Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An application of the American customer satisfaction index (ACSI) in the South African motor vehicle industry

Longer relationships with customers, with an anticipated concomitant increase in profitability flowing from such relationships, have become the focus of many businesses. Over time numerous measures to gauge and predict loyalty and commitment have been developed with the purpose to assist management in this respect. However, one of management’s major challenges is to employ a model that is appropriate to explain and predict customer retention for a particular company or brand. This study investigates the reliability of the ACSI for South Africa and reports on the empirical findings in respect of the relationships between various dimensions in the ACSI model as applied in the South African motor vehicle industry. Apart from a paper in press, no research or application of the ACSI has been published in any South African academic journal (Terblanche, 2006). The motor vehicle industry as a whole as well as two individual motor vehicle brands is the focal point of this study. The strengths of various relationships such as, for instance, the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and the relationship between customer expectations and perceived value were studied. The interpretations of the findings between the various dimensions, which are useful from both a theoretical and a managerial perspective, are offered.
An empirical investigation of guilty pleasures

ABSTRACT In everyday language, the expression ‘guilty pleasure’ refers to instances where one feels bad about enjoying a particular artwork. Thus, one’s experience of guilty pleasure seems to involve the feeling that one should not enjoy this particular artwork and, by implication, the belief that there are norms according to which some aesthetic responses are more appropriate than others. One natural assumption would be that these norms are first and foremost aesthetic norms. However, this suggestion runs directly against recent findings in experimental philosophy, according to which most people deny the existence of aesthetic norms. Through three studies, we investigated people’s experiences of guilty pleasures and the norms that underlay these experiences. We tentatively conclude that guilty pleasures are more often connected to one’s personal norms and social expectations than to properly aesthetic norms.
Stabilization of Crude Oil Contaminated Soils with Alkali-Activated Slag

The high exposure of areas in the vicinity of oil plants and refineries to crude oil and oil product contaminations and the problems they cause for the physical expansion of these facilities underscore the importance of stabilization of oil-contaminated soils. Soil stabilization with cost-effective stabilizing agents is widely regarded as a simple and fast way of limiting the impacts of such contaminations. For decades, cement and lime have been the standard binders for soil remediation and stabilization applications, but with the increasing awareness about their environmental impact and the notion of sustainable development in general, there is now a growing interest in the use of cleaner alternatives based on new technologies for this purpose. In recent years, alkali-activated binders have been the subject of much interest because of their high strength and durability and limited environmental impacts. The soil treatment solution investigated in this study is the use of slag, which is a steel production byproduct mostly consisting of calcium and magnesium alumina silicates, in combination with two activators, namely sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. Direct shear tests were performed on the crude oil contaminated soil specimens in order to determine the best alkali-activated designs and the effect of exposure time, slag content, and treatment time on the outcomes. The test results showed that adding 10% slag, 1.15% sodium silicate, and 1.61% sodium hydroxide (all by dry weight of soil) to the crude oil contaminated soil improved its cohesion and friction angle by 70% and 50% respectively.
Diagnosing Ocean‐Wave‐Turbulence Interactions From Space

Numerical studies indicate that interactions between ocean internal gravity waves (especially those <100 km) and geostrophic (or balanced) motions associated with mesoscale eddy turbulence (involving eddies of 100–300 km) impact the ocean's kinetic energy budget and therefore its circulation. Results from these studies have never been confirmed by observations in regional or basin‐scale domains. Here we show that internal gravity waves have a spectral signature on sea surface height during summer that significantly differs from that of balanced motions. These spectral differences lead us to propose a new dynamical framework that quantifies the interactions between internal gravity waves and balanced motions in physical space from sea surface height snapshots, and in particular the energy exchanges between them. Our results, using this dynamical framework, highlight the strong potential of future satellite altimeter missions to make critical advances in assessing the ocean's kinetic energy budget from observations in large domains.
Stock Market Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

Considerable debate exists on how stock exchanges affect economic growth. One line of research argues that stock market development is a positive and significant contributor to growth. On the other hand, other studies show that stock markets negatively affect growth or that they are not relevant contributors to economic growth. This paper seeks to identify the correlation between stock market development and long-run economic growth in Nigeria using the Vector Error Correction modeling. Empirical results suggest that stock market development, as proxied by market capitalization to GDP ratio, does not contribute significantly to long-run economic growth in Nigeria. The implication of this findings is that the Nigerian economy has not gotten to the stage where the stock market can play critical economic development roles. However, efforts must be made to utilize the revenue from crude oil exports for investment in education, health, and capital goods to boost the country’s ailing manufacturing sector for sustainable development and set up robust institutions necessary for financial markets to flourish.
To Brush or Not to Brush: Product Rankings, Customer Search, and Fake Orders

