Are consumers in high-income countries complicit in labor exploitation when they buy good produced in sweatshops? To focus attention we consider cases of labor exploitation such as those of exposing workers to very high risks of irreversible diseases, for instance, by failing to provide adequate safety equipment. If I purchase a product made under such conditions, what is my part in this exploi...

The general objective of the "Rehabilitation Medicine Summit: Building Research Capacity" was to advance and promote research in medical rehabilitation by making recommendations to expand research capacity. The five elements of research capacity that guided the discussions were 1) researchers; 2) research culture, environment, and infrastructure; 3) funding; 4) partnerships; and 5) metrics. The...

This paper investigates determinants that influence on consumers’ attitudes toward nondeceptive counterfeit fashion products and behavioral intention to purchase them. The results show that brand image, social influence and previous experiences have a positive impact on consumers’ attitudes toward counterfeit fashion products. Meanwhile, personal gratification has a negative effect on counterfe...

Policy concerns arise as e-business activities become increasingly common. This paper discusses important elements of such concerns, particularly the proand anti-competitive assessment of online business-to-business (B2B) exchanges. The definition of markets, the role of quality management and communication, and joint purchasing implications within such environments are related to food distribu...

Ubiquitous IS enables novel services and business models, yet require a careful balancing of consumer privacy concerns (PC) – induced by the provision of particular sensors and information types – with functional performance in order to maximize acceptance. For the exemplary case of Usage-based Insurance (UBI), this paper presents a design science approach to the mitigation of PC under parallel...

This paper introduces and analyses the idea of the binding structure of a social interaction scheme. Binding structures are proposed as means to model the binding power that an interaction scheme imposes on agents interacting according to the scheme, in a social context. The paper considers the case of a basic interaction scheme, namely, the basic Producer-Consumer scheme, to explain the way th...

The use of multiple partial viewpoints is recommended for specification. We believe they also can be useful for devising strategies for testing. In this paper, we use Object-Z to formally specify concurrent Java components from viewpoints based on the separation of application and synchronisation concerns inherent in Java monitors. We then use the Test-Template Framework on the Object-Z viewpoi...

Background: An adequate diet contributes to health and wellbeing in older age. This is nowadays more important than ever since in industrialised countries the elderly population is growing continually. However, information regarding the consumption behaviour of older persons in Switzerland is limited. Objective: The objective of this investigation was to explore how middle-aged and elderly Swis...

A major part in the efforts to increase energy efficiency is the establishment of a smart energy grid. This is supposed to optimize power distribution and facilitate the delivery of fluctuating renewable energy. For these reasons, governments in the EU and US are pressing ahead with legislation for the introduction of smart meters into every household. The precise consumption measurements taken...