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This study examines the role of behavioural factors, such as confidence, optimism, pessimism and rational expectation, in affecting investment decisions in the Pakistani stock market.

Using daily trading data of Karachi Stock Exchange-100 index from January 2012 to December 2015, different regression models, including descriptive statistics and stationarity tests, are performed.

Results indicate that stock market trading has suffered from pessimistic behaviour of investors. In the first model, the authors find a positive sign of confidence and negative sign of optimism with the trading volume. The second model shows a positive role of confidence and rational expectations in affecting the trading volume in daily, Monday and Friday samples. The results of the third model show a negative sign of both optimism and rational expectation with the trading volume. Furthermore, the next model shows a negative sign of confidence combined with pessimism while testing their relationship with the trading volume. Finally, results of the final model suggest that optimism negatively affects the trading volume, and on the other hand, pessimism has a positive impact on the trading volume.

The method and empirical testing of behavioural biases and their relationship with economic variable used in this study seem to be a promising way to better understand the role of psychology in deriving financial decisions for academics and policymakers.

This study uses secondary data for measuring behavioural biases and decomposes the effect between rational expectation and behavioural biases.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how sentiment affects economic activity in Brazil.

Based on a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, this study examines in detail the short-term and long-term asymmetric impacts between the variables during the period from January 2007 to December 2020.

There are three main results of this study. First, sentiment is an important factor for economic activity in Brazil, and its effect possibly occurs through the channels of consumption and investment, which are the two main components of economic growth. Second, sentiment affects economic activity in different ways in the short and the long term: in Brazil, although in the short-term, immediate shocks of sentiment may be confusing, the negative shocks from previous periods have a negative impact on economic activity. Third, the effect of shocks of optimism and pessimism on economic activity is asymmetric, and in the long run, only shocks of optimism have a significant and positive impact.

The relationship between sentiment and economic activity is still a controversial issue in the literature and this study seeks to advance its understanding in Brazil.

In real life, we only know the consequences of each possible action with some uncertainty. A typical example is interval uncertainty, when we only know the lower and upper bounds on the expected gain. A usual way to compare such interval-valued alternatives is to use the optimism–pessimism criterion developed by Nobelist Leo Hurwicz. In this approach, a weighted combination of the worst-case and the best-case gains is maximized. There exist several justifications for this criterion; however, some of the assumptions behind these justifications are not 100% convincing. The purpose of this paper is to find a more convincing explanation.

The authors used utility approach to decision-making.

The authors proposed new, hopefully more convincing, justifications for Hurwicz’s approach.

This is a new, more intuitive explanation of Hurwicz’s approach to decision-making under interval uncertainty.

Building on tourism crisis studies and behavioral economics, this study describes a national survey conducted among 439 Aruban tourism and nontourism employees.

Regression analysis was subsequently conducted to analyze the relationship between experienced well-being, crisis duration and tourism and nontourism employee sentiments.

The findings indicate that tourism employee sentiments are generally, and significantly, more negative and their concerns about the future are significantly more pessimistic than nontourism employees. The results show that the experienced well-being and expected duration of the COVID-19 crisis have a significant negative effect on tourism employees' sentiments. The paper provides several policies and industry recommendations for strengthening tourism employee well-being and economic resilience. Several avenues for future research are presented.

The current study contributes to this literature by showing that the increased pessimism and negativity of the tourism employees as compared to nontourism employees during the current pandemic influence their thoughts about future income and earnings as well as future purchases.

This paper aims to analyze the connectedness between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock market index and cryptocurrencies. It investigates the relevant impact of RavenPack COVID sentiment on the dynamic of stock market indices and conventional cryptocurrencies as well as their Islamic counterparts during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors rely on the methodology of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) to construct network-associated measures. Then, the wavelet coherence model was applied to explore co-movements between GCC stock markets, cryptocurrencies and RavenPack COVID sentiment. As a robustness check, the authors used the time-frequency connectedness developed by Barunik and Krehlik (2018) to verify the direction and scale connectedness among these markets.

The results illustrate the effect of COVID-19 on all cryptocurrency markets. The time variations of stock returns display stylized fact tails and volatility clustering for all return series. This stressful period increased investor pessimism and fears and generated negative emotions. The findings also highlight a high spillover of shocks between RavenPack COVID sentiment, Islamic and conventional stock return indices and cryptocurrencies. In addition, we find that RavenPack COVID sentiment is the main net transmitter of shocks for all conventional market indices and that most Islamic indices and cryptocurrencies are net receivers.

