113 10 3494 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/a48b16bf334cc6207f2137161949780f.docx dded5c7634a7874343d332e375a01870 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/1ed9423f7a3fa40a3fd801270eafec1b.pdf 8de76eb6d325f13d6d660a1386a3d07f PDF Text Text Factors Affecting Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Wood industry in B&H Jasminka Ahmetasević International Burch University Bosnia And Herzegovina sppajalica@yahoo.com Erkan Ilgun International Burch University Bosnia and Herzegovina erkan.ilguen@gmail.com Abstract: This paper examines fundamental elements of competitive advantage in the wood industry. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate core factors that affect the sustainable competitive advantage in the wood industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the first phase of this research study, an importance-performance analysis was performed based on components of the sustainable competitive advantage. In the second phase, the relationships between competitive strategy, innovation, leadership and sources of competitive advantage for sustainable competitive advantage in the market were determined. What makes the profitability of the company and success? How these variables interact with each other? Their interaction was determined in the study. Additionally, in the third phase of our master's thesis, based on the above factors, we showed what makes profitability of the company. It means how a company could be successful and profitable in the long- term. Keywords: wood industry, competitive advantage, innovation, competitive strategy, success, sustainability, sources of competitive advantage, leadership, advertising, profitability. 164 �164 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2644 Title A name given to the resource Factors Affecting Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Wood industry in B&H Author Author AHMETASEVIĆ, Jasminka ILGUN, Erkan Abstract A summary of the resource. This paper examines fundamental elements of competitive advantage in the wood industry. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate core factors that affect the sustainable competitive advantage in the wood industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the first phase of this research study, an importance-performance analysis was performed based on components of the sustainable competitive advantage. In the second phase, the relationships between competitive strategy, innovation, leadership and sources of competitive advantage for sustainable competitive advantage in the market were determined. What makes the profitability of the company and success? How these variables interact with each other? Their interaction was determined in the study. Additionally, in the third phase of our master's thesis, based on the above factors, we showed what makes profitability of the company. It means how a company could be successful and profitable in the long- term. Keywords: wood industry, competitive advantage, innovation, competitive strategy, success, sustainability, sources of competitive advantage, leadership, advertising, profitability. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-04 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 2303-4564 H Social Sciences (General) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2871 Title A name given to the resource FACTORS AFFECTING SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE WOOD INDUSTRY IN B&H Author Author Ahmetašević, Jasminka Abstract A summary of the resource. This paper examines fundamental elements of the Competitive Advantage in the Wood industry. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the key factors affecting Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Wood industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the first phase of this research study, an importance-performance analysis was performed based on components of the Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the second phase, the relationships between Competitive strategy, Innovation, Leadership, Sources of Competitive Advantage, Employee education and Advertising were analyzed. Research data were received from forty-eight Wood industries. Research results show that staff of the Wood industries gives highest importance and experiential rating to the leadership, strategy and HR, while they give the lowest importance to advertising. Keywords: Wood industry, Competitive Advantage, Sustainable Competitive Strategy, Innovation, Leadership, Sources of Competitive Advantage, Employee education, Advertising. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Keywords Keywords. Thesis NonPeerReviewed L Education (General) https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/0bd045852c0ea58a11d8ef6604e4836f.pdf e9cbba86c9570baecd86837205856bd0 PDF Text Text 3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo Yusof, S.A. (2010). Globalization and the Malaysian labor market: an empirical investigation. Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development, 31 (1), 17-40. Factors Affecting The New Vehicle Registration In The Eu Countries Cumhur Erdem1, Şaban Nazlioğlu2 1Department of Economics ,Gaziosmanpaşa University, Tokat-Turkey 2Department of Econometrics, PamukkaleUniversity, Denizli-Turkey E-mails: Cumhur_erdem@yahoo.com,snazlioglu@pau.edu.tr Abstract Theobjective of this study is to determine whether economic factors (namelyprice, consumer preferences, consumer income, interest rate, fuel prices, industrial production, and trade)have any explanatory power on new vehicle registry in the EU member countries. To meet this objective, a panel cointegration analysis was applied to the panel of thirteen EU countries for the time period spanning from January 1999 to August 2010. This study concludes that while the vehicle sales in the EU are determined by the macroeconomic factors instead of the factors in the demand theory, the consumer preferences are impetuses for passenger car sales in the EU countries. Keywords: newvehicle sales, demand theory, macro economic variables, EU countries, panel cointegration, 1. INTRODUCTION Automotiveindustry has become very dynamic and competitive sectors on a global scale in recent years. Since the industry is considered as a crucial contributor to economic growth, it has been observed that most of the developed countries (such as. the USA, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and South Korea) and many of the less developed ones (such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand) have policies for becoming major players on world market by improving their own industry. Therefore, prediction of new vehicle registry is of great interest for policy makers, legislators, transport and urban planners, and traffic engineers in nations whose economies highly depend on the vehicle industry because the prediction of future vehicle registry has a vital importance in terms of forecasting national accounts as well as future energy and infrastructure requirements (Abu-Eisheh and Mannering, 2002). Predicting the new vehicle registration and having information about the determinants of the vehicle demand has also crucial importance for the strategic planning of vehicle manufacturers. The industryplays a vital role in the economies of European Union (EU) member countries, the world’s largest vehicle producer and playground for a highly competitive and innovative 468 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo industry, in terms of manufacturing, employment, exports, Rersearch&Develpment and government revenue (European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (hereafter ACEA), 2011). As of 2009,Germany is the largest vehicle producer (5.2 million units) in the EU followed by Spain, France, United Kingdom (UK), Italy, Czech Republic, and Poland (ACEA, 2011). Vehicle production and demand in most of the countries (including the EU) show upward and downward trends from time to time depending on the changes in economic conditions. Wad (2009) stated that “the effect of the global crisis came immediately with the stop for consumer credit and rapidly declining consumer confidence hitting in particular durable and expensive purchases like automobiles”. Even though 14.1 million new cars were registered in the EUby 2009, the automotive industry experienced the biggest decline in EU car sales since 1993. New passenger car registrations decreased by 9.5% compared to the pre-crisis levels of 2007 (1.6% compared to 2008) and commercial vehicle registrations declined by 32.4% compared to 2008(ACEA, 2011). Due to the significance of the vehicle industry on the economies of EU member countries, from both policy makers and manufacturers’ perspectives, there is a need to establish a policy framework that grows the automotive industry. In this context, it is important to determine the factors affecting the new vehicle registry in EU member countries. However, the empirical attempts on the determinants of the vehicle sales in the EU countries are very scarce and this gap in the literature provides room for examining the factors affecting the new vehicle sales in the EU countries. This paper thereby aims at addressing to which extent the economic factors have impact on the number of new vehicle registry in EU countries. To meet this objective, a panel data analysis was applied to the panel consisting of thirteen EU countries for the period January 1999-August 2010. 2. Literature review There are a limited number of studies in the literature related to the determinants of vehicle demand. In an early study, Abu-Eisheh and Mannering (2002) analyzed the determinants of automobile import in West Bank and their estimation and simulation results showed that population/employment, economic growth, oil prices, exchange rates, and governmental policies have relative importance on the importation of automobiles. They concluded that much of the growth in automobile ownership is determined by economic growth. Lord and Sahito (2010) analyzed whether yen-for-dollar exchange rate and gasoline prices have impact on the demand for Japanese cars in the US and found that demand for Japanese imports is positively correlated with the gasoline prices. They also found a positive relationship between the yen-for-dollar exchange rate and imports after 1988. Alper and Mumcu (2007) estimated the demand for new automobiles in Turkey and found that the origin of automobile’s country and quality have impacts on the demand for automobile in Turkey and found that the demand for new automobiles is price inelastic in the short run. Mannering (1988) conducted a study to determine how consumers in the USA value interest rates in their new car choice decisions. His findings shows that consumers tend to overvalue interest rates relative to their true worth, proving the success of interest rate incentive programs. 469 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo McManus (2007) hypothesized that there is a link between gasoline price and selling price of automobiles in the USA and to reveal the existence of this link, he regressed the aggregate automobile prices on the number of independent variables including the interest rates. He found that interest rates has negative impact on the price of automobiles and concluded that since interest rate has negative impact on the automobile sales, automobile manufacturers overcomes this effect by reducing the selling price of automobiles. Dotseyand Reid (1992)tested the effectiveness of interest rates, proxied for the monetary policy,, and oil prices in economic activity for the USA and concluded that both tight monetary policy and oil price increases are statistically related to the declines in economic activity. Beck (2003) investigated the difference in consumers' responses to changes in the price of automobiles and changes in the level of the interest rate for automobile loans in USA and found that consumers respond to price changes rather than interest rate changes when purchasing a new automobile. His estimation results showed that there is a statistically significant and negative relationship between auto-demand and both interest rate and price variables. As expected, they found a positive and statistically significant positive relationship between auto-demand and disposable income. 3. Empirical Model and Data To examine the determinant of new vehicle registrations in the EU, the demand model which is augmented with the macro-economic aggregates is described as follows: ln NVit   0  1 ln Pit   2 ln CCI it   3 yit   4 iit   5 ln FPit   6 ln IPI it   7 ln XM it   it (1) where i stands for the EU country, t refers to time period, NV is new vehicle sales, P is price of vehicles, CCI is consumer confidence indicator (consumer preferences), y is consumer’s disposable income,i is interest rate,FP is fuel prices (diesel prices for the commercial vehicles, gasoline prices for the passenger cars), IPI is industrial production, and XM is total trade. For new vehicles, four particular segments are considered in the estimations. The number of new registry for passenger cars (PC), light commercial vehicles (LCV) up to 3.5t - (excluding minibuses up to 3.5t), commercial vehicles (CV) over 3.5t - (excluding buses&coaches over 3.5t), heavy commercial vehicles (HCV) over 16t - (excluding buses&coaches over 16t) were used for the dependent variables. The independent variable price is one of the variables that represents the price of vehicles. In equation (1), the sign of the coefficient on the price is expected to be negative due to the demand theory which postulates that the quantity demanded is a negative function of the price. One of the important contributions of this study to the empirical literature is to determine the sensitivity of the new vehicles sales to the consumer confidence indicator. Consumer confidence indicators were formulated in the late 1940's by George Katona at the University of Michigan as a way to include empirical measures of consumer expectations into the models of spending and saving behavior. The demand model described above includes a measure of the consumer confidence indicator to accounts for changes in consumers’ preferences due to the current economic condition, recessions or expansions, which effect consumers' decision to buy a car. Concerning the theory of demand, this variable can be used as proxy to measure the consumers’ preferences (Beck, 2003). With regard to the expected sign of the consumer confidence indicator, 470 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo the views are not unambiguous about to what extent the consumer confidence affects the demand of a good. On the one hand, a positive relationship is expected between new vehicle registration and consumer confidence indicators due to fact that optimistic consumer confidence may encourage consumers to make large expenses and to increase the tendency for borrowing. On the other hand, pessimism may cause consumers to decrease their expenditures and to make more strategic financial decisions. The consumer income is one of the traditional determinant of a good consumed. The demand theory assumes that an increase in demand for a good is positively associated with an increase in consumer income. In this study, the growth rate of per capita income is used as a proxy for the consumer income. Another independent variable representing the price of automobiles is interest rate that is included into the model to determine whether macroeconomic instability has any explanatory power on the new vehicle registry in the EU member countries. As a durable good, it is expected that the demand for vehicles is affected by the real interest rates. Accordingly, a negative relationship between interest rate and vehicle sales is expected due to fact that higher interest rates mean higher costs of borrowing for loans. The fuel prices may be one of the important factors in explaining the fluctuations in new vehicle sales. High oil prices are expected to be negative effect on the consumer demand for the vehicles. According to Lee and Ni (2002), both the demand and supply of oil-sensitive industries are affected after an oil price shock. They also emphasized that the vehicle industry is negatively affected by oil price shocks and that the long run effects of oil price shocks will results in a weakening demand for full-size cars or opting for alternative means of transportation. It was hypothesized that worldwide economic conditions are expected to have impact on demand for commercial vehicles. For the commercial vehicles, industrial production index and trade volume were added to the models as independent variables to determine the effectiveness of economic activities on vehicle demand. It is expected that there is a positive relationship between demand for commercial vehicles and both industrial production and trade volume. It is expected that the demand for the vehicles is expected to rise as the cargo transportation increases with the growing economic activity in the sectors such as the construction, agriculture, chemical, mining and service. This study covers the monthly data spanning from January 1999 to August 2010 for 13 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom). The starting date of time period and the crosssectional dimension of the panel are restricted to availability of the variables in concern for the EU countries. The monthly data for the new registration of vehicles, short-term interest rates, harmonized index of consumer prices were obtained from EUROSTAT databank. To reflect relative movements in the average aggregate price level for new vehicles, motorcars inflation is measured by harmonized index of consumer prices (2005=100). We observe seasonal cycles in the passenger cars and therefore the seasonally adjusted observations for this variable were used in the analysis. The monthly observations for the consumer confidence indicators, industrial production index, trade volume in goods were obtained from OECD databank. Trade volume (export+import) was indexed by taking January 2005=100 as the base time. Since monthly data for the growth rate of per capita income is not available for the countries in hand, the quarterly 471 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo data for the growth rate of per capita income retrieved from OECD database and was transformed to monthly observations by means of cubic spline interpolation method (PROC EXPAND procedure in SAS). The fuel prices are measured as including taxes and duties and were obtained from European Commission Oil Bulletin. 