“Brushing"---the practice of online merchants placing fake orders of their own products to artificially inflate sales on e-commerce platforms---has recently received widespread public attention. On the one hand, brushing enables merchants to boost their rankings in search results, because products with higher sales volume are often ranked higher. On the other hand, rankings matter because search frictions faced by customers narrow their attention to only the few products that show up at the top. Thus, fake orders from brushing may affect customer choice. We build a stylized model to understand merchants’ strategic brushing behavior and its welfare implications. We consider two competing merchants selling substitutable products (one of high quality, the other of low quality) in an evolutionary sales-based ranking system that assigns a higher ranking to a product with higher sales. In principle, such an adaptive system improves customer welfare relative to a case in which products are randomly ranked, but it also triggers brushing as an unintended consequence. Since the high-quality merchant receives a favorable bias in the sales-based ranking, he mainly has a defensive brushing incentive, whereas the low-quality merchant mostly has an offensive brushing incentive. As a result, brushing is a double-edged sword for customers. It may lead customer welfare to be even lower than what it would be in a random-ranking system, but in some other cases, it can surprisingly improve customer welfare. If brushing is more difficult for merchants (e.g., due to tougher regulations), it may make customers worse off as it attenuates brushing by the high-quality merchant but induces the low-quality one to brush more aggressively. If search is easier for customers (e.g., due to improved search technologies), it can actually hurt them as it may disproportionately discourage the high-quality merchant from brushing.
Economic Slowdown and Housing Dynamics in China: A Tale of Two Investments by Firms

In the past decade, the Chinese economy has witnessed a great housing boom, accompanied by a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in firms' financial investment. The waning economic prospects are shown to lead to a surge in housing prices by stimulating firms' demand for financial (especially housing) assets. Motivated by these facts, we take an off-the-shelf dynamic New Keynesian model with novel modeling of firms' dynamic portfolio choice between physical and financial investment. Housing assets earn a positive return and can be used as collateral for the firm's external finances. A negative productivity shock decreases the relative return of production capital, which translates into a housing boom by increasing the firm's housing demand. A rise in house prices then generates competing effects on real investment: it not only raises the firm's leverage due to the collateral effect but also depresses the firm's demand for physical capital because of the crowding-out effect. After calibrating the model for the Chinese economy, our quantitative exercise suggests the former effect is dominated by the latter, which implies counter-cyclical housing prices. Among the policies used to stabilize the aggregate economy and housing markets, our counterfactual analysis implies that the capital-subsidization policy targeting house prices performs better than monetary and deleveraging policies.
Relationship between organizational trust and organizational citizenship behaviors: Staff nurses’ perspective

Background and objective: Individuals, who work in an organization where there is a high level of trust, perceive themselves as an important and valued part of this organization. With more enthusiasm, they come to work and are happier with their jobs. Thus, staff nurses’ organizational trust, which forms the basis of intra-organizational relationships, can affect their performance and help them to demonstrate organizational citizenship behaviors. The aim of this study was to assess organizational trust and organizational citizenship behaviors from staff nurses’ perspective. Also, to investigate the relationship between organizational trust and organizational citizenship behaviors at Alexandria Main University Hospital.Methods: A descriptive correlational design was utilized with convenient sample of staff nurses (n = 352) including staff nurses who works in units of medical care (n = 90), in units of surgical care (n = 120), and in critical care units (n = 142). Two tools were used to measure the study variables: Tool I: Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI). Tool II: Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (OCBS). Results: The highest mean score of organizational trust was related to trust in managers, while, the lowest mean score was related to trust in organization. The highest mean score of organizational citizenship behaviors was related to conscientiousness, while the lowest mean score was related to sportsmanship.Conclusions and recommendations: Staff nurses perceived high organizational trust and moderate organizational citizenship behaviors. There is a strong positive high significant correlation between overall organizational trust and overall organizational citizenship behaviors as perceived by staff nurses. Continuous periodic training programs should be given for staff nurses in different healthcare units, to increase their awareness about organizational trust and how to demonstrate organizational citizenship behaviors.
Mapping Irrigated Areas Using Sentinel-1 Time Series in Catalonia, Spain