This study provides two main types of implications: On the one hand, it helps fund managers adjust the risk exposure of their portfolio by including stocks that significantly respond to COVID-19 sentiment and those that do not. On the other hand, the volatility mechanism and investor sentiment can be interesting for investors as it allows them to consider the dynamics of each market and thus optimize the asset portfolio allocation.

This finding suggests that the RavenPack COVID sentiment is a net transmitter of shocks. It is considered a prominent channel of shock spillovers during the health crisis, which confirms the behavioral contagion. This study also identifies the contribution of particular interest to fund managers and investors. In fact, it helps them design their portfolio strategy accordingly.

The purpose of this paper is to consider recent field evidence to analyse what online public services citizens need, explores potential citizen subsidy of these specific services and investigates where resources should be invested in terms of media accessibility. The authors explore these from a citizen-centric affordability perspective within three exemplar developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank and United Nations in particular promote initiatives under the “Information and Communication Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) to stress the relevance of e-Government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. The authors adopt a contingency value approach to determine directly reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. Hence, our focus is mainly upon an empirical investigation through extensive fieldwork in the context of sub-Sahara Africa. A substantive survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents. It was found, in particular, that citizens were willing to pay to be able to access digital public services and that amounts of fees they were willing to pay varied depending on what services they wish to access and what devices they use (PCs or mobile phones).

The authors adopt a contingency value approach to determine directly reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. A survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents.

The findings suggest that by understanding citizen needs, demands and how they can benefit from online public services could drive decisions related to what public services need to be prioritised for economically active citizens, potentially explore citizen subsidy of these specific public services which will have a trickle-down benefit to poorer citizens by reducing the pressures on traditional channels of public service delivery and investigate where resources should be invested in terms of media to access online services. Willingness to pay between the top online public services showed no statistically significant difference among all respondents.

The research focused on economically active digitally savvy citizens in the major capital cities in each of our selected countries. While these are not representative of the population at large, our intention was to understand what citizen-led government services would look like from the perspective of this group, with an insight into the value they place on these online services and their ability to access them. Technology diffusion starts with the early adopters (Rogers, 2010), and here the authors have focused on those that are likely to be early adopters.

Poor fiscal capacity, namely, the amount and type of resources a state has at its disposal, not only has an impact on economic wellbeing, but particularly relevant in this case, also has an impact on the quality of government (Baskaran and Bigsten, 2013). Thus, e-government is one way in which developing countries can focus on developing good governance and strengthening civil society to improve the quality of government and motivate citizens to participate in the political process.

The economic performance of African countries has been viewed with pessimism, consistently considered to be the poorest continent (Harrison et al., 2014). Recent studies have empirically shown that new information technologies have contributed to longer term economic growth in African countries and stress the need for government to further invest in developing telecommunications infrastructures and internet access (Donou-Adonsou et al., 2016). However one of the major constraints and challenges for developing countries is the limited fiscal capacity and ability to mobilise fiscal resources to finance the provision of public services, which is essential for economic development (Ali et al., 2015).

The authors contribute to the World Bank and United Nations initiatives to promote ICT for Development’ (ICT4D) the relevance of e-government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. If online services are of no benefit, even if they are more convenient and lower cost, they are unlikely to be used. Accessing digital public services directly addresses the needs of economically active citizens and can also facilitate the steps towards an improved quality of government and interaction with civil society. The study has contributed to an insightful understanding of the value, cost and benefits of citizen-led e-Government in this respect.

The current study aims to investigate the impacts of two behavioral biases, namely, loss aversion and overconfidence on the performance of US companies. First, the impact of loss aversion on the economic performance of companies was assessed. Second, the impact of overconfidence on market performance was discussed.

This study used around 6,777 quarterly observations on the population of US-insured industrial and services companies over the 2006-2016 period. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression in two panel data models were used to test the hypotheses formulated for the study.

It was documented that the loss-aversion bias negatively affects the economic performance of companies and this is achieved for both sectors. In contrast, the findings suggest that overconfidence positively affects market performance of industrial firms but negatively affects market performance in service firms. Further robust evidence was found that overconfidence bias seems to be dominant, and hence, investors may tend to be more overconfident rather than more loss-averse.

