Surrogate in-vehicle information systems and driver behaviour: Effects of visual and cognitive load in simulated rural driving

The underlying aim of HASTE, an EU FP5 project, is the development of a valid, cost-effective and reliable assessment protocol to evaluate the potential distraction of an in-vehicle information system on driving performance. As part of this development, the current study was performed to examine the systematic relationship between primary and secondary task complexity for a specific task modality in a particular driving environment. Two fundamentally distinct secondary tasks (or surrogate in-vehicle information systems, sIVIS) were developed: a visual search task, designed such that it only required visual processing/demand and an auditory continuous memory task, intended to cognitively load drivers without any visual stimulus. A high fidelity, fixed-base driving simulator was used to test 48 participants on a car following task. Virtual traffic scenarios varied in driving demand. Drivers compensated for both types of sIVIS by reducing their speed (this result was more prominent during interaction with the visual task). However, they seemed incapable of fully prioritising the primary driving task over either the visual or cognitive secondary tasks as an increase in sIVIS demand was associated with a reduction in driving performance: drivers showed reduced anticipation of braking requirements and shorter time-to-collision. These results are of potential interest to designers of in-vehicle systems

Examining Chinese Tourists’ Nature-based Tourism Participantion Behavior: Incorporating Environmental Concern into a Constraint-Negotiation Modela

Finding the balance between economic development and preservation of the natural environment is a challenging yet important task. This is a particularly pressing issue in the case of China, as it is the largest and fastest-growing market for tourism. The purpose of this research is to examine Chinese tourists’ participation in nature-based, tourism activities by incorporating tourists’ environmental concern, measured by a revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale, into a tourism constraint-negotiation model. The responses of 409 Chinese tourists show environmental concern will positively affect tourists’ motivation, which, in turn, will affect their negotiation strategy and ultimately their participation behavior. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed in the context of the tourism literature

Recommending green hotels to travel agencies’ customers

Highlights • This paper examines salespeople’s environmentally-friendly behavior. • Salespeople’s green hotel recommendation behavior is investigated. • Salespeople’s environmental concern affects their recommendation behavior. • Salespeople’s green hotel knowledge moderates their recommendation behavior

Examining hotel salespeople's new membership programme sales performance

Promoting new membership programmes can be a rewarding, yet challenging task for hotels. However, high-performance sales teams can improve consumer perceptions of new membership programmes in the market and allow hotels to remain competitive. Few studies have explored how hotel sales personnel approach the task of selling new membership programmes, and studies examining the moderating influence of market orientation are also rare. The current study contributes to the hospitality sales management literature by using the goal orientation theory to examine the new membership programmes sales performance of 168 salespeople. ‘Market orientation’ was included as a variable that could moderate salespeople’s performance. The results show that learning goal orientation and performance-prove goal orientation positively influence salespeople’s performance, but performance-avoid goal orientation negatively influences sales performance. Furthermore, hotels’ levels of market orientation (high or low) can moderate the relationship between goal orientation and sales performance

Examining Chinese Tourists’ Nature-based Tourism Participantion Behavior: Incorporating Environmental Concern into a Constraint-Negotiation Modela

Finding the balance between economic development and preservation of the natural environment is a challenging yet important task. This is a particularly pressing issue in the case of China, as it is the largest and fastest-growing market for tourism. The purpose of this research is to examine Chinese tourists’ participation in nature-based, tourism activities by incorporating tourists’ environmental concern, measured by a revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale, into a tourism constraint-negotiation model. The responses of 409 Chinese tourists show environmental concern will positively affect tourists’ motivation, which, in turn, will affect their negotiation strategy and ultimately their participation behavior. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed in the context of the tourism literature

Examining consumers’ luxury hotel stay repurchase intentions-incorporating a luxury hotel brand attachment variable into a luxury consumption value model

