Resource Scarcity Theory Research Articles

Beyond the numbers: unveiling the environmental impacts of international tourism and the role of renewable energy transition

ABSTRACT In pursuit of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 objectives for a sustainable and low-carbon future, this study examines the intricate dynamics between carbon emissions and key variables crucial to the nation's decarbonisation strategy. Grounded in the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Theory, the chosen variables – sustainable tourism, renewable energy demand, and natural resource management – take centre stage. Applying Markov switching regime regression to data spanning 1990–2022, our findings reveal a positive association between international tourism and carbon emissions, aligning with the Tourism-induced Environmental Impact theory. Incorporating the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), our results illustrate a U-shaped relationship. Renewable energy consumption (REC) exhibits a negative impact, supporting EKC's premise that economic development and cleaner energy adoption mitigate environmental degradation. Identified as influential factors affecting carbon emissions, Economic growth and natural resource capital find theoretical backing. The second power of economic expansion positively influences carbon emissions, while the square of natural resources has a negative impact, aligning with resource scarcity theories. Granger causality estimates validate Tourism-led Growth, Resource Capital, and Emissions-led Growth hypotheses. Integrating insights from the Community-Based Tourism (CBT) and stakeholder theory, this study provides actionable insights for policymakers steering Saudi Arabia toward a sustainable, low-carbon future.

Franchising Arrangements and Marketing Performance of Textile Industries in South – East Nigeria

This study investigated the relationship between franchising arrangements and marketing performance of textile distributors in South-East, Nigeria. The study was anchored on Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) and Resource Scarcity Theory (RST). Convenient sampling was employed in order to reach the study objectives. The analysis revealed positive and significant relationship between the two variables that was investigated. The findings revealed that franchising arrangement is a factor that motivates entrepreneurs to remain in franchising chain. Franchising has a strong relationship with customers’ satisfaction and market share, and protects entrepreneurs against competitor. Conclusively, Franchising Arrangements have positive and significant relationship with marketing performance. It was recommended that textile distributors in South-East Nigeria should fully adopt the practice of franchising arrangements in order to boost their business activities.

DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESS FOR SELF-SERVICE LAUNDRY FRANCHISES IN SAMUT SAKHON: A STUDY OF CRITICAL FACTORS, FRANCHISOR-FRANCHISEE RELATIONSHIPS, AND RESOURCE SCARCITY THEORY

The self-service laundry industry has witnessed significant growth and popularity, with self-service laundry franchises emerging as a lucrative investment option. This research investigates the critical success factors (CSFs) and resource scarcity theory that influence the success of self-service laundry franchises in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. The study employs a qualitative approach, conducting in-depth interviews with 25 franchisees operating in the region.
 The findings reveal key CSFs that significantly impact franchise success, including strategic location selection, equipment quality and maintenance, competitive pricing, effective marketing strategies, outstanding customer service, and hygiene standards. The franchisor-franchisee relationship, characterized by mutual support, open communication, and shared values, is also found to play a crucial role in franchise performance. Moreover, resource scarcity theory influences franchisee decision-making, providing access to established brands, operational expertise, and technology. Franchisors' resources, such as training, brand recognition, and marketing support, synergistically combine with franchisee resources to enhance overall performance.

Applying Resource Scarcity Theory to Franchising: The Effect of Industry Choice and Age on Franchise Success and Satisfaction

This study investigates the impact of industry category and age on franchise business ownership and job satisfaction. The selection of industry choice and age of a franchise business owner could be explained through resource scarcity theory. The decision to become or not become an entrepreneur is based on access or possession of resources. In addition, resource scarcity might explain the type of industry chosen to pursue entrepreneurship. This quantitative study used a comparative research model to gauge whether industry category and age of the franchise business owner impact satisfaction on franchise ownership. Findings reported in this study indicated that, in contrast to previous research on non-franchisee entrepreneurs, age was not correlated to higher satisfaction in owning and operating a franchise. Moreover, significant differences in job satisfaction were identified across industries.

