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The purpose of this paper id to investigate the influence of nationality on residents’ perceptions of the impacts of tourism, and their support for tourism development, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Data were collected from self-administered questionnaires from 407 residents, representing 30 nationalities residing in Abu Dhabi.

The findings suggest differences in perceptions of the impacts of tourism between national and expatriate residents. Despite these differences, both groups reported support of tourism development.

This paper groups residents into only two groups – nationals and expatriates – which limits the explanation of findings. Tourism officials should customize strategies to reach targeted group of residents.

Extant literature examines residents’ perceptions of the impacts of tourism in homogenous groups, and little research explores the influence of nationality on residents’ perceptions. This study is the first to be conducted in Abu Dhabi – where more than 80 per cent of the population is comprised of expatriates – that identifies differences in perceptions between national and expatriate residents regarding tourism’s impacts.

Cost of living is an important consideration for the decision-making of expatriates and investment decisions of businesses. As competition between cities for talent and capital becomes global instead of national, the need for timely and internationally comparable information on global cities’ cost of living increases. While commercial research houses frequently publish cost of living surveys, these reports can be lacking in terms of scientific rigour. In this context, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by formulating a comprehensive and rigorous methodology to compare the cost of living for expatriates in 103 world’s major cities.

A cost of living index for expatriates composed of the ten consumption categories is constructed. The results from the study covers a study period from 2005 to 2014 in 103 cities. More than 280 individual prices of 165 goods and services have been compiled for each city in the calculation of the cost of living index for expatriates. New York has been chosen as the base city for the study, with other cities being benchmarked against it. A larger cost of living index for expatriates implies that the city is more expensive for expatriates to live in and vice versa.

While the authors generate the cost of living rankings for expatriates for 103 cities worldwide, in this paper, the authors focus on five key cities, namely, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Zurich, as they are global financial centres. In 2013, the latest year for which data are available, Zurich was the most expensive for expatriates among the five cities, followed by Singapore, Tokyo, London and Hong Kong. These results pertain to the cost of living for expatriates, and cities compare very differently in terms of cost of living for ordinary residents, as ordinary residents follow different consumption patterns from expatriates.

Cost of living in the destination city is a major consideration for professionals who look to relocate, and organisations factor such calculations in their decisions to post employees overseas and design commensurate compensation packages. This paper develops a comprehensive and rigorous methodology for measuring and comparing cost of living for expatriates around the world. The value-addition lies in the fact that the authors are able to differentiate between expatriates and ordinary residents, which has not been done in the existing literature. They use higher quality data and generate an index that is not sensitive to the choice of base city.

This study aims to develop an extended social attachment model for expatriates, integrating a multiple stakeholder perspective, to understand evacuation decisions during disasters.

Through interviews with 12 Tokyo-based expatriates who experienced the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, this study collects the lived experiences of a diverse set of expatriates. This data is analyzed abductively to map relevant evacuation factors and to propose a reaction typology.

While the 2011 Tohoku disasters caused regional destruction and fears of nuclear fallout, Tokyo remained largely unscathed. Still, many expatriates based in Tokyo chose to leave the country. Evacuation decisions were shaped by an interplay of threat assessment, location of attachment figures and cross-cultural adjustment. The study also discusses the influence of expatriate types.

Disaster planning is often overlooked or designed primarily with host country nationals in mind. Expatriates often lack the disaster experience and readiness of host country nationals in disaster-prone regions in Asia and beyond, and thus might need special attention when disaster strikes. This study provides advice for how to do so.

By unpacking the under-researched and complex phenomenon of expatriate reactions to disasters, this study contributes to the fields of international human resource and disaster management. Specifically, seven proposition on casual links leading to expatriate evacuation are suggested, paving the way for future research.

This study aims to understand how female globally mobile employees (GMEs), a group that is gaining a stronger presence in global work, exert their career agency within the context of structural constraints.

Using theoretical perspectives of career-agency theory and person-environment fit as frames of reference, this study collected 113 blog posts written by 19 female GMEs and conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 female GMEs who are currently living and working in Japan.

This study found that the informants exercised career agency as a response to challenges related to foreignness and gender. Through career-related agentic behaviors, the informants strove to increase their fit with their environments while interacting with different aspects of structural constraints. This study also found that people in different stages of global mobility exhibited different mindsets toward their foreignness, consequently influencing their career agency.

This study highlights the dynamic interaction between structural constraints and the agency of female GMEs, advancing the understanding of career agency in women’s global work. In addition, it recognizes the presence of expatriate residents as a distinct subgroup within the GME population, shedding light on the evolving ambiguous boundaries between self-initiated expatriates and other talent categories.

This paper aims to investigate residents’ perceptions of tourism’s impact on their support for tourism development in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires from Abu Dhabi residents (n = 407), who represented 30 nationalities residing in the emirate. Based on social exchange theory, structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

Results suggest that Abu Dhabi residents perceive the impacts of tourism positively and are more sensitive to the environmental and economic influences of tourism than the social and cultural influences.

This study was limited to Abu Dhabi residents; findings cannot be generalized to other emirates in the UAE, or other countries.

This study adds value to extant tourism literature by investigating residents’ perceptions of the influence of tourism in one of the richest cities worldwide, which aspires to be one of the fastest growing tourism destinations in the Middle East.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of collective angst, the concern about the future viability of one’s group, during service failure and recovery.

