• Title/Summary/Keyword: Environmental Perception

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Consumer Awareness and Evaluation of Retailers' Social Responsibility: An Exploratory Approach into Ethical Purchase Behavior from a U.S Perspective (소비자인지도화령수상사회책임(消费者认知度和零售商社会责任): 종미국시각출발적도덕구매행위적탐색성연구(从美国视角出发的道德购买行为的探索性研究))

  • Lee, Min-Young;Jackson, Vanessa P.
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.49-58
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    • 2010
  • Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

Perception of School Foodservice Officials on Rice Bread as School Foodservice Menu (쌀빵에 대한 인식 및 학교급식 적용 가능성 분석: 교육청 학교급식 담당자를 중심으로)

  • Yang, Il-Sun;Lee, Min-A;Cha, Sung-Mi;Jo, Yoon-Hee;Lee, So-Young;Lee, So-Jung;Lee, Hae-Young
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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    • v.37 no.6
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    • pp.729-737
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    • 2008
  • The purposes of this study were to investigate supporting status and subsidy for school food service and to analyze the perception of school food service officials at the educational board on using rice bread to the school food service menu. The questionnaire was developed by content analysis, situation analysis, in-depth interview and checked by the school food service officials at the educational board. The questionnaires were responded by 33 officials (respondent rate: 86.8%) during September 1 to October 26 in 2007. The major findings of this study were as follows: First, most of the respondents were women (93.9%), and worked an average of 104.36 months at school-related work. The metropolitan & provincial office of education had prevalently jurisdiction over 272.3 rural and self-operation type of elementary schools, 115.50 rural and self-operation type of middle schools and 73.0 rural and self-operation type of high schools. In the case of the district office of education, 23.3 urban and self-operation type of elementary schools, 11.6 urban and self-operation type of middle schools and 5.3 urban and contracted type of high schools were averagely managed. Second, all the respondents supported meal cost for low-income group and 50.5% provided reimbursement for organic environmental agricultural products. The highest subsidy was 16.8 billion won as meal cost for low-income group in metropolitan & provincial office and 1,050 million won as labor cost in district office. Third, the experience of performing policies for using rice was relatively lower than perception of rice bread application to school food service menu. Fourth, the advantages of using rice bread were acceleration of consuming rice (32.0%), excellence of nutrition (24.0%) and promotion of healthy image (22.7%). On the other hand, the difficulties of using rice bread were lack of facilities (72.7%), higher cost compared to wheat bread (54.5%), limitation of menu application and cooking method (15.7% each). Fifth, the opinion of utilizing rice and that of applying rice bread were significantly correlated (p<0.001). Desirability and willingness were correlated with reality for applying rice bread to the school food service menu (p<0.001). Also, comparative analysis between divided groups by perception of utilizing rice showed that willingness and experience were significantly different.

A Development of Risk-Taking Behavior Forecasting Model of Taxi driver's Risk-Taking Propensity by Structural Analysis (택시운수업 종사자 위험성향 관련 변인들의 구조적 분석을 통한 위험감행 예측 모형 개발)

  • Park, Mi So;Yoon, Hyo Jin
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.32 no.4D
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    • pp.313-322
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    • 2012
  • This study analyzes taxi driver's risk-taking propensity with respect to risk-taking behaviour and traffic locus of control. In order to explore the traffic risk-taking, we present a predictive model by structural analysis of driver's risk-taking propensity. By applying this model to survey data from taxi drivers, we can observe that driver's risk-taking propensity has a significant impact on the traffic violation intention, and the higher perception of law and the lower lack of law-abiding drivers have, the more they tend to violate. Second, we test using multivariate analysis if the level of risk-taking propensity differs by the locus of control( external or internal). Drivers of external control shows higher risk-taking level compared to those of internal control so that the risk-taking propensity shows difference according to the locus of control for the responsibility of traffic accidents. The structural equation model of our study yielded ${\chi}^2$ = 279.7, ${\chi}^2$/df = 1.55, RMSEA = 0.44, GFI = 0.911, TLI = 0.916, CFI = 0.929.

A Study on the Perception of Korean Intellectuals on Botanical Gardens during the Open Port Period (식물원에 대한 개항기 한국 지식인의 인식 고찰)

  • Kim, Jung-Hwa;Zoh, Kyung-Jin
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.96-107
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    • 2016
  • This study is an attempt to trace the origins of Korean botanical gardens prior to the construction of the botanical garden in Changgyeonggung Palace. We trace the time period during which Korean intellectuals first understood and appropriated botanical gardens based on accounts found in travel journals. These were written by members of delegations sent to Japan, Russia, and Great Britain and by students who had studied abroad, such as Tchi-Ho Yun and Kil-Chun Yu, during the open port period from 1876 to 1910. This study shows that the term "botanical garden" did not appear in any of the travel journals and the delegations did not show much interest in them until the 1880s. Japan had planned to introduce the different types of botanical gardens to the delegations from the Joseon Dynasty, but the delegations left no official records or related accounts regarding their visits. In contrast, members of delegations who were sent to Russia, Europe, and America after the 1890s began to pay attention to botanical gardens. They considered botanical gardens as a representative and essential part of Western culture and attempted to introduce them in Korea as essential tools for academic development as well as for enlightenment. Although many Korean intellectuals' opinions about the necessity of a botanical garden did not actually lead to its construction during the open port period, such a movement was significant in that it strengthened the botanical garden's image as a symbol of civilization. Apart from tracing the origins of the botanical gardens in Korea, this study serves as fundamental research material for understanding the establishment of the Changgyeongwon Botanical Garden in 1909.

