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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how electronic word of mouth (e-WOM), attitude, and city image affect tourists’ intention to visit a tourism city.

Drawing from the tourism management literature, the authors hypothesize and test the relationships among e-WOM, attitude, overall city image, and visit intentions. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the proposed relationships among the variables.

The empirical results suggested that e-WOM has a positive and significant influence on tourists’ attitude and overall city image. Further, e-WOM, attitude toward city, and overall city image were significant determinants of visit intentions.

The paper contributes to understand the relationship between four constructs of e-WOM, attitude, and overall city image and visit intentions, tested in city tourism in the context of a tourism city.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how brand personality and brand equity affect intentions to revisit a city tourism destination.

Statistical population of this research consisted of those visitors who traveled to Pool city in Iran during Spring 2015. A structural equation model test with maximum likelihood estimation was performed to test the relationship among the research variables using 367 participants.

The empirical results from the structural model suggest that brand personality and brand equity positively influenced revisit intention. Furthermore, brand personality was a direct antecedent of brand equity.

An integrated model of brand personality, brand equity and revisit intention was tested in a tourism city in the context of a developing economy. The combination of a developing country context and the significance of destination brand enhance the contextual contribution of the paper.

This memoir records my experiences with, observations of, and reflections upon the racial segregation that prevailed as I was growing up white in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the 1950s and 1960s. As part of the last generation to remember the Jim Crow South, I offer these verbal snapshots of the last days of de jure racial segregation – an exercise in retrospective symbolic interactionism.

Criminal background checks are used widely in the U.S. to screen applicants for employment, licenses, housing, and government benefits. State lawmakers instituted many of these requirements, ostensibly with the aim of managing criminal risk in various areas of social life. The present study examines the development of this legal form. Drawing from legislative discourse in the Illinois General Assembly, this study puts forward an endogenous account of constructing criminal risk, showing that lawmakers justified new background check laws largely as a means of filling security loopholes created by prior legislation. While the laws respond to identified criminal risks, the process of expanding background checks itself draws attention to other dimensions of vulnerability, necessitating the addition of new screening requirements. Incremental expansions are further justified on the basis of background screening’s low cost, which, lawmakers argue, creates an obligation to extend the requirements wherever vulnerabilities are identified, particularly when children are potential victims and sex offenders the possible villains. The study shows how security and vulnerability are mutually generative in the area of background screening and discusses implications for understanding this legal form in the context of contemporary American penality.

In order to emphasize in-depth analyses of individual life stories, seven informants were selected. Since breadth of experience will contribute to a more detailed contextualization of the consumer's use of products in identity negotiation, diversity across informants was emphasized. Interviews generally followed the format as suggested by Thompson, Locander, and Pollio (1989). A comfortable setting was chosen and pseudonyms were used to ensure anonymity. Interviews were audio-taped and lasted anywhere from one to just over two hours. Grand tour questions (McCracken, 1988) focused on the meaning of the tattoo design, the experience of being tattooed, perceptions of the body, words the informants used to describe themselves, and other biographical information important for understanding the informant's personal myth. Every effort was made to present a natural front, keep the informant on track without being too directive, demonstrate active listening, and prompt the informant as a way of probing for details (Spradley, 1979). To ensure accuracy, an experienced and trained transcriptionist transcribed each of the seven interviews. The final text totaled 450 typed double-spaced pages.

This paper first reviews the history of social insurance policy and coverage in urban China, documenting the evolution in the coverage of pensions, medical and unemployment insurance for both local residents and migrants, and highlighting obstacles to expanding coverage. The paper then uses two waves of the China Urban Labor Survey, conducted in 2005 and 2010, to examine the correlates of social insurance participation before and after implementation of the 2008 Labor Contract Law. A higher labor tax wedge is associated with a lower probability that local employed residents participate in social insurance programs, but is not associated with participation of wage-earning migrants, who are more likely to be dissuaded by fragmentation of the social insurance system. The existing gender gap in social insurance coverage is explained by differences in coverage across industrial sectors and firm ownership classes in which men and women work.

Housing prices in China have increased rapidly over the past decade. Motivated by the fact that the real estate market and bank credit scale are vastly different in Chinese cities, the purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of bank credit on house prices in first- and second-tier cities in China.

In this study, a panel data method was used to investigate 19 first-tier cities and 30 second-tier cities between the period 2003 and 2018.

The empirical analysis undertaken in this study found that bank credit was relevant to house prices but varied in different cities in which house prices in second-tier cities tended to be more affected by bank credit compared to those in first-tier cities. In contrast, population was found to be a dominant factor that influenced house prices in first-tier cities. Likewise, the factors, per capita and gross domestic product, were found to exert a significant influence on house prices in first- and second-tier cities.

This paper provided numerous policies to control the price of housing in first- and second-tier cities.

The housing prices, bank credit scale and population distribution are vastly different in different cities in China. This research considers these differences while examining the dominant factors that affect house prices in first- and second-tier cities in China.

The recent financial crisis provides an opportunity to examine the management of local government investment pools (LGIPs). This study examines asset concentration of current LGIPs to find if investment practices of LGIPs are consistent with the objective of prudent management of public funds. Using cross-sectional data of 72 LGIP portfolios, exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Findings suggest that there are five underlying factors that describe the investment practices of current LGIP portfolios. The findings also suggest that LGIP investment managers considered return on investment when they chose investment instruments. However, LGIP managers put more focus on the safety of investment when they allocated assets in their portfolio.

The eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is among the most polluted cities in the Ukraine. Even with a decrease in manufacturing after the dissolution of the USSR, the high amounts of hazardous wastes in the water, air and soil have not been reduced, often exceeding the safety limits used by the World Health Organisation (WHO). City dwellers continue to have worryingly short lifespans, as well as a high percentage of oncological diseases. The current extent of the problems seen in the city is described in this paper, along with a programme aimed at the sustainable development of the city. Public discussions of Mariupol’s environmental problems are documented in this paper and took place via workshops, newspaper articles, television programmes and surveys. As a result of these investigations, increasing life expectancy by ten years was chosen as the primary goal for city development. A summary of the project is presented, along with some analysis and recommendations.