Search results

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of regional geographic brand congruency (GBC) on brand trust, brand parity, perceived value, brand honesty and purchase intentions.

The research uses an experimental method in two studies to test hypotheses derived from the literature.

This research conceptualizes GBC as the relationship between products/services and geographic regions that are authentic, credible and fitting. Results from the two studies support the hypothesis that brands with regional GBC have higher levels of consumer evaluation compared to brands with geographic incongruence or with no geographic reference at all.

This research offers insight into the decision to name a brand. If one is going to associate a product with a regional geographic location, it is more effective to use a location that is fitting as it applies to that product; otherwise, it would be best to avoid a geographic association in a brand name.

The exploration of regional geographic brand congruency in relation to outcomes of brand trust, brand parity, perceived value, purchase intentions and honesty offers new insights into the nature and role of place images.

The purpose of this study is to propose a definition and model of social sustainability within the ambit of systems theory and to test it on hospitality e-distributors. The study suggests that social sustainability arises through the congruence among the interrelated components of social innovation, societal demand and social stakeholders in a transformation model and it can be assessed to whether and how this congruence addresses to the equity principles.

The study provides a case analysis on two selected hospitality e-distributors – Booking.com and Airbnb. The data obtained from a video-based content on managerial interviews were triangulated with the data of corporate disclosures and expert views derived from a focus group study.

The study reveals that both companies affect the intra-generational, procedural and geographical equity principles across physical and virtual communities so long as they take the advantage of their strategic positions. While Booking.com transforms its own industry, Airbnb disrupts the entire system by blurring the boundaries between market and non-market as well as touristic and non-touristic areas.

The study contributes to the practitioners by showing how to configure and assess the social sustainability of their organizations at the different contexts.

The study provides a holistic perspective on social sustainability by linking the concept with social innovation, societal demand and social stakeholders and highlighting its contribution to equity principles.

Despite the proliferation of studies, the authors have very little understanding on the social pillar of sustainability. The current study fills the gap by addressing these conceptualization and measurement challenges in the literature.

This paper investigates the brand personality dimensions associated with professional sports teams and the personality dimensions of the cities they call home. Two studies evaluate ten National Football League teams and their respective homes, with data collected from 434 respondents from five disparate locations throughout the United States. Findings suggest that in general people ascribe similar personality traits to both the team and their city, with correlations stronger among avid NFL fans. It appears that city 'insiders' (i.e. residents) tend to hold more positive views than city 'outsiders'.

Due to the high rate of failure of most crowdfunding projects, knowing the most essential factor to obtain funding success on the crowdfunding platform is of great importance for fund seekers on the crowdfunding platform. The purpose of this study is to explore crowdfunding success factors to know the most essential success factor for stakeholders of the crowdfunding platform to make the best decision when seeking funds on the crowdfunding platform. This study identified and ranked crowdfunding success factors for stakeholders of crowdfunding platforms. Sixteen factors were identified and categorized under five broad headings. These were; project ideas, target capital, track records, geographical proximity and equity.

To rank the identified crowdfunding success factors and subfactors, this study used the Multi-Objective Optimization Based on Ratio Analysis (MULTIMOORA) integrated with the Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solutions (EDAS).

Target capital ranked first among the five categories—while duration involved in raising funds ranked first among the sixteen subfactors. An approach for analyzing how each success factor enhances a crowdfunding campaign was developed in this study. This study provides valuable insight to fund seekers on the crowdfunding platform on how funding success can be achieved by knowing which factor to consider essential when seeking funds on the crowdfunding platform.

This is the first study to explore crowdfunding success factors using the MULTIMOORA-EDAS method. The use of this method will help fund seekers on the crowdfunding platform to know which crowdfunding success factor is essential, thereby aiding fund seekers to make the best decision when seeking funds on the crowdfunding platform. Also, this study is particularly helpful for business owners, platform operators and policymakers when deciding how to allocate resources, plan campaigns and implement regulations.