The Mediating Effect of Self-Efficicy in the Relationship between Hospital Employee's Job Placement and Individual Performance (병원 재직자들의 직무배치와 개인성과간의 관계에서 자기효능감의 매개효과 검증)

  • Lee, Chul-Woo
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.113-121
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    • 2014
  • To improve management performance, medical institutions have great attentions to selecting the good employee. Through job placement, recruited employee performing a given task, previous studies have lack of research, how job environment affects the individual perception of job ability and individual performance. Therefore, targeting at the health care professional employees who work in the hospital, 134 questionnaire data collected, this study performed an empirical study on the relationship between person-job fit, self-efficacy and individual performance. Specifically, mediating effect of self-efficacy between person-job fit and individual performance was verified. The results indicate that first, person-job fit appeared to affect significantly to the sub-factor of self-efficacy (self-adjustment, confidence, goal-difficulty). Second, among the self-efficacy sub-factor, self-adjustment, confidence appeared to influence to the individual performance. Third, self-adjustment was fully mediated between person-job fit and individual performance and confidence was partially mediated between person-job fit and individual performance. These findings have the theoretical implications that self-efficacy studies are expanded to environmental factors and practical implications and study's limitations are discussed in terms of hospital organization's human resource management.

Comparison of Meteorological Drought Indices Using Past Drought Cases of Taebaek and Sokcho (태백, 속초 과거 가뭄사례를 이용한 기상학적 가뭄지수의 비교 고찰)

  • Kang, Dong Ho;Nam, Dong Ho;Kim, Byung Sik
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.39 no.6
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    • pp.735-742
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    • 2019
  • Drought is a social phenomenon in which the degree of perception varies depending on the affected factors, and is defined as various relative concepts such as meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, and climatological drought. In this study, a comparative analysis of meteorological drought among variously defined droughts was conducted and the applicability of the drought index was examined by comparing the actual drought cases and the results of meteorological drought index analysis. In order to compare the drought index, we used standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), China-Z Index (CZI), Modified CZI (MCZI) and Z-Score Index Respectively. Four drought indices were used for the Taebaek and Sokcho areas. The drought index was analyzed using the meteorological data from 1986 to 2015 for a duration of 3 months. As a result of the analysis, the SPI drought index was analyzed to be highly reproducible for the case of drought with past limited water series. In the case of CZI and MCZI drought indices, the number of extreme dry occurrences is similar to that of the past cases, but the reproducibility is low for the actual drought years. In the case of ZSI drought index, it is analyzed that the number of occurrences and the comparison with the past cases are inferior in reproducibility. For the meteorological drought index using precipitation, it would be effective to use the SPI drought index with the highest reproducibility and the past drought case.

The Effects of Environmental Change of Employment on Job Insecurity and Career Commitment Perception among Cooks in Deluxe Hotels (특급 호텔의 고용환경 변화 요인이 조리사의 직무 불안정성과 경력 몰입 인식에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구)

  • Gwak, Da-Young;Park, Jeong-Hwan;Yoon, Hye-Hyun
    • Culinary science and hospitality research
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.117-131
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    • 2011
  • The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the changed employment environment in full-time cooks at deluxe hotels on job insecurity and career commitment. Based on total 389 hotel cooks obtained from an empirical research, this study reviewed the reliability and fitness of a research model and verified total 2 hypotheses with the Amos program. The hypothesized relationships of the model were tested using a structural equation model(SEM). The SEM results show that layoff(${\beta}$=0.326), an organization structure(${\beta}$=0.237), irregular workers(${\beta}$=0.200) among changed employment environment have a significantly positive effect on job insecurity. Also, job insecurity has a significantly positive effect on career commitment. Accordingly, the changed employment environment in workers at deluxe hotels causes job insecurity, making them try harder to stay in an organization. Therefore, motivation is needed for employees' career commitment because the better job insecurity is managed, the more career commitment they have.

