Market-based Approach Research Articles

Saving the World by Being Green with Fintech: Exploring the Contradictions Inherent in the Case of Ant Forest

ABSTRACT The conflict between climate change and economic growth is one of the most significant dilemmas of our era. Under the prevalent discourse of sustainable development and green economy, many believe that market-based approaches can address environmental problems under the current capitalist economic regime. This article aims to analyse Ant Forest, a gamified green initiative launched by the biggest fintech company in China, to combat climate change through cultivating users’ green lifestyles. Based on semi-structured interviews with the game-users, the paper argues that there is an inconsistency between the environmental value of Ant Forest and the real impact it has on the participants’ consumption behaviour. As a capitalist green initiative based on consumption and market forces, Ant Forest reflects the basic logic of competition and expansion. In addition, it enhances the users’ reliance on its related business entities and further alienates the users from the rest of nature by creating a knowledge gap that impedes its users from fully knowing the environmental implications of their consumption behaviour.

GENDER EQUITY AGAINST “ECONOMIC REALITIES”: HOW A CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO MOVEMENTS RESHAPED THE CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING OF PAY

In the United States today, there is a broad cultural understanding that market forces drive pay outcomes. But prior to the 1980s, pay was understood to be the product of bureaucratic processes internal to organizations. The question of whether pay is determined by the market or organizational decisions is essential for evaluating employers’ liability for gender pay inequality, as employers are not responsible for inequalities resulting from the “economic realities” of the labor market. This article locates the shift in cultural beliefs about pay in key court decisions in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, a social movement for pay equity used the idea of comparable worth to hold organizations accountable for inequality between jobs held by women and similarly valuable jobs held by men. But the judges who ruled on these cases were informed by a different movement, known as law and economics, which led them to conceptualize pay as the product of market forces instead of organizational decisions. These judges’ decisions limited employers’ liability for the pay gap and precipitated a transformation of the cultural common sense of pay within organizations, which increasingly adopted market-based approaches. The case of comparable worth highlights the role of judges, who have a unique role in determining the impact of social movements while themselves being targeted by such movements.

Effects of Market Approach to the Valuation on the Financial Performance of Real Estate Investments in the Western Region, Kenya

The main aim of this study was to examine the effect of the market approach to the valuation on the financial performance of real estate management investments in Western region, Kenya. The study was guided by Market Efficient Theory. The study employed a correlational research design. The target population of the study consisted of 52 registered real estate agents within the western Kenya region. The study adopted a census technique to gather all the required data from the existing population. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaires, and secondary data schedules were used to gather secondary data for analysis. Pretesting of survey instruments was conducted as an effort to ensure that there was both content validity and reliability. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. From the study results, market-based explained 57.2% (R2=0.572, p=0.000) of variance in the financial performance of real estate investments. The regression coefficient revealed (β=1.019, P=0.000), implying that a unit increase in the market-based valuation approach would significantly increase the financial performance by 1.019 units. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. The study, therefore, concluded that market-based valuation influences the financial performance of real estate management investments in Western Kenya. The study recommended that evaluators should take caution while employing a market approach as either a primary or secondary approach to valuing a business. One of the notable issues with the market approach is that price may not always be a good indicator of value. Price may be influenced by uneven negotiating skills, the difference in information available, the compulsion to act, payment terms, and financial strengths.

Cost-Effective Spot Instances Provisioning Using Features of Cloud Markets

Cloud computing offers a variable-cost payment scheme that allows cloud customers to specify the price they are willing to pay for renting spot instances at much lower costs than fixed payment schemes, and depending on the varying demand from cloud customers, cloud platforms could revoke spot instances at any time. To alleviate the effect of spot instance revocations, applications often employ different fault-tolerance mechanisms to minimize or even eliminate the lost work for each spot instance revocation. However, these fault-tolerance mechanisms incur additional overhead related to application completion time and deployment cost. This article proposes a novel cloud market-based approach for provisioning spot instances using features of cloud markets to reduce the deployment cost and completion time of applications. The simulation results show that the approach reduces the deployment cost and completion time compared to approaches based on fault-tolerance mechanisms.

