Search results

This chapter addresses the possible consequences of the United States Supreme Court's increasing attention to international and foreign human rights law in its death penalty jurisprudence, particularly with respect to the Eighth Amendment. I question the belief of those commentators who argue that such attention might assist with efforts to abolish the death penalty in the United States, and argue instead that the perceived threat to state sovereignty that the invocation of international and foreign human rights law poses might result in attempts to retain the death penalty as a means of reasserting state autonomy.

Discrimination law has evolved from litigating or prosecuting overt, individual cases of egregious behavior solely by means of anecdotal evidence and eyewitness testimony. Statistical evidence came to bear the imprimatur of the United States Supreme Court in the Seventies as a probative means of discerning guilt or liability, and has been used to shore up patterns of prejudice at a systemic level since. Courtrooms of the Twenty-First Century have struggled to define discrimination through a quantitative lens, nonetheless relying on qualitative evidence to assist the factfinder in rendering a verdict. Some definitions carry more precision and accuracy than others. Consider the inflammatory National Law Journal's indictment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (‘EPA’) as an example of the latter. In 1992, the National Law Journal ran a Special Investigation of the EPA, claiming that the federal government had fostered a racist imbalance in hazardous site cleanup and its pursuit of polluters. Kudos to the columnists for bringing environmental equity into the spotlight of public debate and for forewarning and encouraging the EPA to conduct its enforcements reflectively, in order to avoid being on the receiving end of a Title VI lawsuit. Nonetheless, the methodology used by the National Law Journal belies a total understanding of the bureaucratic structure that pursued these actions and of the notion of statistical significance. This Article confines itself to Region X's actions between 1995 and 1999, applying linear regression and other statistical tests to determine whether biases, found using the National Law Journal's naive methodology, stand after due consideration of chance. The NLJ approach finds evidence of bias, but the author also conducts more complicated and appropriate analyses, such as those contemplated by the National Guidance. After issuing some provisos, the author dismisses charges of racism or classism. While the National Guidance represents a positive first step in identifying environmental justice communities, those with an above-average proportion of lower-class or non-Caucasian inhabitants, it lacks statistical sophistication and econometric depth. This Article concludes by recommending the use of normalized racial distributions, Gini coefficients, and Social Welfare Functions to the EPA and to other organizations conducting environmental justice analysis.

On the example of professional football in Germany, this paper analyses the conflict about the punishment of fan misbehaviour within an agency-theoretical framework to cast light on the reasons for the ineffectiveness of the sentences and to show possible solutions.

In a pre-study, more than 1,300 hand-collected past sentences against clubs by the German and European sports courts were analysed to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the penalties so far. Additionally, in the main study, 26 expert interviews with German representatives of the football association, courts, clubs, sponsors, police and active fan scenes allow a deep insight into the relationships of the involved parties.

The paper suggests that the sentences do not sufficiently consider several agency problems. Due to moral hazard, they exert hardly any influence on fan behaviour and only a small one on the clubs. While the lighting of pyrotechnics is by far the most punished type of misbehaviour, most of the interviewees cite the impossibility of preventing it. Despite the sentences, some clubs make non-public agreements with their fans about still tolerable misconduct or do not pass the penalties on to the polluters as intended by the association. The findings highlight the importance of communication for less misbehaviour.

For the first time, the agency theory and the economic theory of optimal punishment are brought together with insights from interviews with the involved parties. The authors discover a two-stage principal-agent problem and get new insights into stakeholders' hidden motivations and attitudes. The results should encourage a debate on the current penalties and possible solutions to the recurring problem of pyrotechnics.

This paper aims to present a methodology for the prioritization of innovations and improvements in services and products that integrates penalty–reward contrast analysis (PRCA) and improvement gap analysis (IGA).

The presented method is theoretically developed and simulated. It uses a case study with 290 clients of supermarkets, evaluating 16 attributes of this service, to demonstrate the advantages of integrating PRCA and IGA.

