HIV and Income Inequality: If There is a Link, What Does It Tell Us?

There is a striking variation in the prevalence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among countries and regions of the world, with a distinct geographical pattern. This paper explores the link between income inequality and HIV. It presents empirical evidence?a meta-study and additional cross-country regression results?that clearly support the argument that such a link exists. The interpretation of this link is an open issue. Four different hypotheses are discussed, each one pointing out a transit route from income inequality to HIV. The paper presents preliminary evidence on these routes and identifies potential areas for future research.HIV and Income Inequality: If There is a Link, What Does It Tell Us?

HIV and Income Inequality: If There Is a Link, What Does It Tell Us?

The global HIV prevalence map reveals striking contrasts between high- and low-prevalence countries. Africa is the most affected continent, but within Africa there is a distinct geographical pattern. A handful of Southern African countries have prevalence indicators in the range of 15?35 per cent, while rates in West African countries are in the range of 1?5 per cent and those in East African countries are somewhere in between. What explains this variation in HIV prevalence rates? The answer could offer some clues about the HIV epidemic and how to counteract it. More generally, it may also teach us something about why certain societies are more vulnerable than others to an infectious disease such as HIV. (...)HIV and Income Inequality: If There Is a Link, What Does It Tell Us?

Speak my language if you want my money: the impact of service language on consumer tipping behavior

OBJECTIVES The impact of language in services has mainly been studied from a perspective of perceived importance of language use. To date, research has not investigated the impact of language differences on behavioral outcomes. In this paper, we focus on one specific outcome variable; and examine how the service provider’s language use may influence consumer tipping behaviour. Investigating tipping behavior is an interesting outcome variable as consumers rarely wish to pay more when being served (Lynn and McCall, 2000). In this paper, we present three studies investigating the impact of language differences between bilingual customers and service personnel on tipping behavior. We further test the mediating effect of speech accommodation, a process in which the service provider accommodates the customer by doing or showing efforts to use the customer’s language. METHODS The three studies on tipping behaviour include two experiments and one survey with adult bilingual customers from two different countries (Belgium, Finland). The effect of language use on tipping behaviour, and the mediating effects of speech accommodation, is established through the three studies, confirming the hypotheses. RESULTS The results show that the service provider’s language use has a large and significant effect on the consumer tipping behaviour. This effect can consistently be observed in all three studies across both countries, confirming the generalizability of the results. We further establish that the impact of language differences on tipping behaviour is fully mediated by speech accommodation employed by the service provider. CONCLUSIONS Consistent across different countries and different methodologies, we find that customers who are served in their second language are less willing to tip than customers who are served in their native language. Given that tipping behavior can be considered as a proxy for service quality perceptions (Lynn, 2001; Lynn and Sturman, 2010), our findings thus suggest that restaurant visitors who are served in their second language perceive the quality of the service as low. This is an important finding as prior research focused on whether customers find it important to be served in their native language (Holmqvist, 2011), but did not focus on behavioral outcomes of these language differences. Our research has important implications for waiters and waitresses active on bilingual markets. It appears that they are able to increase their income with tips if they accommodate to the restaurant visitor’s native language. This would require waiters and waitresses to learn or enhance the second language of the market. Restaurant owners might also offer language courses to waiters and waitresses in order to make them more fluent in the different languages of the market. Doing so might be beneficial, as waiters and waitresses who receive more tips have a higher job satisfaction, and are more committed to deliver good service

Examining the relationship between language divergence and word-of-mouth intentions

More than half the countries in the world are multilingual, and more than half the world’s consumers speak more than one language. Thus, bilingual consumers often receive services provided in a second or nonnative language. This article examines these consumers’ word-of-mouth intentions after a service provision in a second language. Two studies show that consumers served in a second language are less likely to spread positive word of mouth. The results also reveal that consumers served in a second language perceive the service provider as less responsive in general. Furthermore, the service provider’s perceived responsiveness appears far more important for determining positive word-of-mouth intentions than other factors, such as service reliability. This study therefore contributes to the fields of service and sociolinguistics, with important implications for managers as well.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Examining the relationship between language divergence and word-of-mouth intentions journaltitle: Journal of Business Research articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.09.008 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.status: publishe

