This thesis uses laboratory and field experiments to examine the underlying motivations that drive biased and discriminatory behaviour. Its focus is on the differential treatment of others that stems from individuals’ preferences for particular social and ethnic groups. The unifying theme of this thesis is the exploration of how such discriminatory tastes can manifest themselves within individuals’ social and other–regarding preferences, determining the extent to which they care about the welfare of others. The prevalence and implications of these types of preferences are considered in both market and non–market settings.

Context Colors are an important aspect of video games, they have a key roll when designing everything from characters to world objects. Therefore designers and developers need to know what colors that are preferred over others. Objectives This paper tries to determine which color setting that is the most preferred on a game avatar. Methods To do this an experiment conducted with 15 participants. They conducted a two alternative forced choice test (2AFC) with 236 pairs of pictures. All of the 236 pairs were based on color harmonies and displayed on an avatar and a cube. The different color harmonies that were used sprung from the three primary colors of the RGB-color wheel that worked as a base in this experiment. The results that were collected went through a Chi-square test. Result Some interesting results were generated from the experiment. For instance, the most preferred color harmony for the avatar was the split complementary with the base in the primary color red. Second to that was the color harmony triad, built on the three primary colors red, green and blue. The color harmonies that had their base in the color green were with zero percent the least preferred of all harmonies. On the other hand the color harmonies that had their base in the color blue were generally the most preferred among all of the harmonies. Conclusion The main conclusion that was made and that could answer the research question was that the most preferred color harmony for the avatar was split complementary red. There were also some conclusions made that could help to create a more general preference for all kind of avatars, if this experiment would be remade on a larger scale.

One of the main goals for political parties is to attract as many voters as possible. The competition for voters among the parties is especially relevant in a multiparty system. A voter in such a system may choose between several parties and can order them in any way he or she pleases. Thus, the voter has an order of party preferences. In this thesis, I argue that differences in a voters’ first and second preference order can be used as a resource to discover unique patterns in the voters’ party identification. To address this conjecture, I have used the Super-Riks-SOM dataset to study such patterns between the years 2005, 2011 and 2013. The results show that along the points of measure, the Swedish voter has become less willing to vote for the middle parties. Hence, the pattern indicates that the party identification in the second preferences is more balanced in 2013 than in 2005.

D.Comm. (Marketing Management) / Repeat purchasing of newly developed products is critical for new product success and customer profit maximisation. Yet this topic has received little or no attention from the literature. Today, as profitability is being challenged from global competition, marketers of consumable industrial products (MRO) have to understand better than ever before how to effectively and efficiently manage repeat purchasing to achieve their profit maximising objectives. The study investigates industrial consumable repeat purchasing from a high involvement purchasing perspective and identifies four purchasing constructs and their variables whichimpact customer purchasing decision making. These constructs relate to pre-trial purchase, trial purchase, first repeat purchase and long term repeat purchase decision making dimensions, each containing purchase decision making factors which the marketer is able to influence. The findings reveal that customers decide which vendor to select for a trial- purchase, heavily influenced by the transactional value offered and the customer's perceived probability of transactional value satisfaction with the offer. Retaining the vendor for a first repeat purchase requires confirmation of the perceived pre purchase satisfaction likelihood with the evaluation of the purchase and consumption experience. To be retained for continued repeat purchasing and profitability maximisation over the long term, requires marketing strategies that are based on the customer's repeat purchase orientation and the firm's ability to meet the customer's rising value expectations. Such orientation consists of either transactional or relational repeat purchasing. In the transactional case, vendor preference has to be maintained from a perspective of superior transactional value and transactional value .satisfaction whereas in the relational repeat purchasing case, vendor preference requires in addition.. vendor loyalty and buyer-seller relationships for retention. The empirical study verifies these findings which lead to a repeat purchasing framework and a predictor for measuring vendor retention. As vendor retention reflects a customer's attitudinal intent towards the product/vendor entity, marketers are advised to develop favourable customer attitudes before, during and after a purchase. By implementing customer relationship management (CRM), customer value, satisfaction, loyalty and value laden buyer-seller relationships can be created to achieve sustainable repeat purchasing and enhanced stakeholdervalue

