Search results

The purpose of this study is to establish a systematic framework to characterise the safety of air routes, in terms of separation minima infringements (SMIs) between en-route aircraft, based on the definition of models known as safety performance functions.

Techniques with high predictive capability were selected that enable both expert knowledge and data to be harnessed: Bayesian networks. It was necessary to establish a conceptual framework that integrates the knowledge currently available on the causality and precursors of SMIs with the hindsight derived from the analysis of the type of data available. To translate the conceptual framework into a set of causal subnets, the concepts of air traffic management (ATM) barrier model and event trees have been incorporated.

The model combines analytics and insights, as well as predictive capability, to answer the question of how airspace separation infringements are produced and what their frequency of occurrence will be. The main outputs of the network are the predicted probability of success for the ATM barriers and the predicted probability distribution of the vertical and horizontal separation of an aircraft in its closest point of approach.

The main contribution of this work is that, by virtue of the calculation capacity obtained, the network can be used to draw conclusions about the impact that a modification of the airspace and of the traffic, or operational conditions, would have on the effectiveness of the barriers and on the final distributions of distance between aircraft in the CPA, thereby estimating the probability of SMI.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of the role of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) policies for cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) by distinguishing between coercive and noncoercive OFDI policies.

The dependent variable is the count of completed M&A transactions, measured monthly. Due to the nature of the study’s data, the author performs a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression.

Separating between coercive and noncoercive policies, the author finds that the latter type shows a stronger supportive effect on the count of M&A deals. Considering firm ownership, the study’s results reveal that announcements of coercive policies have a weaker effect on cross-border M&A for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than that for private-owned enterprises (POEs). For local SOEs (LSOEs) and central SOEs (CSOEs), this difference becomes even larger with noncoercive policy announcements. The influence on M&A of both policy types gets partially replaced with increasing internationalization experience.

Combining institutional theory with policy change theory, the author argues that international business (IB) research on policy change needs to consider the integration of theoretical policy-level approaches to catch the effects of policy change on firm internationalization appropriately. The findings of the study support this argument by highlighting that the policy effect differs by policy type.

Drawing on attribution theory, the current paper aims to examine the effects of review content structures on online review helpfulness, focusing on three pertinent variables: review sidedness, information factuality, and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Moreover, the moderating roles of reviewer reputation and review sentiment are investigated.

The review sentiment of 144,982 online hotel reviews was computed at the sentence level by considering the presence of adverbs and negative terms. Then, the authors quantified the impact of variables that were pertinent to review content structures on online review helpfulness in terms of review sidedness, information factuality and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was employed to test the model.

The results reveal that review sidedness negatively affects online review helpfulness, and reviewer reputation moderates this effect. Information factuality positively affects online review helpfulness, and positive sentiment moderates this impact. A review that begins with a highly emotional statement is more likely to be perceived as less helpful.

Using attribution theory as a theoretical lens, this study contributes to the online customer review literature by investigating the impact of review content structures on online review helpfulness and by demonstrating the important moderating effects of reviewer reputation and review sentiment. The findings can help practitioners develop effective review appraisal mechanisms and guide consumers in producing helpful reviews.

Do consumers rate reviews describing other consumers' sensory experience of a product (touch, smell, sight, hear and taste) as helpful or do they rate reviews describing more practical properties (product performance and characteristics/features) as more helpful? What is the effect of review helpfulness on purchase intention? Furthermore, why do consumers perceive sensory and non-sensory reviews differently? This study answers these questions.

The authors analyze 447,792 Amazon reviews and perform a topic modeling analysis to extract the main topics that consumers express in their reviews. Then, the topics were used as regressors to predict the number of consumers who found the review helpful. Finally, a lab experiment was conducted to replicate the results in a more controlled environment to test the serial mediation effect.

Contrary to the overwhelming evidence supporting the positive effects of sensory elicitation in marketing, this study shows that sensory reviews are less likely to be helpful than non-sensory reviews. Moreover, a key reason why sensory reviews are less effective is that they decrease the objective perception of the review, a less objective review then decreases the level of helpfulness, which decreases purchase intention.

This study contributes to the interactive marketing field by investigating customer behavior and interactivity in online shopping sites and to the sensory marketing literature by identifying a boundary condition, the authors’ data suggest that sensory elicitations might not be processed positively by consumers when they are not directly experienced, but instead communicated by another consumer. Moreover, this study indicates how companies can encourage consumers to share more effective and helpful reviews.

Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.

The model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

Evaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model’s utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.

Presents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.

