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This paper reports the results of an investigation of the use of instalment land contracts (ILCs) in the Montgomery County, Ohio commercial real property market.

Generalised spatial two-stage least squares regression is used to analyse data from 164 ILC financed commercial property transactions and 918 traditionally financed commercial property transactions, all of which were initiated between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2023.

In our sample, the use of ILCs for the acquisition of commercial real estate is concentrated on relatively low-value properties. A bargaining power imbalance was discovered; the price ILC vendees promised to pay was more than buyers using traditional financing paid for similar property.

The results suggest that some commercial property investors use ILCs because they cannot qualify for a loan from an institutional lender, and some may benefit from the additional regulations that ILC critics have proposed.

This is the first published empirical study of ILC use in a local commercial property market.

The purpose of this study is to examine the culture of transparency in the Norwegian ministries considering the public sphere. The research question has been as follows: to what extent do the Norwegian ministries’ records registration and transparency practices contribute to the public sphere today?

A follow-up study after the Norwegian Auditor General’s investigation of records management and transparency in the Norwegian ministries and at The Office of the Prime Minister in 2014–2016 is presented. The design was a case study. The methods were a combination of an interview and document research.

Registries are published faster than when the original investigation was done, which means the possibilities of debate are increased. However, wide use of confidentiality provisions may indicate that too many records are defined as belonging to the private sphere. Registration routines have improved, which may increase control of the ministries. However, this is counteracted by extensive use of exception clauses.

Research about the public sphere has usually dealt with the participants in public debate and places for debate. This paper broadens the perspective using data from various official sources to shed light on the role of records centers and online public records registries in the public sphere.

This study aims to address sustainability challenges in construction by exploring the structural performance and environmental benefits of incorporating pozzolanic waste glass (WG) into ultra-high-performance reinforced concrete (UHPRC) beams.

A comprehensive evaluation of UHPRC beams was conducted, incorporating varying ratios (10%, 20% and 30%) of WG powder alongside a consistent 0.75% inclusion of basalt fiber. The investigation encompassed the entire UHPRC production process, including curing, casting and molding, while evaluating workability and physical properties. Furthermore, the environmental impact, particularly CO₂ emissions associated with UHPRC mixture components, was also assessed. Type K thermocouples were employed to analyze temperature dynamics during fabrication, providing valuable insights.

The findings demonstrate positive implications for using pozzolanic WG as a cement substitute in UHPRC beams.

This research stands out for its unique focus on the combined effects of incorporating recycled pozzolanic glass waste on the structural performance and environmental footprint of UHPRC beams.

Tourists’ resource integration both offers opportunities and presents challenges to tourism service providers. Focussing on the tour guide perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore how tour guides experience knowledge/information-based asymmetry in encounters with tourists and identifies the roles and coping strategies used by guides to facilitate service co-production.

Critical incident technique is used in qualitative interviews with 47 tour guides in Scotland, broadly representative of the Scottish tour guiding context. 107 critical incidents were analysed, with an average of 2.32 incidents per interview. Narrative analysis of the incidents was performed inductively in four iterative steps using QSR NVivo.

Three resource asymmetry incident categories are identified: probing – Guide-Oracle is questioned by inquiring tourists and copes through diverting, evasion, and follow-up strategies; learning – Guide-Magpie learns from expert tourists through acknowledging and co-delivery; and negotiation – Guide-Diplomat with greater knowledge helps misguided tourists save face through appeasing, following the official line and tactfully correcting.

The paper contributes to service co-production research in tourism by theorising about contexts where knowledge/information asymmetry exists between tour guides and tourists, particularly where fluid power relations between guides and knowledgeable tourists occur or where misguided tourists co-produce the service by prioritising own meanings. Findings highlight the importance of soft skills and other non-content capabilities of guides, and suggestions are offered for effective training and resource sharing/ learning initiatives for tour guiding services.