Mapping irrigated plots is essential for better water resource management. Today, the free and open access Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) data with high revisit time offers a powerful tool for irrigation mapping at plot scale. Up to date, few studies have used S1 and S2 data to provide approaches for mapping irrigated plots. This study proposes a method to map irrigated plots using S1 SAR (synthetic aperture radar) time series. First, a dense temporal series of S1 backscattering coefficients were obtained at plot scale in VV (Vertical-Vertical) and VH (Vertical-Horizontal) polarizations over a study site located in Catalonia, Spain. In order to remove the ambiguity between rainfall and irrigation events, the S1 signal obtained at plot scale was used conjointly to S1 signal obtained at a grid scale (10 km × 10 km). Later, two mathematical transformations, including the principal component analysis (PCA) and the wavelet transformation (WT), were applied to the several SAR temporal series obtained in both VV and VH polarization. Irrigated areas were then classified using the principal component (PC) dimensions and the WT coefficients in two different random forest (RF) classifiers. Another classification approach using one dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) was also performed on the obtained S1 temporal series. The results derived from the RF classifiers with S1 data show high overall accuracy using the PC values (90.7%) and the WT coefficients (89.1%). By applying the CNN approach on SAR data, a significant overall accuracy of 94.1% was obtained. The potential of optical images to map irrigated areas by the mean of a normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) temporal series was also tested in this study in both the RF and the CNN approaches. The overall accuracy obtained using the NDVI in RF classifier reached 89.5% while that in the CNN reached 91.6%. The combined use of optical and radar data slightly enhanced the classification in the RF classifier but did not significantly change the accuracy obtained in the CNN approach using S1 data.
Forest dynamics in a forest-tundra ecotone, Medicine Bow Mountains, Wyoming

Forest Dynamics In A Forest-Tundra Ecotone, Medicine Bow Mountains, Wyoming by Christopher J. Earle Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Linda Brubaker College of Forest Resources, Division of Ecosystem Science and Conservation The alpine timberline in much of western North America is characterized by a structurally complex transition from subalpine forest to alpine tundra, the forest-tundra ecotone. Trees within the ecotone are typically arrayed across the landscape within clumps or "ribbon forests," elongated strips oriented perpendicular to the prevailing winds. This study describes the structure and reconstructs the development of two study plots, one containing ribbon forest and the other, tree clumps. These data are used to develop a theory of ribbon forest origin and development. The plots are located within a foresttundra area dominated by Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). At the clump plot, most trees have established by layering. Consequently, clumps typically contain one species (spruce or fir). All clumps contain trees that consist of a flagged leader growing above a krummholz mat. Evidence from a regional tree-ring database suggests that an episode of new clump establishment and leader release between 1850 and 1925 occurred in response to a period of relatively warm summers. Presently, patterns of snow accumulation and seedling establishment suggest that microsites covered by < 1 m of snow are too dry, and microsites with > 1.5 m of snow are too wet, for successful seedling establishment. The ribbon plot is dominated by spruce, most of which established from seed. The forest also contains clumps of fir, which established primarily by layering. Before 1750, the forest apparently consisted of discrete tree clumps. Many of the oldest trees display relict krummholz growth form features suggesting that they experienced an environment similar to that now found at the clump plot. These trees show an abrupt increase in radial growth beginning ca. 1750 and from this time until about 1830 widespread seedling establishment occurred, with many trees establishing several meters from their nearest neighbor. This process did not coincide with any recorded amelioration of climate, but probably was a period when the ribbon trees had grown sufficiently large and numerous to trap snowdrifts at least 1 m deep, providing optimum soil moisture conditions for seedling establishment. Since 1830 seedling establishment has been biased towards the windward edge of the ribbon, indicating that when snow depths were too deep for seedling establishment within the forest, establishment was still possible at the drier and sunnier windward edge of the forest. Presently, deep snows both within and adjoining the forest largely preclude seedling establishment. Main text.doc 2/14/03 Page i of 5 Earle, C. J. 1993 [Dissertation] CONTENTS Abstract .
Revisiting the Role of Trade and Automation in US Labor Market Polarization

The increase in the share of high- and low-wage employment at the expense of middle-wage employment has been a striking feature of the US economy. We exploit differences across local labor markets in the exposure to Global Value Chains (GVCs), Chinese import competition and automation to study the drivers of this labor market polarization. Using value added trade data, we are able to correctly assign trade-related shocks to local labor markets, based on the source of value added. Across the 722 commuting zones that approximate US local labor markets, we find that employment polarization is mainly driven by their exposure to automation. GVCs lead to an increase in the employment share of relatively high-wage occupations (which we call ‘skill upgrading’), while import competition from China leads to an increase in the employment share of relatively low-wage occupations (which we call ‘skill downgrading’). Trade as a combination of the two thus may contribute to employment polarization but to a lesser extent than automation.
A Model of Customer Loyalty: An Empirical Study of Indian Retail Banking Customer