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A Hybrid Tendency of Contemporary Landscape Design (현대조경설계의 하이브리드적 경향)

  • Jang Il-Young;Kim Jin-Seon
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.34 no.2 s.115
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    • pp.80-98
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    • 2006
  • This study originated from following questions. What can we understand the conception of deconstruction, which has been the core idea of new discourses developed in various ways since modernism? How can this question be interpreted in landscape design? What is the conceptional frame of integration the prominent hybrid post-genre movements and phenomena? The frame can be epitomized with the deconstruction phenomenon. 'Deconstruction' is the core conception appeared in late or post-modern ages in the embodiment of modernity and can be viewed as an integrating or a hybrid phenomenon between areas or genres in formative arts. Therefore, the author regards the hybrid movements widely witnessed in the post contemporary formative arts as one of the most important indicators of de-constructive signs. It is safe to say that the phenomenon of this integration or hybridism, of course, does not threaten the identity of landscape design but serves as an opportunity to extend the areas of landscape design. One of the consequences of this integration or hybridism is the voluntary participation of users who have been alienated in the production of the meanings of design works and hybrid landscape design with the hybridization of genres that is characterized with transformation in forms. This view is based on the distinction between hybridization of interactions between the designer (the subject) and the user (the object), and hybridization of synesthesia. Generally speaking, this is an act of destroying boundaries of the daily life and arts. At the same time, it corresponds to vanishing of modern aesthetics and emerging of post-contemporary aesthetics which is a new aesthetic category like sublimeness. This types of landscape design tries to restore humans' sensibility and perceptions restrained by rationality and recognition in previous approach and to express non-materialistic characteristics with precaution against excessive materialism in the modern era. In light of these backgrounds, the study aims to suggest the hybrid concept and to explorer a new landscape design approach with this concept, in order to change the design structure from 'completed' or 'closed' toward 'opened' and to understand the characteristics of interactions between users and designs. This new approach is expected to create an open-space integrating complexity and dynamics of users. At the same time, it emphasizes senses of user' body with synesthesia and non-determination. The focus is placed on user participation and sublimity rather than on aesthetic beauty, which kind of experience is called simulacre. By attaching importance to user participation, the work got free from the material characteristics, and acceptance from the old practice of simple perception and contemplation. The boundaries between the subject and object and the beautiful and ordinary, from the perspective of this approach, are vanished. Now everything ordinary can become an artistic work. Western dichotomy and discrimination is not effective any more. And there is 'de-construction' where there is perfect equality between ordinary daily life and beautiful arts. Thus today's landscape design pays attention to the user and uses newly perceived sensitivity by pursing obscure and unfamiliar things rather than aesthetic beauty. Space is accordingly defined to take place accidentally as happening and event, not as volume of shape. It's the true way to express spatiality of landscape design. That's an attempt to reject conventional concepts about forms and space, which served as the basis for landscape design, and to search for new things.

Development of Dynamic Passenger-Trip Assignment Model of Urban Railway Using Seoul-Incheon-Gyeonggi's Transportation Card (대중교통카드기반 수도권 도시철도 통행수요배정모형)

  • Sohn, Jhieon
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.105-114
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    • 2016
  • With approximately 20 million transportation card data entries of the metropolitan districts being generated per day, application of the data to management and policy interventions is becoming an issue of interest. The research herein attempts a model of the possibility of dynamic demand change predictions and its purpose is thereby to construct a Dynamic Passengers Trip Assignment Model. The model and algorithm created are targeted at city rail lines operated by seven different transport facilities with the exclusion of travel by bus, as passenger movements by this mode can be minutely disaggregated through card tagging. The model created has been constructed in continuous time as is fitting to the big data characteristic of transport card data, while passenger path choice behavior is effectively represented using a perception parameter as a function of increasing number of transfers. Running the model on 800 pairs of metropolitan city rail data has proven its capability in determining dynamic demand at any moment in time, in line with the typical advantages expected of a continuous time-based model. Comparison against data measured by the eye of existing rail operating facilities to assess changes in congestion intensity shows that the model closely approximates the values and trends of the existing data with high levels of confidence. Future research efforts should be directed toward continued examination into construction of an integrated bus-city rail system model.

Anxiety, Depression and Pressure Pain Threshold in Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (외상후 스트레스장애 환자의 불안 및 우울 증상과 압통역치 간의 비교 연구)

  • Kim, Eun-Young;Na, Chul;Nam, Bum-Woo;Cho, Ju-Youn
    • Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.51-60
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    • 1999
  • This study was designed to evaluate anxiety & depression symptoms and pressure pain threshold in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder(n=23) and to find out the relationship between the affective symptoms and the pressure pain threshold scores. And this was compared with healthy control subjects(n=18). The scores of pressure pain threshold were checked with algometer. The results were as follows : PTSD patients showed higher scores of anxiety & depression symptoms than that of the control group. In contrast with our hypothesis, pressure pain threshold in PTSD patients presented statistically significant higher scores than that of the control group. These results may be derived from following factors. First, chronic depression has influenced the pain perception of patients with PTSD rather than anxiety symptoms, second, abnormal state of the opiate system in PTSD patients, third, the sick role of the PTSD patients, fourth, the socio-environmental factor of the PTSD patients. In conclusion, affective symptoms, especially depression, were related to the chronic pain in patients with PTSD, however, the causality of elevated pressure pain threshold was uncertain in this study. To understand more clearly the relation between affective symptoms and chronic pain, it will be necessary to control the other specific factors.

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