Objective – The aim of the paper is to bring evidence and lessons from two low- and middle-income countries (LMIs) of the former USSR into the global debate on health financing in poor countries. In particular, we analyze the introduction of social health insurance (SHI) in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. To some extent, the intent of SHI introduction in these countries was similar to that in LMIs elsewhere: increase prepaid revenues for health and incorporate the entire population into the new system. But the approach taken to universality was different. In particular, the SHI fund in each country was used as the key instrument in a comprehensive reform of the health financing system, with the new revenues from payroll taxation used in an explicitly complementary manner to general budget revenues. From a functional perspective, the reforms in these countries involved not only the introduction of a new source of funds, but also the centralization of pooling, a shift from input- to output-based provider payment methods, specification of a benefit package, and greater autonomy for public sector health care providers. Hence, their reforms were not simply the introduction of an SHI scheme, but rather the use of an SHI fund as an instrument to transform the entire system of health financing.

Methodology/approach – The study uses administrative and household data to demonstrate the impact of the reforms on regional inequality and household financial burden.

Findings – The approach used in these two countries led to improved equity in the geographic distribution of government health spending, improved financial protection, and reduced informal payments.

Implications for policy – The comprehensive approach taken to reform in these two countries, and particularly the redirection of general budget revenues to the new SHI funds, explain much of the success that was achieved. This experience offers potentially useful lessons for LMIs elsewhere in the world, and for shifting the global debate away from what we see as a false dichotomy between SHI and general revenue-funded systems. By demonstrating that sources are not systems, these cases illustrate how, in particular by careful design of pooling and coverage arrangements, the introduction of SHI in an LMI context can avoid the fragmentation problem often associated with this reform instrument.

Mass tourism in urban settings has proven to be economically significant in many parts of the world. To date, however, the academic debate on sustainable tourism has focused primarily on the ecological and socio-cultural sustainability of tourism in rural and coastal, rather than urban, settings. This paper aims to review the emerging debate on sustainable urban tourism, its complexities and challenges, and questions how urban destinations that are striving to become sustainable cities, can leverage benefit from the implementation of sustainable policies and practices to achieve tourism ‘destination’ competitiveness.

The paper uses a qualitative, exploratory research approach using in-depth interviews to seek responses from key stakeholders on their views and experiences of sustainability in the context of an urban destination. Thematic analysis is used to analyze and present the findings.

This study concludes that destinations need to be viewed in their broader regional context. Rather than be viewed solely as destinations that are ‘kind to the environment,’ sustainable urban destinations need to demonstrate a deeper commitment to all stakeholder groups, and especially local residents, to provide a fair and desirable ecosystem for achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This paper reflects on the potential relationship between ‘urban sustainability’ and the ‘destination competitiveness’ of an urban tourism destination. This then will provide the platform for sustainability to truly contribute to future destination competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to try to understand the process of community building that helped transform the City of Chattanooga to become one of the greenest cities in the country and why the sustainability program worked for Chattanooga.

In total, 30 key informants, identified through snowball sampling, were interviewed. To corroborate the interview data, numerous documents were reviewed and repeat field visits to Chattanooga and surrounding area conducted over a period of three-and-a-half years. Interview data were analyzed using MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software.

Findings show that the transformation process from “the dirtiest city in America” to “green city” was mainly a community agenda. Led by concerned private citizens and visionaries, Chattanooga went through aggressive community mobilization, citizen empowerment and participation in environmental improvement, building of social capital and economic revitalization.

Research limitations include under coverage and researcher bias.

Lessons for cities that share the same industrial history as Chattanooga.

Community-building and community participation can work in a collectivist culture.

The lead author collected the data, conducted analysis and did all the writing with mentoring from the co-authors.

