lower the demand for transfers, making it difficult to distinguish between the two effects. These two effects of distance act by lowering the demand for transfers, making it difficult to disentangle the effect of altruism from the effect of cost. The authors' empirical strategy seems to allow to identify each of them and to provide a suggestion on whether it is advantageous to carry out redistribution at the local level.

In seeking to extend rational choice theory from “market” to “political” behaviour, economists have encountered a paradox: namely, that the act of voting itself appears to be inconsistent with the assumption of rationality. This is true not only when self‐interest is assumed, but also when altruistic behaviour (at least in its non‐Kantian form) is allowed for. This article surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of the decision to participate in voting, and concludes that this decision is responsive to changes in the expected benefits and costs of voting; even though the expected costs of voting must normally outweigh the expected benefits. Interpretations of this behaviour include the possibility that voters act rationally, but are misinformed about the likely effectiveness of their votes; alternatively, the electorate may include more Kantians than economists have generally been willing to admit.