Abstract The present article proposes and tests an integrative model to examine the relationships among service quality (SQ), perceived value (PV), customer satisfaction (CS), corporate image (IMG) and customer loyalty (CL) in Indian retail banking context. The model is tested on the basis of data collected from 545 customers of Indian public sector banks (PSBs) using structural equation modeling (SEM) through path analysis. The finding exhibits that the present research model strongly predicts direct and/or indirect relationship of all constructs with CL phenomenon. However, the construct of PV was found to be insignificantly related to IMG in this integrative model. Moreover, the results also reveal that SQ exerts a strong influence on CS and CL; therefore, SQ is found as the most dominant construct in the model. The results of the model validate that SQ, PV, CS and IMG are the key antecedents of CL. Thus, integrative model of CL emerges as an ‘outcome’ in Indian context with special reference to selected PSBs.
Can Social Innovations in Housing Save Public Money? The Case of Slovakia

ABSTRACT The paper deals with research into the innovative provision of public services by the non-governmental organizations in the field of housing. The paper describes the legislation of the housing system in Slovakia and aims to analyse innovation in social housing provision. The paper contributes to the knowledge on innovative social housing solutions provided by non-governmental organizations. The use of cost benefit analysis reveals the benefits of innovation in housing provision by an internationally awarded organization ETP Slovakia. The analysis proves the government´s possible savings of public expenditures if it would decide to support the innovative approach in social housing provision.
Late Holocene Glacial Fluctuations of Schiaparelli Glacier at Monte Sarmiento Massif, Tierra del Fuego (54°24′S)

The Magallanes–Tierra del Fuego region, Southern Patagonia (53–56°S) features a plethora of fjords and remote and isolated islands, and hosts several thousand glaciers. The number of investigated glaciers with respect to the multiple Neoglacial advances is based on a few individual studies and is still fragmentary, which complicates the interpretation of the glacial dynamics in the southernmost part of America. Schiaparelli Glacier (54°24′S, 70°50′W), located at the western side of the Cordillera Darwin, was selected for tree-ring-based and radiocarbon dating of the glacial deposits. One focus of the study was to address to the potential dating uncertainties that arise by the use of Nothofagus spp. as a pioneer species. A robust analysis of the age–height relationship, missing the pith of the tree (pith offset), and site-specific ecesis time revealed a total uncertainty value of ±59 years. Three adjacent terminal moraines were identified, which increasingly tapered towards the glacier, with oldest deposition dates of 1749 ± 5 CE, 1789 ± 5 CE, and 1867 ± 5 CE. Radiocarbon dates of trunks incorporated within the terminal moraine system indicate at least three phases of cumulative glacial activity within the last 2300 years that coincide with the Neoglacial phases of the Southern Patagonian Icefield and adjacent mountain glaciers. The sub-recent trunks revealed the first evidence of a Neoglacial advance between ~600 BCE and 100 CE, which so far has not been substantiated in the Magallanes–Tierra del Fuego region.
Roman Transport Network Connectivity and Economic Integration

We show that the creation of the first integrated multi-modal pan-European transport network during Roman times influences economic integration over two millennia. Drawing on spatially highly disaggregated data on excavated Roman ceramics, we document that contemporary interregional trade was influenced by connectivity within the network. Today, these connectivity differentials continue to influence integration as approximated by cross-regional firm investment behaviour. Continuity is partly explained by selective infrastructure routing and cultural integration due to bilateral convergence in preferences and values. We show that our results are Roman-connectivity specific and do not reflect pre-existing patterns of exchange using pre-Roman trade data.
High-resolution remapping of the coastal dune fields of south east Queensland, Australia: a morphometric approach

ABSTRACT The sand islands and shore-attached dune fields of south east Queensland form the world’s oldest and largest coastal sand dune system. Here we present updated morphological maps for the dune fields based on topographic expression and geomorphic relationships. Individual dunes were delineated using high-resolution elevation data and were grouped into morphosequences based on the elevation, drainage characteristics and slope characteristics of the individual dunes. The slope characteristics focussed on high resolution derived slope-curvature and slope-elevation parameters. Morphosequences were recognised from cross-cutting relationships and relative position in the dune field. Our method was developed for the Cooloola Sand Mass and then applied to Fraser Island, Moreton Island and North Stradbroke Island, the other major sand islands in south east Queensland. In total, five Holocene and four Pleistocene units have been identified. The new mapping underpins current work on the geomorphic evolution of the dune fields.