游客资源整合为旅游服务提供商提供了机遇, 同时也带来了挑战。本文以导游视角为重点, 探讨了导游在与游客接触中如何体验知识/信息不对称, 并识别了导游用于促进服务共同生产的角色和应对策略。

本研究采用关键事件技术（CIT）进行质性访谈, 对象为苏格兰的47名导游, 广泛代表苏格兰导游环境。分析了107个关键事件, 每次访谈平均2.32个事件。对事件的叙述分析在QSR NVivo中通过四个迭代步骤进行归纳性分析。

确定了三个资源不对称的事件类别：1）探询 - 导游-神谕被询问, 通过转移、回避和后续策略来应对询问的游客; 2）学习 - 导游-喜鹊通过承认和共同交付从专业游客中学到经验; 3）协商 - 导游-外交官以更多知识帮助误导的游客保全体面, 通过安抚、追随官方路线和巧妙纠正来应对。

本文通过理论化导游和游客之间存在知识/信息不对称的情境, 特别是在导游和知识丰富的游客之间存在流动权力关系的情况下, 或者误导的游客通过优先考虑自己的意义来共同生产服务的情境, 为旅游服务的共同生产研究做出了贡献。研究结果强调了导游的软技能和其他非内容能力的重要性, 并提出了关于为导游服务提供有效培训和资源共享/学习倡议的建议。

La integración de recursos de los turistas ofrece oportunidades y presenta desafíos para los proveedores de servicios turísticos. Centrándose en la perspectiva de los guías turísticos, este artículo explora cómo los guías turísticos experimentan una asimetría basada en conocimiento/información en encuentros con turistas, e identifica los roles y estrategias de afrontamiento utilizados por los guías para facilitar la coproducción de servicios.

La técnica de incidentes críticos (CIT) se utiliza en entrevistas cualitativas con 47 guías turísticos en Escocia, ampliamente representativos del contexto de los guías turísticos escoceses. Se analizaron 107 incidentes críticos, con una media de 2,32 incidentes por entrevista. El análisis narrativo de los incidentes se realizó de forma inductiva en cuatro pasos iterativos utilizando QSR NVivo.

Se identifican tres categorías de incidentes de asimetría de recursos: 1) Sondeo: los turistas interrogan a Guide-Oracle y lo afronta mediante estrategias de desvío, evasión y seguimiento; 2) Aprendizaje: Guide-Magpie aprende de turistas expertos a través del reconocimiento y la entrega conjunta; y 3) Negociación: el guía-diplomático con mayor conocimiento ayuda a los turistas descarriados a salvar las apariencias apaciguándolos, siguiendo la línea oficial y corrigiendo con tacto.

El artículo contribuye a la investigación de la coproducción de servicios en el turismo al teorizar sobre contextos donde existe asimetría de conocimiento/información entre guías turísticos y turistas, particularmente donde ocurren relaciones de poder fluidas entre guías y turistas conocedores, o donde turistas equivocados coproducen el servicio priorizando propios significados. Los hallazgos resaltan la importancia de las habilidades interpersonales y otras capacidades de los guías no relacionadas con el contenido, y se ofrecen sugerencias para iniciativas efectivas de capacitación e intercambio de recursos/aprendizaje para los servicios de guías turísticos.

Industrial heritage works within a world of contradictions, contentions and scalar liminality. Archaeologists and historians focus upon oral histories and discourses of tangible and intangible memory and heritage while planners and economists see industrial World Heritage, in particular, as a marketing ploy to redevelop deindustrialized spaces. Within this liminality, we explore the potential for geographical perspectives to solder such contradictions into transdisciplinary heritage assessments and tourism contexts. How might the spatial tools of landscape and scalar analyses expose alternative and sustainable futures within broader patterns of industrial heritage management and consumption?

Using three comparative cases, interview and landscape methods and conducting discourse analysis within a spatial and scalar framework, we explore the increasing presence of industrial World Heritage.

We present both an institutional reflection upon the complexities of heritage discourse across complex spatial configurations and the intersectional historical, cultural, political, environmental and economic geographies that guide and emerge out of World Heritage Designations. Framed scalarly and spatially, we highlight common interpretation, tourism and heritage management styles and concerns found across industrial World Heritage. We point out trans-scalar considerations for future municipalities and regions looking to utilize their industrial landscapes and narratives.

We believe that more theoretical groundings in space and scale may lead to both the flexibility and the applicability needed to assess and, in turn, manage trans-scalar and trans-spatial complex heritage sites. These perspectives may be uniquely poised to assess the complex geographies of industrial, particularly mining, World Heritage Sites.