LATRINE COMPOSTING – A HYGIENIC EVALUATION

Thermophilic composting of faecal matter from urine diverting toilets can effectively reduce the numbers of faecal bacterial indicators and pathogen. Already at 50C, the numbers of pathogens, including the Salmonella phage, and indicator organisms analysed were effectively reduced within a few days of exposure. Although the numbers of enterococci were reduced, they were continuous isolated as purple colonies on Slanetz and Bartleys agar after prolonged exposure at all temperature levels studied. This indicates that certain micro-organisms present in the composted faecal material, Enterococcus spp. or micro-organisms resembling enterococci on the agar medium, can survive and multiply even at 60C. These findings question the use of enterococci as faecal indicators and test organisms to control the efficiency of composting of human faeces. Further work is in progress to identify the taxonomy of these organisms

Speak my language if you want me to come back! Service language's impact on return intentions

Purpose: Given the importance of customer loyalty in services, the article addresses how customer loyalty is influenced by the language the service provider uses. Despite the importance of the interaction in service encounters, service research assumes that both customers and service providers share a common native language. This might not be the case on bilingual markets. Specifically, the paper tests whether bilinguals who are served in their second language are less likely to return to the service provider. Moreover, it examines the mediating role of perceived speech accommodation efforts, and the moderating roles of bilinguals’ perceived second language proficiency and emotional attachment to the native language. Design/method/approach: Study 1 and 2 tests the main hypothesis using a scenario-based experiment with adult consumers in two bilingual countries (Belgium, Finland) and in different settings (restaurant, telecom). Study 3 further elaborates on these findings using a retrospective survey of actual customer experiences in Belgium. Findings: Driven by perceptions of speech accommodation efforts and consistent throughout different services, countries and methods, customer return intentions sharply decrease when service providers in bilingual markets do no use the customer’s language. Moreover, this relationship is not dependent on consumers’ perceived second language proficiency, but rather upon their emotional attachment to their native language. Originality/value: This is the first study of bilingual customers’ reactions to being served in their second language, among bilingual customers from different countries. Given that more than half the countries in the world are multilingual, service providers need to take customers’ native language into account when serving bilingual customers

Over-Bias Light Emission due to Higher Order Quantum Noise of a Tunnel Junction

Understanding tunneling from an atomically sharp tip to a metallic surface requires to account for interactions on a nanoscopic scale. Inelastic tunneling of electrons generates emission of photons, whose energies intuitively should be limited by the applied bias voltage. However, experiments by Schull et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 057401 (2009)] indicate that more complex processes involving the interaction of electrons with plasmon polaritons lead to photon emission characterized by over-bias energies. We propose a model of this observation in analogy to dynamical Coulomb blockade, originally developed for treating the electronic environment in mesoscopic circuits. We explain the experimental finding quantitatively by the correlated tunneling of two electrons interacting with an LRC circuit modeling the local plasmon-polariton mode. To explain the over-bias emission, the non-Gaussian statistics of the tunneling dynamics of the electrons is essential.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The role of psychological distance in value creation

Purpose – The field of service research has devoted consider able attention to the customer's role as value creator, but there is a lack of research on understanding customers' psychological processes in value creation. This paper highlights the importance of psychological distance in value-creation processes. Psychological distance is the customer's perceived distance from service interactions in terms of spatial distance, temporal distance social distance and hypothetical distance. Critically, psychological distance influences cognitive processes and can influence how customers think and feel about the service interaction. An appreciation of psychological distance within service contexts can help managers to tailor the interaction in order to facilitate value creation. Methodology/approach – In this conceptual paper, we build on psychology research and service research to develop seven propositions that explore how psychological distance can operate within service interactions and how this might influence value creation. Findings – We divide the propositions into three sections. The first concerns how perceived psychological distance from the service interaction can act as a barrier to entering a service interaction. In particular, we consider the influence of social distance and spatial distance within the context of service interactions. The second section examines how psychological distance to the expected point of service use can influence how customers construe the service and the value creation. The third aspect addresses customer-specific characteristics that can impact on value creation by influencing perceived psychological distance toward the service