To test this objective the authors utilize an experiment to examine how Kuwaitis react to service failures when the front-line employee is a foreigner.

The results indicate that collective angst is associated with greater anger following a service failure. The authors also find that collective angst moderates the impact of cultural distance on anger and recommendation intentions following a service-failure recovery attempt. More specifically, cultural distance leads to greater anger and lower intentions to recommend a service establishment for consumers that experience greater collective angst.

The research provides the first attempt at examining how local consumers react to foreigner service providers, by examining how concern about the future vitality of one’s national group, in other words collective angst, affects such reactions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how residents in Qatar, the host country of the 2022 World Cup, interact, socialize and acculturate in order to create a more harmonic society, a critical factor for the event delivery and preparations.

Data were collected from Qatari nationals and expatriates residing in the country of Qatar using a survey. A stratified random sampling approach was applied using as sampling framework all households having a mailing address with the country’s electric company. In total, 2,398 Qataris were contacted and 1,020 completed the survey. From the expatriate population, 1,852 were contacted and 1,134 completed the survey.

The results showed Qatari nationals were favorable toward Arab and Asian expatriates but not as favorable as Arab and Asian expatriates were toward them. Both groups of residents showed high quality of life (QOL) perceptions, with the locals having slightly higher QOL. Finally, Asian expatriates were more open to socializing with the locals and Arab expatriates.

The results of the study shed light into the acculturation process in host societies of mega sport events such as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

This is the first study that examined a mega event’s host country resident’s cultural interactions to identify potential issues that can arise and interfere with the event experience of the 2022 World Cup in a very diverse society.

Although 76% of the population of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is Muslim, takāful (Islamic insurance) has a much smaller share of business in the UAE than conventional insurance does. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of brand equity (BE), which is known as the incremental value that provides reason to buy a brand. This study provides useful insights that can help the health takāful industry to gain a feasible market share in the UAE.

This is a quantitative study in which stratified random sampling was adopted for data collection from 300 respondents through a self-administered questionnaire from August to November 2018. Underpinning the study is the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique has been used to examine the impact of BE on purchase intentions (PI) through the moderating role of demographic factors such as age, income, education and religion. Three dimensions of BE, i.e. brand awareness (BAW), brand association (BAS) and perceived quality (PQ), are evaluated in terms of their significance as dimensions of BE.

The major findings of this study confirm that BE has a strong positive influence on the PIs of health takāful customers in the UAE and that all three dimensions of BE make significant contributions to the overall BE. The results show that education does moderate the relationship between BE and PI while age, income and religion do not. A new finding of this study is the nonsignificant moderating role of religion, whereby it was found that takāful products in the UAE are not limited to Muslim customers but can include potential customers who are followers of other religions.

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of BE on the PI of health takāful customers in the UAE. The findings of the study give academia, researchers and marketers a better understanding of the importance of BE and of its vital role in promoting takāful products in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as the UAE.

This paper used input‐output analysis to compare the initial and flow‐on economic effects of tourism spending by two different types of tourists from Australia to Sri Lanka. The two groups of tourists were Sri Lankan migrants resident in Australia and Australians born either in Australia or in a country other than Sri Lanka. The paper also covered the needs and perceptions of the target audiences. The two sample surveys undertaken revealed that different expenditure priorities are evident between the two groups. Non‐expatriate tourists were found to constitute only a small proportion of total tourist numbers. This group spent more on food and beverages with relatively higher flow‐on effects. Expatriate expenditures focused on the retail and wholesale sector and on local transport with relatively lower flow‐on effects. The mean expenditure incurred by migrants was more than twice that of the non‐migrants. The results indicate that small markets like Australia merit close scrutiny by the Ceylon Tourist Board and that travel by expatriates generally merits closer examination.

This study focusses on exploring the little-researched adjustment experiences of those expatriates who self-initiate (SIE) their employment in foreign countries. The Black et al. (1991) model of expatriate adjustment is the theoretical foundation used for this study.

An online survey was administered to expatriate academics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Quantitative data analysis was subsequently performed to include factor analysis, Pearson correlation, regression modeling, ANOVA, and Tukey HSD analysis.

Hypotheses regarding correlation of previous overseas work experience and culture novelty with adjustment for this SIE population were supported, whereas hypotheses regarding foreign language ability were not supported. In addition, exploratory analysis through the use of regression models and ANOVA determined an influence on SIE adjustment by factors such as age, gender, length of employment, and location.

The results indicate that further research into this area is warranted, particularly given the dearth of information currently available on the adjustment experiences of SIEs. In addition, this research is limited by its narrow focus on academics in the UAE; therefore it should be replicated in other locations with different types of SIEs to ensure generalizability.

This paper provides suggestions for practical HRM implications, particularly with regards to recruitment and selection stages for organizations that target SIEs as potential employees.

This paper provides suggestions for practical HRM implications, particularly with regards to recruitment and selection stages for organizations that target SIEs as potential employees.

This study provides new evidence regarding factors which influence SIE sociocultural adjustment and, through exploratory analysis, highlights factors which may need to be explored further in order to develop a more thorough understanding of SIE sociocultural adjustment.