Fashion, Cooperation, and Social Interactions

Fashion plays such a crucial rule in the evolution of culture and society that it is regarded as a second nature to the human being. Also, its impact on economy is quite nontrivial. On what is fashionable, interestingly, there are two viewpoints that are both extremely widespread but almost opposite: conformists think that what is popular is fashionable, while rebels believe that being different is the essence. Fashion color is fashionable in the first sense, and Lady Gaga in the second. We investigate a model where the population consists of the afore-mentioned two groups of people that are located on social networks (a spatial cellular automata network and small-world networks). This model captures two fundamental kinds of social interactions (coordination and anti-coordination) simultaneously, and also has its own interest to game theory: it is a hybrid model of pure competition and pure cooperation. This is true because when a conformist meets a rebel, they play the zero sum matching pennies game, which is pure competition. When two conformists (rebels) meet, they play the (anti-) coordination game, which is pure cooperation. Simulation shows that simple social interactions greatly promote cooperation: in most cases people can reach an extraordinarily high level of cooperation, through a selfish, myopic, naive, and local interacting dynamic (the best response dynamic). We find that degree of synchronization also plays a critical role, but mostly on the negative side. Four indices, namely cooperation degree, average satisfaction degree, equilibrium ratio and complete ratio, are defined and applied to measure people's cooperation levels from various angles. Phase transition, as well as emergence of many interesting geographic patterns in the cellular automata network, is also observed.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figure

Factors influencing sustainable entrepreneurship in fisheries small and medium-sized enterprises in Tanzania

This paper seeks to establish factors influencing sustainable entrepreneurship in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the fishing industry. Quantitative data were collected from 390 Nile perch fishery entrepreneurs in Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Multiple regression analysis was used to establish factors influencing sustainable entrepreneurship and their significant contribution. Results indicated that entrepreneurs have a high level of sustainable entrepreneurial behaviour but perceive a lack of government support. Entrepreneurs’ values, innovativeness, proactiveness, and rules and regulations were found to highly significantly influence sustainable entrepreneurship in the fishery business. On the other hand, firm assets and firm age were found to be only associated with social and environmental practices and not with sustainable entrepreneurship in general. The study recommends an integrated approach that considers entrepreneurial orientation, gender inclusion, values-driven entrepreneurship, educational initiatives, and community engagement for sustainable entrepreneurship in fisheries

Determinants of household food expenditure in Tanzania: implications on food security

Abstract Background Food expenditure in developing countries particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa constitutes about 65–70% of total household expenditure. Existing literature on the determinants of household food expenditure in developing countries have mixed results. Thus, this study aimed at examining the determinants of household food expenditure in Tanzania and their implications on food security using country representative data from the 2017/18 household budget survey. The Two-Stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis was used as method of analysis. Results Results show that, on average, monthly household food expenditure in Tanzania is about TZS 159,072.80(≈ US $ 69.2). Food expenditure exhibited a non-linear relationship with age of household head with income elasticity of 0.72%. Expenditure also increases with household size, household head sex, education, asset ownership, group membership and marital status while being located in rural areas is negatively associated with food expenditure. Conclusions To increase household’s food expenditure with dietary diversity for improved health, strategies aiming at improving household income, family planning, gender equity, education and social cohesion are important which will further increase household’s food security