Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Local Foods Purchasing In The Farmers' Market Channel: Value-Attitude-Behavior Theory, Christopher Thomas Sneed

Doctoral Dissertations

From farmers’ market booths to kitchen tables, demand for locally-produced foods has increased significantly over the last decade. Yet, despite increasing popularity of local foods, theoretically-based research of this topic has just begun.

This study fills this gap in literature and broadens the current research base by utilizing Value-Attitude-Behavior Theory to explore local foods purchasing in the farmers’ market channel. The impact of four values (food novelty, food safety, civic engagement, and environmental concern) on consumers’ attitudes regarding farmers’ market design perceptions, farmers’ market social perceptions, and local foods quality perceptions are examined. In turn, the impact of these attitudes …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

State Space Modelling Of Dynamic Choice Behavior With Habit Persistence, Kang Bok Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present a new approach to capturing dependence across time in dynamic choice data. To achieve this, I develop a state space dynamic choice model and a novel algorithm to fit the data. Instead of capturing dependence in outcomes through lagged response variables, referred to as state dependence, I introduce a lagged utility term through the latent state equation. The lagged utility term captures habit persistence, which has not been explored directly in earlier models (Heckman, 1981b). The autoregressive nature of the lagged utility provides a significantly richer summary of prior utility than a lagged outcome variable. …

May I Help You? How Stereotypes And Innuendoes Influence Service Encounters, Lauren Michelle Brewer

Doctoral Dissertations

"You only get one chance to make a good first impression." The dissertation focuses on marketing agents; among the most visible is the "service provider." Previous research establishes the important role of cognitive social schemata in determining the way consumers react to different types of marketing agents, including service providers. In the literature review, a classification schema is developed for service provider stereotypes derived from theory using social stereotypes. The development of the Service Provider Perception Framework (SPPF) creates a classification for the individual service provider along two main dimensions: competence and affect.

In services design (particularly situations involving a …

Sales Performance And Intuition – The Role Of Gut Feelings, David Locander

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation extends the dual theory of salesperson information processing by examining the relationship between salespersons' emotional intelligence (EI) and their preference for and use of decision-making styles (intuition and/or deliberation) in the selling process. This dissertation contains two studies, Study 1 employs a descriptive research design and Study 2 uses experimental manipulations to investigate the role that intuition and deliberation play within the sales process. Data for both studies come from a sample derived from a national online panel of business to business salespeople.

Study 1, using a survey approach, assesses two competing models and one post hoc model …

Taking It To The Streets: A Multimethod Investigation Of Street Credibility And Consumer Affinity Toward Street Credible Endorsers, Delancy Howard Sterling Bennett

Doctoral Dissertations

Celebrity endorsers are featured in 10 to 20 percent of commercials in the United States (Agrawal and Kamakura, 1995). While firms have invested significant capital in celebrity endorsers, they traditionally shy away from those who have been involved in illegal or immoral acts (Briggs, 2009; Creswell, 2008). However, the rules of endorser selection appear to be changing. Recently, a new type of endorser whose celebrity is built in part upon criminal activity or violent history has emerged. These celebrities, often rappers, successfully endorse major brands such as Vitamin Water and Chrysler. They are frequently described as having another form of …

Two Essays On Insider Trading And Option Grants Around The Filing Of Influential Patents, Liu Pan

Doctoral Dissertations

Research documents that insiders, who have access to private information, appear to trade with profits before major corporate events like mergers, bankruptcy, dividend announcements, and future cash flow news (see, e.g., Seyhun, 1990; Seyhun and Bradley, 1997; John and Lang, 1991; Jiang and Zaman, 2010). Another recent stream of studies find that the size and quality of a firm's patent portfolio are positively related to the firm's future stock returns (Hirshleifer, Hsu, and Li, 2012; Pandit, Wasley, and Zach, 2011). However, there is little systematic evidence on whether insiders act opportunistically when they possess private information about the firm's patent …

Two Essays On Insider Trading And Option Grants Around The Filing Of Influential Patents, Liu Pan

Doctoral Dissertations

Research documents that insiders, who have access to private information, appear to trade with profits before major corporate events like mergers, bankruptcy, dividend announcements, and future cash flow news (see, e.g., Seyhun, 1990; Seyhun and Bradley, 1997; John and Lang, 1991; Jiang and Zaman, 2010). Another recent stream of studies find that the size and quality of a firm's patent portfolio are positively related to the firm's future stock returns (Hirshleifer, Hsu, and Li, 2012; Pandit, Wasley, and Zach, 2011). However, there is little systematic evidence on whether insiders act opportunistically when they possess private information about the firm's patent …