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The purpose of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the factors that influence a shipper's decision to choose air cargo as a mode of shipment.

A disaggregate multinomial discrete choice model is developed using freight shipment survey data to identify critical factors influencing air cargo mode choice. Disaggregate revealed preference data is obtained from surveying 347 manufacturers, freight forwarders, and other third-party service providers.

The empirical model developed in this research shows that the rate of shipment, time of transit, cost-per-pound shipped, quantity shipped, perishability and delay rate of the mode are significant factors that influence mode choice.

The discrete choice model developed can be improved by taking into account logistics costs not considered in this research. Perhaps more in-depth surveys of the shippers and freight forwarders are needed. Additionally, improving the mode choice model by including stated preference data and subsequently incorporating service quality latent variables would be beneficial.

Identifying the sensitivity of the shippers to various factors influencing mode selection enables transportation planners make better demand forecast for each mode of transportation.

This paper extends previous mode choice studies by analyzing mode selection between air cargo and other modes. Better forecasting is achieved by replacing the logit model with probit, heteroscedastic extreme value and mixed logit models.

This purpose of this paper is to evaluate Millennials’ intention to use service mobile apps and assess gender as a moderator.

An extended technology acceptance model framework that includes information quality and self-efficacy guides this research. PLS-SEM is used to evaluate the data and test the hypotheses.

The study reveals that information quality, self-efficacy, perceived ease of use and usefulness, and attitude influence Millennials’ intentions to use service mobile apps. Additionally, gender is found to partially moderate the results.

Service companies that rely on mobile apps to deliver services ought to consider the disparities among the Millennial generation, increasing the likelihood that Millennial customers will adopt service mobile apps and that they receive acceptable customer experiences.

This paper examines the factors influencing adoption and use of service mobile apps among Millennials and examines gender as a moderator. Additionally, guidelines for service mobile app design are included.

This study aims to examine how the number of choices consumers have influences provider satisfaction, plan satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) in the health insurance industry.

Partial least squares (PLS) and structural equation modeling (SmartPLS) was used to conduct multi-group analysis to analyze the structural models. Data were collected online using Amazon mechanical turk, resulting in 425 respondents.

This study finds that the number of choices consumers have impacts the strength of provider and plan satisfaction and positive WOM. Also, this study finds that provider satisfaction is generally more impactful than plan satisfaction when generating positive WOM.

This study extends reactance theory, satisfaction and WOM based on choice options to the health insurance industry where credence attributes are prevalent and the analysis includes two satisfaction constructs in the structural model, whereas multiple satisfaction constructs are often overlooked.

As a consequence of the global financial and economic crisis, the European Commission recently reformed the audit market. One objective was to restore public trust in the auditing profession and thus to enhance the audit function. This study investigates whether perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality are influenced by audit firm rotation, auditor retention and joint audits, because regulators argue that these instruments can improve auditor independence and audit quality. Therefore, we conduct an experiment with bank directors and institutional investors in Germany. The results indicate a negative main effect for joint audits on perceived auditor independence, and that a rotation cycle of 24 years marginally significantly impairs participant perceptions of audit quality, compared to a rotation cycle of only ten years. Besides the main effects, planned contrast tests suggest a negative interaction between rotation and joint audit on participant perceptions of auditor independence. Moreover, a negative interaction effect is revealed between rotation after 24 years and retention on perceptions of audit quality. It is particularly noteworthy that we failed to identify a positive impact of the regulatory measures taken or supported by the European Commission on perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality.

American sociology has long been concerned with the social conditioning of American character, particularly with regard to caring for others. This interest can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1899[1838]) in which he reflected on how democratic participation in government and voluntary associations in the 1830s shaped the American character. Tocqueville believed that participation in social institutions, and especially voluntary societies, balanced the potentially excessive individualism he observed in the United States. David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd: A Study of Changing American Character (1950) picked up similar themes in an exploration of the isolation of the individual within modern society. These concerns reached a broad audience more recently in Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton's Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985) in which the authors argued that the scale had swung in favor of individualism at the expense of commitment to the social good. Robert Wuthnow (1991) addressed these issues again in Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, in which he explored how in volunteer work, Americans attempted to reconcile compassion with individualism. These studies, primarily focusing on white, middle‐class Americans, have laid the groundwork for an exploration of the social nature of the American character within the context of caring for others.

The focus of this chapter is to describe the methods and results of ASCEND, an innovative program that empowers undergraduate students to lead research projects. ASCEND, which stands for “A Student-Centered Entrepreneurship Development Training Model to Increase Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce,” is funded by the National Institutes of Health and is being implemented at Morgan State University, a historically black university in Baltimore, Maryland. The results are thus far very promising and show that placing undergraduate students in leading research positions and surrounding them with like-minded peers enhances their sense of science identity, leadership, peer support, and research capabilities. It is hoped that students who participate in ASCEND will pursue graduate training and become future successful biomedical researchers.

The logic of economic inquiry requires two distinct research programs. One program treats economic life in terms of invariant formal categories across time and place. The other program treats the continual generation of novelty and turbulence through time and human interaction. These programs are not commensurable: one cannot be reduced to the other. The former program must be conveyed by a theory of equilibrium; the latter program requires a process-based theory of emergent phenomena. Roy Weintraub articulated a neo-Walrasian research program in his General Equilibrium Analysis, and here I sketch a complementary neo-Mengerian program. In presenting this sketch, I also explain that needless analytical confusion and antagonism can result from a failure to recognize that economic analysis requires two distinct research programs. As a historical side-bar, Carl Menger probably recognized this situation, as evidenced by his correspondence with Léon Walras.

Self-efficacy is the bridge between theoretical knowledge of counselling and practical application of effective techniques (Akinlolu and Chukwudi, 2019). Furthermore, risk-assessment and management are fundamental components of counselling training and self-efficacy in these areas is central to ethical practice. Gamification represents an opportunity to increase motivation encouraging users to engage with serious content via an entertaining medium. This study aims to present two studies concerning an outline of the development process and an initial evaluation of “Perspective: Counselling Simulator”, a gamified training tool for developing and enhancing self-efficacy in risk-assessment skills in trainee counselling students in the UK.

This paper presents the development and initial user-evaluation of “Perspective”, as well as an initial evaluation of the game’s capacity to deliver risk-assessment education in a group of UK-based trainee counsellors to British Association for Counselling and Psychology (BACP) standards.

Firstly, mid-development assessment of a prototype-version of the game produced a good system usability score and positive user-feedback, while identifying areas for further improvement. Secondly, data relating to an initial evaluation of the efficacy of the game suggest that the game in its current form is significantly improved in terms of system usability and produces descriptive, albeit not statistically significant improvements to self-reported self-efficacy. Additional feedback was provided by users and further development and evaluation is planned.

This paper represents, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first of its kind in developing and evaluating a gamified tool with accessibility and scalability for teaching and consolidating risk-assessment skills of UK counselling students in-line with BACP standards.