Motivators for adoption of photovoltaic systems at grid parity: A case study from Southern Germany

In some countries, photovoltaic (PV) technology is at a stage of development at which it can compete with conventional electricity sources in terms of electricity generation costs, i.e., grid parity. A case in point is Germany, where the PV market has reached a mature stage, the policy support has scaled down and the diffusion rate of PV systems has declined. This development raises a fundamental question: what are the motives to adopt PV systems at grid parity? The point of departure for the relevant literature has been on the impact of policy support, adopters and, recently, local solar companies. However, less attention has been paid to the motivators for adoption at grid parity. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the diffusion of PV systems, explaining the impact of policy measures, adopters and system suppliers. Anchored in an extensive and exploratory case study in Germany, we provide a context-specific explanation to the motivations to adopt PV systems at grid parity.

Alternative Cost-Effective Employee Motivators

Traditionally, the awarding of cash bonuses has been one of the primary tools utilized by organizational leaders to increase employee motivation. Recent research has indicated that cash awards may successfully motivate employees. The same research presents alternative, effective techniques that have been demonstrated to improve employee motivation and performance. Results of the 2010 Society for Human Resource Management survey highlight respondents' opinions regarding alternate employee motivators in the United States. The results strongly suggest that alternate cost-effective employee motivators may be as effective as cash rewards. The results of this Capstone will demonstrate that innovative, cost-effective methods can be used by organizations to retain employees. This paper will address specific areas of research including talent management, leadership, communication, and recognition.

Engaging Immigrants in Youth Sport Coaching: Part 2. A Qualitative Analysis of the Barriers, Facilitators and Motivators for Involvement

Although research in the area of immigrants and their physical activity patterns has been steadily growing, there is still much to learn. The purpose of this study was to identify the barriers, facilitators and motivators facing recent Canadian immigrants as they relate to involvement in coaching youth sport. The quantitative information presented in the first article of this series served as a framework for conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with 28 immigrant youth-sport coaches. Results of these interviews support the notion that there are two distinct groups of immigrant coaches - the ‘leisure-oriented coach’ (those without coaching occupational aspirations) and the ‘career-oriented coach’ (those with coaching occupational pursuits). Despite sharing several of the same barriers, facilitators and motivators, each group showed marked divergence from the other on a number of aspects in each of these three categories.

Assessing the potential of inter-organisational shared services

Shared Services (SS) involves the convergence and streamlining of an organisation’s functions to ensure timely service delivery as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a management structure designed to promote value generation, cost savings and improved service delivery by leveraging on economies of scale, the idea of SS is driven by cost reduction and improvements in quality levels of service and efficiency. Current conventional wisdom is that the potential for SS is increasing due to the increasing costs of changing systems and business requirements for organisations and in implementing and running information systems. In addition, due to commoditisation of large information systems such as enterprise systems, many common, supporting functions across organisations are becoming more similar than not, leading to an increasing overlap in processes and fuelling the notion that it is possible for organisations to derive benefits from collaborating and sharing their common services through an inter-organisational shared services (IOSS) arrangement. While there is some research on traditional SS, very little research has been done on IOSS. In particular, it is unclear what are the potential drivers and inhibitors of IOSS. As the concepts of IOSS and SS are closely related to that of Outsourcing, and their distinction is sometimes blurred, this research has the first objective of seeking a clear conceptual understanding of the differences between SS and Outsourcing (in motivators, arrangements, benefits, disadvantages, etc) and based on this conceptual understanding, the second objective of this research is to develop a decision model (Shared Services Potential model) which would aid organisations in deciding which arrangement would be more appropriate for them to adopt in pursuit of process improvements for their operations. As the context of the study is on universities in higher education sharing administrative services common to or across them and with the assumption that such services were homogenous in nature, this thesis also reports on a case study. The case study involved face to face interviews from representatives of an Australian university to explore the potential for IOSS. Our key findings suggest that it is possible for universities to share services common across them as most of them were currently using the same systems although independently.

STRATÉGÉ – Study of Transparent Recognition, Accreditation Tools and Experience in a Global Environment

Engineering graduates of today, face a working environment that assumes global mobility in the labour market. This challenge means, amongst universities worldwide, a demand to increase the globalisation of educational programs, context, and increase and support the mobility of students through mechanisms such as student exchange and double masters degrees. Engineering student mobility from Australia is low with only a few Engineering Faculties encouraging students to go internationally. This comparative study, using universities in Australia and Europe, of feedback from students who have been on exchange or proposing to go on exchange, employers and faculty addresses the motivators and barriers to student mobility and exchange from the perspectives of the university, faculty, students and employers. Recommendations will be presented on how student mobility and exchange can be improved, and mechanisms such as double Masters Degrees, dual accreditation and Erasmus Mundus 2009 – 2013 can be utilised to improve student mobility.