The effect of vaccination during the COVID-19 for the restaurant industry

The purpose of the study is to determine whether vaccination rates and the use of franchising have an impact on the volatility of stock returns in the restaurant industry. Based on the agency and resource scarcity theories, this study first examines the effect of vaccinations against COVID-19 on a restaurant firm’s stock return volatilities caused by uncertainty during a crisis. The study further investigates whether firm-specific vaccination rates more greatly reduce stock return volatilities as the degree of franchising increases. With a two-way fixed-effects model, the study finds that the firm-specific vaccination rate reduces volatilities of the firm’s stock returns. However, the study also finds an opposite direction to the moderating effect of franchising in that the more a restaurant firm franchises, the further the risk-reduction effect of its vaccination rate diminishes. Theoretical and practical implications along with limitations are discussed.

‘LAND BANDITS’ OR ‘LAND GRABBERS’: FULANI HERDSMEN AND LOCAL FARMERS INCESSANT BLOODY CLASHES IN NIGERIA

Incontáveis mortes desnecessárias ocorreram devido aos incessantes e sangrentos conflitos entre pastores Fulani e fazendeiros locais nigerianos. A situação da segurança no país já é ruim o suficiente sem esta ameaça, que envolve a simples, inocente e trabalhadora população de base. No entanto, as autoridades parecem não ter pistas sobre o ângulo apropriado, a partir do qual abordar a questão. As principais discussões acadêmicas sobre o assunto também não deram atenção ao embate em relação às leis de pastoreio e uso de terra. Esta pesquisa, portanto, investiga as mortes perpetradas por pastores Fulani sob a luz de fatores multidimensionais, que estão, também, sujeitos a um cenário político em constante alteração. A pesquisa é qualitativa e utiliza fontes de dados secundárias e de arquivo. As discussões são baseadas na Teoria da Modernização e na Teoria da Escassez de Recursos, o que permite abordar os conflitos de perspectivas variadas. O estudo identifica as políticas contraditórias para o uso pacífico e apropriado de terras e o problemático esquema de apaziguamento nos diversos níveis do governo nigeriano como um dos gatilhos para os confrontos. Além disso, o fraco pacote de segurança social ofertado à população pode ser conectado às Lutas sangrentas e incessantes Visto que não são realizados planos de desenvolvimento estrutural apropriados, que criem reservas de pastagem para os mercantes nômades, estes decidiram expandir seus negócios à força, uma opção que rapidamente atende às suas necessidades em um país deficitário em segurança. Novamente, a porosidade das fronteiras da nação é, também, um fator crucial considerado nesta pesquisa, já que abundam evidências para provar que a maior parte dos perpetradores destes assassinatos sem sentido tem seus esconderijos em nações fronteiriças, de onde armas são transportadas para dentro do país, a fim de executar suas atividades. Por último, o estudo discute a tomada de terras rurais como a finalidade dos massacres realizados pelos pastores Fulani. Após destruir as vilas, os criminosos confiantemente ocupam a terra, algumas vezes com ajuda militar, enquanto os donos originais fogem em busca de segurança. Este desafio securitário contribui para o atraso econômico, social e político, visto que leva à perda de vidas e propriedades, dificulta e provavelmente impede investimentos locais e estrangeiros, destrói terras férteis e aráveis, além de reduzir o fornecimento de alimentos, em última instância reduzindo a produtividade como um todo. Se o governo não responder à altura, por meio de medidas de segurança drásticas, ocorrências futuras permanecerão prováveis.

