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The purpose of this paper is to identify those product characteristics that are of importance to consumers of organic food in Switzerland.

In order to identify important organic product characteristics, this study applies a Generalized Linear Model using a six-year sample of Swiss household data distinguishing between organic and conventional products at the product level.

The analysis reveals three product-related dimensions of importance. First, Swiss consumers prefer unprocessed organic products over highly processed ones suggesting that communicating potential benefits of organic food is more promising for unprocessed products. Second, organic consumers are reluctant to buy products with high price premiums. Third, Swiss consumers prefer domestically produced organic products over imported ones.

The results imply that supporting organic agriculture in Switzerland is still promising from a policy and a marketing perspective as long as the organic price premium is not too high.

This paper presents results regarding the determinants of the organic market share in Switzerland. They give a first understanding of which product characteristics determine organic market shares. From a policy as well as from a marketing perspective a further investigation at the household level is promising in order to understand and respond to the needs and expectations of Swiss consumers.

Many transactions are partly carried out within social networks and without payment, partly commercially on the market. The paper aims to explore the interdependencies between shrinking cooperation in society and a growing service sector.

The author tries to categorize cooperation and to set it into relation to services carried out against payment. Examples are found where a clear switch from cooperation to the service sector have been taken place.

The paper diagnoses a broad societal switch from socially driven cooperation to the market. Tour reps at holiday clubs, psychologists and nurses for the elderly are all rising professions and are used as cases in point. Utility theory sees such switches as a rise in GDP and therefore as something positive. From a happiness research perspective, however, switching from cooperation to markets will probably lead to declining social capital.

The overall impact to societal utility remains unclear.

This is an example for a phenomenon where happiness research leads to very different results from welfare economics.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of agricultural policy reform – specifically the change from market to direct payment support – on income variability of Swiss farming households. In addition, the observed heterogeneity in income risks across farms and time is explained in terms of farm and regional characteristics.

Unbalanced farm‐level panel data of the Swiss farm accountancy network (FADN) are used to construct coefficients of variation of five‐year overlapping time intervals for total household income and gross farm revenues over the period 1992 to 2009. Linear fixed effect models are applied to measure the effect of specialization, off‐farm income, direct payments, farm size, and liquidity on the variability of gross farm revenues and household income in the valley, hill, and mountain regions.

The switch from market‐based support to direct payments has decreased the variability of farm revenues and household income. The strong reliance on direct payments serves as insurance for most farmers and reduces both household income and revenue risk. Off‐farm income can be used by farmers to reduce household income risk but it increases revenue risk in the valley regions. In all of the regions considered, farm size has a positive effect on household income risk and a negative effect on revenue risk. A high degree of specialization increases both gross revenue and household income risk. Potential revenue insurance contracts should specify farmers' off‐farm employment, the degree of specialization, farm size, and regional specific risk profiles.

This paper assesses the complementary effects of specific farm characteristics and risk management strategies with regard to both farm revenue and household income risk. Influences of agricultural policy changes on income risks are also empirically assessed at different spatial scales.

The purpose of this paper is to identify success variables for local food networks in Germany.

The approach takes the form of a written questionnaire sent to local food networks and statistical analysis to explain success indicators for networks.

The analysis shows that vertical penetration, i.e. the inclusion of many different sectors in the network, increases the success of the network in terms of turnover. Another factor increasing the success of a network is whether small food enterprises like bakers or butchers are in charge of it.

There is a difficulty in identifying general success factors of networks with different objectives.

This is the first analysis integrating vertical integration and quantitative integration as success factors.

While it is fairly easy to design apparatus that will demonstrate heat transfer phenomena in a general way it is much more difficult to verify quantitively the fundamental laws. After a long period of development in co‐operation with a leading university engineering department, Plint & Partners Limited have brought out an apparatus which meets the more exacting requirements of the phenomena of radiation and natural convection.

BY a happy consonance the Year Book of the Library Association for 1946 reached us as the Conference at Blackpool was beginning. It set a character to the Conference in that it contained a most admirably faithful portrait of the President. He was, without a shadow of doubt, the personality of the week. The flexible and earnest open features of the portrait are those of an unusual man, distinctive in thought, speech and act. This was reflected in an address which someone declared, with the warm acquiesence of his hearers, to be “a classic of librarianship.” Even if this prove to be an exaggeration, since prophecy is unwise and rarely fulfilled, that was the effect he produced, in words that began on a self‐excusing note and with a, to himself, unfair comparison of himself with his predecessors, became with increasing tempo a pæan of the joy so many of us share in librarianship, in spite of the sacrifices and slights that all librarians encounter, interwoven with the quoted or suggested results of a life‐time of reading.

Blues music is in the midst of its second revival in popularity in roughly thirty years. The year 1960 can be identified, with some qualification, as a reference point for the first rise in international awareness and appreciation of the blues. This first period of wide‐spread white interest in the blues continued until the early seventies, while the current revival began in the middle 1980s. During both periods a sizeable literature on the blues has appeared. This article provides a thumbnail sketch of the popularity of the blues, followed by a description of scholarly and critical literature devoted to the music. Documentary and instructional materials in audio and video formats are also discussed. Recommendations are made for library collections and a list of selected sources is included at the end of the article.

Treatment satisfaction of different mental disorders is still poorly understood, but of high clinical interest. Inpatients of a general psychiatric care hospital were asked to fill out questionnaires on satisfaction and clinical variables at admission and discharge. On the basis of an exploratory approach, differences in treatment satisfaction among diagnostic groups were examined by means of one-way analysis of variance. Potential associated clinical and socio-demographic variables were studied using multi/univariate tests. Patients with personality disorders (n=18) showed a significantly lower treatment satisfaction (ZUF-8, Zurich Satisfaction Questionnaire) and a slightly lower improvement of symptoms (CGI, Clinical Global Impression) and global functioning (GAF, Global Assessment of Functioning scale) than that of other diagnostic groups (n=95). Satisfaction in patients with personality disorders correlated much stronger with the symptom improvement and slightly with the functioning level than in patients without personality disorders. Interestingly, in patients with personality disorders psychopharmacological treatment in general (present versus not present) was independent from satisfaction. This exploratory investigation suggests that a lower satisfaction of patients with personality disorders in a general psychiatric hospital is mainly based on a reduced improvement of the symptoms and of the global functioning level.

The purpose of this paper is to understand why the quality markets are expanding in some areas of food production, while struggling in others. Across agricultural markets in advanced industrialized economies, there are movements toward quality production and consumption. The author argues that the quality turn in beer, coffee, wine and other transformed artisanal food production are fundamentally different from the quality movements in primary food products. The heart of that difference lies in the nature of the supply chain advantages of transformed versus primary agricultural products.

The author applies convention theory to explain the dynamics within transformed agricultural quality markets. In these producer-dominant markets, networks of branded producers shape consumer notions of product quality, creating competitive quality feedback loops. The author contrasts this with the consumer-dominant markets for perishable foods such as produce, eggs, dairy and meat. Here, politically constructed short supply chains play a central role in building quality food systems.

The emergence of quality in primary food products is linked to the strength of local political organization, and consumers have a greater role in shaping quality in these markets.

Quality beer, coffee, wine and other transformed products can emerge without active political intervention, whereas quality markets for perishable foods are the outcome of political action.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2020-0001.