This research can be extended by focusing on the following question: What is the impact of the contradictory (positive and negative) effects of an investor's loss aversion and overconfidence on the US company performance in case of realization of a stock market crisis or stock market crash?

Research consistently shows that non-scientific bias, equity, and diversity trainings do not work, and often make bias and diversity problems worse. Despite these widespread failures, there is considerable reason for hope that effective, meaningful DEI efforts can be developed. One approach in particular, the bias habit-breaking training, has 15 years of experimental evidence demonstrating its widespread effectiveness and efficacy.

This article discusses bias, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts from the author’s perspective as a scientist–practitioner – the author draws primarily on the scientific literature, but also integrates insights from practical experiences working in DEI. The author provides a roadmap for adapting effective, evidence-based approaches from other disciplines (e.g. cognitive-behavioral therapy) into the DEI context and review evidence related to the bias habit-breaking training, as one prominent demonstration of a scientifically-validated approach that effects lasting, meaningful improvements on DEI issues within both individuals and institutions.

DEI trainings fail due to widespread adoption of the information deficit model, which is well-known as a highly ineffective approach. Empowerment-based approaches, in contrast, are highly promising for making meaningful, lasting changes in the DEI realm. Evidence indicates that the bias habit-breaking training is effective at empowering individuals as agents of change to reduce bias, create inclusion, and promote equity, both within themselves and the social contexts they inhabit.

In contrast to the considerable despair and pessimism around DEI efforts, the present analysis provides hope and optimism, and an empirically-validated path forward, to develop and test DEI approaches that empower individuals as agents of change.

This paper analyses Hanoi consumers' evaluation of food risk and response to the perceived risk.

The authors employed the mixed method approach that integrates segmentation analysis on the survey data and information from group discussions.

Based on consumers' risk rating of six food groups and level of food safety worry, the authors identified four distinct consumer segments: low, moderate, high and very-high-risk perception. The authors found the existence of widespread food safety concerns among Hanoi consumers. Living in an urban region was associated with a higher level of food risk perception. Moderate, high and very-high-risk perception segments exhibited a very low level of institutional trust and subjective control over hazards. Response to the perceived risk differed across segments. “Very high-risk perception” was associated with the most risk-averse behaviour, putting more effort into seeking food safety information and engaging more in supermarket purchase. Consumers with a low and moderate perceived food risk participate more in self-supply of food to reduce their food safety concern.

The paper provides empirical evidence on consumers' evaluation of food risk and their risk-reducing strategies to support the risk communication in Vietnam.

Enhancing institutional trust and risk communication including hazard education can improve consumer confidence in food.

This is the first segmentation study on consumer food risk perception in Vietnam.

This paper aims to examine the antagonistic coexistence of different tourism imaginaries in global post-viral social landscapes. Such antagonisms may be resolved at the expense of the ethics of tourism mobility, if not adjudicated by post-human reflexivity. Currently, unreflexive behaviours involve the refusal to conform to lifesaving “stay-at-home” policies, the tendency to book holidays and the public inspection of death zones.

Each of the consumption styles explored in this paper to discuss post-COVID-19 tourism recovery corresponds to at least one tourist imaginary, antagonistically placed against social imaginaries of moral betterment, solidarity, scientific advancement, national security and labour equality. A multi-modal collection of audio-visual and textual data, gathered through social media and the digital press, is categorised and analysed via critical discourse analysis.

Data in the public domain suggest a split between pessimistic and optimistic attitudes that forge different tourism futures. These attitudes inform different imaginaries with different temporal orientations and consumption styles.

COVID-has exposed the limits of the capacity to efficiently address threats to both human and environmental ecosystems. As once popular tourist locales/destinations are turned by COVID-2019s spread into risk zones with morbid biographical records their identities alter and their imaginaries of suffering become anthropocentric.

Using Castoriadis’ differentiation between social and radical imaginaries, Foucault’s biopolitical analysis, Sorokin’s work on mentalities and Sorel’s reflections on violence, the author argue that this paper has entered a new phase in the governance and experience of tourism, which subsumes the idealistic basis of tourist imaginaries as cosmopolitan representational frameworks under the techno-cultural imperatives of risk, individualistic growth through the adventure (“edgework”) and heritage preservation. This paper also needs to reconsider the contribution of technology (not technocracy) to sustainable post-COVID-19 scenarios of tourism recovery.