The business of saving cheetahs: Cheetah ecology and the diverse politics at work in human wildlife conflict (HWC) interventions in Namibia

This paper is concerned with the intersection of cheetah ecology, human wildlife conflict (HWC), settler colonialism, and private land ownership in Namibia. Cheetahs’ ecological adaptation(s) in Namibia point to the need for a fuller picture of the permutations of conservation and conservation NGOs in Africa. In the case of Namibia, cheetahs’ ecological adaptations to interspecies threats have shaped their territory to be primarily on private commercial farms where they cause HWC. While cheetahs cause HWC on commercial farms and farming communities in Namibia writ large, HWC itself is not the conflict discussed in this research. Rather, HWC is the catalyst for what this paper will analyze to be a conflict between two private sector industries—commercial farming and cheetah conservation. After thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this case study suggested diverse politics are at work within the NGOs conservation intervention policies at global, national, and local scales. This research identified a theoretical and conceptual fissure which led to an anomaly in the field of political ecology. This paper will argue HWC is an organizing structure in the business of saving cheetahs. The NGOs studied in Namibia are a service-based industry. They invest in both tangible and intangible conservation services rather than market-based participatory approaches, ecosystem services, and/or economic development. This is illustrative of a shift from market-based conservation to a service-based approach and calls for widening the political ecology lens to account for other cases of NGOs’ on-the-ground conservation business practices in Africa.

The Iranian Housing System under the Islamic Republic Government (1990–2021)

Abstract Increasing urbanization, a massive migration to the big cities, and an imbalance between supply and demand for housing have introduced a housing shortage over the past few decades. The housing issue in Iran has been addressed through government housing provision and development programs. A brief review of the government's policies on development programs shows that government-based and market-based approaches are the two main types in the housing sector. Although the government initially had a primary role in housing provision, this responsibility was gradually transferred to the private sector, but without a proper balance between housing supply and demand. In this article, we will explore the different housing policies and examine the successes and failures of each one.

Post-neoliberalization and the Irish private rental sector

Recent years have witnessed new policy interventions in many countries seeking to get to grips with challenges in the private rental sector (PRS), including rent regulation and enhanced security of tenure. This raises the possibility of a shift away from market-based approaches which have characterized neoliberal housing regimes over recent decades. This article adds to emerging work on post-neoliberalism by examining policy change in the Irish PRS. The Irish PRS is an illustrative example because it has experienced rapid increases in the proportion of households renting and in average rents, but also because of the large volume of reforms introduced since 2015. Examining these shifts through the lens of ‘market rule’, the article conceptualizes the Irish PRS as in a process of ‘post-neoliberalization’ in that it has moved away from the commodification of PRS housing, and yet continues to be shaped by the transnational political economy of institutional investment, itself largely a product of previous phases of neoliberalization.

Political signalling and emissions trading schemes in China: Insights from Guangdong Province

China's approach to environmental regulation relies heavily on campaign-style enforcement and blunt-force regulation. While considered effective in the short run, this approach is often inefficient and generates unintended regulatory outcomes in the longer run. At the same time, China continues to experiment with the use of market-based approaches that are theoretically more efficient and have the potential to facilitate sustained reductions in carbon emissions. Arguably the most high-profile example is the Guangdong Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which was launched in 2013 as a national pilot scheme. We construct a synthetic control of Guangdong and analyse 51,076 party-led newspaper reports to show that while the ETS reduced emissions in the short run, these reductions were systematically associated with political signalling. Notably, emissions reduced substantially upon the announcement of the ETS in 2011 – a full two years before the scheme was scheduled to begin – before rebounding to near pre-ETS announcement levels by 2017. The presence of an anticipation effect and the systematic association between political signalling and emissions reductions mirrors findings on China's more direct approaches to environmental regulation. Our findings suggest that market-based mechanisms in China may not be qualitatively different from more direct forms of environmental regulation.

Explaining Government Policy Inaction on International Student Housing in Australia: The Perspectives of Stakeholders.

Housing is a major concern for many international students. This is especially so in those countries where students are mostly dependent on the private market for their accommodation. Australia is one such country, and is one of the world’s major destinations for international students. This article analyses governmental failure to address problems relating to international student housing affordability and conditions. Using theory on ‘policy inaction’ to frame the analysis, we draw on 20 interviews with policy stakeholders to explain the Australian government’s reliance on: (1) market-based housing provision for international students, and (2) a longstanding policy preference not to provide support. Interviewees were widely critical of the lack of action to address international student housing problems and understood inaction in relation, rather than in opposition, to the dominance of market-based action in housing and higher education. However, analysis of stakeholder perspectives also illuminates how policy-making action benefiting some emerges as inaction for others left behind or overlooked by the status quo. The interview data points to the need for government to overhaul its policy framework, and in doing so, to collaborate with higher education providers in revising the market-based regulatory approach. The main implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Assessing Consumer Attitude Towards Marine Non-Indigenous Fish Species: A Case Study From Greece (Eastern Mediterranean Sea)