The foreign direct investment (FDI) motivations of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are mainly twofold: acquisition of strategic assets in foreign markets, and foreign market penetration. While prior studies have delivered valuable insights, findings regarding the performance of those two types of FDI remain somewhat inconsistent or inconclusive. This study aims to develop complementary perspectives that can motivate scholars to explore the internal mechanisms of achieving goals for these two FDI types by providing a review of prior literature on EMNEs’ knowledge- and market-seeking FDI.

Indexed to the EBSCO database and Google Scholar from 2000 to 2020, 73 articles from 13 journals were selected and reviewed to identify the main research future research agendas.

Our findings show that the purpose of EMNEs’ FDI can be divided into value creation and value capturing, with the former pursuing knowledge-seeking and the latter pursuing market-seeking, according to our study, which draws on insights from innovation-focused literature.

International business (IB) scholars have extensively studied both knowledge-seeking and market-seeking outward FDI of EMNEs for decades. Our study contributes to the literature by providing the potential for integrating IB and innovation studies to extend the scope of EMNEs studies.

The purpose of this study is the same as those of the preceding 16 studies on happiness, health and religion, and they are as follows: to estimate the mean scores and the sex-related differences in the study scales; to examine the associations between the study scales; to investigate the principal components; and to compare the present results with the previous findings.

A non-probability sample of university students in the United Arab Emirates was selected by the “snowball” sample method. To overcome the issue of people refusing to participate in the study, this method was used in the selection process due to the challenge of sampling students in all the universities across the nation, which makes it difficult to choose a probability sample. The approval of the Ethics Committee was obtained from Ajman University to apply the study tools, and then the students were given the choice through open announcement to participate in the study and circulate it to other students at Ajman University.

Results showed that men had significantly higher mean ratings on mental health, physical health and happiness than did women. All the Pearson correlations between the scales were significant for men. Except for the correlations between religiosity and both happiness and mental health, all correlations between the scales for women were significant. A principal components analysis extracted one component for men which was labeled “Well-being and religiosity”, whereas two components were retained for the women which were labeled “Well-being” and “Religiosity and physical health”. Comparing the present sample’s mean happiness score to that of prior students from 16 other countries revealed that it was higher and consistent with other scores from rich Arab nations with a high GDP per capita (such as Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman). In conclusion, happiness was found to be associated with mental and physical health in both men and women, as well as religiosity in men.

Despite the strengths of the current investigation, i.e. the large sample size and the good to high reliability and validity properties of the scales, some limitations have to be acknowledged. First, the convenience and non-probability sample. Second, university students are a special segment of any country. Their age range is limited, and they probably have greater intelligence and more education compared to the general population. Therefore, a replication of the present study using a probability sample from the general population is needed.

SPSS (2009) was used for data analysis. Means, standard deviations, t-tests, d for effect size, Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and principal components analysis were used. For the principal components analysis, the Kaiser criterion (i.e. eigenvalue > 1.0) and the scree plot were used to define the number of components to be retained.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about happiness in United Arab Emirates.

The purpose of this study is to get a clearer knowledge of the reasons for, approaches to and challenges associated with integrating sustainable development concerns into pipeline construction projects in New Zealand. To achieve this, this study delves deeply into sustainable construction to understand the reasons behind and incorporate sustainable development trials into their newly established product management and development procedure. As a result, this study looks at identifying key elements of sustainable construction practices and various interpretations of sustainability in the construction industry; offering a strategy for incorporating sustainable construction practices into the pipeline construction project in New Zealand; and benefits and difficulties that the construction industry encounters when implementing sustainable construction. Finally, a framework is developed to help in understanding the issues and potential solutions for integrating sustainable building methods into the pipeline construction project in New Zealand.

This study followed a four-step method (Figure 1), beginning with the identification of the data, continuing with the first screening of the data, determining eligibility and, finally, including the data. This data collection is being done to provide knowledge and direction for further research. Data were collected from various websites on the Web of Science and from Scopus databases. Additionally, data were gathered with the assistance of aggregator databases such as Scopus (scopus.com) and publishing databases such as Elsevier (sciencedirect.com), Inderscience, Taylor and Francis (tandfonline.com), Emerald Insight (emeraldinsight.com) and Google Scholar. These databases have been considered by a number of scholars to be reputable databases.