What value do users derive from social network applications?

Research on social networking sites like Facebook is emerging but sparse. This exploratory study investigates the value users derive from self-described ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications to their friends. The concepts of value and cool are explored in a social networking context. Our qualitative data reveals consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicate self-expression as important motivators, while males tend to use Facebook applications to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage, and uni-directional features only encourage or discourage but not both. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features and context, rather than one feature in isolation.

Exploring donation decisions: Beliefs and preferences for organ donation in Australia

We explored common beliefs and preferences for posthumous and living organ donation in Australia where organ donation rates are low and little research exists. Content analysis of discussions revealed the advantage of prolonging/saving life whereas disadvantages differed according to donation context. A range of people/groups perceived to approve and disapprove of donation were identified. Barriers for posthumous donation included a family’s objection, with the type of organ needed important for living donation. Motivators included knowledge about potential organ recipients. Donation preferences favored loved ones, with weaker preferences for recipients who were perceived as morally questionable or responsible for their illness.

Determining the psychosocial predictors of living, living-related, and posthumous organ donation

The worldwide organ shortage occurs despite people’s positive organ donation attitudes. The discrepancy between attitudes and behaviour is evident in Australia particularly, with widespread public support for organ donation but low donation and communication rates. This problem is compounded further by the paucity of theoretically based research to improve our understanding of people’s organ donation decisions. This program of research contributes to our knowledge of individual decision making processes for three aspects of organ donation: (1) posthumous (upon death) donation, (2) living donation (to a known and unknown recipient), and (3) providing consent for donation by communicating donation wishes on an organ donor consent register (registering) and discussing the donation decision with significant others (discussing). The research program used extended versions of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the Prototype/Willingness Model (PWM), incorporating additional influences (moral norm, self-identity, organ recipient prototypes), to explicate the relationship between people’s positive attitudes and low rates of organ donation behaviours. Adopting the TPB and PWM (and their extensions) as a theoretical basis overcomes several key limitations of the extant organ donation literature including the often atheoretical nature of organ donation research, thefocus on individual difference factors to construct organ donor profiles and the omission of important psychosocial influences (e.g., control perceptions, moral values) that may impact on people’s decision-making in this context. In addition, the use of the TPB and PWM adds further to our understanding of the decision making process for communicating organ donation wishes. Specifically, the extent to which people’s registering and discussing decisions may be explained by a reasoned and/or a reactive decision making pathway is examined (Stage 3) with the novel application of the TPB augmented with the social reaction pathway in the PWM. This program of research was conducted in three discrete stages: a qualitative stage (Stage 1), a quantitative stage with extended models (Stage 2), and a quantitative stage with augmented models (Stage 3). The findings of the research program are reported in nine papers which are presented according to the three aspects of organ donation examined (posthumous donation, living donation, and providing consent for donation by registering or discussing the donation preference). Stage One of the research program comprised qualitative focus groups/interviews with university students and community members (N = 54) (Papers 1 and 2). Drawing broadly on the TPB framework (Paper 1), content analysed responses revealed people’s commonly held beliefs about the advantages and disadvantages (e.g., prolonging/saving life), important people or groups (e.g., family), and barriers and motivators (e.g., a family’s objection to donation), related to living and posthumous organ donation. Guided by a PWM perspective, Paper Two identified people’s commonly held perceptions of organ donors (e.g., altruistic and giving), non-donors (e.g., self-absorbed and unaware), and transplant recipients (e.g., unfortunate, and in some cases responsible/blameworthy for their predicament). Stage Two encompassed quantitative examinations of people’s decision makingfor living (Papers 3 and 4) and posthumous (Paper 5) organ donation, and for registering and discussing donation wishes (Papers 6 to 8) to test extensions to both the TPB and PWM. Comparisons of health students’ (N = 487) motivations and willingness for living related and anonymous donation (Paper 3) revealed that a person’s donor identity, attitude, past blood donation, and knowing a posthumous donor were four common determinants of willingness, with the results highlighting students’ identification as a living donor as an important motive. An extended PWM is presented in Papers Four and Five. University students’ (N = 284) willingness for living related and anonymous donation was tested in Paper Four with attitude, subjective norm, donor prototype similarity, and moral norm (but not donor prototype favourability) predicting students’ willingness to donate organs in both living situations. Students’ and community members’ (N = 471) posthumous organ donation willingness was assessed in Paper Five with attitude, subjective norm, past behaviour, moral norm, self-identity, and prior blood donation all significantly directly predicting posthumous donation willingness, with only an indirect role for organ donor prototype evaluations. The results of two studies examining people’s decisions to register and/or discuss their organ donation wishes are reported in Paper Six. People’s (N = 24) commonly held beliefs about communicating their organ donation wishes were explored initially in a TPB based qualitative elicitation study. The TPB belief determinants of intentions to register and discuss the donation preference were then assessed for people who had not previously communicated their donation wishes (N = 123). Behavioural and normative beliefs were important determinants of registering and discussing intentions; however, control beliefs influenced people’s registering intentions only. Paper Seven represented the first empirical test of the role of organ transplant recipient prototypes (i.e., perceptions of organ transplant recipients) in people’s (N = 465) decisions to register consent for organ donation. Two factors, Substance Use and Responsibility, were identified and Responsibility predicted people’s organ donor registration status. Results demonstrated that unregistered respondents were the most likely to evaluate transplant recipients negatively. Paper Eight established the role of organ donor prototype evaluations, within an extended TPB model, in predicting students’ and community members’ registering (n = 359) and discussing (n = 282) decisions. Results supported the utility of an extended TPB and suggested a role for donor prototype evaluations in predicting people’s discussing intentions only. Strong intentions to discuss donation wishes increased the likelihood that respondents reported discussing their decision 1-month later. Stage Three of the research program comprised an examination of augmented models (Paper 9). A test of the TPB augmented with elements from the social reaction pathway in the PWM, and extensions to these models was conducted to explore whether people’s registering (N = 339) and discussing (N = 315) decisions are explained via a reasoned (intention) and/or social reaction (willingness) pathway. Results suggested that people’s decisions to communicate their organ donation wishes may be better explained via the reasoned pathway, particularly for registering consent; however, discussing also involves reactive elements. Overall, the current research program represents an important step toward clarifying the relationship between people’s positive organ donation attitudes but low rates of organ donation and communication behaviours. Support has been demonstrated for the use of extensions to two complementary theories, the TPB and PWM, which can inform future research aiming to explicate further the organ donation attitude-behaviour relationship. The focus on a range of organ donation behaviours enables the identification of key targets for future interventions encouraging people’s posthumous and living donation decisions, and communication of their organ donation preference.