Do financial constraints affect the sensitivity of investment to cash flow? New evidence from franchised restaurant firms

This study investigates whether industry-specific characteristics such as franchising can affect investment and financing decisions when restaurant firms have limited access to capital. Building on the resource scarcity theory and investment-cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) model, this study developed an industry-specific ICFS model that analyzes corporate demand for franchising as a means of complementing the firms’ ability to invest in imperfect markets. Using a sample of US restaurant firms, we empirically evaluated the extent to which franchising provides greater insights into ICFS. By investigating the industry-specific effect of franchising on ICFS, the current study provides a more comprehensive understanding and explanation for the interaction between investment and financing decisions in the US restaurant industry. The findings of this study will provide restaurant investors and shareholders with valuable insights into how to monitor the investment behavior of management.

Redes de Franquias Estrangeiras e Domésticas em um Mercado Emergente: Análise Comparativa

Resumo O artigo tem como objetivo analisar as diferenças existentes no processo de constituição das redes de franquias estrangeiras que atuam no mercado brasileiro e as redes de franquias domésticas brasileiras. Este processo compreende a instalação, a manutenção e a expansão das redes. A revisão teórica e o desenvolvido teórico se baseiam na Teoria da Agência e na Teoria da Escassez de Recursos. Por meio de uma regressão logística com 147 redes de franquias brasileiras e 41 redes de franquias estrangeiras em operação no mercado brasileiro, observou-se que as redes de franquias estrangeiras e domésticas se diferem nas três etapas do processo de constituição: instalação, manutenção e expansão. Complementarmente, foram realizadas três entrevistas semiestruturadas com três franqueadores de redes de franquias estrangeiras. Os resultados apontam que as franquias estrangeiras apresentam uma maior taxa de investimento e manutenção do que as redes de franquias brasileiras, no entanto exibem uma menor capacidade de monitoramento e controle do que as redes de franquias brasileiras. Por outro lado, ao contrário do esperado, observou-se que as redes de franquias estrangeiras atuantes no Brasil apresentam uma menor taxa de crescimento do que as redes de franquias domésticas deste país.

Evolution in franchising: Trends and new perspectives

Franchising as a legal or marketing concept was not new. It arose as a structured business system in the US, around 1860´s when The Singer Company established a network of resellers for sewing machines. Nowadays franchising is one of the fastest developing forms of business in the world. The evolution of theories that seek to explain franchise systems have been published in academic journals from time to time, but until now there was not a study that have established a social network analysis to quantify the degree of centrality and cohesion of the relationship between the main authors, journals, methods and theories in franchise. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to extend the knowledge about franchising through an extensive research on its main theoretical perspectives into relevant international academic journals, showing the evolution of the field, highlighting the principal issues, authors and methods. Through a selection of 130 articles ranging from 1966 to 2015 the study investigates five relevant theories in franchising: (1) Resource Acquisition Theory, (2) Agency Theory, (3) Transaction Cost Analysis, (4) Signaling Theory, and (5) Property Rights Theory. A descriptive statistical analysis was done in order to identify the main authors and trends with the most used associated theories in franchise papers. The findings show agency theory and signaling theory, and resource scarcity theory as the main perspectives used in studies about franchising, but other perspectives have been increasing its presence, mainly the institutional theory and resource based-view perspective. The main dependent and independent variables cover a wide range of constructs, but ownership, performance, age, size, growth, geographical dispersion, and internationalization have been the most cited.

Risk-Sharing as a Long-Term Motivation to Franchise: Role of Franchising Experience

This study aimed to examine a long-term motivation for franchising by considering the influence of experience franchisors gain through conducting the franchising strategy. The study mainly investigates the moderating effect of franchising experience on the relationship between three main motivations for franchising (derived from agency theory, resource scarcity theory, and risk-sharing theory) and firms' degree of franchising in the restaurant context. Dynamic panel data model was employed and the findings suggest that not only do restaurant companies' franchising experience positively affect firms' degree of franchising, but also that those experiences positively moderate the relationship between risk-sharing motivation and the degree of franchising. The findings lead to theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for future research.

