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This paper examines the possibility of using sense of belonging as an indicator for social capital. Social capital, from the collective social capital theory perspective, is constructed from three main elements: trust, social network and participation. Social capital is crucial to civil society and well-being, but there is no consensus on how to define and measure it. This paper approaches this problem with the different but related concept of sense of belonging, as belonging overlaps with social capital conceptually, but also is more amenable to measurement.

Qualitative and quantitative data was collected from approximately 800 university students and used to explore the relationship between belonging and social capital both conceptually and empirically in the higher education context.

The mixed methods research analysis in this paper provides strong evidence to show how sense of belonging and social capital are theoretically and empirically intertwined, Conceptually they occupy overlapping spheres and their connections can be clearly traced and measured. This is supported by substantial statistical evidence of their relatedness, despite their independent origins in social research. For these reasons, this paper argues that sense of belonging can be used as a simplified alternative way to measure social capital.

This paper explains the advantages of using sense of belonging to understand social capital. It sets out a conceptual framework and provides a statistical demonstration. This paper develops and enriches a current strand of social capital and sense of belonging research in the fields of sociology and higher education policy.

This paper aims to empirically explore the extent to which actual use intensity of mobile internet (MI) access is influenced by factual use conditions and evaluative perceptions of MI adopters. Furthermore, it analyzes relationships between this usage behavior and mobile voice call as well as SMS activity quantities at the individual customer level.

Indicators of actual MI, voice call and SMS use intensity were obtained for a sample of 443 MI customers of a mobile network operator (MNO) in Germany. The objective behavioral measures were integrated with adopter responses collected through a standardized telephone survey.

Factual MI use conditions (MI tariff type and appliance class, fixed broadband internet home access) were significant predictors of MI use intensity, whereas MI‐related evaluative perceptions (e.g. MI value assessment) were not. Distributions of MI, voice telephony, and SMS use intensities were highly skewed. A small group of users disproportionately contributed to the total MI traffic generated by the sample. Most customers use MI only to a limited extent after the initial adoption. MI use intensity was not significantly correlated with mobile voice communication or SMS activity levels.

The study included data only from early MI subscribers of one MNO in a single country. The system‐captured MI use intensity indicator did not distinguish between different variants of MI services. Measures of factual MI use circumstances were not very fine‐grained. Common potential perceptual antecedents of MI acceptance (e.g. usefulness, ease of use) were excluded due to constraints imposed by the collaborating MNO.

The research indicates that MNO should consider promoting MI use intensity by offering “packages” that encompass a flat rate and a laptop at special bundle prices. Further, MNO are well‐advised to develop activities which discourage customers who do not already have a fixed broadband access at home from the acquisition of such an installation in the future. Finally, managers are urged to critically reflect the validity of single rater studies on MI acceptance before drawing practical conclusions from this type of work.

The contributions of this paper result from the exploration of actual usage behaviors of MI adopters and the integration of system‐captured use intensity measures with survey responses. This approach is seminal in better understanding limitations of purely questionnaire‐based investigations on use of mobile communication services in general and MI in particular. Additionally, the study demonstrates the importance of considering factual MI use circumstances as factors shaping MI use intensity.

Many of today’s information and technology systems and environments facilitate inquiry, learning, consciousness-raising and knowledge-building. Such platforms include e-learning systems which have learning, education and/or training as explicit goals or objectives. They also include search engines, social media platforms, video-sharing platforms, and knowledge sharing environments deployed for work, leisure, inquiry, and personal and professional productivity. The new journal, Information and Learning Sciences, aims to advance our understanding of human inquiry, learning and knowledge-building across such information, e-learning, and socio-technical system contexts.

This article introduces the journal at its launch under new editorship in January, 2019. The article, authored by the journal co-editors and all associate editors, explores the lineage of scholarly undertakings that have contributed to the journal's new scope and mission, which includes past and ongoing scholarship in the following arenas: Digital Youth, Constructionism, Mutually Constitutive Ties in Information and Learning Sciences, and Searching-as-Learning.

The article offers examples of ways in which the two fields stand to enrich each other towards a greater holistic advancement of scholarship. The article also summarizes the inaugural special issue contents from the following contributors: Caroline Haythornthwaite; Krista Glazewski and Cindy Hmelo-Silver; Stephanie Teasley; Gary Marchionini; Caroline R. Pitt; Adam Bell, Rose Strickman and Katie Davis; Denise Agosto; Nicole Cooke; and Victor Lee.

The article, this special issue, and the journal in full, are among the first formal and ongoing publication outlets to deliberately draw together and facilitate cross-disciplinary scholarship at this integral nexus. We enthusiastically and warmly invite continued engagement along these lines in the journal’s pages, and also welcome related, and wholly contrary points of view, and points of departure that may build upon or debate some of the themes we raise in the introduction and special issue contents.

The purpose of this paper is to find ways to develop more efficient mass transit systems across the USA and, thus, make the best use of state/federal/municipal government funds and taxpayers’ monies. This paper conducts benchmarking studies. In doing so, this paper identifies the best-in class mass transit practices that every regional mass transit system can emulate.