4. Methods and Findings In order to search for the long-run relations among the new vehicle sales and their determinants in equation (1), this study utilizes panel cointegration methods. The justification behind the use of panel cointegration analysis is due to the fact that panel data methods are more powerful than times series analysis since the panel data gets additional information from the cross-sectional dimension in addition to the time series dimension. In the first step of our empirical analysis, unit root properties of the series are investigated via four panel unit root tests developed by Breitung (2000), Levin et al. (2000), Im et al. (2003), and Hadri (2000). The panel unit root analysis indicates that while the variables of interest have unit root in their level forms, they are stationary in the fist-difference form76. The unit root analysis therefore implies that the variables may be cointegrated in the long-run, which provide a room to continue the empirical analysis with the examination of the cointegration properties of the variables. To analyze the existence of the long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables in question, several panel cointegration tests are developed in McKoskey and Kao (1998), Kao (1999), Pedroni (1999). The test of McKoskey and Kao (1998) and of Kao (1999) strictly assumes a homogenous panel cointegration vector for the panel. Pedroni (1999) relaxes this assumption by allowing heterogeneous cointegration vectors among cross-sectional units of the panel. To test for the null of no-cointegration in the panel, Pedroni (1999) developed the seven cointegration statistics which are asymptotically distributed as standard normal77. First, four statistics are based on the within-dimension approach which pools the autoregressive coefficient across different members for the unit root tests on the estimated residuals. The next three statistics are based on the between-dimension approach which averages the individually estimated coefficients for each member in the panel. The results from the panel cointegration tests are reported in Table 1. The findings strongly support that the new sales of commercial vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and heavy commercial vehicles in the EU are cointegrated with the prices, the consumer confidence index, the interest rate, the real income growth, the diesel prices, the industrial production, and the trade 76See Pedroni (1999) for further details and mathematical representation of the statistics. 77Single-family homes are unattached houses and townhouses, including individually owned and operated housing units as well as single-family townhouse condominiums. Currently, some 66 percent of all U.S. housing consists of single or one-family homes (Listokin, D. and Burchell, R.W., Housing (shelter), Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD], Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008). 472 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo volume. Similarly, the passenger car sales tend to be move together in line with the changes in the prices, the consumer confidence index, interest rate, the consumer income, and the gasoline prices. The existence of the cointegration relations is also implies that the short-run deviations from the steady-state equilibrium in the estimated demand models for the vehicles are corrected over time. Accordingly, the policy makers in the EU countries may not quickly react to the shortterm shocks to the new vehicle sales. Table 1: Results for panel cointegration tests Statistic Commercial vehicles (CV) Light commercial vehicles (LCV) Heavy commercial vehicles (HCV) Passenger Cars (PC) 6.02 -29.37 -30.71 -28.24 6.42 -21.94 -24.80 -22.14 5.92 -28.30 -29.52 -27.69 12.92 -27.37 -29.19 -22.99 -30.48 -35.20 -32.05 -23.79 -29.68 -26.88 -29.28 -33.64 -31.29 -28.63 -31.81 -27.01 Within-dimension Panel v-stat Panel rho-stat Panel pp-stat Panel adf-stat Between-dimension Group rho-stat Group pp-stat Group adf-stat The critical value at 1 percent level of significance is 1.96 for panel v-stat and -1.96 for other statistics. All the statistics are statistically significant at 1 percent level of significance. The existence of the cointegration among the variables arises the question of to what extent the explanatory variables influence the new vehicle sales in the long-run. To estimate the long-run cointegration parameters, panel ordinary least squares (OLS), panel dynamic OLS (DOLS) and panel fully modified OLS (FMOLS) have been extensively utilized. Since these estimators are asymptotically equivalent, the choice among the methods depends upon their performance in finite samples (Banerjee, 1999). Monte Carlo experiments carried out by Kao and Chiang (2000) show that panel DOLS outperforms both panel OLS and FMOLS estimators. The recent Monte Carlo study of Wagner and Hluoskova (2009) indicate that the panel DOLS estimator outperforms both single- and system-equation panel cointegration methods. We therefore estimate the panel cointegration parameters by the group-mean panel DOLS estimator developed by Pedroni (2001). The panel DOLS estimator of Pedroni (2001) is flexible in examining crosscountry heterogeneity in the panel as well as in providing the mean value of the panel cointegrationcoefficient. Estimation of the cointegration parameters from the group-mean panel DOLS approach is computationally simple that the following regression model is estimated with the OLS for each member of the panel. yit   i   i xit  K ii  k   K ii ik xit k  it (2) wherey denotes the dependent variable, x is the matrix of the explanatory variables (lnP, lnCCI, i, y, lnFP, lnIPI, lnXM), ∆ is the first–difference operator, -K and K are leads and lags to be 473 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo N ˆ *  N 1   i  i 1 determined. The panel cointegration parameter is constructed as where i is the cointegration parameter obtained from the individual OLS estimation of equation (2). Finally, the N associated t-ratio for the panel cointegration parameter is derived as t ˆ *  N 1 / 2  t ˆ i 1 . The results for the panel cointegration estimations are reported in Table 2. Findings indicate that although some of the cointegration parameters appear to be insignificant, they have the expected signs. More specifically, while the commercial and heavy vehicles are negatively affected from interest rates, they are positively associated with a rise in the industrial production and in the total trade. For the light commercial vehicles, consumer confidence, income, and trade are found to be significantly positive. When we turn the passenger cars, it is found that while the passenger car sales are positively determined by the consumer confidence and the income,it is negatively determined by the interest rates. Table 2: Results for panel cointegration estimation Commercial vehicles lnP lnCCI I Y lnFP lnIPI lnXM -1.74 (1.47) 0.44 (0.73) -0.04 (3.04) *** 0.06 (0.95) -0.06 (0.74) 0.34 (2.38) *** 0.83 (3.40) *** Light commercial vehicles -0.26 (1.49) 1.16 (2.15) ** -0.01 (0.98) 0.05 (2.31) ** -0.43 (3.35) 0.90 (1.36) 0.30 (2.80) *** Heavy commercial Vehicles -1.23 (0.41) 0.10 (0.46) -0.05 (3.36) *** 0.03 (0.11) -0.19 (1.24) 0.46 (3.40) *** 1.20 (4.28) *** Passenger Cars -0.06 (1.28) 0.75 (1.66) * -0.01 (2.18) ** 0.02 (1.97) ** 0.05 (0.08) Figures in parentheses are the absolute t-statistics. ***, **, * indicates the significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent level of statistical significance. 5. Conclusions and Policy Implications In this study, we determine to what extent the economic variables affect the new vehicle sales in the selected EU countries over the period January 1999-August 2010 by means of panel cointegration analysis. The empirical results for the vehicles show that the vehicle sales are strongly associated with higher industrial production and trade. For the passenger cars, we find out that the passenger car sales are basically determined by the consumer preferences. The panel cointegration analysis provides important implications about the vehicle sales in the EU. First of all, the macro economic variables such as interest rate, industrial production, and trade appear to be more pronounced factors in the fluctuations of the vehicle sales. 474 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo REFERENCES Abu-Eisheh, S.A. and Mannering,F.L. (2002) Forecasting automobile demand for economies in transition: a dynamic simultaneous-equation system approach.Transportation Planning and Technology, 25(4), 311-331. ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association)(2011)The automobile industry in Europe an industry with strength and breadth.http://www.acea.be/index.php/collection/industry_and_economy_industry_report, (Accessed:02/01/2011) Alper, C.E. and Mumcu,A. (2007) Interaction between price, quality and country of origin when estimating automobile demand: the case of Turkey.Applied Economics, 39, 1789–1796. Banerjee, A. (1999) Panel data unit roots and cointegration: an overview. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 61, 607-629. Beck,E.C. (2003)Are consumers more interested reductions?Issues in Political Economy, 12,1-9. in financing incentives or price Breitung, J. (2000)The local power of some unit root tests for panel data. in B. H. Baltagi, ed., Nonstationary Panels, Panel Cointegration and Dynamic Panels, Advances in Econometrics, 15, 161-177. Dotsey, M. andReid,M.(1992) Oil shocks, monetary policy, and economic activity. Economic Review, 78, 14–27. Hadri, K. (2000)Testing for stationarity in heterogeneous panel data. Econometrics Journal, 3, 148–161. Im, K. S., Pesaran, M. H.and Shin, Y. (2003)Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels. Journal of Econometrics, 115, 53–74. Kao, C. (1999)Spurious regression and residual-based tests for cointegration in panel data. Journal of Econometrics, 90, 1-44. 475 �3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, May 31 - June 01 2012, Sarajevo Kao, C. and Chiang, M.H. (2000)On the estimation and inference of a cointegrated regression in panel data. In B.H. Baltagi, ed., Advances in Econometrics.Nonstationary Panels, Panel Cointegration and Dynamic Panels, 15, 179–222. Lee, K. andShawn,N.(2002)On the dynamic effects of oil price shocks: a study using industry level data. Journal of Monetary Economics, 49, 823-852. Levin, A., Lin, C., and Chu, C.J. (2002)Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties. Journal of Econometrics, 108, 1-24. Lord, R.A. and Saito,Y. (2010) Effect of exchange rates and gasoline prices on us imports of japanese automobiles, The International Trade Journal, 24(2), 182-208. Mannering, F. (1988) Analysis of the impact of interest rates on automobile demand. Transportation Research Record, 1116, 10-14. McCoskey, S., and Kao, C. (1998)A residual-based test of the null of cointegration in panel data.Econometric Reviews, 17, 57-84. McManus, W. (2007) The link between gasoline prices and vehicle sales.Business Economics, 42, 53-60. Pedroni, P. (1999)Critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 61(Special Issue), 653–670. Pedroni, P. (2001) Purchasing power parity tests in cointegrated panels.Review of Economics and Statistics, 83, 727-931. Wad, P. (2009) Impact of the global economic and financial crisis over the automotive industry in developing countries, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Research and Statistics Branch, Working Paper, No:16/2009. Wagner, M., Hlouskova, J. (2009) The performance of panel cointegration methods: results from a large scale simulation study, Econometric Reviews, 29(2), 182-223. 476 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1355 Title A name given to the resource Factors Affecting The New Vehicle Registration In The Eu Countries Author Author Cumhur, Erdem Abstract A summary of the resource. Theobjective of this study is to determine whether economic factors (namelyprice, consumer preferences, consumer income, interest rate, fuel prices, industrial production, and trade)have any explanatory power on new vehicle registry in the EU member countries. To meet this objective, a panel cointegration analysis was applied to the panel of thirteen EU countries for the time period spanning from January 1999 to August 2010. This study concludes that while the vehicle sales in the EU are determined by the macroeconomic factors instead of the factors in the demand theory, the consumer preferences are impetuses for passenger car sales in the EU countries. Keywords: newvehicle sales, demand theory, macro economic variables, EU countries, panel cointegration, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-31 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed H Social Sciences (General),HB Economic Theory,HG Finance,HJ Public Finance https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/4d4cb279ec5406a6d9c5789e61709418.pdf 052351cb45b6da17f6158b98d1ed117c PDF Text Text International Conference on Economic and Social Studies, 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo Factors Influencing Buying Behavior on Daily Deal Sites in Turkey Hilal Asil Fatih University, İstanbul, Turkey hilalasil@gmail.com Hilal Özen İstanbul University, İstanbul, Turkey hilalasil@fatih.edu.tr The Internet is experiencing a new fashion in the last two years. Daily deal sites have become popular also in Turkey like many other countries. They provide daily discounted offers to the customers for various items. Most of the people look at those sites for discounts before they start to work. This new way of shopping becomes almost a habit for them. Those sites are nearly a part of our daily lives. But, this means not that every person using the Internet for shopping purposes prefers daily deal sites for purchasing goods and services. There are some behavioral differences between customers. The factors that initiate the buying process differ across customers. This study will try to investigate the factors that influence Turkish consumers’ buying behaviors and satisfaction from daily deal sites in Turkey. A model is proposed of the buying process in the online shopping environment. Mostly price related constructs and the impulse buying tendencies of online consumers will be used as predictors of buying behavior. Satisfaction from daily deal sites is held a result of buying behavior. Hypotheses will be developed according to the effects of the factors on buying behavior and satisfaction from daily deal sites. The hypotheses will be tested using multiple regression analysis. A survey will be held through online daily deal site shoppers in Turkey who bought at least one item