Institutional Environments And The Internationalization Of Franchise Chains: The Contrasting Cases Of Three North African Countries

Franchising has become a dominant model of retailing in the Western world and is rapidly expanding in emerging countries. This paper is an attempt to explain the significant differences in the development of franchising in three emerging countries: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Explanations can be found in the general institutional environment in these countries, including the political and economic environments; governments' willingness to modernize the distribution structures; and the legal and regulatory environments specific to franchising. Our analytical framework is based on institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), a framework that provides further insights beyond the approaches based on economic efficiency (agency theory and the resource scarcity perspective). Based on an analysis of the documents in the major public databases in the three countries, supplemented with field research, we propose an analytical framework that helps explain the uneven developments of franchising in the three North African countries based on the specific institutional environment of each country. This study thus provides empirical evidence supporting the institutional theory of franchise expansion. It appears that institutional theory complements agency theory and resource scarcity theory in explaining the development of franchising in emerging markets: while agency theory and resource scarcity theory explain the motivation of firms to expand internationally through franchising, institutional theory helps explain the success or failure of these firms in the emerging markets they expand to.

A property rights view of multi-unit franchising

This study develops a property rights explanation of the multi-unit (MU) ownership strategy of the franchise firm. According to the property rights theory, the allocation of residual rights of control (decision and ownership rights) in franchise firms depends on the contractibility of system-specific and local market assets (LMA). We develop and test the following hypotheses: Multi-unit franchising (MUF) is positively related to the franchisor’s intangible system-specific assets and negatively to the franchisee’s intangible LMA. In addition, we argue that impact of financial assets on the tendency toward MUF depends on the contractibility of LMA. Empirical results from the German franchise sector provide partial support of the hypotheses. Compared to the agency theory, which focuses on (complete) incentive contracts that specify residual income rights between the franchisor and franchisee, property rights theory focuses on incomplete contracts that allocate residual control rights between the franchisor and network partners. Furthermore, compared to the resource scarcity theory, property rights theory explains the impact of contractibility of resources/assets on the ownership strategy of the franchise firm.

An Analysis Of Three Confronting Theories To Explain Franchising Supply

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In this article, we have analyzed one of the most relevant lines of research in the franchising literature - the creation of a franchising system. Three confronting theories are reviewed and presented in this paper to explain the franchising phenomenon; namely, the resource scarcity theory, the agency theory, and the plural from theory. The conclusion of our analysis is that probably none of them is able to explain the full franchising occurrence, but each theory explains different parts of the franchising phenomenon, so they should be perceived as complementary theories.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

Study on Regulating Reservoir Changing Water Resource Value Mechanism

In order to understand the impact of reservoirs to water resource value more scientifically and rationally, and based on expatiating the study of water resource value theory, this paper reveals the mechanism of regulating reservoir changing water resource value, by some physical theory such as momentum and kinetic energy theory, as well as resource scarcity theory. It is that the reservoirs transfer the relative control pivot’s labor value to the flowing water resources, and change the scarcity value of regulating water resources, by dam working on regulating water resources. The paper provides a scientific basis for regulating reservoir obtaining compensation benefits.

Franchising success: Insights from real estate brokerage

This article highlights factors that contribute to the success of franchising in the Australasian real estate brokerage industry. Evidence from both franchisor and franchisee perspectives reveals underlying fundamentals of competitive advantage. System success is argued to be based on the development of a complementary resource competency that ensures relationship sustainability. The franchisee adds value to the franchisor-initiated system and brand by developing presence and expertise in the local market. Franchisee screening and recruitment strategy is important, with prior experience and industry acculturation occupying a central place as a driver of success. The nature of entrepreneurship is a key question addressed and the strength of the entrepreneurial alliance is shown to be a component of the success equation. The pursuit of explanations beyond agency and resource scarcity theory widens the theoretical lens for examining the ubiquitous phenomenon of franchising in the real estate domain.