This study investigates the effect of user fees on access and waiting time in Nigeria. For access, the effect of user fees on both preventive and curative care; and the effect of user fees on waiting time at public healthcare facilities were examined. User fees are vital for the fiscal sustainability of healthcare provision for most African economies. Its imposition could debar healthcare access by the poor while its removal can reduce quality of care and induce longer waiting time.

The wave 3 of the Nigerian General Household Survey (2015/16) data was used for users of public health facilities. Access to healthcare was modelled using utilization data in a logistic regression model while waiting time was through the Negative Binomial Regression Model (NBRM).

The analyses showed significant effects of user fees on access to both preventive and curative care and on time spent waiting to make use of healthcare services. Individuals were able to access healthcare services regardless of amounts paid. Also, there was a non-negative effect of user fee imposition on waiting time.

Nigeria should improve healthcare facilities to address the enormous demand for healthcare services when designing policy for health sector.

This paper shows that even with the imposition of user fees, healthcare facilities could still not cater for the rising healthcare needs of the populace but cautioned that its abolition may not be a preferred option.

China is a major energy import powerhouse, its trade deals have significant impact on international energy trade and global energy markets. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of energy in China’s preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and their impact on Chinese imports of oil, gas and coal.

An extended trade gravity model framework is applied to explore the dynamics of China’s annualized energy import flows from the 22 economies that have PTAs with it for the period 1995–2015.

The effect of PTAs on trade patterns varies across the product groups and agreement clauses. The dominant factor affecting trade flows of coal, crude oil and oil products is the average tariff level. Its impact is less significant for gas imports, which are more affected by policy arrangements represented by a PTA variable. The depth and scope of a PTA do not affect Chinese energy imports patterns.

This paper is focused on exploring the effect of China’s trade and foreign relations strategies on its energy imports through the prism of its PTAs. Estimating the direct impact of China’s initiatives in the areas of trade, investment, security, culture, etc., on its trade flows of energy products and other product groups using the methodological framework proposed in this study would contribute to better understanding of the issue.

The findings can assist both China and energy exporting countries that target Chinese market in better understanding the drivers of trade flows of energy products and design their PTA strategies accordingly.

This study applies the trade gravity model framework to assess the impact of specific components of preferential trade agreements – tariff reduction and depth and scope of agreement – on energy trade flows differentiated by product group.

Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs use typically increases in prevalence and frequency during middle and late adolescence. School health instruction often focusses on providing facts and rarely provides tools for addressing the psychosocial risk factors needed to prevent substance use. The purpose of this paper is to report about the effectiveness of a prevention programme delivered in US high school health classes. The intervention augments typical instruction by providing teachers with activities that can be infused in their daily teaching.

In total, 26 schools were randomly assigned to receive the intervention or serve as controls. Pupils were pretested near the beginning of the school year, posttest near the end of the school year and administered a final test near the beginning of the following school year. Teachers in treatment schools were provided with activities designed to target psychosocial variables known to mediate substance use onset and self-initiated cessation. These include normative beliefs, intentionality, lifestyle incongruence, beliefs about consequences of use, peer pressure resistance skills, decision-making skills, goal setting skills and stress management skills.

Hierarchical modelling analytic strategies revealed the intervention to have definable positive impacts on alcohol and cigarette use. Moreover, the intervention had strongest effects on alcohol and cigarette use among pupils who were identified at pretest as being lower-than-average risk.

This research provides support for providing teachers with a strategy for preventing alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that can be used in a flexible manner to augment the instruction they are already mandated to provide.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.

The paper aims to provide a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between corporate governance (CG) structure and firm performance in Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2015. The authors’ motivation derives from the fact that the CG system in China is different from those in the US, the UK, Germany, Japan and other countries.

A large unbalanced sample, covering more than 22,700 observations in Chinese listed firms, was used to explore, by means of a system-generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimator, the relationship between CG structure and firm performance to remove potential sources of endogeneity.

Results show that Chinese CG structure is endogenously determined by the CG mechanisms investigated: there is no relationship between board size (including independent directors) and firm performance; CEO duality has a significantly negative effect on firm performance; concentration of ownership has a significantly positive influence on firm performance; managerial ownership is negatively correlated with firm performance; state ownership has a significantly positive effect on firm performance; and a supervisory board is positively correlated with firm performance.

The findings provide policymakers and firm managers with useful empirical guidance concerning CG in China.

Few integrative studies have examined the impact of CG structure on firm performance in China. This study adds new empirical evidence that the relation between CG structure and performance in China is endogenous and dynamic when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, simultaneity, and dynamic endogeneity.