Testing a belief-based intervention encouraging sun safety among adolescents in a high risk area

Objective. To provide a preliminary test of a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) belief-based intervention to increase adolescents’ sun protective behaviors in a high risk area, Queensland, Australia. Methods. In the period of October-November, 2007 and May-June, 2008, 80 adolescents (14.53 ± 0.69 years) were recruited from two secondary schools (one government and one private) in Queensland after obtaining student, parental, and school informed consent. Adolescents were allocated to either a control or intervention condition based on the class they attended. The intervention comprised three, one hour in-school sessions facilitated by Cancer Council Queensland employees with sessions covering the belief basis of the TPB (i.e., behavioral, normative, and control [barrier and motivator] sun-safe beliefs). Participants completed questionnaires assessing sun-safety beliefs, intentions, and behavior pre- and post-intervention. Repeated Measures Multivariate Analysis of Variance was used to test the effect of the intervention across time on these constructs. Results. Students completing the intervention reported stronger sun-safe normative and motivator beliefs and intentions and the performance of more sun-safe behaviors across time than those in the control condition. Conclusion. Strengthening beliefs about the approval of others and motivators for sun protection may encourage sun-safe cognitions and actions among adolescents.

An investigation of consumer acceptance of M-banking

This paper aims to identify and test the key motivators and inhibitors for consumer acceptance of mobile phone banking (M-banking), particularly those that affect the consumer’s attitude towards, and intention to use, this self-service banking technology. A web-based survey was undertaken where respondents completed a questionnaire about their perceptions of M-banking’s ease of use, usefulness, cost, risk, compatibility with their lifestyle, and their need for interaction with personnel. Correlation and hierarchical multiple regression analysis, with Sobel tests, were used to determine whether these factors influenced consumers’ attitude and intention to use M-banking.

Characteristics of utility cyclists in Queensland, Australia : an examination of the associations between individual, social and environmental factors and utility cycling

Background: Initiatives to promote utility cycling in countries like Australia and the US, which have low rates of utility cycling, may be more effective if they first target recreational cyclists. This study aimed to describe patterns of utility cycling and examine its correlates, among cyclists in Queensland, Australia. Methods: An online survey was administered to adult members of a state-based cycling community and advocacy group (n=1813). The survey asked about demographic characteristics and cycling behavior, motivators and constraints. Utility cycling patterns were described, and logistic regression modeling was used to examine associations between utility cycling and other variables. Results: Forty-seven percent of respondents reported utility cycling: most did so to commute (86%). Most journeys (83%) were >5 km. Being male, younger, employed full-time, or university-educated increased the likelihood of utility cycling (p<0.05). Perceiving cycling to be a cheap or a convenient form of transport were associated with utility cycling (p<0.05). Conclusions: The moderate rate of utility cycling among recreational cyclists highlights a potential to promote utility cycling among this group. To increase utility cycling, strategies should target female and older recreational cyclists and focus on making cycling a cheap and convenient mode of transport.