using those sites in the last three months. Findings of the study will be useful both for the academics and online retailers. Keywords: Daily Deal Sites, Online Shopping, Turkey, Multiple Regressions 157 � https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/2ed56d7f1d7a8e7b8cc77c4c13e0dc17.docx 8374eb99dfde7753f1163e7672857cfe https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/34fa4a6d06b352a2b7b33f5470812787.pdf 7549e0502fad81cf5241ead84f5f2192 PDF Text Text International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo Factors Influencing Buying Behavior on Daily Deal Sites in Turkey Hilal Asil Fatih University, İstanbul, Turkey hilalasil@fatih.edu.tr Hilal Özen Istanbul University, İstanbul, Turkey hilaloz@istanbul.edu.tr Abstract The Internet is experiencing a new fashion in the last two years. Daily deal sites have become popular also in Turkey like many other countries. They provide daily discounted offers to the customers for various items. Most of the people look at those sites for discounts before they start to work. This new way of shopping becomes almost a habit for them. Those sites are nearly a part of our daily lives. But, this means not that every person using the Internet for shopping purposes prefers daily deal sites for purchasing goods and services. There are some behavioral differences between customers. The factors that initiate the buying process differ across customers. This study will try to investigate the factors that influence Turkish consumers’ buying behaviors and satisfaction from daily deal sites in Turkey. A model is proposed of the buying process in the online shopping environment. Mostly price related constructs and the impulse buying tendencies of online consumers will be used as predictors of buying behavior. Satisfaction from daily deal sites is held a result of buying behavior. Hypotheses will be developed according to the effects of the factors on buying behavior and satisfaction from daily deal sites. The hypotheses will be tested using multiple regression analysis. A survey will be held through online daily deal site shoppers in Turkey who bought at least one item using those sites in the last three months. Findings of the study will be useful both for the academics and online retailers. Keywords:Daily Deal Sites; Online Shopping; Turkey; Multiple Regression. Introduction The rapid change in the information and communication technologies today made consumers begin to spend much more time on the Internet. Hence, the number of the consumers’ online shopping activities is increasing day by day. According to the Interbank Card Center (BKM) data, e-commerce in Turkey has grown14% in 2013 compared to the same period in 2012 (BKM, 2013). On the other side, thisrevolution of the Internet has also forced organizations to adapt their marketing, sale, distribution and promotion efforts into the online environment. For retailers, these platforms represent a new marketing channel to promote their products and services and to attract new customers (Krasnova et al., 2013). Parallel to the developments in e-commerce, daily deal sites have become the latest Internet enthusiasm, providing discounted offers to customers for various items and have contributed to the transformation of the online shopping. This new concept is a growing 1 �International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo figure as a subset of online shopping, which has been also named as “private shopping” or “exclusive shopping” and it is really like a closed loop at which only members can take the advantage of deep discounts and high-end brands (Baybars and Ustundagli, 2011). Membership is free, but in some cases to become a member to one of the deal sites a person needs to be invited by another member. There are a number of daily deal websites where users have to sign up to be able to buy products at high discounts. Markafoni is the first website which applied the daily deal model in Turkey, Trendyol and Limango are the followers in the Turkish online market.After those three firms, the number and variety of daily deal sites are increasing continuously (Ekonomist, 2011). Despite the rapid development of the private shopping industry, research in this area appears to be insufficient. Thus, this paper represents an attempt to find out factors affecting consumers’ shopping behaviors and their satisfaction from daily deal sites, using a combination of data analysis and modeling. Conceptual Background Coupons and the promotions are widely studied by academics in the literature, but limited research exists about daily deal sites which is also a new form of price promotion (Kimes and Dholakia, 2011). Several concepts from the promotions literature are relevant to the study of daily deals. Among these, consumers’ price consciousness, price mavenism, sale proneness, coupon proneness which is price related constructs and impulse buying tendency were examined in the context of this study. Price Consciousness Price consciousness is "the degree to which the consumer focuses exclusively on paying low prices" (Lichtenstein et al., 1993; p. 235). The Internet itself is a very convenient channel for price conscious consumers; because it reduces the search costs by providing rapid access to information about products (Girard et al., 2003). Daily deal sites also provide low price opportunities to customers. Price conscious consumers have a tendency to find cheaper items and reduce their search cost. So, they may be more willing to shop from daily deal sites. Therefore, it is expected in this study that price consciousness has a positive effect on buying behaviors of online consumers. H1: Price consciousness is positively associated with buying behavior from online daily deal sites. Price Mavenism Some of the consumers may have a desire to be perceived as a "price maven" in their social environment (Lichtenstein et al., 1993). By the definition provided by Yu (2008; 67), price mavenism is explained as “the degree towhich an individual is a source for price information formany kinds of products and places to shop for the lowestprices”. Price mavenism concept could be accepted as the narrow interpretation of the market mavenism concept (Moore et al., 2003). Because, where market mavens are known as a market expert, price mavens are only focused on price information in a market. Price mavens are mostly concerned with low price information in the market so that s/he could share this with others. So, similar with price consciousness, price maven consumers could be more willing to shop from daily deal sites that are mostly popular with low prices. It is expected 2 �International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo in this study that price mavenism has a positive effect on buying behaviors of online consumers. H2: Price mavenism is positively associated with buying behavior from online daily deal sites. Impulsive Buying Tendency When consumers see an offer in the morning in a daily deal site they could buy the item without thinking. In a study held by Sharma and Khattri (2013) they also found that most of the e-shopping of the deals is taking place on impulse. So, the shopping made from daily deal sites may be strongly related to impulse buying tendencies of consumers. This study is also expecting a high relationship between those two constructs. H3:Impulsive buying tendency is positively associated with buying behavior from online daily deal sites. Sale Proneness Being on sale could be sometimes the foremost important reason for a consumer in order to decide to buy a product. Yu (2008; p. 67) defined sale proneness as “"an increased propensity to respond to a purchase offer when the price is presented in a discounted form”. Lichtenstein, Ridgway and Netemeyer (1993) stated in their study that people perceive sale prices more valuable than an equivalent price that is not presented in sale form. The buying intentions of consumers and being sale prone was found to be positively correlated in the literature (Alford and Biswas, 2002). In this study, it is also expected that sale proneness has a positive effect on buying behaviors of online consumers. H4: Sale proneness is positively associated with buying behavior from online daily deal sites. Coupon Proneness Coupons are important promotional tools in some product categories (Swaminathan, Bawa, 2005). They are also being used in daily deal sites in order to attract consumers. When they are offered a discount coupon after entering the website they become prone to use this coupon. So, consumers who respond to coupon offers are called as “coupon prone” consumers (Lichtenstein et al., 1990). Coupon proneness has a very similar rationale to that for sale proneness and suggests that the perception of the price cue may also be related to the form in which it is presented (Lichtenstein et al., 1993, p. 235). Coupon proneness is like sale proneness and is consistent with the negative role of price which means that higher prices result in lower purchases (Alford and Biswas, 2002). Lichtenstein et al. (1990) define coupon proneness as “increased propensity to respond to a purchase offer because the coupon form of the offer positively affects purchase evaluations”. This study is claims that coupon proneness has also a positive effect on buying behavior. H5: Coupon proneness is positively associated with buying behavior from online daily deal sites. 3 �International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo Satisfaction The satisfaction concept has an important position in marketing practice (Ho and Wu, 1999). Satisfaction from a retailer refers to consumers’ overall evaluation of the organization based on their experiences with the organization (Park and Kim, 2003, p.18). When the consumers are dissatisfied after a purchase behavior, they generally do not want to try the same experience again from the same retailer or e-tailer. So, it can be said that satisfaction is a key component for designing an online retail store (Liu et al., 2008). In order to make customers repeat the purchase behavior e-tailers should try to satisfy them. So, it is expected in this study that buying behavior has a positive effect on satisfaction. H6: Buying behavior is positively associated with satisfaction from online daily deal sites. Research Methodology This study tries to analyze the effects of price related constructs and impulse buying tendencies of online consumers on their buying behaviors from daily deal sites in Turkey. Besides the effect of buying behavior on satisfaction will also be investigated. Figure 1: Research Model Price Consciousness Price Mavenism Impulse Buying Tendency Buying Behavior from Daily Deal Sites Sale Proneness Coupon Proneness 4 Satisfaction from Daily Deal Sites �International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo In order to test the research model, an online survey will be conducted. Respondents of the survey will be online consumers in Turkey that have bought a service or a product from an online daily deal site in Turkey in the last three months. A sample size of 400 online consumers is targeted. The price related constructs which are price consciousness’s, price mavenism, sale proneness and coupon proneness will be measured using multiple items, five-point, Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Similarly impulse buying tendency and satisfaction from online daily deal sites will also be measured by multiple items. Buying behavior from online daily deal sites will be measured by asking the amount of money spent and the number of purchases made from an online daily deal site in the last three months. The respondents’ demographic profiles (i.e. gender, age, income level, education) will be also included in the survey. After collecting the data, first of all the reliabilities and validities of the variables will be analyzed. Multiple regression analysis is chosen in order to analyze the causal relationship among variables in the research model. Those analyses will be held with the help of SPSS 18 statistical program. References Alforda, Bruce L. and Abhijit Biswas (2002), “The effects of discount level, price consciousness and sale proneness on consumers’ price perception and behavioral intentions”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 55, pp. 775– 783. Baybars, Miray and Elif Ustundagli (2011), “Attitudes toward Online Shopping from the Aspects of Personal Characteristics and Shopping Motive through a Developing Concept: Private Shopping”, International Journal of Business and Management Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 201-210. BKM (2013), The Interbank Card Center Report, http://www.bkm.com.tr/bkmen/istatistik/sanal_pos_ile_yapilan_eticaret_islemleri.asp Available at: Ekonomist (2011), “e-Ticarette yeni trend tek ürüne odaklanmak”, Available at: http://www.ekonomist.com.tr/eticarette-yeni-trend-tek-urune-odaklanmakhaberler/2491.aspx Girard, Tulay, Pradeep Korgaonkar, and Ronnie Silverblatt (2003), “Relationship Of Type Of Product, Shopping Orientations, and Demographics with Preference for Shopping on the Internet”, Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 101-120. Ho, Chin-Fu and Wen-Hsiung Wu (1999), “Antecedents of Customer Satisfaction on the Internet: An Empirical Study of Online Shopping”, Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Kimes, Sherly E. and Utpal M. Dholakia (2011), “Customer response to restaurant daily deals”, SSRN eLibrary. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1925932. 5 �International Conference on Economic and Social Studies (ICESoS’13), 10-11 May, 2013, Sarajevo Krasnova, Hanna, Natasha F. Veltri, Klaus Spengler, and Oliver Günther (2013), “ “Deal of the Day” Platforms: What Drives Consumer Loyalty?” Business & Information Systems Engineering. Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-013-0268-2# Lichtenstein, Donald R., Richard G. Netemeyer, and Scot Burton (1990), “Distinguishing Coupon Proneness From Value Consciousness: An Acquisition-Transaction Utility Theory Perspective”, Journal of Marketing Vol. 54, pp. 54-67. Lichtenstein, Donald R., Nancy M. Ridgway, and Richard G. Netemeyer (1993), “Price Perceptions and Consumer Shopping Behavior: A Field Study”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 30, pp. 234-45. Liu, Xia, Mengqiao He, Fang Gao and Peihong Xie (2008), “An empirical study of online shopping customer satisfaction in China: a holistic perspective”, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 36 No. 11, pp. 919-940. Moore, Marguerite, Karen McGowan Kennedy, and Ann Fairhurst, (2003), “Cross-cultural equivalence of price perceptions between US and Polish consumers”, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 268–279. Park, Chung-Hoon and Young-Gul Kim, (2003), “Identifying key factors affecting consumer purchase behavior in an online shopping context”, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 16-29 Sharma, Nidhi Vishnoi, and Varsha Khattri (2013), “Study of online shopping behavior and its impact on online deal websites”, Asian Journal of Management Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 394-405. Swaminathan, Srinivasan and Kapil Bawa (2005), “Category-specific coupon proneness: The impact of individual characteristics and category-specific variables”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 81, No. 3, pp. 205–214 Yu, Shu-Fen (2008), “Price perception of online airline ticket shoppers”, Journal of Air Transport Management, Vol. 14, pp. 66–69. 