The continuous underutilization of a mass transit system can increase public scrutiny concerning the increased investment in mass transit services. To defuse such scrutiny, this paper analyzes the past (in year 2011) performances of 515 mass transit agencies in the USA using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Also, to identify which factors influences those performances, the authors paired DEA scores for transit efficiency at the state level against a set of independent variables using a special form of regression analysis called Tobit regression.

The authors found that the greater population density of the service area, the greater number of riders can be served in a short amount of distance and time. Also, the authors discovered that the transportation mode of mass transit services could affect mass transit efficiency. On the other hand, the authors found no evidence indicating that the public ownership or private operation of transit systems could make any differences in the transit efficiency.

This paper is one of the few that assessed the performance of mass transit systems in comparison to their peers using a large-scale data and identify the leading causes of mass transit inefficiency. Thus, this paper helps transit authorities in handling juggling acts of protecting the conflicting interests of government policy makers against the general public and, then, make sensible future investment decisions.

This paper gives a review of the finite element techniques (FE) applied in the area of material processing. The latest trends in metal forming, non‐metal forming, powder metallurgy and composite material processing are briefly discussed. The range of applications of finite elements on these subjects is extremely wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore the aim of the paper is to give FE researchers/users only an encyclopaedic view of the different possibilities that exist today in the various fields mentioned above. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on finite element applications in material processing for 1994‐1996, where 1,370 references are listed. This bibliography is an updating of the paper written by Brannberg and Mackerle which has been published in Engineering Computations, Vol. 11 No. 5, 1994, pp. 413‐55.

Universities are expected to operate with high efficiency, with ever-growing expectations from a rising number of stakeholders in society. From a theoretical perspective economic science does provide frameworks and methods in order to tackle this, with the cornerstone of defining efficiency as a simple relation of a quantity of inputs toward a quantity of outputs. For the practice of university management and policy this does not answer the crucial questions of which inputs and which outputs to measure, and how to ensure the quality aspect of such management approaches. Higher education research can contribute to answering these questions. This chapter outlines a sector-specific framework for efficiency analysis and management, including suggestions regarding how to implement efficiency-improving measures in university settings.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

This paper aims to investigate the introduction of Nescafé, a brand of the Swiss multinational company Nestlé, into the Turkish market and examines the formative period (1952-1987) before it succeeded to become the most popular and leading coffee brand in Turkey. By that it aims to draw attention to Turkey as an interesting case in point for the study of the history of marketing practices in a non-Western context.

This study deploys a variety of largely unexplored material ranging from archival sources to newspaper reports and advertisements. In the first part, archival sources provided by the Nestlé archives (AHN) will be analyzed to present the company’s marketing strategy. As the amount on advertisements between 1952 and 1984 remained modest, the second part is devoted to the analysis of Turkish media reports to discuss Nescafé’s public perception.

The paper demonstrates that during the period under consideration the instable political and economic environment was pivotal for Nescafé’s marketing. Nestlé in the early years used similar strategies as in the West advertising Nescafé as a premium product for the upper middle-class. Due to import restrictions, it was a scarce and high-priced product. Nescafé succeeded to become a highly esteemed and sought-after product because it stood for Western modernity and prosperity. The study argues that it was not primarily Nestlé’s marketing that resulted in Nescafé’s considerable brand recognition but its public “visibility” through media reporting.

This study is a preliminary attempt to investigate the history of instant coffee and its marketing in a non-Western market. The paper is mainly focused on Nescafé because it was and still is the most important brand in Turkey. Further, this paper brings into spotlight a country with distinct sociopolitical and cultural particularities which distinguish it from Western countries and allow to scrutinize how marketing practice and thought may develop in a non-Western setting. Further research is needed as Turkey's specific marketing environment is far from being thoroughly investigated.

By focusing on Turkey, this paper provides an insight into the specific ways Nescafé was marketed, consumed and perceived in a non-Western market. By that it allows to consider how multinational companies responded and adapted to a culturally, politically and economically challenging environment.

This study analyzed the factors affecting visual attention toward sugar-reduction information (SRI) on sugar-reduced beverages (SRBs) and identified the most optimal SRI type and location using eye-tracking. The eye-tracking results were compared with those of a self-reported questionnaire.

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted on 50 Korean people in their 20s and 30s to analyze implicit responses. Subsequently, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to analyze explicit responses, facilitating the investigation of perceptions, attitudes, preferences, intentions to purchase SRBs, and preferred SRI types and positions.

The results were as follows. First, personal trait-, state-, and product-related factors were found to affect eye movement in relation to SRI. Second, eye-tracking revealed that SRI types and locations that drew long-lasting fixation and attracted considerable attention were similar to those preferred in the self-reported questionnaire. Therefore, to efficiently convey information on SRBs, SRI should be combined with a graphic, and not merely a word, and placed in the upper-right corner, exhibiting consistency with the results of two previous experiments.

This study specifically focused on considering personal and product-related traits while conducting an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the factors that attract consumers' attention. Furthermore, this study is the first to investigate the use of SRI labels to promote SRB selection. What is significant is that both explicit and implicit responses were assessed and compared via a self-reported survey and eye-tracking experiments for various SRB categories.