Differences in the cost of living and the general attractiveness of communities lead to significant, regional differences in the prices school districts must pay for their most important resource – people. According to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, labor costs differ by more than 50% from the lowest-cost district to the highest-cost district within California, Florida, New York, Texas, and West Virginia. Furthermore, all states but Hawaii and Rhode Island face at least a 7.7% internal differential in labor cost. Most states fail to account for such cost differences in their school finance formulas, leading to inequitable differences in school district purchasing power. This chapter compares and contrasts the various strategies states use to make geographic cost adjustments to their school funding formula, describes the implications of geographic adjustment for interstate and intrastate measures of school finance equity (and corresponding litigation), and discusses the impact that such adjustments could have on the distribution of federal aid for economically disadvantaged students under Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

This paper examines whether technological changes that promote communications between investors and managers help bridge the gap in the cost of equity capital among firms in different regions.

We use the online interaction platforms of listed firms in China and utilize brokerage presence (BP) to capture the geographic distribution of financial factors. We explore whether online interactions would reduce the cost of equity to a greater extent for firms located in low brokerage presence regions (hereafter “low-BP firms”) than those in high brokerage presence regions (hereafter “high-BP firms”).

We find low-BP firms benefit more from an improved information environment created by online interactions. We also find that posts about low-BP firms are more value-relevant and useful in processing corporate disclosures. Further, a higher number of interactions significantly enhances more informational efficiency for low-BP firms, and the effect of reducing the gap in financing costs is more pronounced when corporate information is complex.

We conclude that online interactions alleviate geography-induced information frictions and create a relatively level playing field for firms located in all regions.

In the build-up of an investment decision, the existence of both active and passive investment vehicles triggers a puzzle for investors. Indeed the confrontation between active and index replication equity funds in terms of risk-adjusted performance and alpha generation has been a bone of contention since the inception of these investment structures. Accordingly, the objective of this chapter is to distinctly underscore whether an investor should be concerned in choosing between active and diverse passive investment structures.

The survivorship bias-free dataset consists of 776 equity funds which are domiciled either in America or Europe, and are likewise exposed to the equity markets of the same regions. In addition to geographical segmentation, equity funds are also categorised by structure and management type, specifically actively managed mutual funds, index mutual funds and passive exchange traded funds (‘ETFs’). This classification leads to the analysis of monthly net asset values (‘NAV’) of 12 distinct equally weighted portfolios, with a time horizon ranging from January 2004 to December 2014. Accordingly, the risk-adjusted performance of the equally weighted equity funds’ portfolios is examined by the application of mainstream single-factor and multi-factor asset pricing models namely Capital Asset Pricing Model (Fama, 1968; Fama & Macbeth, 1973; Lintner, 1965; Mossin, 1966; Sharpe, 1964; Treynor, 1961), Fama French Three-Factor (1993) and Carhart Four-Factor (1997).

Solely examination of monthly NAVs for a 10-year horizon suggests that active management is equivalent to index replication in terms of risk-adjusted returns. This prompts investors to be neutral gross of fees, yet when considering all transaction costs it is a distinct story. The relatively heftier fees charged by active management, predominantly initial fees, appear to revoke any outperformance in excess of the market portfolio, ensuing in a Fool’s Errand Hypothesis. Moreover, both active and index mutual funds’ performance may indeed be lower if financial advisors or distributors of equity funds charge additional fees over and above the fund houses’ expense ratios, putting the latter investment vehicles at a significant handicap vis-à-vis passive low-cost ETFs. This chapter urges investors to concentrate on expense ratios and other transaction costs rather than solely past returns, by accessing the cheapest available vehicle for each investment objective. Put simply, the general investor should retreat from portfolio management and instead access the market portfolio using low-cost index replication structures via an execution-only approach.

The battle among actively managed and index replication equity funds in terms of risk-adjusted performance and alpha generation has been a grey area since the inception of mutual funds. The interest in the subject constantly lightens up as fresh instruments infiltrate financial markets. Indeed the mutual fund puzzle (Gruber, 1996) together with the enhanced growth of ETFs has again rejuvenated the active versus passive debate, making it worth a detailed analysis especially for the benefit of investors who confront a dilemma in choosing between the two management styles.