Hunters & gatherers : strategies for curriculum mapping and data collection for assurance of learning

Assurance of learning is a predominant feature in both quality enhancement and assurance in higher education. Assurance of learning is a process that articulates explicit program outcomes and standards, and systematically gathers evidence to determine the extent to which performance matches expectations. Benefits accrue to the institution through the systematic assessment of whole of program goals. Data may be used for continuous improvement, program development, and to inform external accreditation and evaluation bodies. Recent developments, including the introduction of the Tertiary Education and Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) will require universities to review the methods they use to assure learning outcomes. This project investigates two critical elements of assurance of learning: 1. the mapping of graduate attributes throughout a program; and 2. the collection of assurance of learning data. An audit was conducted with 25 of the 39 Business Schools in Australian universities to identify current methods of mapping graduate attributes and for collecting assurance of learning data across degree programs, as well as a review of the key challenges faced in these areas. Our findings indicate that external drivers like professional body accreditation (for example: Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)) and TEQSA are important motivators for assuring learning, and those who were undertaking AACSB accreditation had more robust assurance of learning systems in place. It was reassuring to see that the majority of institutions (96%) had adopted an embedding approach to assuring learning rather than opting for independent standardised testing. The main challenges that were evident were the development of sustainable processes that were not considered a burden to academic staff, and obtainment of academic buy in to the benefits of assuring learning per se rather than assurance of learning being seen as a tick box exercise. This cultural change is the real challenge in assurance of learning practice.

Why do nurses migrate? – a review of recent literature

Aim  To identify the reasons why nurses continue migrating across international borders. Background  International nurse recruitment and migration have been increasing in the last decade and recent trends show an increase in the movement of nurses between developing and developed countries, resulting in a worldwide shortage of nurses. Methods  A manual and electronic database literature search was conducted from January 2004 to May 2010. Qualitative content analysis was completed for the final 17 articles that satisfied the inclusion criteria. Results  Motivators to nurse migration were linked to financial, professional, political, social and personal factors. Although economic factors were the most commonly reported, they were not the only reason for migration. This was especially evident among nurses migrating between developed countries. Conclusion  Nurses migrate for a wide variety of reasons as they respond to push and pull factors. Implications for nursing management  It is important for nurse managers in the source countries to advocate incentives to retain nurses. In the recipient countries the number of international nurses continues to increase implying the need for more innovative ways to mentor and orientate these nurses.

Integrating complementary and alternative therapies into psychological practice : A qualitative analysis

Although complementary and alternative therapies (CATs) are utilised widely for treating psychological disorders, little research has examined psychologists' beliefs about integrating CAT into psychological practice. Six practicing psychologists and six psychology students were interviewed about their CAT integration beliefs, in particular integrating CAT into clinical practice via recommending CATs, offering referrals to CAT practitioners, or undertaking training to utilise CATs within psychological practice. Guided broadly from a theory of planned behaviour perspective, participants raised a number of costs and benefits, discussed referent groups who would influence their decisions, and suggested motivators and barriers for integration. A number of additional themes were raised, including risks, such as the possibility of litigation and the need for clear Society guidelines, as most participants were unclear about what constitutes appropriate practice. Identifying these themes serves as an important initial step to informing discussion and policy for this emerging practice issue within psychology.

Book review of Donald, S.H., & Gammack, J.G. 2007. Tourism and the Branded City : Film and Identity in the Pacific Rim. Aldershot : Ashgate.

In the decade since the destination branding literature emerged (see for example Pritchard & Morgan 1998, Dosen & Vransevic 1998), only a few books have been published. These are Morgan et al.’s (2002, 2004) edited volumes of international case studies and conceptual papers, and Baker’s (2007) practitioner perspective on branding small cities in the USA. This work by Stephanie Donald and John Gammack is the first research-based text related to destination branding, and is a welcome and timely addition to the field. In the foreword to the first issue of Place Branding and Public Policy, editor Simon Anholt (2004, p. 4) suggested “almost nobody agrees on what, exactly, branding means”, when he described place branding practice as akin to the Wild West. Indeed, this lack of theory was one of the motivators for the authors of this text. Tourism and the Branded City is part of Ashgate’s New Directions in Tourism Analysis series, edited by Dimitri Ioannides. The aim of the series is to address the gap in published theory underpinning the study of tourism, with a particular interest in non-business disciplines such as Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human and Social Geography, and Cultural Studies...