An empirical survey: Can green marketing really entice customers to pay more?

This research integrated the Social Cognition Theory and the Engel Kollat Blackwell customers’ purchasing model (EKB model) to synthetically discuss the three kinds of possible relations comprising “does negatively entice”, “does possibly entice” and “does positively entice” between green-marketing and customers’ purchasing and payment, with consideration given to environmental-protection issues. Based on the measured results, the most contributed contention of this research not only utilized three cross-analytical theories consisting of the social cognition theory (SCT) , the Fuzzy theory (FT) and the EKB model, and the novel F-ANP of the MCDM methodology to evaluate the collected data but it also manifested that Green-marketing does possibly entice customers to pay more (GMPECPM). These measured results have distinctly stunned the fundamental assumption in the traditional green-marketing research field that customers were supposed to be willing to pay more for green products and services because they were supporting green initiatives and helping environmental-protection. Further, major future research directions were also briefly demonstrated in this research as (1) the collection data have to be strengthened to gather more empirical customer feedback, corporate management comments, and professional scholars’ reports; (2) enterprises have to resoundingly establish a green-branding initiative after successfully executing green-marketing strategies.Green Marketing (G-marketing); Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM); Analytical Network Process (F-ANP).

Improved Methods for Network Screening and Countermeasure Selection for Highway Improvements

Network screening and countermeasure selection are two crucial steps in the highway improvement process. In network screening, potential improvement locations are ranked and prioritized based on a specific method with a set of criteria. The most common practice by transportation agencies has been to use a simple scoring method, which, in general, weighs and scores each criterion and then ranks the locations based on their relative overall scoring. The method does not deal well with criteria that are qualitative in nature, nor does it account for the impacts of correlation among the criteria. The introduction of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) provides agencies with a method to include both quantitative and qualitative criteria. However, it does not address the issue on correlation. This dissertation explores the use of both Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) for their potential capabilities to address both issues. Using urban four-lane divided highways in Florida for bicycle safety improvements, both ANP and FANP were shown to provide more reasonable rankings than AHP, with FANP providing the best results among the methods. After the locations are ranked and prioritized for improvements, the next step is to evaluate the potential countermeasures for improvements at the selected top-ranked locations. In this step, the standard practice has been to use Crash Modification Factors (CMFs) to quantify the potential impacts from implementing specific countermeasures. In this research, CMFs for bicycle crashes on urban facilities in Florida were developed using the Generalized Linear Model approach with a Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) distribution. The CMFs were tested for their spatial and temporal transferability and the results show only limited transferability both spatially and temporally. The CMFs show that, in general, wider lanes, lower speed limits, and presence of vegetation in the median reduce bicycle crashes, while presence of sidewalk and sidewalk barrier increase bicycle crashes. The research further considered bicycle exposure using the bicycle activity data from the Strava smartphone application. It was found that increased bicycle activity reduces bicycle crash probabilities on segments but increases bicycle crash probabilities at signalized intersections. Also, presence of bus stops and use of permissive signal phasing at intersections were found to increase bicycle crash probabilities

Increasing the benefits of stadiums for a municipality through sustainable development : a case study of Stadion Feijenoord

Almost all Dutch municipalities hosting a professional football club are owner of the stadium. The uncertainty of the indirect social and economic benefits of a stadium together with often unhealthy financial situations of professional sports club can result in the vacancy of the stadium. Thus, unmonitored decisions bring along irresponsible high financial risks for these municipalities in relation to the gained benefits. With sustainable (re)development these stadiums can become more beneficial for both the municipality and the main user, a sport club itself. A questionnaire among 31 City Councillors of the Dutch cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Eindhoven and Enschede showed that limited financial risks and attracting companies are the most important criteria for public investments in stadium projects. Specific aspects related to sustainability had a lower impact, but the sustainability of the whole project, including long-term planning for example could increase the benefits for municipalities. A case study of Stadion Feijenoord was analysed for this research

Does AHP help us make a choice? - An experimental evaluation

In this paper, we use experimental economics methods to test how well Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) fares as a choice support system in a real decision problem. AHP provides a ranking that we statistically compare with three additional rankings given by the subjects in the experiment: one at the beginning, one after providing AHP with the necessary pair-wise comparisons and one after learning the ranking provided by AHP. While the rankings vary widely across subjects, we observe that for each individual all four rankings are similar. Hence, subjects are consistent and AHP is, for the most part, able to replicate their rankings. Furthermore, while the rankings are similar, we do find that the AHP ranking helps the decision-makers reformulate their choices by taking into account suggestions made by AHP.Decision analysis, Multiple Criteria Decision Aid, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)