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1611 Title A name given to the resource Factors Influencing Buying Behavior on Daily Deal Sites in Turkey Author Author ASIL, Hilal OZEN, Hilal Abstract A summary of the resource. The Internet is experiencing a new fashion in the last two years. Daily deal sites have become popular also in Turkey like many other countries. They provide daily discounted offers to the customers for various items. Most of the people look at those sites for discounts before they start to work. This new way of shopping becomes almost a habit for them. Those sites are nearly a part of our daily lives. But, this means not that every person using the Internet for shopping purposes prefers daily deal sites for purchasing goods and services. There are some behavioral differences between customers. The factors that initiate the buying process differ across customers. This study will try to investigate the factors that influence Turkish consumers’ buying behaviors and satisfaction from daily deal sites in Turkey. A model is proposed of the buying process in the online shopping environment. Mostly price related constructs and the impulse buying tendencies of online consumers will be used as predictors of buying behavior. Satisfaction from daily deal sites is held a result of buying behavior. Hypotheses will be developed according to the effects of the factors on buying behavior and satisfaction from daily deal sites. The hypotheses will be tested using multiple regression analysis. A survey will be held through online daily deal site shoppers in Turkey who bought at least one item using those sites in the last three months. Findings of the study will be useful both for the academics and online retailers. Keywords: Daily Deal Sites, Online Shopping, Turkey, Multiple Regressions Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-10 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 978-9958-834-23-3 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/882457187ecea13a507ea75c383980d2.docx 3ebd7f3afb0ab67a1aa541e279e7fdbd https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/70d7332f70c0cb5c6072cb32840ebecd.pdf ebc83c67b7b9398f9d56c8b4d1b162f2 PDF Text Text Factors of E-Business Success: Comparative Analysis of Pik.Ba and Market.Ba Tarik Prušćanović International Burch University Bosnia and Herzegovina pruscanovic@hotmail.com Meliha Handžić International Burch University Bosnia and Herzegovina meliha.handzic@ibu.edu.ba Abstract: This study aims to provide a comparative analysis of two e-businesses operating in sales and marketing sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina: pik.ba and market.ba. The first one is highly successful and the other one is struggling to stay in business. The present study will try to determine key differentiating factors that contributed to the current status of these two ebusinesses. A survey of customers’ perceptions and attitudes towards these e-businesses, as well as their purchasing behaviors will be examined in order to detect any potential differences and reasons behind those differences. It is expected that an improved understanding of the identified e-business success factors will help to improve e-business design functionality, usability and aesthetics. This should lead to the enhanced customer satisfaction and the ultimate business success. Keywords: e-business, e-commerce, sales, marketing, purchasing behavior. 170 �170 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2650 Title A name given to the resource Factors of E-Business Success: Comparative Analysis of Pik.Ba and Market.Ba Author Author PRUŠĆANPOVIĆ, Tarik HANDŽIĆ, Meliha Abstract A summary of the resource. This study aims to provide a comparative analysis of two e-businesses operating in sales and marketing sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina: pik.ba and market.ba. The first one is highly successful and the other one is struggling to stay in business. The present study will try to determine key differentiating factors that contributed to the current status of these two e-businesses. A survey of customers’ perceptions and attitudes towards these e-businesses, as well as their purchasing behaviors will be examined in order to detect any potential differences and reasons behind those differences. It is expected that an improved understanding of the identified e-business success factors will help to improve e-business design functionality, usability and aesthetics. This should lead to the enhanced customer satisfaction and the ultimate business success. Keywords: e-business, e-commerce, sales, marketing, purchasing behavior. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-04 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 2303-4564 H Social Sciences (General) https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/8daf0bef4d42e2143f09220c9d4a280d.pdf 4d1529a6c7432373d462e5d2eb3d9e45 PDF Text Text 1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo Factors That Affect Life Values “A Research on the Students of Suleyman Demirel University” Đlker Hüseyin ÇARIKÇI Assoc. Dr., Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey ihcarikci@iibf.sdu.edu.tr Ahmet Sait ÖZKUL asozkul@sdu.edu.tr Sebahattin TAŞ sbhttntas@hotmail.com Abstract:This study aims to determine the life values profiles of the students of Suleyman Demirel University according to demographic variables whether it changes. The theory part of the research about life values is consist of Maslow, Rokeach, Hofstede and Schwartz Value Theories. The domain of the research is 600 students from five different faculties of Suleyman Demirel University. Gungor’s Life Values scale was used for questionnaire of the research. First, the principal component analyses was applied to the scale. As a result, the life values could be collected in three factors. Later, these factors were tested with the demographic factors which were chosen. At the analyses, independent sample t test, One Way Anova and principal component analyses methods were used. Value Notion Value notion was initially explained by famous social psychologist Milton Rokeach’s (1973) expressions. Rokeach gave master assumptions about nature of human values preferential consideration in order to make description on value. These assumptions are stated as follows: 1) Total number of values owned by an individual is relatively small. 2) Individuals undertake same values with different levels. 3) Organization of values eventuated in value systems. 4) Culture, society, associations and personality of the individual are effective in development of an individual’s values. 5) Value’s importance outstands and evidently observed in every piece of social science’s spehere of interest. Rokeach defined value as “enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” on the basis of above assumptions. (Rokeach, 1973: 3,5) Geert Hofstede (1980) who made broad intercultural research on values, expressed value as “a great tendency towards preferring specific states than alternatives.”(Hofstede, 1980: 19) Shalom Schwartz (1999) who performed considerable efforts on values, describes value as, “a social actor which helps in choosing behaviours/actions, evaluating people, explaining behaviours/actions” and defines as “desirable purposes serve as guiding principles within variable importance in the lives of people” (Schwartz, 1999: 24–25) In other words, values defined as, “verbal representatives of master motivations approved by society.” (Struch and others, 2002: 16–17) Erol Gungor who is recognized by his studies on Values Psychology, defines value as, “belief respect to anything desirable or unenviable.” (Gungor, 2000: 27) Schwart defines the properties of values as follows. 1) Values are beliefs. But, they are not objective/not subjective/neutral and cold beliefs, they are bonded/committed with strong feelings which are sometimes impasse/inevitable. 2) Values have motivational structure. Values contain desirable targets and they are about these targets which people show strenuous efforts to achieve. 3) Values are the concepts which are upon specific movements/behaviours and occasions. Values are metaphysical targets. This metaphysical structure differentiates values from concepts like norms and attitiudes mostly related to special movements, objects or occasions. 4) Values lead in evaluating and selecting events, people, behaviour patterns and movements. This case is the indicator of values serving as leading standards and criterias. 488 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo 5) Values are arranged/lined up by comparative importance of a condition to another. These lined up values network yields to value priorities to be formed. People’s value figure is a steady system of value priorities which defines/describes/characterized them individually. Values’ hierarchical feature differentiate themselves from norms and attitudes. (Schwartz, 2007) Value Theories Leading life theorists can be listed as, Abraham Maslow, Milton Rokeach, Geert Hofstede and Shalom Schwartz. Maslow told that needs and values are in relation one another hierarchical and developmental in terms of power and priority. According to Maslow, needs are values. He said that the only value that every single person wants to attain is to actualize oneself. According to Maslow’s postulate, if the needs at lower levels are met/satisfied, the higher needs are conspicuous. As it is specified above, together with the thought Maslow had that the condition that person is in at that moment without realising a new need is the most important need while he was representing that some of the factors may influence for good. (Oishi and others, 1999: 981; Malka and Chatman, 2003: 744) Rokeach emphasized that values can be categorized as instrumental and terminal. According to Rokeach, terminal values are classified as individual-centric/subjective (intrapersonal) values and societycentric/social (interpersonal) values. He specified that this classification that he spoke out can be in the form of interpersonal and transpersonal, and he specified the distinction of these two forms, as an example; personal purpose expressions like person’s peace of mind and salvation are transpersonal values, on the other hand, communal purpose expressions like world peace and fellowship are interpersonal values. (Rokeach, 1973: 7-8) According to Hofstede, values also have two features; intensity (importance level) and direction (what it implies). He expressed that if an individual accepts a value, these features have great importance to respond the questions in the subject of how much this value is important for him and to what level it is suitable for that individual. According to Hofstede, reason for the individual to determine some behaviours as good and some as bad is resulting from the characteristic of the values’ direction/orientation and people differentiate in terms of intensity or direction or both. Hofstede set off this with an example. According to him, the money is important for the one who heeds/adopts Holy Book-Bible (intensity), nonetheless having less is important than having a lot of (Direction). According to present day’s values, money is still important (Intensity), but it is important that the money is a lot not the less (Direction). However, money is no consideration for some people (Intensity). (Hofstede, 1980: 20) Schwartz told that the content which abstracts values are the motivational purpose types that values signify, and he assumed that value types result from three universal requirements. He declared these basic assumptions as, 1) Biologic reasoned basic requirements of individudal’s organism, 2) Social interaction requirements among individuals, 3) Social requirements which provide continuity and affluence of societies and groups (Roccas and others, 2002: 790) As a reply to the question, “What are the basic contents of the values?”, Schwartz expressed that universal requirements of human existence form the basis of the values. (Bardi and Schwartz, 2003: 1208) Schwartz expressed that societies and individuals represent their universal requirements consciously which they should overcome. (Ros and others, 1999: 51) Students’ Point of Vıew on Life and Work Values Life values of the students, who have many expectations from daily life and working life, is the main subject of the research. In this study, life values of university students were tried to be profiled and the subject of which values the students give the most importance was accentuated. Model of the below study’s hypothesis is seen as: Model of Research Hypothesis Demographic Factors Life Values Gender Ideal Values High School Faculty Belief Values Class Birth Place Economic Values Resident Area 489 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo Cosmos of the research is Undergraduate and Associate Degree students of Suleyman Demirel University in 2006–2007 Fall and Spring Semester. %1-%2 of the students of Suleyman Demirel University participated in this research. A fixed number of scale of Life and Work Values handed out to 750 students with the criteria of academic unit (Faculty/MYO) and gender differences and 600 of them filled out the survey and took part in the implementation. Because the non-proportional quota sampling model has been applied, 120 each person has been selected from each faculty. 60 each person from both first and senior classes from each faculty has been selected. 300 each person has been selected as in equal for the number of female and male students. Findings of the Research 1. Reliability Analysis: Reliability coefficient for life values scale in Cronbach-Alpha personal consistency analysis was 0,8295 and N: 573. 2. Life Values Factor Analysis According to the results obtained from life values scale, factors were formed and they were called upon the predominance of the topics. Calling of Life Values Factors Factor 1: Ideal Values (Total Variance Contribution: % 26,088) 1) Provide equity 2) Fight for Independence 3) World in which ignorance purified 4) Help People Factor 2: Belief Values (Total Variance Contribution: % 22,900) 1) Purification of sins 2) Achieve eternity-beyond 3) Peace in conscience Factor 3: Economic Values (Total Variance Contribution: % 16,728) 1) Economic independency 2) Live in easy circumstances As it is stated at the first factor, political and notional statements that person wants to do/achieve/fulfill priority consideration in life, and in general, because it reflects the ideals not the realities first factor is called as Ideal Values. Because the second factor emphasizes the spiritual feelings and belief dimension of an individual, it is called as Belief Values. In the last factor, individual’s eagerness to economic independency and desire to live in easy circumstances to be monitored so it is called as Economic Values. 3. Life Values of Demographic Factors In this section, whether there’s difference or not of demographic factor groups over on life value factors in terms of attitudes of students was researched. Relations between demographic factors and variables added up under the name of examined factors that were stated before with the applied analysis. All hypothesis has been developed in this context. Gender and Life Values • Gender-Ideal Values Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances F SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 490 Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Sig. 1,382 ,240 ,534 ,465 ,203 ,653 6,004 ,015 t-test for Equality of Means t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper -,704 596 ,481 -3,801E-02 5,396E-02 -,1440 6,796E-02 -,705 593,748 ,481 -3,801E-02 5,395E-02 -,1440 6,794E-02 -,260 593 ,795 -1,247E-02 4,788E-02 -,1065 8,157E-02 -,261 588,959 ,795 -1,247E-02 4,788E-02 -,1065 8,156E-02 ,506 595 ,613 2,454E-02 4,854E-02 -7,08E-02 ,1199 ,506 590,318 ,613 2,454E-02 4,853E-02 -7,08E-02 ,1199 1,420 596 ,156 6,893E-02 4,854E-02 -2,64E-02 ,1642 1,419 581,009 ,156 6,893E-02 4,856E-02 -2,65E-02 ,1643 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo Sig. (2-tailed) values of all variables are above 0,05. This case shows that no difference is noted in attitudes of students towards ideal values among gender groups. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per gender groups.” is accepted. Furthermore, the result of “Gender groups did not give rise to changes of attitudes in belief and economic values” is seen by the applied analysis. High School which was Graduated and Life Values • High School – Ideal Values ANOVA SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 6,160 253,472 259,632 1,229 201,050 202,279 ,703 208,604 209,307 1,262 209,347 210,609 df 6 591 597 6 588 594 6 590 596 6 591 597 Mean Square 1,027 ,429 F 2,394 Sig. ,027 ,205 ,342 ,599 ,731 ,117 ,354 ,331 ,920 ,210 ,354 ,594 ,736 Sig. values of all variables except first one are above 0,05. No difference is noted in attitudes of students towards ideal values among high school groups. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per high school groups.” is accepted. • High School-Belief Values ANOVA DINI1 DINI2 AHLAKI2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 10,483 328,097 338,579 9,348 448,403 457,750 7,672 210,150 217,822 df 6 585 591 6 586 592 6 588 594 Mean Square 1,747 ,561 F 3,115 Sig. ,005 1,558 ,765 2,036 ,059 1,279 ,357 3,578 ,002 Sig. values of all variables except variable DINI2 are below 0,05 at the table. This shows that there is difference in attitudes of high school groups towards belief value variables. Graduates of Regular High School, Super High School, High School in English language, Engineering High School are more sensitive than Science High School graduates as per belief value factor variables. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s difference in attitudes of SDU students towards belief value variables as per high school groups.” is accepted. • High School-Economic Values 491 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo ANOVA EKONOMK1 EKONOMK2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 2,248 417,333 419,581 1,968 255,379 257,346 df 6 590 596 6 591 597 Mean Square ,375 ,707 F ,530 Sig. ,786 ,328 ,432 ,759 ,602 Sig. values of all variables are above 0,05. This shows that there is no difference in attitudes of high school groups towards economic value variables. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards economic value variables as per high school groups.” is accepted. Faculty and Life Values • Faculty-Ideal Values ANOVA SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 Between Groups Sum of Squares 3,905 df 4 Mean Square ,976 ,431 Within Groups 255,728 593 Total 259,632 597 3,782 4 ,945 Within Groups 198,497 590 ,336 Total 202,279 594 3,871 4 ,968 Within Groups 205,435 592 ,347 Total 209,307 596 Between Groups Between Groups Between Groups 2,229 4 ,557 Within Groups 208,379 593 ,351 Total 210,609 597 F 2,264 Sig. ,061 2,810 ,025 2,789 ,026 1,586 ,176 Sig. value of two variables is above 0,05 and for two of them it is below 0,05 at the table. When the analysis checked, no difference is noted in attitudes towards ideal values as per faculty groups. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per faculty groups.” is accepted. • Faculty-Belief Values ANOVA DINI1 DINI2 AHLAKI2 492 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 2,231 336,348 338,579 7,367 450,383 457,750 5,032 212,790 217,822 df 4 587 591 4 588 592 4 590 594 Mean Square ,558 ,573 F ,973 Sig. ,421 1,842 ,766 2,405 ,049 1,258 ,361 3,488 ,008 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo Sig. value of two variables is below 0,05 and one variable’s value is above 0,05 at the table. This shows that there is difference predominantly in belief values factors among faculty groups. Students of Engineering Faculty and Economics and Business Administration Faculty are more sensitive than the students of Technical Education Faculty and students of Business College are more sensitive than students of Engineering Faculty. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s difference in attitudes of SDU students towards belief value variables as per faculty groups.” is accepted. • Faculty-Economic Values ANOVA EKONOMK1 EKONOMK2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 4,487 415,094 419,581 3,328 254,018 257,346 df 4 592 596 4 593 597 Mean Square 1,122 ,701 F 1,600 Sig. ,173 ,832 ,428 1,942 ,102 One variable’s Sig. value is below 0,5 and other is above 0,05 at the table. According to the results of the analysis, a significant difference is not observed among faculty groups. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards economic value variables as per faculty groups.” is accepted. Class and Life Values • Class-Ideal Values Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances F SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed 1,038 ,040 2,746 ,481 Sig. ,309 ,841 ,098 ,488 t-test for Equality of Means t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper ,659 596 ,510 3,557E-02 5,396E-02 -7,04E-02 ,1415 ,659 593,729 ,510 3,557E-02 5,397E-02 -7,04E-02 ,1416 -,120 593 ,904 -5,751E-03 4,789E-02 -9,98E-02 8,830E-02 -,120 587,208 ,904 -5,751E-03 4,789E-02 -9,98E-02 8,831E-02 -,737 595 ,462 -3,576E-02 4,853E-02 -,1311 5,955E-02 -,737 591,151 ,461 -3,576E-02 4,852E-02 -,1310 5,953E-02 ,317 596 ,751 1,541E-02 4,861E-02 -8,01E-02 ,1109 ,317 590,939 ,751 1,541E-02 4,863E-02 -8,01E-02 ,1109 Attitude difference is not noted between first classes and senior(last) classes for ideal values at the table. Because all p values are above 0,05 and their group average is so close to each other. This case represents that class groups do not set forth different attitudes among ideal value variables. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per class groups.” is accepted. 493 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo • Class-Belief Values Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances F DINI1 DINI2 AHLAKI2 Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Sig. 4,766 3,332 1,211 t-test for Equality of Means t ,029 ,068 ,272 df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper -1,375 590 ,170 -8,549E-02 6,217E-02 -,2076 3,661E-02 -1,377 574,124 ,169 -8,549E-02 6,210E-02 -,2075 3,647E-02 -,966 591 ,334 -6,980E-02 7,222E-02 -,2116 7,205E-02 -,967 577,980 ,334 -6,980E-02 7,217E-02 -,2115 7,194E-02 -,766 593 ,444 -3,807E-02 4,967E-02 -,1356 5,948E-02 -,766 592,974 ,444 -3,807E-02 4,966E-02 -,1356 5,947E-02 Sig.(2-tailed) values of variables at the table are above 0,05. This represents that there is no attitude difference among belief value variables as per class groups. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards belief value variables as per class groups.” is accepted. • Class-Economic Values Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances F EKONOMK1 EKONOMK2 Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed ,154 11,229 Sig. ,695 ,001 t-test for Equality of Means t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper 1,795 595 ,073 ,1230 6,855E-02 -1,16E-02 ,2577 1,795 591,740 ,073 ,1230 6,856E-02 -1,16E-02 ,2577 2,609 596 ,009 ,1394 5,344E-02 3,449E-02 ,2444 2,608 583,728 ,009 ,1394 5,346E-02 3,444E-02 ,2444 First variable’s p value is above 0,05, second variable’s p value is below 0,05 at the table. When T values are checked, first classes are more sensitive to economic values than senior(last) classes. This case shows that there’s attitude difference towards economic values among class groups. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s difference in attitudes of SDU students towards economic value variables as per class groups.” is accepted. Place of Birth and Life Values • Place of Birth-Ideal Values 494 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo ANOVA SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 2,645 256,784 259,430 1,539 200,572 202,111 4,668 204,078 208,746 2,432 207,991 210,423 df 7 588 595 7 585 592 7 587 594 7 588 595 Mean Square ,378 ,437 F ,865 Sig. ,534 ,220 ,343 ,641 ,722 ,667 ,348 1,918 ,064 ,347 ,354 ,982 ,443 No difference is noted from the table among the students who came from different regions. Reason for this is, Sig. values of all statements are above 0,05. This represents that despite birth places are different, student groups do not set forth different attitude among ideal value variables. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per place of birth groups.” is accepted. Moreover, the analysis shows that there’s no difference in attitude towards belief and economic values among place of birth groups. Place to Live and Life Values • Place to Live as of now-Ideal Values ANOVA SIYASI1 SIYASI2 TEORIK2 SOSYAL2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 12,185 247,143 259,328 4,880 197,147 202,027 3,025 205,960 208,985 9,038 201,292 210,329 df 5 589 594 5 586 591 5 588 593 5 589 594 Mean Square 2,437 ,420 F 5,808 Sig. ,000 ,976 ,336 2,901 ,013 ,605 ,350 1,727 ,126 1,808 ,342 5,289 ,000 Although one variable’s Sig. value is above 0,05, three variables’ value is below 0,05. This case is the indicator of having difference predominantly in ideal values factors among place groups. Students staying at dormitories or at parent’s place are more sensitive to ideal values than the ones staying alone. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s difference in attitudes of SDU students towards ideal value variables as per place to live groups.” is accepted. 495 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo • Place to Live as of now-Belief Values ANOVA DINI1 DINI2 AHLAKI2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 6,351 331,537 337,888 28,537 426,385 454,922 3,629 213,491 217,120 df 5 583 588 5 584 589 5 586 591 Mean Square 1,270 ,569 F 2,234 Sig. ,050 5,707 ,730 7,817 ,000 ,726 ,364 1,992 ,078 First variable’s Sig. value is 0,05, although second variable’s Sig. value is below 0,05, one of those variables’ value is above 0,05. This case is the indicator of having difference in belief values factors among place to live groups. Students staying at dormitories, at parent’s place, with friends and at other places (guest house, etc.) are observed to be more sensitive than the ones staying alone. In this case, the hypothesis of “There’s difference in attitudes of SDU students towards belief value variables as per place to live groups.” is accepted. • Place to Live as of now-Economic Values ANOVA EKONOMK1 EKONOMK2 Between Groups Within Groups Total Between Groups Within Groups Total Sum of Squares 5,674 412,765 418,439 2,848 253,831 256,679 df 5 588 593 5 589 594 Mean Square 1,135 ,702 F 1,617 Sig. ,154 ,570 ,431 1,322 ,253 All variables’ Sig. values are above 0,05. This represents that students within place to live groups do not set forth different attitudes to economic value variables. As a result, the hypothesis of “There’s no difference in attitudes of SDU students towards economic value variables as per place to live groups.” is accepted. Results Acording to the results of the research, the relation with Life Values and Demographic Factors is as follows. • A result with attitude difference is not seen in terms of grouping between life values and gender factor. Male and female students do not show different attitudes in life value factors like; Ideal, Belief and Economic Values. • Where the hypothesis was set as differing in high schools types-engage very important place for education in the life of students- may have effect in value judgements, the achieved results represent the difference in grouping. As a result, there is difference in attitudes towards life values among high school groups. • According to the analysis results about life values could be commented in a different way as per the cases of faculty groups, it can be said that there is difference in point of view. Results like differing in being educated in separate faculties have effect on belief values which is a factor of life values. • According to the test results about different attitudes may occur in life values in terms of being educated in first grade or senior(last) grade, it can be said that there is difference in point of view. It is observed that there is 496 �1. International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10 2009, Sarajevo attitude difference only in economic values in terms of differences of classes of the students. Based on this case, it is observed that first grade students are more sensitive than senior(last) grade students to economic values. • A result with attitude difference is not seen in terms of grouping between life values and birth place factor. • According to the hypothesis test results, where the hypothesis was set as, if selected places where the students are staying cause any differences on their thoughts for life values or not; it is observed that there is difference in attitudes towards the subject of Ideal and Belief values which have the most highest and second highest variant value of the students’ life values. With these factors, it is observed that the students, staying at dormitory or with parents, are more sensitive to ideal values than the ones staying alone. It is observed that the students, staying at dormitory, with parents, with friends and other places (guest house, etc.) are more sensitive to the factor of belief values than the ones staying alone. It is observed that the students who are staying alone are showing dissimilar attitude than other groups in both factors. Circumstances/environment of the place to live may effect individuals’ point of view to life. As a result, the places where students are living as of now cause differences in attitudes on life values. References Bardi, A. ve Schwartz, S. H., “Values and Behavior: Strength and Structure of Relations”, Personality Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, s: 1207-1220, 2003. Güngör, E., Değerler Psikolojisi Üzerine Araştırmalar, Đkinci Baskı, Ötüken Yayınevi, Đstanbul, 1998. Hofstede, G., Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Sage Publications, London 1980. Malka, A. ve Chatman, J. A., “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Work Orientations as Moderators of the Effect of Annual Income on Subjective Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study”, Personal Social Psychology Bulletin, 29; 737, 2003. Oishi, S., Diener, E. F., Lucas, R. E. ve Suh, E. M., “Cross-Cultural Variations in Predictors of Life Satisfaction: Perspectives from Needs and Values”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, s: 980, 1999. Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H. ve Knafo, A., “The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values”, Personal Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, s: 790, 2002. Ros, M., Schwartz, S. H. VE Surkiss, S., “Basic Individual Values, Work Values and The Meaning of Work”, Applied Psychology: An International Review, 48 (1), s: 49–71, 1999. Schwartz, S. H., “A Theory of Cultural Values and Some Implications for Work”, Applied Psychology: An International Review, 48 (1), 23–47, 1999. Schwartz, S. H., “Basic Human Values”, Theory, Methods and http://dpms.csd.auth.gr/emplak/Schwartzpaper.pdf (Date: 23 Mart 2008, Saat: 00:58) Aplications, An Overview, Rokeach, M., The Nature of Human Values, Free Press, New York, 1973. Struch, N., Schwartz, S. H. ve Kloot, W. A., “Meanings of Basic Values for Women and Men: A Cross-Cultural Analysis”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 2002. 497 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 299 Title A name given to the resource Factors That Affect Life Values “A Research on the Students of Suleyman Demirel University” Author Author ÇARIKÇI, ilker Hüseyin ÖZKUL, Ahmet Sait TAS, Sebahattin Abstract A summary of the resource. This study aims to determine the life values profiles of the students of Suleyman Demirel University according to demographic variables whether it changes. The theory part of the research about life values is consist of Maslow, Rokeach, Hofstede and Schwartz Value Theories. The domain of the research is 600 students from five different faculties of Suleyman Demirel University. Gungor’s Life Values scale was used for questionnaire of the research. First, the principal component analyses was applied to the scale. As a result, the life values could be collected in three factors. Later, these factors were tested with the demographic factors which were chosen. At the analyses, independent sample t test, One Way Anova and principal component analyses methods were used. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-06 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed HB Economic Theory https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/b51ff162deeada2bfa73eee6e6bcfdfe.pdf 95ff3233f4a9e449e44a599c394bf4b6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource IT Senior Design Projects Description An account of the resource The IT Senior Design Projects (SDPs) category showcases innovative and practical final-year capstone projects developed by undergraduate and graduate students in the field of Information Technology. These projects represent the culmination of students' academic and technical expertise, demonstrating their ability to solve real-world problems through software and hardware solutions. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource FAKE REVIEW DETECTION USING NLP AND MACHINE LEARNING Author Author Ajla Beća Abstract A summary of the resource. As AI tools like large language models become more advanced, it is increasingly difficult to tell apart human-written and AI-generated product reviews. This thesis presents a system that detects AI-generated reviews and explains its predictions in a user-friendly way. Several models were tested, including Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines, GRUs, and transformer-based models like RoBERTa and DeBERTa. The best performance came from RoBERTa with label smoothing and DeBERTa-v3, both reaching 98% accuracy. While these advanced models were the most accurate, simpler models like GRU were still competitive and easier to interpret. The thesis also examined linguistic differences between real and AI-generated reviews. Real reviews were shorter, used more personal and emotional language, while AI-generated ones were longer, more structured, and often overused formal or generic phrases. A working browser extension was built as part of the project. It allows users to analyze reviews directly on websites and see predictions with basic explanations. Although the tool works well, there are still limitations, such as handling newer AI models and providing clearer feedback for non-technical users. Keywords Keywords. fake reviews, AI detection, browser extension, RoBERTa, NLP machine learning NLP sdp https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/2a722cb0edfe9b24776a07238a75dbfd.pdf 9280025f2e2dca001159bc3954ebf479 PDF Text Text Journal of Economic and Social Studies Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Muhammad Rehan Shaukat College of Applied Sciences, Rustaq Ministry of Higher Education Sultanate of Oman mohammedrehan.rus@cas.edu.om Iqtidar Ali Shah College of Applied Sciences, Salalah Ministry of Higher Education Sultanate of Oman iqtidar.sal@cas.edu.om Abstract: This research studies three aspects relating to farmers Keywords: Agriculture, readiness for the proposed mobile phone information and trade Information System, Mobile, system (MAITS) namely (a) farmer readiness to adopt newly Pakistan, Readiness, Technology proposed mobile information and trade system (b) key factors that affect farmers mobile decision support systems (c) farmers readiness to connect with mobile enterprise networks. These were investigated using a qualitative research method. After a careful selection of a set of questions, interviews were conducted with selected farmers from four cities of Pakistan including Lahore, Faisalabad, Vehari and Khanewal. The analysis revealed that farmers readiness to embrace new mobile phone information systems requires maximum level of optimism and innovativeness along with deal of the inhibiting factors which affect the readiness state; inhibiting factors in MAITS adoption comprised of uncertainty factors and current faulty existing system services; and there has been a complete consensus among the farmers to practice MAITS along with mobile decision support system because it can help them in crop planning, farm inputs (seeds, fertilizer, sprays etc), harvesting, transporting and trading. The findings of this study will provide guidance to the relevant organizations when considering readiness and barriers towards implementing of MAITS. The results of the study will give insight to many extension service and policy makers to understand what farmers actually need. JEL Classification: A1, Q00 Article History: Submitted: 6 August 2013 Resubmitted: 16 November 2013 Resubmitted: 10 December 2013 Accepted: 13 December 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JECO SS11428 191 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah Introduction Pakistan is an agriculture country with seventy percent of its population living in rural areas. The agriculture sector is an important sector contributing 50 to 60% revenue to the national economy of the country and provides 50% of the jobs (Khan, 2011). Almost half of labor earnings come from this sector and it is one of the biggest sources of foreign exchange (Akhtar, 2007). The significance of agriculture, despite the fact that country has faced adverse climate change, drought and flash flood, has witnessed remarkable growth in the past (Thomas, 2011). A tremendous increase in out-put of crops (per acre) was registered in 2009 till 2013 (Pakistan Today, 2013). Despite of good contribution of agriculture sector in the economic development of Pakistan, the farmers are facing various challenges. There are farmers who work hard throughout the year to get their crops ready, but when the crops ready for selling, they face the problem of access to the retail markets and buyers to get competitive market rates. Thus, the quality of goods and commodities are affected and farmers are often paid lower market rates for their commodities. This process puts farmers into a situation where they barely mange to pay off loans which may have been taken for crop cultivation, and they end up with making little or no profit. Another key challenge is the location of the agricultural trade markets, which are often located far away from the villages. Due to lack of availability of transportation, it is very hard for farmers to take their goods to the market. When farmers are offered a lower rate, they have no other choice but to sell their goods sometimes without making any profit. Moreover, complicated procedures affecting agriculture farming comprise, crop planning and selling in the market which requires greater attention for farmers to choose the best route for them (Amjad, 2010). Similarly, scarcity of funds for rural infrastructure which affects farm productivity and growth is also one of the challenges. Moreover, the low literacy rate in the villages where most of the farmers cannot read and write is itself a big challenge. The farmers do not know how to access information using latest technology that could improve yields to get better market rates for their harvested crops. The farmers mainly rely on conventional information systems and are not familiar with the new technologies such as use of IT, whereas farmers in developed countries have realized the importance of information driven economies. To address various challenges, the government of Pakistan has focused more on research and development network which comprises of institutions such as the 192 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Agriculture Research Institutes (ARI), Agricultural Universities (AUs) and Agriculture Development Banks (ADB). The function of these set-ups in research and extension services support activities is of immense importance. However, there has been no major technological innovation which could give fresh momentum to agricultural productivity levels. Inadequate extension services for trading, and limited access to information further broaden the gap in the adoption of specific agricultural technology which results in the poor yields of agriculture products or crops. In order to achieve the higher levels of agricultural productivity, farmers must be equipped with up-to-date information and decision support in the agricultural systems. This has often been considered as the next step in modernizing agricultural setups. The current levels of mobile phones and mobile-enabled information services in rural areas could reduce information asymmetry and allow further awareness of the core expertise within the extension services. In the Pakistani context, the impact of mobiles as a mode of providing information for farming purposes would depend on how effectively the proposed mobile phone information and trading system network is embraced by the farmers in order to attain the market information. The impact of technology can generate significant results on productivity of crops in terms of increased returns by adapting changes in best practice for cropping patterns that could improve yields and the better price information for agriculture inputs and outputs which will make the farmer’s position better. Other non-price factors such as information regarding farming inputs, seed quality, and adoption of modern techniques are also crucial to enhance productivity. In order to maintain the enhanced productivity levels and to resolve crop selling hurdles like infrastructure limitations, distribution inefficiencies and the key factors resisting the spread / gain, and considering the high usage of mobile phones in Pakistan, the Government of Pakistan has shown immense interest by applying telecom industry exemplary model of growth with agriculture sector. The agricultural model can be more modified in a way that it can use telecommunications and access its benefits. Today in Pakistan 72% out of total telephone penetration rate is 119.9 million mobile users and Pakistan Telecommunication Authorities (PTA) has begun encouraging the development of indigenous based content on mobile/information and communication technology provisions and set to offer any kind of support to benefit farmers by offering the reliable and timely information (Saadia, 2012; Aziz 2012). The objective of this study is to explore and evaluate farmer’s readiness and barriers towards implementation of newly proposed mobile information and trade system 193 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah (MAITS) in Pakistan. More specific objectives are to investigate a) farmer readiness to adopt newly proposed mobile information and trade system (MAITS) b) key factors that affect farmers' mobile decision support systems and c) farmers readiness to connect with mobile enterprise networks. The rest of the paper is organized as: after introduction, literature review has been carried out followed by methodology. In next section, analysis and discussion has been presented followed by findings. The conclusion of the study is given at the end of the paper. Literature Review Despite a huge organizational setup by the government of Pakistan, the extension services do not reach to the most of farmers because of the geographical scatter and low motivation of the extension staff serving them (Siraj, 2011). Resultantly, this affects the growth of agriculture sector. There are various government, private and multinational organizations, as well as Non Government Organizations (NGOs) working to empower the farmers by providing the necessary agricultural information tools and inputs. However, the most striking cause which the farmer experiences is the shortage of relevant information needed for taking befitting timely action. Farmers are therefore disadvantaged and are unable to benefit with the existing agricultural knowledge. To provide timely and relevant information to the farmers, the government and some ICT organizations are planning to develop mobile phone information and trading system (MAITS). The purpose of mobile information and trading system is to create an information pool allowing access to farmers and to provide them appropriate training, support and motivation, and also rewards to serve the whole community in a productive way. The use of ICT in agriculture is not a new attempt in Pakistan as almost every mobile operator has launched agriculture associated services on partial basis (Siraj, 2011). For example, Telenor mobile operator has provided “e-Mandi” (Urdu name for e-market) information which consist only the rates of each agriculture commodity (Telenor, 2009). The ICT technology still has not been diffused in agriculture in Pakistan. There is a need to evaluate the readiness of farmers towards implementation of MAITS in Pakistan. The term technology-readiness refers to people’s inclination to embrace and apply novel technologies for accomplishing goals and objectives. It can be viewed as an evaluation process of overall state of mind that determines a person’s predisposition to make use of novel ideas by using those technologies 194 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan (Parasuraman, 2000). Although new technologies are diffusing through different segments of daily life at a much faster pace than ever before but on the other hand other survey-based evidence have shown signs of growing technology adopter’s frustration and disillusionment (Alsop, 1999). Though overall benefits of technology is seen as prolonging the adoptive process - for instance, the automobile took 55 years to attain 25% share of the market, compare to the cellular telephones which took only 13 years to reach the same level of market share (Berry, 1999). The concept of ICT readiness has received very infrequent attention in the literatures. Some studies have shown the evidence of higher level of technology readiness generally leads to lower level of innovation risk with a greater successful implementation outcome (Basole and Chao, 2004). A similar argument can be use in the context of mobile ICT: higher levels of mobile ICT readiness leads to lower technology risks and implementations that could also be successful. Individual readiness is important in explaining and predicting about the inclination to adopt new technology (Lin et al., 2007). Most of the models such as Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) and Technology Readiness Model (Parasuraman, 2000) were originally established for evaluating people’s technology readiness or technology adoption behavior in particular organizational environments (Lin et al., 2007). People in work settings may unwillingly or reluctantly to adopt new technology due to management influence. However, individuals or consumers in free market settings are free to choose among conventional and mobile phones information and trading systems. When people make their minds to use new mobile information and trade system, they mutually create an e-service with the system but do not hold ownership of the system (Siraj, 2011). According to Lovelock et al. (2004), in e-service perspective, service provisions cannot be created separately from the customers’ full contribution and participation explaining what they would like. Likewise a similar input is required from Pakistani farmers. Farmer readiness conceptualizes their general beliefs about technology, decision support factors and enterprise readiness linked with their engagement in technology-based products and services (Parasuraman, 2000; Basole and Chao, 2004; Basole, 2007). Indication of evidence from the work done in the field confirm that all the readiness and decision making factors are not enough to explain why farmers do not adopt new technologies, such as mobile phones with agriculture information systems or trade tracking systems. Earlier research studies have developed different models/constructs/frameworks that had critically focused on several success factors related to technology adoption 195 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah decisions (Agarwal et al., 1997; Damanpour, 1991). Some focused on individual technology adoption of technologies which combined theories of consumer behavior and psychology. A variety of models have emphasized technology acceptance and use by individuals and these investigations have provided key indicators to technology adoption decisions. However, they do not describe organizational technology adoption decisions essential for integration process (Legris et al., 2003). Other researchers developed key dimensions of technology readiness (Basole, 2005) from the domain of engineering management, information systems, organization behavior and strategy, which has shown the different avenues of organizational adoption decision making criterion very well in adopting those technologies. (Lai and Guynes, 1997; Tornatzky and Klein, 1982). In the literature, the recent and the most suitable and popular methodologies developed and adopted to evaluate the readiness of users for technology adoption are: Technology Adoption Model (TAM) (Parasuraman, 2000) which include optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity, Technology Readiness Index (TRI) (Basole and Chao, 2004) which include timeliness, trust, information richness, ease of use and Decisions Support Systems (DSS) (Basole, 2007) which include technology readiness, further including data and information readiness, process readiness, resource readiness, knowledge readiness, leadership readiness, employee readiness values and goals readiness… According to Basole (2007) any business entity itself passes through three phases which evaluate the readiness which include; preparedness, potential and willingness to adopt the mobile technology. A complete readiness assessment involves an evaluation process across the three layers along eight readiness dimensions. The first layer preparedness is assessed for all eight dimensions and refers to an organization’s ability to adopt, distribute, and assimilate mobile information system. The second layer potential is evaluated along the process, employee, and value and goals dimensions which are aligned with organization’s processes, employee, and strategy that could benefit from mobile information system. Third, willingness is assessed along the employee and leadership dimensions that reflect the leadership and employee attitudinal orientation towards adopting the mobile phone as a tool. Basole (2007) further find out the eight modes of readiness (key parameters) in evaluating specific aspects of readiness with actual information so that any company or entity can test these dimensions to check the readiness level before introducing the technology in their setup. These models include technology readiness, data and 196 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan information readiness, process readiness, resource readiness, knowledge readiness, leadership readiness, employee readiness and, value and goals readiness. Methodology In the literature, various methods have been adopted to evaluate the stakeholders' readiness for technology adoption. To evaluate the farmers' readiness to adopt mobile technology for agriculture development purpose, the following conceptual framework has been developed from Parasuraman (2000), Basole and Chao (2004) and Basole (2007) and adopted in this study. Figure 1. Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Farmers Readiness for Technology Adoption 197 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah The following basic questions were designed on the basis of above framework. • How ready are farmers to embrace the new mobile phone agriculture services in Pakistan? • What are the key factors in mobile decision support systems which affect farmer readiness to adopt new mobile phone agriculture information and trade systems? • How ready are farmers to work with mobile enterprise networks after getting agriculture services on their mobile phones? The new proposed Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade System (MAITS) is a mobile phone information system which will provide important market information to the farmers and traders about agriculture. The basic objective of MAITS is to increase farmers' returns by providing various information about agriculture activities including better price, better quality of seed, weather conditions, better time for cultivation, better pesticides and fertilizers etc for agriculture inputs and outputs which will make the farmer’s position better. Data was collected from four important city of Pakistan including Lahore, Faisalabad, Vehari and Khanewal using interview methods. The interview guide has been developed (see Appendix). In order to get valid and reliable data, interview was recorded from only those farmers who were listed by agriculture development banks and agriculture research institutes. Twenty people including farmers (Progressive Farmers, Economical Farmers and Small Farmers i) and agricultural experts were interviewed. Interviews were conducted in local language Urdu and then translated into English because English was not the first language of informants. The research theme and the interview guide were sent to the informant a day prior of interview, so interviewees have clear perception about the research and be able respond correctly. A credit officer better known as a mobile credit officer from the Agriculture Development Bank and a second officer from the Agriculture Research Institute cooperated in conducting interview. A digital recorder was used to record all the interviews in order to increase the accuracy of the data collected and to remain more attentive to the informant. 198 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Analysis and Discussion Technology Adoption Model (TAM) In Pakistan farmers are aware of the new technology uses in their personal life. Information is needed to cut down their problems related to agriculture. Different interactions with the people give them an ability to appraise and appreciate use of new technology whilst working in their fields. They use technology to produce more crops and to get good offers from customers or market dealers. According to the Expert of Horticulture and Parks Authority Development, “The customers and market dealers are well informed about the results of promising technologies and usually collaborate with those farmers who have adopted or a considering adopting the new technology.” The technologies effects are perceived to be promising – with greater understanding of the use of these technologies it provides the users a greater insight into new modes of thinking and processes in agricultural reform. In Pakistan, the farmers who use technology perceived it to be more valuable than the other farmers who lack in it, but were vaguely aware of it, According to the farmers, “latest technologies make the life easier, save time and make easy and quick approach to other person / organization & departments.” The accurate information, at precise times, at the exact place is important for the farmers. However in Pakistan mostly there exists no complete set of mobility information sources that travel with farmers. While they are in a field visit or in markets for agriculture buying and selling, they use mobile phone for communications. According to the Expert of Agriculture Research Institute “Phone calls are not made for agriculture purposes. They are just made for normal gossips.” Majority of farmers informed that farmers “use information from TV, radio and newspapers.” One of the farmers who was using internet in field responded as “internet made us aware of what is going around the world.” However, Agriculture Research Officer (Expert) pointed out that farmers who are using this facility are very small in number. According to a farmer, well-informed farmers consider them more confident in discussing those issues which they learnt from media. The media has created positive and negative impacts on farmers. The negative impact is, the farmers are most of the time unknowingly mislead about the 199 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah information and most of time they use partial information which put adverse effects on their productivity. The information is needed for agriculture - physical infrastructure, agriculture inputs and market information which make the farmer rethink to look for sources of information rather than personal use. Their ambition shows their future is connected through mobile phones that will provide them in hand information to proactively manage their crops and trading. According to a farmer “we can harvest our crops before the weather changes… rain or heavy storms.” Some farmer doubt that this system may not be successful in Pakistan, because of farmer illiteracy and middlemen influences. Farmers were found not happy with existing extension services offered by government and private organizations. Farmer concerns about extension services that “these services are very limited and old fashioned and they are ready to adopt new technology which reduces their time of information searching.” Most farmers are looking for more choices if available so they are interested to know about mobile phone affects and its progression in most of the fields of other sectors. According to a farmer: “Simple! This is very helpful for us. From weather update (information) we can plan our sowing, irrigation, spray of pesticides and use of fertilizers… "We can compare our old varieties of crops with new one if mobile company provide authentic yield of new variety… From market updates I can manage the selling of my agriculture commodities.” It is common behavior to know about people more familiar with new technologies who have more information. They are the ones who are interested in latest technology information and can especially handle high-tech products and services without any further help. As they know a lot about working of technology and face fewer problems as compared to those people who are not innovators. For evaluation of farmer readiness it is necessary for farmers to have an innovative mind. The farmer who intends to take risks is the only one able to use new proposed mobile information systems. In Pakistan, Innovator type farmers prepare other fellow farmers for new technologies. The prior type of farmers observes their surroundings carefully in expectation to get latest ideas. They discover new ways of approaching the technology and try them fitting to their exact situation or to see if that is relevant to solve their specific problems - readiness state. All the way through this procedure, many farmers during the interviews for the technology benefits made up their minds to adopt latest ideas and latest methods of the systems. The similar response from the farmer to urge for new information and their readiness level to act on it can identify “man to man information… we go to different farmers and ask them that what 200 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan should we plant and how?… On their provided information we act on the information what they have told us to do.” Farmer readiness to use technology is activated by causes or problems like pesticide spray prices. Currently, the cost of fertilizer has increased to the level that some farmers may not be able to afford to buy this. Thus, the use of information is productive in different ways, a farmer responded as "the use of information has equipped us with many skills… I would say farmers do not broaden their exposure… otherwise there are lot of opportunities here… from which farmer can easily increase the yield… for example there are some insects… if you use those insects in your crops they kill the insects which are destroyer of the crops… now this technology is available and at free cost… many farmers do not know about this.” In similar case of mobile phones, these trends are proving farmers readiness to use mobile phone in place of old and existing systems due to innovativeness. Farmers think that when they are connected with agriculture world through mobile phones, it will increase their knowledge about agriculture business and will impact on other regions. The interviews data shows that the farmers want to learn new ways in agriculture. Indeed, most of information transferred to them is only one sided. Until the farmers do not put their wisdoms through innovativeness, the adoption of mobile phone services will not occur. A farmer who was active participant of different agriculture forums argued that “until we have a better communication with other farmers, trainers, experts and organizations… then only we will be able to understand about any new information… what presently is going on?... information is one sided delivered and nobody encourages the discussions… we perceive discussions facilities should be as far provided to us because we need sometimes to clarify and rectify some terms… which we are unable to understand easily in one go.” Farmers have shown their issues regarding traditional agriculture systems as a weak dispersal mechanism with a long search time, and incomplete levels of information retrieval. There is no certainty of information be delivered on time. During interviews farmers were found complaining about the current agriculture system lacking especially about the technologies in government sector which are not fully supporting them and how uncomfortable they were feeling in obtaining information. Even use of technology by others brings discomfort to them. 201 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah According to a farmer, “I go to them for soil test... they give me two weeks time… and after that the results were recommended for the color land… they have interchanged results with other farmer mistakenly.” One farmer felt uncomfortable because as he stated he does not know exactly whom to call in the case of emergency; who is the best person to get them the relevant information? When farmers tried to call the consultants or advisors, they usually end up with busy calls. Farmers suggest that there must be built in recording facility so that their calls are recorded automatically on the consultant cell phones. According to a farmer, “mostly when we are in field … we missed some information and not able to completely understand what we missed or even convey concerns to the relevant authorities.” Farmer does not know exactly to whom to call in case of emergency. Who is the best person to get them the relevant information? According to a farmer, “my crops were attacked by… insects… the climate condition was helping to grow those insects in no time but in this emergency state I was not able to get any help from anywhere. Eventually as a last step I burned my crops. This was a big loss for me” Most of farmers consider human involvements are too crucial in some farm activities. They are reluctant to give information on mobile phones. Farmers are skeptical in providing information, indeed if it actually gets to the right person in the right location. One farmer said that “they do have to trust middlemen” and not see any secure option to do any type of financial transactions via mobile. Some farmers have put this as their deep concern that any deals, they do by machine should be authenticated afterward in writing, “before this it was done by the middlemen.” Farmers feel insecure shifting from traditional agriculture system to mobile phones, while the limitations are the payment and lack of contact in the market. Farmers perceive that they cannot rely on only mobile information systems; they have doubts on the technology like the technology is too complex that how are we going to get out our payments. According to a farmer, “we get immediate payments from middleman, we do not know how mobile phone will give us this facility, we cannot trust the services for buying and selling purpose but we can trust in case if it's backed by the government… banks. 202 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan The proper information and standards should meet in any case. A number of organizations from the government sectors provide the free information, but most of farmers do not have access to this information sources. There must be some centers which also check the communication flow and how these systems can respond effectively. According to a farmer “most time when we are in the field… we know when we have missed some information and are therefore not able to completely convey the complete information or query… to the concerned authorities.” Farmers hire people and do not use the technology by themselves in sensitive matters where chances for damage are greater than the chances for enhanced productivity. Few farmers responded as “to get rid of weeds there are special skills required, you have to treat without damaging the main crop… sometime technology is dangerous like you need unique skills to spray… same deficits are in mobile phone… how you can be save from radiation effects.” In traditional agriculture farmers face middlemen who charge the higher money from them. According to a farmer, “the role of middle man is very dominant in our market system. Sometime middle man earns more than farmers. It will be a great change if we are able to get rid of these intermediaries. Surely the more profit I will get from my produce…”.When farmers were asked about whether they like to minimize or eliminate the role of middleman, few farmers responded as “this will be miracle. The middle man provide us low market rate, take its percentage also. The only creditability is the payment… He paid money within weak. If mobile company opens its own purchase centre, payment guarantee, provide fair market rates, which ultimately increase our profits more than the middleman… we appreciate the elimination of the middleman.” Farmers only go or reach to the middleman when they do not have investment to grow their crops, under hard pack circumstances. Farmers are force to take loans from the middleman on their terms. Most of the farmers have shown their willingness that if the mobile phone technology or the MAITS system is associated with some banks or government department which give them loans on the light terms and conditions they like to have it. According to the expert opinion from the Agriculture Development Bank, “… for farmers who are excited to use this new facility the service should be personalized and superior. The mobile Agriculture should provide the access to farmer consistent, reliable, updated information that is tailored for his use.” 203 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah Technology Readiness Indicators (TRI) The farmer’s decisions making factor has to be decided within time while it has been noted through the interviews that farmers were indeed had the greatest concerned about information timing. For, instance, deciding which mobile phone function is important; a farmer says “time is critical factor… we perceive that instead of SMS services… bear just little cost and just makes the phone call.” The decision support system in current situation is working around information from government, private companies and middlemen. Due to time factors and other information sources tendency towards media habits are changing. According to a farmer “…there are many agriculture programs aired on TV, radio… but due to our presence in field… we do not have time to see it… now these programs are available on CDs…which we purchase and watch