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A high-end ethnic restaurant is a tourism experience that can increase the attractiveness and brand recognition of a tourism destination. The restaurant environment is a key element that affects consumer visits. The purpose of this paper is to adopt Schmitt’s experience module to analyse tourist preferences and experiences with respect to floral styles in ethnic fine dining restaurants. The results of this study are intended to serve as a reference for operators of fine dining establishments in designing flower arrangements.

This study adopts a quantitative research method. A sample was developed using tablet computers to simulate flower arrangements in restaurants. The research tools included a floral style preference scale and a tourist floral experience scale.

Based on the results, the test subjects preferred European floral design styles in restaurants. Restaurant environments with floral arrangements were best at relaxing the test subjects. A restaurant’s floral style was positively correlated with various aspects of the tourist experience. Gender, age, Chinese flower styles, Japanese flower styles, European flower styles and other variables enabled forecasting the degree of the tourist experience.

When a consumer exhibits higher preference for a restaurant’s floral style, the level of the tourist experience increases. This study investigates the aesthetic experience of restaurants and restaurant atmosphere as a marketing tool. Sensory stimulation within the restaurant atmosphere can be based on the five senses such that tourists may, through the design of the restaurant environment, have specific emotional reactions that improve their tourist experience and reinforce the restaurant’s brand image.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between executive pay disparity and the cost of debt.

The authors use a sample of syndicated bank loans granted to United States (US) listed firms from 1992 to 2014 and adopt the loan yield spread (Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay slice) as the main proxy for the cost of debt (executive pay disparity). The authors also use the Heckman two-stage model to address the sample selection bias and the two-stage least squares and propensity score matching methods to control the potential endogeneity issues. To test different views about executive pay disparity, the authors adopt the cash-to-stock ratio to proxy for managerial risk-shifting incentives.

The authors find that the cost of debt is significantly higher for firms with larger executive pay disparity, which is robust to sample selection bias, endogeneity concerns, alternative measures and various controls. This positive relationship increases with the risk-shifting incentives of CEOs instead of other top executives, which supports the managerial power view, and is stronger for firms with higher levels of financial distress. The findings suggest that creditors view executive pay disparity are associated with higher credit risk and CEO entrenchment.

This paper reveals one “dark” side of executive pay disparity: it increases the cost of debt and identifies a significant role played by CEOs' risk-shifting incentives. The authors provide direct evidence of the relevance of pay differential to corporate credit analysis.

Diversity and uncertainty summarise Taiwan’s Generation Z. Diversity because the background of fewer than 3.4 million Taiwanese, which is less than 20% of the overall population, cannot be included in a ‘one-fits-all’ category. As a sovereign nation, Taiwan has developed through various cultural, economic, and political stages. Democratic freedom has given the Taiwanese the right and terrain to de-Sinicise their homeland and politically construct ‘Taiwanese Consciousness’. These points are essential, because this is the societal fabric given to Generation Zers. Apart from national identity, this chapter illustrates the uncertainties that Generation Zers are facing in relation to education, job opportunities, and living standards. It is suggested that conditions are easier for those that have received ‘superior’ education and have enjoyed family-economic support. Their consumer behaviour, Generation Z in the workplace, as well as voters are also carefully analysed in this chapter.

This paper aims to investigate outsourcing of different types of logistics activities in Taiwanese food industry, and benchmark with practices in The Netherlands.

The outsourcing of four levels of logistics activities is investigated: transportation (level 1), packaging (level 2), transportation management (level 3), and distribution network management (level 4). A structured questionnaire was designed and sent to logistics managers in The Netherlands and Taiwan to evaluate the most commonly outsourced activities and identify specific outsourcing firm's characteristics.

About 69 per cent of the companies, in both countries outsource level 1 activities, 16 per cent level 2, and 37 per cent level 3 activities. Only few companies (about 10 per cent) outsource the highest level of activities. In particular, The Netherlands has higher percentages for levels 1 and 3. This might be caused by the fact that most Taiwanese companies emphasise low cost whereas the Dutch companies focus on flexibility in order to deal with higher complexities. When intentions for the future are included, Taiwan is planning to outsource level 2 (40 per cent) and level 4 activities (36 per cent) much more than The Netherlands (respectively 13 and 17 per cent). When zooming in, it was found that outsourcing strategies of companies in the subsectors differ. For instance, the dairy sector outsources more frequently than the meat sector on the first three levels. This might be caused by the fact that meat companies emphasise food quality, whereas dairy companies emphasise flexibility and reliability.

This study investigated only food processors. The paper suggests further research should include other types of food organisations.

The paper provides valuable insights in outsourcing strategies of food processing companies in Taiwan and The Netherlands for advanced logistics service providers who are looking at the market potential of Taiwan.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the price interrelationship between the Taiwanese and US financial markets.

The trivariate GJR‐GARCH (1,1) model and event study were employed to investigate volatility asymmetry and overreaction phenomenon, respectively.

The empirical results show that return volatility reveals the asymmetric phenomenon, and the holding period returns on US index futures from the opening of the US index futures electronic trading to the opening of the Taiwanese stock market are an important reference for investors in the Taiwanese stock market. Additionally, the paper presents an overreaction of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index to a drastic price rise of E‐min NASDAQ 100 Index futures at the opening of the Taiwanese stock market.

This paper deletes the observations arising from the different national holidays of the USA and Taiwan, to have the same number of observations in both markets, which might contaminate the empirical results.

Investors in the Taiwanese stock market tend to pay more attention to the fluctuations in the share prices of high‐technological companies in the USA.

Most of the previous studies regarding price transmission between the Taiwanese and US stock markets focused mainly on the Taiwanese market reactions to the overnight returns of the US market. This paper enlarges the current field by examining the lead‐lag relationship, the volatility asymmetry, and the overreaction phenomenon between the Taiwanese and US financial markets according to the most updated US stock index information.

This paper proposes that ethnic identity and identification in the modern nation-state is a process of dialogical interaction between self-perceived notions of identity and sociopolitical contexts, often defined by the state. Each example of ethnic identification has at least two levels of discourse, articulated internally and externally. As suggested by Bakhtin, whose study of Dostoevsky posed fundamental questions of self and society, identity and ideology: The endlessness of the external dialogue emerges here with the same mathematical clarity as does the endlessness of internal dialogue. … In Dostoevsky’s dialogues, collision and quarrelling occurs not between two integral monologic voices, but between two divided voices quarreling (one of those voices, at least, is divided). The open rejoinders of the one answer the hidden rejoinders of the other (Bakhtin, 1981 [1963], pp. 253, 254).