Previous research on investor preferences focused mainly on the relationship between socio-demographic variables and risk tolerance. This study extends the research in this area by focusing on three aspects of investor preferences: risk tolerance, time horizon, and estate intentions. The objective is to provide a more comprehensive model of investor preferences, including both psychological and attitudinal variables. This study addresses the following: Are socio-demographic variables sufficient to predict investor preferences? Is there a difference between males and females? How much additional variance is explained by including political ideology, positive psychology attitudes, and pro-social attitudes? Are these attitudinal variables simply additive or are they interactive? Data were collected from MBA students and senior undergraduate students in a major research university in South Florida. A scale was developed to measure estate intentions, a construct that has never been examined in management studies. The findings supported the expectation that psychological variables would be positively correlated with the dependent variables. However, I expected that pro-social attitudes would be a moderator variable, and this expectation was not realized. This dissertation contributes to the investor preferences field in several ways. First, it demonstrates the importance of psychological and attitudinal variables in explaining investor preferences. I also found differences between males and females regarding risk tolerance. This study can provide financial advisers with a deeper understanding of the importance of psychological and attitudinal variables in determining investor behavior. Finally, the results of this study augment and expand stakeholder theory. This study brings the investor into the stakeholder model, enhancing the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive capabilities of stakeholder theory. Future research could replicate this study using real investors in different locations for cultural variation, or using a panel of respondents for a longitudinal study.

Persistent conflicts between stakeholders and complex trade offs among forest values have created a difficult decision environment for sustainable forest management. Tools developed for decision support in land use planning are essential for managing these challenges. This research study is an interactive assessment of a land use planning Decision Support Tool (DST) in the Invermere Timber Supply Area (TSA), located in the East Kootenay area of British Columbia. The aim of this study is to explore whether stakeholders' initial stated preferences change and whether trade-offs are made between various forest values upon observation of a long-term forecast of these values using a DST. Representatives from various stakeholder groups in the area were assembled for individual sessions to interact with the multi-criteria DST. Participants were required to state their preferences for six forest values using a weighting scheme. The DST developed an output for each forest value based on the participants' preferences. Upon review of the DST output, the participant had the opportunity to alter their initial preferences iteratively until a desirable output was found. The results indicate that participants' preferences changed after reviewing the DST outputs and that participants are willing to make trade-offs between various forest values using a DST to find a desirable solution. However, the preference order of the forest values changed only slightly from the participants' initial to preferred scenarios; instead participants made drastic changes to the weighting of each value to find a desirable output. Participants also stated their willingness to use DSTs for land use planning decision-making, although underlying assumptions built into the model must be improved before stakeholders can trust the tool as an aid for decision-making. Studies such as this can further the development of DSTs to help find desirable decisions for sustainable resource management and to help create a productive and engaging process. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate

The objective of the study was to determine perceptions of the consumers on how they judged behaviour and beef quality of cattle slaughtered for traditional ceremonies in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. A survey was conducted where a sample of 200 consumers were randomly selected and interviewed. Fifty non-descript cattle were slaughtered during traditional ceremonies and two hundred and twenty four (224) cattle were slaughtered at 3 through-put abattoirs (high, medium and low). Meat quality attributes were determined from the cattle slaughtered for traditional ceremonies and from cattle slaughtered at the abattoirs. Data for questionnaires was summarized as frequencies for each ceremony and statistical differences were analysed using chi square test (X2). The effect of Age, breed and sex on beef pH, colour, meat tenderness, temperature and cooking loss of cattle slaughtered during traditional ceremonies, at low, medium and high throughput abattoirs were analyzed using General Linear Model (PROG GLM) of SAS (2003). There was a significant age effect (P < 0.05) on beef tenderness and cooking loss of cattle slaughtered for traditional ceremonies. Age of cattle that have milk teeth to 1 year and age of 6 years to 8 years had an effect on the beef tenderness (25.55 ± 8.05) and cooking loss (48.00 ± 4.26) of cattle slaughtered for traditional ceremonies in Table 4.1. There was no significant sex effect on beef tenderness and cooking loss of cattle slaughtered for traditional ceremonies. Non-descript and Angus cattle slaughtered at low throughput abattoir had an effect on the colour of the beef in Table 4.2. The lightness (27.49 ± 2.53) and yellowness (21.16 ± 0.79) of the beef shows that there was a significant breed effect on cattle that are slaughtered at Low throughput abattoir, however redness of the meat was not affected by breed after slaughter. Cattle that are slaughtered at high throughput abattoir between ages of 6 to 8 years and also cattle that are more than 8 years in Table 4.4 had an effect on cooking loss (p < 0.05). Age between 6 to 8 years had an effect on the beef tenderness from cattle that are slaughtered at medium throughput abattoir. It was concluded that the meat tenderness of the young cattle with milk teeth slaughtered for traditional ceremonies was affected. On the other hand the meat tenderness and cooking loss of beef from the cattle slaughtered from low, medium and high throughput abattoir were affected by sex and breed mostly.

The aim of this dissertation was to explore whether preschoolers understand that preferences differ over time and between people. The first goal was to determine if 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds could appreciate that their future or “grown-up” preferences may differ from their current ones (self-future condition). This understanding was compared to children’s understanding of the preferences of a grown-up (adult-now condition), or the grown-up preferences of a same-aged peer (peer-future condition). Results from 3 experiments (N = 240) suggest that these types of reasoning develop substantially over the preschool years, and that children are generally proficient by 5 years of age. Results also indicate that thinking about one’s own future preferences is more difficult than thinking about the (future) preferences of others. The second goal of this dissertation was to explore the relations between reasoning about preferences and theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) abilities. Correlational analyses revealed that children’s reasoning about their future preferences and those of others was associated with EF skills, but not with ToM. These findings provide a timely contribution to the expanding research on children’s future-oriented cognition. Implications for theories about perspective-taking abilities, more broadly, and future research are also discussed.

This work deals with the analysis of legal regulations concerning the instruments of financial support of agricultural entrepreneurship, above all the tax instruments in the Czech republic. These are compared with the instruments in Germany and other states of the European union and other states.

From amusement parks to casinos, cruises to video games, large sectors of the economy market consumer fun. Yet surprisingly, little research has been devoted to understanding the consumer psychology of fun—both the experience and its main psychological drivers in marketplace settings. This dissertation aims to develop a psychological theory of consumer fun that can help inform how fun experiences are engineered and managed by both businesses and consumers. I use a multimethod approach combining in-depth interviews and narrative analyses with controlled experiments, structural equation modeling, and field data analysis of consumer selfies. Two psychological pillars of consumer fun are identified: (1) hedonic engagement and (2) a sense of liberation. Each pillar in turn rests on two sub-pillars: (1a) perception of novelty and (1b) connectedness, and (2a) a sense of spontaneity and (2b) impressions of boundedness. My dissertation research shows that fun is an experience of liberating engagement, a temporary release from psychological restriction via a hedonically engaging activity. Importantly, a digital ethnography of consumer selfies showed that compared to other positive experiences such as happiness, pride, or relaxation, fun is much more likely to be situated in commercial settings, thus substantiating the business relevance of fun. Through five experiments, I show that marketers can engineer fun by directly activating feelings of liberation through situational cues such as boundedness. Using a proprietary dataset by Brand Asset Valuator, I show that fun emerges as a major brand image attribute that is significantly related to brand preference and key financial outcomes such as revenue. Broadly, my dissertation reveals that fun leads to increased consumer well-being, independently from the meaningful, eudaimonic path toward happiness.