This research provided a thorough description of the key justifications for sustainable construction. This study demonstrated how the idea worked in practice by reviewing the literature on the relevance and analysis of sustainability in construction. This body of research identified crucial components of sustainable construction techniques and varied interpretations of sustainability in the construction industry. To better grasp the current application considerations in the construction sector, it also offered literature on sustainable construction methods. To determine the most effective strategy to make certain adjustments to the current construction processes, the literature also includes a wide range of sustainability-related topics in both developed and developing country contexts. This study also demonstrated the many perspectives and strategies for sustainable behaviors. Because the purpose of this study was to develop a strategy for implementing sustainable construction in New Zealand, it was of the utmost importance to shed light on the most well-known and prominent sustainable construction applications from across the world. The output of this aim provided the literature on construction practices to acquire insight into the ongoing conversations on sustainable practices and systems in the construction industry. This was done to obtain insight into the existing talks.

This research's contribution to the body of knowledge is demonstrated by the fact that this study has led to a better understanding of sustainable construction practices in the construction industry as well as the identification of the most significant challenges that businesses, organizations, educators and policymakers must face to improve their ability to put these strategies into practice. This research has provided a solid foundation for future research that aims to advance knowledge in this field by providing options for future research to evaluate the influence that the approach has had on enhancing the implementation of sustainable construction. Additionally, this study presents options for future research to evaluate the influence the approach has had on improving the implementation of sustainable construction. The successful completion of the research aim in the more traditional forms of higher education in the built environment can contribute to a better representation of new trends in the practice area associated with expanding and improving the construction industry sustainably.

The increasing conviction rates of stalking in the UK have prompted efforts to identify factors that may influence individuals to engage in such behaviour. Over two million people in England and Wales experience stalking every year, with estimated reoffending rates for stalking being between 25 and 55% (ONS, 2022; McEwan et al., 2017). Research has identified risk factors that may contribute towards stalking behaviours, which has included obsessive relational pursuit and online impulsivity (Post et al., 2014a; Rocheleau, 2019). This has resulted in researchers postulating a link between facets of neurodiversity and stalking behaviour (Freckelton, 2013). The purpose of this study was to examine the evidence base for any link between neurodiversity and stalking.

The Systematic Review was performed according to the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Papers were screened for quality appraisal and risk of bias. The initial search yielded 3,880 articles. A total of 10 papers were deemed as meeting the inclusion criteria.

There is insufficient research quality regarding neurodiversity and stalking perpetration due to poor diagnostic reliability of neurodiversity and a lack of reliable tools being used in the research which do not meet the definitions of stalking. As such, the existing research about neurodiversity and stalking perpetration is inconclusive and predominantly unreliable. Tentative evidence indicated that people with neurodiversity were at greater risk of being victims of stalking and that for the minority of people with neurodiversity who engage in stalking the factors that contribute towards this mirror those of neurotypical individuals.

Overall, the factors contributing to stalking highlighted by the included studies, such as difficulties with communication, empathy, insight into social functioning, interpersonal competence and ways of forming relationships with others, seem to map onto the deficits of neurotypical stalking perpetrators (Canter and Youngs, 2012; Lewis et al., 2001; Mullen et al., 2006). However, tools that contextualise neurodiversity in the context of risk assessments for stalking may be helpful (Al-Attar, 2019, 2021).

Recommendations for further research are made to gain a robust understanding of any potential relationship between neurodiversity and stalking and in particular a risk of stalking victimisation.

This study aims to explore the gaps concerning the organizational operant resources (OORs) of logistics service providers (LSPs) expected in outsourcing relationships. The study considers the views of both manufacturing firms (M-firms) and LSPs in India and DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) seeking gaps within and across regions.

This research employed a survey targeting executives from large M-firms and LSPs in both India and DACH. The perceptions about the importance and improvement expectations of 17 OORs are analyzed. A modified version of importance-improvement analysis (A-B), a novel comparative A-B analysis (CABA) method, has been proposed to identify the importance and improvement gaps in OORs between M-firms and LSPs within and across India and the DACH region.

There are more gaps between M-firms and LSPs in India compared to DACH. Cross-country comparisons reveal that LSPs in India and DACH have similar perceptions concerning the OORs, but M-firms in India have significantly higher improvement expectations than those in DACH.

This study proposes an analytical approach that enables managers to identify improvement areas and better align with their outsourcing relationship partners. It also highlights aspects that need to be considered while entering emerging markets such as India.

The analysis approach using CABA is novel. Also, among the cross-country studies, this is the first to compare outsourcing relationships in India with the DACH region while involving both users' and service providers' perspectives.