Non-indigenous fish species (NIFS) are spreading in the Mediterranean Sea, altering species assemblages and reshaping the marine ecosystems. Market-based approach has been promoted as a measure to limit the spread and damages by the NIFS and provide economic revenues to fishers. Understanding drivers of NIFS consumption and documenting consumers’ habits are pivotal in guiding a market strategy. Α custom-made online questionnaire was developed and distributed to Greek consumers through Social Media networks. The majority of consumers: (a) supported that NIFS are causing adverse effects to the marine environment (54%), (b) would consume NIFS products if they encountered them on a restaurant menu (62%), (c) would buy and consume NIFS provided they protect the marine environment and indigenous species (76%), and (d) hanker for the implementation of a quality control certificate on NIFS products (79%). Multivariate models revealed that the most important criteria for the consumers except for taste were the freshness of the products, whether the fish is poisonous, and the hygienic conditions of the fish market and its staff. The results reflected the positive attitude of the Greek consumers towards the consumption of NIFS and highlighted the importance of further promoting a market that could improve fisheries sustainability and challenge non-indigenous species (NIS) proliferation.

Australia’s Energy Security and Statecraft in an Era of Strategic Competition

Previously published studies on Australia’s energy security did not examine the country’s domestic energy security situation in tandem with its international energy statecraft. This paper fills this research gap. In order to provide a robust analysis of a country’s strategic options in the energy sector, it is paramount to balance domestic and international dimensions, along with internal and external factors. The paper utilizes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) method to review Australia’s strategic options by balancing the inward-looking, domestic risk minimization dimension (energy security), with the outward-looking, international power projection dimension (energy statecraft). The paper also applies the 4A framework (availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptance) to assess Australia’s energy security performance. On the one hand, the results demonstrate that Australia has many strengths and opportunities as a reliable and stable energy supplier, endowed with traditional and renewable energy resources, and critical minerals. On the other hand, numerous internal weaknesses and external threats may affect Australia’s strategic options in the future. The most pressing issue is the historical lack of strategic government intervention in the energy market, which has, paradoxically, resulted in domestic energy accessibility and affordability crisis. The market-based approach is also the main reason why Australia has not transformed its energy resources into capabilities to be used as instruments of statecraft. The paper uses the SWOT analysis and the 4A assessment as the basis for discussion on how Australia can transform its energy sector weaknesses and threats into strengths and opportunities, to benefit the national interest.

A Comparative Review on Energy Storage Systems and Their Application in Deregulated Systems

Electrical energy is critical to the advancement of both social and economic growth. Because of its importance, the electricity industry has historically been controlled and operated by governmental entities. The power market is being deregulated, and it has been modified throughout time. Both regulated and deregulated electricity markets have benefits and pitfalls in terms of energy costs, efficiency, and environmental repercussions. In regulated markets, policy-based strategies are often used to deal with the costs of fossil fuel resources and increase the feasibility of renewable energy sources. Renewables may be incorporated into deregulated markets by a mix of regulatory and market-based approaches, as described in this paper, to increase the systems economic stability. As the demand for energy has increased substantially in recent decades, particularly in developing nations, the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions has increased fast, as have fuel prices, which are the primary motivators for programmers to use renewable energy sources more effectively. Despite its obvious benefits, renewable energy has considerable drawbacks, such as irregularity in generation, because most renewable energy supplies are climate-dependent, demanding complex design, planning, and control optimization approaches. Several optimization solutions have been used in the renewable-integrated deregulated power system. Energy storage technology has risen in relevance as the usage of renewable energy has expanded, since these devices may absorb electricity generated by renewables during off-peak demand hours and feed it back into the grid during peak demand hours. Using renewable energy and storing it for future use instead of expanding fossil fuel power can assist in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is a desire to maximize the societal benefit of a deregulated system by better using existing power system capacity through the implementation of an energy storage system (ESS). As a result, good ESS device placement offers innovative control capabilities in steady-state power flow regulation as well as dynamic stability management. This paper examines numerous elements of renewable integrated deregulated power systems and gives a comprehensive overview of the most current research breakthroughs in this field. The main objectives of the reviews are the maximization of system profit, maximization of social welfare and minimization of system generation cost and loss by optimal placement of energy storage devices and renewable energy systems. This study will be very helpful for the power production companies who want to build new renewable-based power plant by sighted the present status of renewable energy sources along with the details of several EES systems. The incorporation of storage devices in the renewable-incorporated deregulated system will provide maximum social benefit by supplying additional power to the thermal power plant with minimum cost.

