The Measurement Invariance of Customer Loyalty and Customer Experience across Firms, Industries, and Countries

Research on cross-national (and cross-group) measurement invariance is now well developed in the social and behavioural sciences, but this research has yet to engage research practitioners whose focus is measuring and modelling customer loyalty and customer experience. This is a notable gap in existing research on cross-group comparisons, especially considering the reliance of business decision-makers on customer feedback. Though standard measures of customer experience and loyalty are used in every industry, their measurement invariance across industries has not been subject to extensive testing. This article brings current thinking about cross-group comparisons and modern tools of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to the measurement of customer loyalty and customer experience across firms, industries, and countries, drawing on original large-scale survey data from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada

Proximity, Politics and Policy Attitudes in the North American Context

The study of mass public opinion and political behaviour has developed a substantial corpus of theoretical claims and empirical results linking political, attitudinal and demographic variables to different policy attitudes. Still, the research literature has, to date, paid scant attention to how space – that is, proximity and distance to salient geographic features – influences policy attitudes. Research in political behaviour has long proceeded as though policy attitudes among mass publics ‚come from nowhere.‛ The unifying argument of the four articles comprising this thesis is that mass public opinion does indeed come from somewhere: spatial dynamics matter for policy attitudes in a variety of domains. The articles develop the argument that spatial proximity to geographic features act as an indirect measure of intergroup contact, localized knowledge, issue awareness, and issue salience. The articles deal with three substantive topics: the Canada–United States relationship, attitudes toward energy transportation infrastructure, and attitudes toward immigration policy. Specifically, the thesis draws on survey data to investigate: (1) the mutual perceptions of the Canadian and American publics, (2) Canadian attitudes toward North American integration, (3) attitudes toward the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, and (4) American attitudes toward illegal immigration. The major finding in each article is an interactive relationship between proximity and political attitudes: depending on the political context, proximity serves to either amplify or mute the effects of political party identification or ideology on policy attitudes. An innovative aspect of this research is the integration of spatial data through geocoding (appending latitude–longitude coordinates to) respondent-level data and calculating distances to relevant geographic features (e.g., the Canada–United States border, oil pipelines and the United States–Mexico border)

The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: comparing the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts

Like father, like son: Justin Trudeau and valence voting in Canada's 2015 federal election

Canada's 2015 federal election was an exiting, as well as a nostalgia provoking, contest. After nine years in office, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the governing Conservatives were defeated by the resurgent Liberals led by Justin Trudeau. Trudeau is the son of Pierre Trudeau, perhaps Canada’s best known prime minister. Analyses of national survey data demonstrate that party leader images—a major component of the "valence politics" model of electoral choice—were important in both cases. Unlike his father, Justin Trudeau was castigated as a "lightweight" and "just not ready." However, articulating plausible policies to jump-start Canada's sluggish economy and espousing "sunny ways," the younger Trudeau was warmly received by many voters. In contrast, Harper's image of managerial competence was tarnished by bad economic news, and his attempt to refocus the campaign on emotionally charged cultural issues failed. The result was a Liberal majority government and a prime minister named Trudeau

Some people just want to watch the world burn: the prevalence, psychology and politics of the ‘Need for Chaos’

People form political attitudes to serve psychological needs. Recent research shows that some individuals have a strong desire to incite chaos when they perceive themselves to be marginalized by society. These individuals tend to see chaos as a way to invert the power structure and gain social status in the process. Analysing data drawn from large-scale representative surveys conducted in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, we identify the prevalence of Need for Chaos across Anglo-Saxon societies. Using Latent Profile Analysis, we explore whether different subtypes underlie the uni-dimensional construct and find evidence that some people may be motivated to seek out chaos because they want to rebuild society, while others enjoy destruction for its own sake. We demonstrate that chaos-seekers are not a unified political group but a divergent set of malcontents. Multiple pathways can lead individuals to ‘want to watch the world burn’

Party identification, local context, and Australian attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy

The acceptance of newcomers as either immigrants or asylum seekers has been a recurring issue in Australian politics. Both the size of Australia's intake of economic migrants and the resettlement of asylum seekers held offshore have been contentious political issues. Research in other immigrant-receiving countries has identified numerous factors shaping attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy. These include political factors (such as party identification) and local demographic context – both immigrant concentration and change in immigrant concentration over time. Still, few studies of Australia have considered the effects of genuinely local demographic context, or how local context moderates the effects of political factors on attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy. Drawing on survey data from the Australian Election Study (2010–2016) and local-level census data, this article advances an explanation of Australians’ attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy centring on the roles of party identification, local demographic context, and their interaction

Politics, time, space, and attitudes toward US–Mexico border security

The tumultuous 2016 US presidential election featured a range of policy proposals to address the issue of illegal immigration. Channeling anxieties around the economic and social consequences of illegal immigration with claims of porous, unsecured borders, Republican candidate Donald Trump notably committed to building a wall the length of the US–Mexico border. At the same time, border security is not a new issue on the American policy agenda. Drawing on spatially-referenced survey data from 2006 to 2016, this article explores two questions. First, how have attitudes toward border security shifted over time in response to changes in the partisan political environment? Second, how does spatial context – namely proximity to the US–Mexico border – shape attitudes toward the proposed border wall? Findings point to both time and space, in conjunction with individual-level political attitudes, as key factors shaping attitudes toward US–Mexico border security

Partisanship, Border Proximity, and Canadian Attitudes toward North American Integration

The study of public attitudes toward continental integration has a long lineage in Canada. Still, the research literature has neglected the effect of spatial proximity to the United States. This maintains even though the cross-border trade, travel, and social ties constituting the daily reality of Canada–U.S. relations concentrate near the Canada–U.S. border. This article advances a spatially informed analysis of Canadian attitudes toward North American integration drawing on data from the Canadian Election Studies (1997–2011). The explanation it advances has three main foci: The roles of political party identification and political ideology; the role of spatial proximity to the Canada–U.S. border; and the interactive relationship between political views and border proximity