Corporate Social Responsibility, Consumption Values and Consumers Choice Behaviour

The aim of current paper is to identify key consumer variables that determine Croatian consumers’ behaviour in relation to CSR of companies in Croatia and check if these factors and behaviour correspond to CSR activities performed by companies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can take various forms. Its emphasis can be on consumers, environment and/ or employees. The major goal of CSR activities, whoever they are aimed at, is to create an image of a company as responsive to the society and based on that, build the competitive advantage.  Research of consumers with respect to CSR has been mainly concentrated on cognitive and affective as well as behavioural factors that influence their buying decisions.  Such research has not been performed in Croatia, where the CSR concept is rather a new phenomenon. In general, Croatian consumers are willing to support companies’ CSR activities by paying a higher price for products with CSR attributes if the area of comparable quality and availability. The results show the influence of social values on consumer attitudes towards CSR, but also the low level of knowledge on the subject as well as trust to companies self-promoting their CSR activities. Keywords: corporate social responsibility, consumers, Croati

An Open-source Image Analysis Toolbox for Quantitative Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

Background: Qualitative and quantitative assessment of retinal perfusion using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) has shown to be effective in the treatment and management of various retinal and optic nerve diseases. However, manual analyses of OCTA images to calculate metrics related to Foveal Avascular Zone (FAZ) morphology, and retinal vascular density and morphology are costly, time-consuming, subject to human error, and are exposed to both inter and intra operator variability.Objective: This study aimed to develop an open-source software framework for quantitative OCTA (QOCTA). Particularly, for analyzing OCTA images and measuring several indices describing microvascular morphology, vessel morphology, and FAZ morphology.Material and Methods: In this analytical study, we developed a toolbox or QOCTA using image processing algorithms provided in MATLAB. The software automatically determines FAZ and measures several parameters related to both size and shape of FAZ including area, perimeter, Feret’s diameter circularity, axial ratio, roundness, and solidity. The microvascular structure is derived from the processed image to estimate the vessel density (VD). To assess the reliability of the software, three independent operators measured the mentioned parameters for the eyes of 21 subjects. The consistency of the values was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) index.Results: Excellent consistency was observed between the measurements completed for the superficial layer, ICC >0.9. For the deep layer, good reliability in the measurements was achieved, ICC >0.7. Conclusion: The developed software is reliable; hence, it can facilitate quantitative OCTA, further statistical comparison in cohort OCTA studies, and can assist with obtaining deeper insights into retinal variations in various populations