• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.133-148
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• 1989

This study attempts of analyze empirically the living status of the elderly in Korea by finding out the problems of it in the family and by clarifying the influences of the family environmental variables and the values on the adjustment of the aged. To carryout the aim of this study, the causes and the patterns of the problems for the aged had been found out through the review of literature. Based on them the questionnaire was prepared including the questions of the values, family environmental vriables as well as the degree of satisfaction of thier liver and the extent of life interchange. The former variables were taken as independent and the latter were taken as dependent variables, so that the relationship between the two variables could be exemplified. The 400 aged over 60 living in Seoul and the other cities were selected through the purposive sampling and interviewed. The answers of the 376 respondents, 94% of the sample, were analyzed for this study. The following results have been found out through the various statistical analysis such as frequency distribution, chi-square test, pearson's correlation, analysis of variance and cluster analysis. At first, the results from the examination of the frequency distribution regarding the living status of the aged are; I) sixteen percent of the respondents living with their married offspring were receiving economical support, though they pointed out the problems of the extended family are the inconveniences with their children (60%) and simpleness (20%) of their livers. It seems that the aged in Korea are poor and have negative opinion on the relationship with their offspring even if they live in the same house. Secondly, it has been found out that the family environmental variables, especially such as sex, occupation, residence, education, level, living ability and the family type, play and important role not only on the degree of satisfaction of their liver but also on the extent of interchange of their lives. However, the variables such as religion and whether the spouse is alive or not do not play and important role. Thirdly, the reported main reasons of their delightness were healthy life (1.87%), the well-being of their offspring (2.08%), the spouse's long life (3.38%), religious activity (5.05%), the hobby activity (4.31%) and the participation in the social activity (5.05%). While, they mainly concern about the illness (1.98%), offspring (2.00%), econmic difficulties (3.39%), inharmonious home (3.81%) and the despicable treatment (3.81%). The respondents wer classified into two groups, they are dependent and independent, using cluster analysis. Health, social activity, offspiring, religion, couple's long life among the factors which lead them to be delighted were turned out to be statistically signhificant at 0.01 significance level between the two groups. As far as their worrisome matters are concerned, health and economic difficulties were significantly different between the two groups. Fourthly, regarding the life interchange, it has been proved that there is a statistically significant differences betwwen the two groups in the economic and the emotional satisfaction, help for ordinary life, status in the family, subjective and objective relationship with offspring, but not in economic dependency and the activity status. Fifthly, it has been noted that there is a high correlation between the degree of life's satisfaction and the extent of life interchange. On the basis of the results mentioned above, it could be concluded taht; i) The majority of the aged in Korea are not economically active, and thus they live with their married offspring even of they have a negative opinion on the subjective relationship with them. This can be pointed out as the main problem of the aged and thus it needs to be studied further. ii) the environmental variables such as age, sex education level, family type and occuption (which can not be changed by their effrot) turned out to give an important effect on the extent of the life interchange among the aged. iii) The respondents who are identified as independent group have a higher degree of life satisfaction and family status than the group identified as defendent. Thus, it can be inferred that it is possible for them to adjust their life by making an effort to modify themselves. iv) The high correlation between the extent of life interchange and the degree of life satisfaction indicates that the elderly themselves can adjust in order to obtain the higher degree of life satisfaction. Therefore, the following suggestions are derived from this study. First of all, the aged should try to be psychologically independent. Second, they need to control themselves in order to achieve self-assurance. Third, the community have to prepare a program of self-development for the aged. Fourth, the social welfare policy that can solve the problem of illness and poverty of the elderly should be introduced, so that their minimum requirements can be satisfied.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.739-746
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• 2010

The purposes of this study are 1) to develop an advanced chamber system within ${\pm}10%$ of air velocity at the particulate matter (PM) collection area, 2) to research theoretical characteristics of PM10 and PM2.5 samplers, 3) to assess the performance characteristics of PM10 and PM2.5 samplers through chamber experiments. The total six one-hour experiments were conducted using the cornstarch with an mass median aerodynamic diameter (MMAD) of $20\;{\mu}m$ and an geometric standard deviation of 2.0 at the two different air velocity conditions of 0.67 m/s and 2.15 m/s in the chamber. The aerosol samplers used in the present study are one APM PM10 and one PM2.5 samplers accordance with the US federal reference methods and specially designed three mini-volume aerosol samplers (two for PM10 and one for PM2.5). The overall results indicate that PM10 and PM2.5 mini-volume samplers need correction factors of 0.25 and 0.39 respectively when APM PM samplers considered as reference samplers and there is significant difference between two mini-volume aerosol samplers when a two-way analysis of variance is tested using the measured PM10 mass concentrations. The PM10 and PM2.5 samplers with the cutpoints and slopes (PM10: $10{\pm}0.5\;{\mu}m$ and $1.5{\pm}0.1$, PM2.5: $2.5{\pm}0.2\;{\mu}m$ and $1.3{\pm}0.03$) theoretically collect the ranges of 86~114% and 64~152% considering the cornstarch characteristics used in this research. Furthermore, the calculated mass concentrations of PM samplers are higher than the ideal mass concentrations when the airborne MMADs for the cornstarch used are smaller than the cutpoints of PM samplers and the PM samplers collected less PM in another case. The chamber experiment also showed that PM10 and PM2.5 samplers had the bigger collection ranges of 37~158% and 55~149% than the theocratical calculated mass concentration ranges and the relatively similar mass concentration ranges were measured at the air velocity of 2.15 m/s comparing with the 0.67 m/s.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1-13
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• 2009

