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Real-time location sensing (RTLS) systems offer a significant potential to advance the management of construction processes by potentially providing real-time access to the locations of workers and equipment. Many location-sensing technologies tend to perform poorly for indoor work environments and generate large data sets that are somewhat difficult to process in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, little is still known regarding the practical benefits of converting raw worker tracking data into meaningful information about construction project progress, effectively impeding widespread adoption in construction.

The presented framework is designed to automate as many steps as possible, aiming to avoid manual procedures that significantly increase the time between progress estimation updates. The authors apply simple location tracking sensor data that does not require personal handling, to ensure continuous data acquisition. They use a generic and non-site-specific knowledge base (KB) created through domain expert interviews. The sensor data and KB are analyzed in an abductive reasoning framework implemented in Answer Set Programming (extended to support spatial and temporal reasoning), a logic programming paradigm developed within the artificial intelligence domain.

This work demonstrates how abductive reasoning can be applied to automatically generate rich and qualitative information about activities that have been carried out on a construction site. These activities are subsequently used for reasoning about the progress of the construction project. Our framework delivers an upper bound on project progress (“optimistic estimates”) within a practical amount of time, in the order of seconds. The target user group is construction management by providing project planning decision support.

The KB developed for this early-stage research does not encapsulate an exhaustive body of domain expert knowledge. Instead, it consists of excerpts of activities in the analyzed construction site. The KB is developed to be non-site-specific, but it is not validated as the performed experiments were carried out on one single construction site.

The presented work enables automated processing of simple location tracking sensor data, which provides construction management with detailed insight into construction site progress without performing labor-intensive procedures common nowadays.

While automated progress estimation and activity recognition in construction have been studied for some time, the authors approach it differently. Instead of expensive equipment, manually acquired, information-rich sensor data, the authors apply simple data, domain knowledge and a logical reasoning system for which the results are promising.

The purpose of this paper is to combine the elaboration likelihood model and hedonic/utilitarian values into a coherent model of shopping motivational values for online and offline Malaysian shoppers. Once these values were identified, they were compared to one another based on shopping channel, gender, and age group.

The Shopping Motivational Value Questionnaire was developed by the researcher after extensive literature review and measured the respondent’s perception toward shopping motivational values in both shopping channels. Data were collected from 306 Malaysians above the age of 21, and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and pairwise t-test techniques.

The factor analysis revealed a three-factor model of shopping motivational values. Gratification Values were the most important to shoppers, followed by Essential and Societal Values. Shoppers perceived all these motivational values as important when shopping offline as compared to online, regardless of gender and age group.

The results of the factor analysis revealed a three-factor model of shopping motivational values: Gratification Values which were the most important to shoppers, followed by Essential and Societal Values. These values were then compared to one another based on shopping channel, gender, and age group. Results indicate that shoppers perceived all these motivational values as important when shopping offline rather than online, regardless of gender and age group. Moreover, the perception of shoppers toward specific product categories and other shopping channels were not taken into account.

This study attempted to combine the elaboration likelihood model and hedonic and utilitarian values into a coherent model. A questionnaire was developed by the researcher with these two theoretical models as its foundation. Additionally, the shopping motivational values of this study have been formulated to be compatible to both shopping channels.

The purpose of this paper is to examine citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP), in relation to having a professional first-tier football club in a medium-sized Danish municipality, when tangible economic benefits such as economic growth and/or inbound migration produced by these are absent.

Using the contingent valuation method on survey respondents, the study examines factors affecting WTP using binary logistic regression and interval regression and further extrapolates the WTP from the sample to the municipal population.

Citizens significantly value having a first-tier football club in their municipality even when tangible benefits are absent, although a large proportion of respondents stated to be against the municipality being financially involved in professional team sports clubs (PTSC). WTP is largely driven by interest in sports and the local football club. It is argued that the findings cannot be generalized across contexts.

There can be circumstances where public subsidy of PTSCs is beneficial to economic welfare. However, authorities should be careful in their evaluation of whether to subsidize PTSCs.

The study expands on existing research by informing respondents about the lack of tangible benefits produced by PTSCs, hereby focusing on WTP on an informed basis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential market impacts of the use of insect-based protein for fish feed as an innovative approach out of the fish-meal trap.

An online questionnaire was used to elicit information on fish consumption choices among 610 German consumers using a discrete choice experiment. Mixed logit and latent class logit models were used to model consumers’ preference heterogeneity.

Results show that consumers’ preferences for fish attributes such as filets, freshness, ecolabelling and domestic production are heterogeneous and important in consumption choices. The minor share of the respondents is sensitive, while the remaining is indifferent regarding the use of insect based protein as feed in trout production. For this sensitive segment, consumption would be expected to be reduced unless the price is reduced or other attributes such as convenience aspects are improved.

The implication is that firms can substitute without a significant impact on the market demand given that the majority of consumers are indifferent regarding feed sources for trout production. As a result, it provides an innovative way to ensure sustainable use of resources and reduces the threat of fish meal trap while reducing pressure on the already over-exploited marine life.

The results provide first insights into the market impact of using insects in the animal protein value chain. It is important especially with Europe’s recent lift of the ban on using insect-based protein in the animal food industry.

Enterprise social media (ESM) platforms are rapidly diffusing in the business context because they can bring substantial benefits to companies by enhancing their knowledge management (KM) processes. However, such benefits materialize only if active employee participation is ensured. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how individual employees use an ESM platform to assist their knowledge-related activities. This paper contributes to this topic by proposing a classification of ESM users based on two dimensions: frequency and type (active or passive) of use.

The paper presents the results of a survey of 262 employees of an international engineering service company that has adopted an ESM platform to support its KM processes. Statistical methods (e.g. ANOVA, Tukey’s b) were applied to verify the usefulness of the proposed typology and identify the main aspects that characterize the different user groups.

The survey results confirm the existence of different types of ESM users and provide the empirical basis for developing a bi-dimensional classification from which four user groups were derived and characterized: frequent contributors, sporadic contributors, frequent lurkers and sporadic lurkers.

The main limitation is that only one company in one sector with specific knowledge needs and capabilities was investigated.

The study provides useful suggestions for how to promote the use of an ESM and particularly for how to encourage less frequent and less active users to increase their participation in a platform.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of how employees approach ESM by identifying factors that characterize different user groups.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the necessity of regulating European club football financially, in order to create a fair structure of sporting competition.

By deploying the soft budget constraint approach – originally developed by Hungarian Economist János Kornai in order to understand (public) business behavior in socialist and post‐socialist economies – and combining it with empirical analysis, the paper develops an understanding of why the majority of European top league clubs are loss‐makers and why regulation is needed. The paper rests on its application of the soft budget constraint approach to build its argument and uses existing empirical research in order to support it within the field of European professional football.

The paper finds substantial evidence of soft budget constraints in professional football clubs, and argues that softness punishes the few financially well‐managed clubs in sporting terms for balancing their books.

From a theoretical point of view, the new perspective of soft budget constraints takes political, cultural and emotional aspects into account in order to understand economic behavior among professional team sports clubs. This gives promising new insights into the discipline of sports economics and sports management.

The paper's findings demand action to be taken to secure financial fair play in order to deal with issues of equal sporting competition. It argues that this must be done through a central regulation scheme covering all European leagues, thus endorsing the new UEFA financial fair play program. At the same time, however, the paper recognizes the problems in implementing the program efficiently.

The originality and value of the paper is its application of a new theoretical approach that clarifies the problems of European professional football and the reasons why regulatory solutions are necessary to harden the budget constraints.