Purpose: Luxury consumption research has focused more on the consumers of goods than services, despite the trend that consumers are more interested in luxury services, such as luxury hospitality services, than ever before. Additionally, the results regarding the factors that can influence consumers’ luxury service product purchase intentions can be further tested. The purposes of this research are to examine the factors that contribute to consumers’ luxury hotel stay repurchase intentions, to further develop the luxury hospitality service consumption literature, and to identify implications for practitioners to consider. Design: To contribute to the luxury consumption literature, this research incorporates a “luxury hotel brand attachment” variable into a luxury consumption value model to examine consumers’ intentions to repurchase luxury hotel stays when traveling for tourism purposes. We draw on a survey of over 450 luxury hotel consumers. Findings: Our findings confirm that luxury hotels’ perceived functional value, hedonic value, and symbolic / expressive value affect consumers’ emotions, which in turn affects their luxury hotel attachment and repurchase intentions. In addition, luxury hotel attachment moderates the influence of emotion on repurchase intention. Originality: This study conceptualizes tourists’ luxury hotel stay intentions by examining the influence of perceived luxury value (i.e. functional value, financial value, hedonic value, and symbolic / expressive value), tourists’ emotions, and luxury hotel brand attachment. Several implications of the study are identified, and avenues for future research are suggested. In addition, this research explores how luxury hotel brand attachment can moderate the relationship between consumers’ emotions and their repurchase intentions. Several implications of the study are identified, and avenues for future research are suggested

On Digital Distribution’s Failure to Solve Newspapers’ Existential Crisis: Symptoms, Causes, Consequences and Remedies

This chapter examines some of the symptoms and causes of the crisis facing newspapers via analyses of their finances and of audience measures. The consequences of the crisis, and whether there are any realistic remedies, are also considered, both in relation to journalism as a product and to the institutions, such as newspapers, that have traditionally produced it. We start with an analysis of the financial performance of multiplatform news publishers in Australia, Europe and the USA, which leads us to conclude that digital distribution is not reversing newspapers’ decline, and raises questions about the support for journalism in the long term. Next, some of the consequences of the declines that have already taken place are discussed. Moving from consequences to possible remedies, the chapter focuses on two areas. Firstly, media policy, and secondly, journalism as a product: what news should be produced and how it should be delivered. Another strand of the chapter concerns audience measures. They are used to help explain newspapers’ continuing dependency on print revenues, and are understood, depending on their constitution and use, as both a party to the crisis and as an able assistant in its alleviation

Examining Consumers' Intentions to Dine at Luxury Restaurants while Traveling

This study incorporates a “food image” variable into a luxury value-attitude-behavior model. The aim is to examine Taiwanese tourists’ attitudes toward luxury restaurants and purchase intentions, i.e., to dine at luxury restaurants while traveling for tourism purposes. A total of 361 participants were recruited to complete the questionnaires. The results indicated that the perceived functional value, perceived symbolic / expressive value, and perceived hedonic value may influence consumers’ attitudes toward luxury restaurants, which, in turn, may affect their purchase intentions – to dine at luxury restaurants while participating in tourism activities. In addition, a destination’s food image moderates the relationship between attitude and purchase intentions. The managerial implications of this research are discussed

Examining Chinese consumers’ luxury hotel staying behavior

The value of the luxury goods market is about to exceed US$302 billion worldwide in 2012. In addition, the top 3% of travelers in the world represent 20% of the total tourism expenditure. Although the growth has been significant, few studies have examined the consumption of luxury tourism and hospitality products. The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers’ luxury hotel staying behavior when traveling for leisure purpose. To examine this issue of growing importance, a modified value–attitude–behavior model was proposed. Following exploratory qualitative research, 368 Chinese consumers were recruited for the main study. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results show that hotels’ luxury value will influence lodgers’ attitude toward luxury hotels. Furthermore, the better their attitude toward luxury hotels, the more likely they will stay in luxury hotels when traveling. The implications of this study are discussed within the literature of hospitality and consumer studies

Object oriented design of a thermo-mechanical FEM code

An object oriented design is presented for a computer program that can perform\ud thermo-mechanically coupled analyzes. The target of the design is a \ud exible and robust\ud computer program. It should be easy to adapt and extend, re-using existing code, without\ud interfering with already established algorithms.\ud The program uses publicly available toolkits that are currently emerging as C++ pack-\ud ages. First of all the Standard C++ Library (formerly Standard Template Library) is\ud used for packing items in container classes. Secondly the matrix and vector operations\ud are derived from the Template Numerical Toolkit (TNT) and �nally (not essentially for\ud the numerical part) a graphical user interface is made, based on the wxWindows package,\ud that can generate a GUI for Motif and MS-Windows with the same code.\ud Attention is given to the design of classes such as speci�c elements and material classes\ud based on more general classes. A hierarchy of classes is constructed where general behavior\ud is put high in the hierarchy and speci�c behavior low. The choice between inheritance and\ud aggregation is made at several levels