Alkalinity and total carbon contents were measured by acid neutralizing titration (ANT), back titration (BT), gravitational weighing (GW), non-dispersive infrared-total carbon (NDIR-TC) methods for assessing precision and accuracy of alkalinity and total carbon concentration in $CO_2$-rich water. Artificial $CO_2$-rich water(ACW: pH 6.3, alkalinity 68.8 meq/L, $HCO_3^-$ 2,235 mg/L) was used for comparing the measurements. When alkalinity measured in 0 hr, percent errors of all measurement were 0~12% and coefficient of variation were less than 4%. As the result of post-hoc analysis after repeated measure analysis of variance (RM-AMOVA), the differences between the pair of methods were not significant (within confidence level of 95%), which indicates that the alkalinity measured by any method could be accurate and precise when it measured just in time of sampling. In addition, alkalinity measured by ANT and NDIR-TC were not change after 24 and 48 hours open to atmosphere, which can be explained by conservative nature of alkalinity although $CO_2$ degas from ACW. On the other hand, alkalinity measured by BT and GW increased after 24 and 48 hours open to atmosphere, which was caused by relatively high concentration of measured total carbon and increasing pH. The comparison between geochemical modeling of $CO_2$ degassing and observed data showed that pH of observed ACW was higher than calculated pH. This can be happen when degassed $CO_2$ does not come out from the solution and/or exist in solution as $CO_{2(g)}$ bubble. In that case, $CO_{2(g)}$ bubble doesn't affect the pH and alkalinity. Thus alkalinity measured by ANT and NDIR-TC could not detect the $CO_2$ bubble although measured alkalinity was similar to the calculated alkalinity. Moreover, total carbon measured by ANT and NDIR-TC could be underestimated. Consequently, it is necessary to compare the alkalinity and total carbon data from various kind of methods and interpret very carefully. This study provide technical information of measurement of dissolve $CO_2$ from $CO_2$-rich water which could be natural analogue of geologic sequestration of $CO_2$.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.257-264
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• 1989

In order to study spatial variability of soil chemical properties across the land-partitioned boundary on Hwadong silt clay loam soil (Fine clayey, mixed, mesic family of Aquic Hapludalfs) in the experimental fie ld of the wheat and Barley Research Institute in Suwon, all measured data were analyzed by means of kriging, fractile diagram, smooth frequency distribution, and autocorrelation. Sampling for soil chemical property analysis was made at 225 intersections of 15x 15 grid with 10m interval from three soil depths (0-10cm, 25-35cm, 50-60cm) in the seven patitioned fields. 1. The coefficient of variance (CV) of various chemical properties varied from 5.4 to 72.7%. Soil pH was classified into the low variation group with CV smaller than 10%, while the other chemical properties belonged to the medium variation group with C.V. between 10 and 100% 2. The approximate number of soil samples for the determination of various chemical properties with error smaller than 10% were two for pH, ten for CEC, 15 for exchangeable Ca, 32 for total nitrogen content, 39 for exchangeable Mg, 40 for exchangeable K, 61 for exchangeable Na, 82 for organic matter content, 212 for available phosphate,. 3. Smooth frequency distribution and fractile diagram showed that available phosphate was in log-normal distribution while others were in normal distribution. 4. Serial correlation analysis revaled that the soil chemical properties had spatial dependence between two nearest neighbouring grid points. Autocorrelation analysis of chemcial properties measured between the serial grid points in the direction of south to north following land-partitioned boundary showed that the zone of influence showing stationarity ranged from 20 to 50m. In the direction of east to west accross land-partitioned boundary, the autocorrelogram of many chemical properies showed peaks with the periodic interval of 30m, which were similar to the partitioned land width. This reveals that the land-partitioned boundary causes soil variability.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.398-404
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• 1999

Factor analysis technique was employed to screen the principal indicators influencing soil and water qualities in the intensively cultivated areas of the Han River Basin. Soil chemical parameters were analyzed for the soil samples collected at intensive farming area in Pyungchang-Gun, and water quality monitoring data were obtained from the agricultural small catchments of Han River Basin during 1996 and 1997. Among the $11{\times}11$ cross correlation matrix, 29 correlations were significant out of 55 soil quality indicator pairs. The overall Kaiser's measure of sampling adequacy(KMS) value was acceptable with 0.60. Most indicators except iron were acceptable. Among soil indicators, the first factors showing high factor loadings were pH, Ca and Mg. The factor loading was the highest for Ca. The second factor could be characterized as phosphate and micronutrient. The third factor was organic matter and EC, and the fourth factor was potassium and Fe. Out of 190 water quality indicators, 86 correlations were significant. Overall KMS value was 0.74, but the KMS values for pH, TSS, Cd, Cu and Fe were lower than 50. The first factor of EC accounts 27.1 percents of the total variance, and showed high factor loadings with Na, Ca, $SO_4$, Mg, K, Cl, $NO_3$, and T-N. The second factor showed high loadings with Zn, Fe, Mn and Cd. The third to seventh factors could be characterized as $PO_4$, TSS, inorganic nitrogen, pH and T-P, and Cu factors, respectively. The factor score for EC was the highest in Kuri, followed by Chunchon, Dunnae and Daegwanryng. The factor score for heavy metals were the highest in the Daegwanryng. The results demonstrated that the factor analysis could be useful to select the most principal factor influencing soil and water qualities in the agricultural watershed.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-88
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• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.