Enabling end-to-end digital carbon emission tracing with shielded NFTs

In the energy transition, there is an urgent need for decreasing overall carbon emissions. Against this background, the purposeful and verifiable tracing of emissions in the energy system is a crucial key element for promoting the deep decarbonization towards a net zero emission economy with a market-based approach. Such an effective tracing system requires end-to-end information flows that link carbon sources and sinks while keeping end consumers’ and businesses’ sensitive data confidential. In this paper, we illustrate how non-fungible tokens with fractional ownership can help to enable such a system, and how zero-knowledge proofs can address the related privacy issues associated with the fine-granular recording of stakeholders’ emission data. Thus, we contribute to designing a carbon emission tracing system that satisfies verifiability, distinguishability, fractional ownership, and privacy requirements. We implement a proof-of-concept for our approach and discuss its advantages compared to alternative centralized or decentralized architectures that have been proposed in the past. Based on a technical, data privacy, and economic analysis, we conclude that our approach is a more suitable technical backbone for end-to-end digital carbon emission tracing than previously suggested solutions.

Assessing Household Willingness to Pay for the Conservation of the Phou Chom Voy Protected Area in Lao PDR

This study aimed to examine whether local residents were willing to pay (WTP) for the improvement of the Phou Chom Voy Protected Area (PCV PA), by using the hypothetical scenario framework of the contingent valuation method. We interviewed a sample of 365 local residents. Among the respondents, 271 were willing to pay to maintain the protected area. Most residents who refused to pay had low incomes and stated that they did not want to increase their monthly expenses by contributing to the conservation fund. The estimated mean willingness to pay among the respondents who expressed the maximum willingness to pay for natural forest conservation because of its natural value and attractiveness for tourism was Lao Kip (LAK) 27,055/year. The aggregate willingness to pay for the protected area improvement was approximately LAK 93 million. The logit regression results revealed that age, education level, annual household income, and attitude toward conservation significantly influenced willingness to pay. The results of this study provide insights into applying willingness to pay in sustainable financing, to develop market-based conservation approaches in protected areas, thus reducing ongoing biodiversity losses and maintaining natural resources.

An exploration of poverty as a consumption object: voluntourist’s stories from an orphanage in Nepal

ABSTRACT This paper examines the understanding of poverty emerging in voluntourists’ accounts of their first-hand experiences of poverty alleviation. Based on the ethnography of an orphanage in Nepal, we show that despite voluntourists’ good intentions and even (self-)criticism of the volunteer tourism approach to poverty relief, their accounts tend to consolidate rather regressive ideas about poverty. We draw on postcolonial and post-development theory to illuminate specific ways in which the old Orientalist tropes and discourses of othering are perpetuated in this novel neoliberal form of travelling. We contribute to the critical work on voluntourism and market-based approaches to societal and environmental problems by focusing on poverty as an object of consumption. Such a conception emerges from how the voluntourists’ stories were shaped by and refracted through the structure of voluntourism and the logics of social media. Such refraction leads to systematic depoliticisation of global inequality and responses to poverty.

English

Technological evolution has triggered more advanced market-based approaches to the transfer of goods, services, and information. In Ghana, Agribusiness small-medium enterprises' electronic commerce adoption is concentrated in Accra and Kumasi. This study spotting the research gap in Agribusiness small-medium enterprises' electronic commerce adoption selected the Upper East Region for the study. The study is centered on examining e-commerce adoption by agribusiness small-medium enterprises’ and the preferred electronic commerce applications adopted by Agribusiness small-medium enterprises' in the Upper East region of Ghana. A simple random sampling technique was adopted for the study. The results of the study show that 91% of agribusiness had adopted electronic commerce for their operations with the major observation that being electronic commerce environment is good for business. The major barrier to adoption was the high cost of adoption of electronic commerce applications. Owner experience, observability, benefits from electronic commerce, trialability and years in business were all found to be factors influencing agribusiness small-medium enterprises’ adoption of electronic commerce. Furthermore, the results also indicated that Agribusiness small-medium enterprises in the Upper East region use electronic commerce applications mostly for customer relation management and interorganisation system. In conclusion to the study, electronic commerce adoption was observed to be rising among agribusiness small-medium enterprises in the Upper East region but the greatest hurdle to their adoption was the high cost of adoption of these applications. The study, therefore, recommends that financial institutions, electronic commerce application manufacturers, and the government should collaborate to subsidy the cost of these electronic applications to agribusiness small-medium enterprises. Key words: Adoption, e-commerce applications, agribusiness SMEs, preference.