The integration of PRCA and IGA provides benefits that outweigh the use of each method individually. The joint use of these methods allows the identification of possible nonlinear impact of attributes on customers’ overall satisfaction, allowing managerial recommendations to be made with greater discriminatory power, in addition to qualifying the identification of innovative attributes.

Managers must be aware of the effect of the interaction of innovative attributes with attributes already used by the company. At the same time, it is appropriate to verify whether there is potential to improve the existing attributes. The literature shows that PRCA identifies the nonlinear influence of customers’ satisfaction with individual attributes on overall satisfaction, but it fails to identify the possible impact of innovative attributes. In turn, IGA identifies innovative attributes but does not identify how the attributes influence overall satisfaction. Thus, the benefits of integrating PRCA and IGA outweigh the individual limitations of each method, thereby increasing the quality of managerial recommendations. Moreover, a limitation of PRCA makes this method useful for identifying innovative attributes in relation to attractive attributes identified by the IGA method.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept of sustainability as a new paradigm regarding food consumption and, by means of a case study from the aquaculture sector, to illustrate how sustainability elements may lead to a new paradigm in food consumption.

The study described involved sensory analyses and personal responses from different consumers representing the population for who the product is intended. Standard methods were adopted for field and laboratory studies.

The experimental studies have shown that appearance, flavour, odour, texture and overall acceptance of farmed salmon is at least as accepted as wild salmon. The sustainability analysis has shown that under the right conditions, sustainability elements may be applied in aquaculture as a means to improve quality and catalyse sustainable food consumption.

The work was carried out in order to discuss the extent to which the concept of sustainability may apply to food consumption projects.

This is the first time a holistic analysis of the links between sustainability in food consumption projects has been made. The paper provides useful data and knowledge on which further research can be carried out.

The paper presents important measurement approaches in the field of costumer satisfaction with services and applies those empirically for service bundles at the level of the tourism destination. After working out the most prominent characteristics of existing satisfaction concepts according to the American and the Scandinavian school of thought, the latter will be critically evaluated for its potential practical use in measuring guest satisfaction. Based on this preparatory work, the Importance‐Performance Analysis, the Implicit Importance Analysis and the Penalty‐Reward‐Contrast Analysis are implemented and show that differing satisfaction models will lead to varying results and hence, ambiguous implications for destination management. However, due to its model parsimony and methodical stringency the Penalty‐Reward‐Contrast Analysis will be retained as the most valuable instrument for measuring tourist satisfaction. The paper concludes with implications for the management of destinations and a brief outlook for further research.

This paper aims to identify the influence of dimensions of movie theater service on customer behavior intention, comparing linear and nonlinear methods.

With a sample of 345 cinema customers, the analysis compares penalty–reward contrast analysis (PRCA) and multiple linear regression analysis (MLR).

This research demonstrates that PRCA brings a better identification of the antecedents of customer behavior intention than MLR, showing that a nonlinear analysis can bring superior decision information to movie theater managers. Also, this study shows that superior performance of aspects related to the client's feelings leads the consumer to a tendency to return and recommend the cinema (behavior intention). This study also confirms that successful recovery actions can compensate for failures.

Although the nonlinear antecedents of customer satisfaction have been studied in the scientific literature, there is a gap of studies applying methods to identify nonlinear antecedents of customer behavior intention (tendency to return and recommend), particularly in the industry of movie theater services. The findings of this research may allow movie theaters to improve the service provided, confronting the great challenges of online movie-watching alternatives.

This paper examines the development of customer-based brand equity through communication consistency in a luxury hotel segment. Communication consistency is considered as a basic principle of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach.

The empirical research was conducted among 223 guests during their stay in five-star deluxe luxury hotels in a Mediterranean country. Data are analyzed through the PLS technique and impact-asymmetry analysis.