Can Signaling Theory Help Agency and Resource Scarcity Theories Explain Franchisee Failure? Predicting SBA-Backed Loan Defaults

This study examines the use of analytic techniques to develop a model that predicts the potential default of Small Business Administration (SBA) backed loans issued to American franchisees. Data collected by World Franchising (WF) in their 2008 survey and by SBA from 2000-2008, covering 271 diverse US franchise chains, on the reported failure rates and charge off percentages of SBA backed loans was used to explore associations between franchisor characteristics and franchisee loan performances. The predictive capability of the derived model was assessed using a data mining technique in which the original data set is split into two different subsets: one for estimation and one for validation. KXEN’s (Knowledge Extraction Engines) predictive modeling was used to associate default rates with franchise characteristics. Earnings claims, the requirement for franchisee’s industry specific knowledge, total units growth rate, and franchise experience were found as significant predictors linking franchise theories; agency, resource scarcity, and signaling to franchisee failure (default). This study can be used as an important policy tool that will aid franchisors, franchisees, lenders, the SBA, and other stakeholders in making financing decisions.

Teorías y líneas de investigación en el sistema de franquicia: una revisión desde los años 60 hasta 2009

Many works have analyzed franchising and identified the major research lines regarding the scientific works published until that moment (Elango and Fried, 1997; Díez de Castro and Rondán, 2004). The present paper tries to follow this process. Moreover, it is identified the theories used by researchers to study franchising -agency theory, resource scarcity theory, risk extension theory, contractual theory, transaction cost theory, as well as signaling theory-, and explained its contributions to the literature. Subsequently, four research lines are highlighted in conjunction with main literature about the topic, and emphasized those studies developed by Spanish researchers under the form of papers, conference proceedings, books, book's chapters, as well as dissertations. In doing so, we attempt to offer a whole vision about franchising literature from the 60s up to date.

The selection of international retail franchisees in East Asia

PurposeAlthough international franchising has occurred in East Asia over the past 20 years, surprisingly very little academic research has been undertaken to understand key dynamics of this marketing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine franchise resources, which is a key construct in the internationalization of retail franchising.Design/methodology/approachA multiple case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities inherent within such an international marketing relationship. The data were drawn from five US food service retail franchises, which are household brands across East Asia, operating in Singapore.FindingsThis study presents several interesting findings for the retail franchise industry. First, consistent with resource scarcity theory, international franchising relationship begins with a high degree of franchise dependency on the local franchisees. Next, international franchisors will be well served to select their overseas franchisees with strong financial resources to engage in rapid expansion, good contacts to secure early stores in prime retail locations and well‐proven local knowledge to modify the concept to suit particular market needs.Practical implicationsFindings from this study have important managerial implications for international retail franchisors on how to effectively select franchisees to successfully launch and manage their brands in East Asia.Originality/valueThis empirical study has made a major contribution in adding to the limited body of empirical knowledge on franchisee selection in international retail franchising, particularly in East Asia. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate why certain international retail franchise concepts perform relatively better in East Asia than others.

Toward a Theory of Social Venture Franchising

This article examines the relevance of the two main theories used to understand business format franchising—resource scarcity theory and agency theory—for social venture franchising through an in–depth case study of one of the United Kingdom's first and most high–profile social franchises. We posit that both theories can be reframed to take account of the distinctive characteristics of social franchise systems. In developing our arguments, we present four findings that, taken together, move us closer toward a theory of social venture franchising.

Resource Scarcity and Agency Theory Predictions Concerning the Continued Use of Franchising in Multi‐outlet Networks

A study of 439 franchisors was conducted to identify factors influencing changes in their propensity to franchise. Consistent with agency theory, franchisors with wide multinational scope were increasing their proportion of franchised outlets whereas franchisors with large outlets were emphasizing firm ownership. As predicted by resource scarcity theory, franchisors were decreasing their proportion franchised as they grew in size, although most of the decrease occurred while firms were relatively small. In contrast to resource scarcity theory, franchisors increased their proportion franchised over time. Key implications are that both agency and resource scarcity theories are needed to explain franchising, but perhaps future research should look beyond resource scarcities toward resource‐based capabilities to better explain franchising decisions.