Towards Green Credentials of SMEs: Qualitative Insights on Barriers to Green Responsiveness from a Developing Economy

This study explored the drivers/stimulators behind the effective implementation of green strategy and how firms can strategically minimise barriers and hurdles. It investigated the barriers to green responsiveness encountered by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the perspective of owners/top managers in a developing economy. The present study utilised qualitative data gathered from 16 semi-structured interviews with manufacturing and service sector SMEs in Sri Lanka. It adopted directed qualitative content analysis to determine how firms interpret and judge the barriers to green engagement, which are classified into responsibility, practicality and individual barriers. The study found that responsibility and practicality-related barriers are the most salient barriers experienced by SMEs. The gaps in environmental regulatory frameworks, acts and ordinances, weak coordination and monitoring systems, and excessive political interventions caused resentment towards the prevailing command-control policies, as well as the lack of government support and incentives to navigate the embryonic stage of utilising market-based approaches in green responsiveness. The study outcome offers policymakers valuable implications regarding environmental policy development and suggests SME owners/managers focus on the existing barriers and formulate strategies to overcome them to ensure corporate sustainability.

Community perceptions: A comparative analysis of community participation in forest management: FSC-certified and non-certified plantations in Mozambique

With the increasing expansion of large-scale forest plantations in developing countries, concerns are rising about relationships between plantations and local communities. Community participation in forest plantation management can improve relationships between forestry companies and adjacent communities and affect the distribution of benefits from plantations. The social dimension of the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) responsible forest management standard targets the participation of local communities in plantation management. Using household survey data from villages adjacent to plantations owned by two private forest companies in Mozambique, we assess households' perceptions about their participation in plantations' activities. We compare the perspectives of households in villages adjacent to FSC-certified plantations with those of households in villages adjacent to non-certified plantations. Our quantitative analyses show that communities adjacent to the certified plantations are more likely to perceive that they participate in activities of plantations. In terms of socio-economic characteristics, male-headed households and households with plantation employees were more likely than their counterparts to participate in plantations' activities. However, we did not find statistically significant relationships between the perceptions of communities near the certified plantations and those near the non-certified plantations regarding their satisfaction with their participation, the extent to which they consider the plantation a ‘friendly good neighbor’ and whether households have benefitted from the plantations. Our results suggest that market-based approaches of forest governance, such as forest management certification, can complement state policy towards responsible forest management.

Technical reform or radical justice? Environmental discourse in non-governmental organizations

Discourses integrate facts, frames, metaphors, and narratives to produce shared understandings of environmental problems, and these shared understandings structure environmental policy and outcomes. Recent scholarship uses new data and quantitative content analysis to identify Environmental Management, Climate Politics, Ecological Modernization, and Environmental Justice as the major discourses among global environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). Such discourse classification can be intellectually and politically useful, but typologies elide variation. Understanding environmental discourse involves not only classifying major discourses, but also identifying nuances, tensions, and absences behind any typology. This study builds on recent quantitative research with a qualitative, small-N design. We selected two ENGOs identified as extreme representatives of each of the four major discourses, for a total of eight ENGOs, and we conducted qualitative content analysis of ENGO documents as the basis for critical discourse analysis (CDA), examining the principal ideas, frames, and narratives of each discourse and the relations between discourses. Our analysis identifies tensions in Climate Politics between climate justice and multi-stakeholder governance subdiscourses, and divergence in Environmental Management discourse between protection-based and market-based approaches. Linking discourse with organizational structure, we trace tensions in these categories to broader webs of power that transcend typological classifications. Qualitative case studies both deepen and challenge quantitative analyses, underlining the importance of multimethod research and enhancing our understanding of environmental discourse as a key sphere of environmental politics.

RELIABLE ENTERPRISE VALUATION METHODS: A CASE STUDY ON ROMANIA’S INVESTMENT FUNDS

<p>Professionals in enterprise valuation can use multiple methods and approaches for the valuation mission. To support them, the standards in the matter use the market approach, income approach, and cost approach. The market approach or comparison approach refers to determining the value of an entity or the common equity of an entity using direct comparison with other enterprises or similar shares traded on the free market (the price of which is public). The sources of information concerning such data are mainly the stock exchanges and the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) operations and preceding transactions with similar companies. The most common multiples in the market-based approach are PER (Price Earnings Ratio), PEG (Price Earnings to Growth), and EV/EBITDA. Within this study, we highlighted the extent to which these multiples reflect or not the market value of the companies analysed, as defined by the stock exchange mechanism. Furthermore, to achieve this goal we set out to establish the validity of three hypotheses regarding the ability of multiple-based methods to highlight a stock’s market price. Using a quantitative approach and historical data we demonstrated that market-based multiples are a safe way to obtain an enterprise’s fair value, pointing out that results vary slightly depending on the variables used.</p><p> </p><p><strong>JEL</strong>: M40, M41, M49</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0333/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>