Communication consistency is found to have a strong positive impact on all brand equity dimensions, especially on brand trust, brand image and perceived quality. The impact-asymmetry analysis further revealed negatively asymmetric relationships between communication consistency and six out of seven brand equity dimensions, except for affective commitment.

Some restrictions related to the measurement scales should be mitigated in future research.

Communication consistency is confirmed as a core management practice in luxury hotel business. Marketing professionals operating in this industry are therefore confronted with increasing challenges of efficient management of IMC.

This work addresses several research calls from the most recent marketing and hospitality literature. The analysis of the impact of communication consistency has extended our knowledge on the potential of IMC in creation of a strong brand. Obtained insights into the shape of the relationship between communication consistency and seven different brand equity dimensions help to better understand the process of brand equity building in a luxury hotel setting.

Using asymmetric impact–performance analysis for examining an asymmetric relationship between user satisfaction and website features, the present research aims to identify features of high priority for quality improvement. For doing so, the current research was conducted in the context of the E-learning website of the most prestigious university in Iran, namely, the University of Tehran.

The main question was which of the three groups of basic, performance and excitement factors has the required dimensions of the quality of the website based on the model WebQual 4.0 by considering Kano’s user satisfaction model and impact–performance analysis. This is a descriptive survey, applied and cross-sectional study. The study population included Tehran University’s students who enrolled in virtual courses in the academic year 2020–2021 from which a sample of 457 students was selected. The data collection tool was the questionnaire of Webqual 4.0, as well as a researcher-made questionnaire to measure end-user satisfaction.

Using structural equation modeling and multiple regression, the findings showed that the customer’s overall satisfaction with the mentioned website is primarily affected by the feature interaction with services, including the two structures of trust and empathy, and then the dimensions of usability and quality of information. Examining the Webqual 0.4 dimensions indicated that the website usability dimension is a part of the high-performance excitement factors group, the information quality dimension is a part of the high-performance basic factors group and the website interaction dimension is in the low-performance basic factors group.

The research is highly innovative taking the theoretical model of Kano and methodological investigation of asymmetric impact–performance analysis into consideration alongside the WebQual 4.0 as a fundamental model for website assessment. Moreover, the research was conducted on an E-learning website, which is unique and a necessity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to explore the underlying structure of wellness in upper-upscale and luxury hotels and the roles wellness attributes play in customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

This study uses a mixed methods approach consisting of content analysis and social media analytics. In Study 1, the authors integrate and review the structure of wellness attributes by conducting a literature review on prior research on wellness and analyzing websites of upper-upscale and luxury hotels. In Study 2, the authors implement text analytics and regression analysis to determine the roles of wellness attributes in customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction by examining the final data gathered from 141,973 reviews of 226 upper-upscale and luxury hotels in NYC.

This research introduces the underlying structure of wellness in the upper-upscale and luxury hotels. Findings demonstrate a significant relationship between wellness attributes and customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. This study shows each wellness attribute’s specific roles in customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction through the Kano model.

The current study extends the research on wellness by discovering the underlying structure of wellness in the upper-upscale and luxury hotels. Based on the Kano Model, the study reveals specific roles of wellness attributes regarding their dichotomous impact on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The study makes a novel approach to the topic of wellness through a mixed methods approach consisted of content analysis and social media analytics. Analyzing online customer reviews derived from TripAdvisor.com, the study provides an in-depth insight and understanding of customers’ perceptions of wellness attributes.

The study guides hotel operators to perform wellness attributes by defining the unique roles of wellness attributes in customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Using the findings of the current study, hotel operators can prioritize wellness attributes regarding their core strategies and provide satisfying wellness attributes to customers.

Prior research merely focuses on hotels in wellness destinations or wellness-focused hotels with a lack of research on wellness offered in the general lodging industry. This research fills the gap by discovering the underlying wellness structure embedded in the general lodging industry, specifically in the upper-upscale and luxury hotels.