according to our own available time slots… The recording systems are expensive and complicated … so we just bring CDs and watch it” Few agriculture experts responded, "time factor varies from region to region, every region has its own set of conditions... The timing of crops is different in each region so mobile services must emphasize these implications on ground realities… depending on region to region requirements.” Most of the farmers which are connected to old modes of information technology have information and time advantages. From the total interview sample, five farmers responded that they through online sources identified the markets which were selling commodities in the offseason “We get it in cheap rates”, a farmer stated. The majority of farmers are showing the lack of trust in the new system suggesting that both systems should run on parallel basis. According to a farmer, “…among choosing old and new systems… I think MAITS should run parallel to traditional systems... We cannot leave the tradition system in very beginning of the technology diffusion… I think the system will be chosen on our goals basis... we can adopt any system we like to facilitate our goals.” Farmer’s attitude towards technology acceptance shows that trust plays a vital role in the farmer’s decision making process. As stated above farmers trust the media including TV, radio, newspapers but the amount of information provided is not good enough to meet their requirements. Some complaint that they are able to get 204 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan only basic information from old media – TV shows them the rate slides, radio inform about specific advertisements and newspapers publish advertisements and incomplete messages. Even personal source contacts fail to get complete information in the name of business secrets, one farmer said “we collect the information from different places but if it is available from a single source … we will be effectively proceeding to crop planning… sowing to trading… easily.” Most of the farmers do not agree that mobile phones would give complete information. According to a farmer “…we do not know how a tiny device can cover these all information needs.” According to experts the mobile phone can just provide the immediate information and rest of information will be linked to other technology sources like internet. According to the Expert of Associate Agriculture Chemist, “even they get the information on mobile phone, they will not take the risks and will opt for the other information sources… like as laboratory tests, rates.. ” Detail explanation is required to change the understanding level of farmers. In current traditional system farmers are informed about new varieties of crops through seminars arranged by the mill owners. Thus, the information provided is according to their research and requirements to which they can get crops from the farmers. According to a farmer, “we are invited by various sugar making factory owners… They provide us with the information about new varieties and ways for sugarcane productions.” Farmers know about the mobile phone uses to the extent of making phone calls and some of them use SMS. Majority of them are using it for their personal uses only. There were number of farmers who were using the mobile functions (MMS, internet) more than calling and writing SMS. Farmers take the mobile phone as a convenient technology device that is easy to use, easy to carry and from using it can call any time with little effort as they already know its basic functionality. There are some difficulties while using mobile phone such as many farmers get confused during calls in which they are asked to press several buttons to talk to a customer service representative. Instead of convenience, it becomes a time taking device. According to some farmers “mobile phone technology is more convenient to talk from any place and could get the information as well as pass on the information… the demerits of mobile phones we cannot see the faces on the other side… some time it is a time taking process to call companies and interact with automated message systems… she ask us to press too many buttons… it just waste our too much time.” 205 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah Decision Support System (DSS) Farmers are willing to interact with technology. According to them “we need interaction with the technology experts… they provide us information about agriculture-related technologies and detailed information of different market access… sometimes over internet… for example.” Sometimes the infrastructure is available from a different funding agency which aids the agricultural sector free of charge (Siraj, 2011), but farmers unfortunately cannot get any information about these agencies because of lack of awareness of these types of organizations. As one of the farmer responded that “recently, solar cell tube wells (water production unit) were introduced in Pakistan and most of farmers do not know about it or came to know late… it was already installed in other places with other farmers.” Farmers also stated that access to the technological experts will make them more knowledgeable to use the technology in agriculture sector and the linkages with the industry will benefit all stakeholders in one go. Farmers perceive that due to technological support they will be able to produce crops according to the new innovations. A farmer from Khanewal responded as “I like to do the research… I am planning to install a unit (factory) for energy drinks… yes these energy drinks would be produced by natural ways… It contains lot of vitamins and calcium… I need its formula to add flavor… I need the technology to produce it in canned form…. I do not know where from I can take help about these, the mobile phone services you are telling about if help I will adopt it.” A farmer also pointed out that "the farmers have to go to different agents… the worse of them is middlemen role… they give the loans on this promise made by farmers... they will buy farm inputs form them… they will sell their crops to them on fix rate… middleman is taking more advantages than the farmers… they are getting profits out of farm inputs, standing crops… and where they sell forward… from end buyers they charge this.” It is sometime difficult to get loans from Agriculture Development Bank as there is long queue of farmers standing in the waiting lists. Farmers have complaint that they have not able to get loans on time According to them “they are biased in giving the debt money… they give big loans to big land farmers… we have to always wait… mostly time mobile credit officers are out for recovery in field.” The bank officials argued on this problem differently, according to them they are always at the disposal of the farmer. Expert from Agriculture Development Bank pointed out that “when the farmer come to us they try to give them maximum leverage… sometime problem is face by us that the next 206 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan sanction of loans are depended on the previous records of farmer… Farmers with higher recoveries paid get more quickly and the farmers who are still not clear from previous recorded loans have to give the justification to sanction new loans for them… we have the databases but here staff more work manually as they do not have access directly to databases… meanwhile after weeks of fieldwork they come and enter their records through IT experts… which is also time taking factor… if farmers are connected to the bank customer databases… they will be able to request before coming to bank… By then we will check their records.” Farmers encounter scarcity of labor and technical equipment at times crops are ready for harvesting and sowing. According to some farmers “time management is very important… the weather is not predictable… so the market… we need immediate number of labor and technical assistance at the time of planting and harvesting the crop…”. However, experts from Agriculture Research Institute and Agriculture University informed that “the technical assets and labors are available from scattered places. Farmer has to run after the individual need. This is the big waste of time. Even they are not sure that they will be able to get them.” Expert from Mobile Operator Company, farmers and expert from Agriculture Development Bank informed that agriculture technical equipment being expensive is not affordable by farmers and they have to rent that from either government bodies or private sector. Farmers desired that there should be a database about renting equipments for them. For better connectivity farmer should remain well-connected through mobile phones with these networks to check the availability of related resources. Farmers keep changing patterns of producing crops, seeds buying and harvesting as per the market conditions. For example, in case of high demand of sugar cane, maximum number of farmers will produce the sugar cane in next year without predicting the market demands. According to some farmers, ''we change our product sales… naturally according to the rate variations. We delay products if prices are not suitable… but in some case we are force to sell it… some grains are perishable which are out of control… so we need other sources… which give us options to decide”. Thus, farmers need different type of knowledge about the new technology innovations needed in particular agricultural environment. Most of the farmers in interview have recommended that the knowledge can be provided through different sources like mobile social communities network and information mobile centers. 207 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah One of the farmers said that “the training of mobile uses should be imparted in schools adjacent to the villages. The children are quick with technology especially new emerging technologies. They will pick the information quickly and educate their elders about its significant uses.” Overall, farmers have shown willingness to have greater knowledge than before. As one of the farmer state “every day we are learning from our society… the knowledge we retrieve is in raw form… we are unable to process it… if we can get systemized knowledge… we will perform in more better way”. An educated farmer responded to a question on leadership role in following manner: “I have not faced any kind of problems, I am the member of different committees… we represent farmers and gave suggestions about the current agriculture needs and they consider our valuable suggestions… I have not experienced any kind of problems in respect of technology and other agricultural innovations accessibility.” Other farmers who do not have access to such networks stated: “they are biased and they just provided the agriculture facilities to those with whom they have contacts”. The day to day processes are long and farmers feel uncomfortable using those. One of the farmers said: “they are such lengthy and time taking processes… irrigation system is one of them, we have to wait for the water and due to non availability of water sometime our crops growth gets affected… same effects come out from fake fertilizers and insect killing sprays available in markets”. Farmers also see agriculture processes of dealings, transactions, selling, seeding as very complicated as one of the farmer responded: “If information is of the worth which reduces cost and travelling then this will be appraised by the farmers". Expert from Horticulture informed that farmers can go into more new processes of farming like “tunnel farming is one of the skills related to agriculture technology which farmers need to adopt this process should handle with very careful analysis of land condition that best fit with the seeds this can only be done if the farmer has obtained useful information to how to launch these processes”. Mobile phone should have some packages that support the farmer more in detail to understand the information more specifically. Thus, another farmer reflect like the process can be handle with “…communities involvement in information and knowledge sharing will put better impact” on our day to day engagements and procedures. 208 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Support for farmers for enhanced execution of processes that could give better productivity or access to new emerging markets is very necessary to help them achieve their goals because far too many bureaucratic blocks prevent some farmers from operating in a free market enterprise like system. A farmer showing his disappointment in information and other processes connectivity says that “we can get information of international market but we are not able to get licenses and fulfill the other requirements which are mostly time consuming, expensive and complicated”. It is noted with concern that majority of the farmers in Pakistan do not have the potential to use mobile phones services. It is because of their disillusionment about the technology that they have already presumed that is only for personal purposes. In future they expect to change their attitude in adopting those technologies. As expert from agriculture bank reflected that “we are seeing lot of changing pattern of farmers… today farmer is having… of difference than they use to be in 5-6 years ago… today farmer is willing to adopt the technology for their crops production… most of farmers come to us and ask about new innovations of agriculture… we have declared the model villages in all areas and urge farmer to go there… they get the information and apply in their fields… They are now very successful in it”. The overall readinesses of farmers for technology adoption are surmised in the following table 1. Table 1. Results of Farmers Readiness for Technology Adoption Farmers Readiness Technology Adoption Model (TAM) Technology Readiness Indicators (TRI) Decision Support System (DSS) Farmers Willingness Discomfort Farmer see lack in current information system: Farmer feel information is not delivered on time: Farmer could not call anyone in case of emergency: Farmer when try to call experience busy calls on Technological readiness Farmer like to use MAITS if it connects with technical experts: Farmer like to use other networks through MAITS: Farmer want to know more feasible technologies available: Farmers want someone Timeliness Farmer see in time information is crucial for decision making, use phone calls service instead of doing SMS, presume time factor is changing their media habits, time varies region to region basis, get cheaper 209 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah other side: Farmer touring in field missed a lot of information: Farmers cannot read messages: Farmers do not have record facility to store their messages: Farmer retrieval information is not economical: Farmer got general information which is not of any use: Farmer experience absence of social amenities. Insecurity Farmers doubt and distrust MAITS: Farmers like to interact with humans rather than MAITS: Farmer believe payment methods are not ensure on mobile phones: Farmers feel transactions on MAITS should be authenticate after in writing also: Farmers feels MAITS model is too complex: Farmer feel human presentation skills are more valuable than MAITS: Farmer feel MAITS will not be successful for longer period. 210 to tell them about new Agri-related technologies. commodities in offseason. Resource Readiness Farmers like to acquire loans from financial institutions: Farmer feel more feasible sending loan request before they visit the source: Farmer like to have easy access to labor: Farmer have to search labor and technical assets from different places: Farmer require to communicate government bodies or public sector companies for necessary assistance in resources Knowledge Readiness Farmer have the knowledge of current mobile phones working: Farmer do changes in their patterns according to known values: Farmer like to know about different available options in using technology innovations in their field work: Farmer desire to know about the market rates: Farmer can access the basic knowledge of MAITS uses in their nearly training centers Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Farmers Potential Farmers Preparedness Innovativeness Farmer want to be a first user of MAITS: Farmer desire more Agri-information than others: Farmer can handle MAITs functions: Farmer creative ability to apply information differently: Farmers are ready to take risk to adopt MAITS: Farmers expect latest ideas: Farmer interact in community: Farmer give advices to other farmers: Farmer are ready for change Leadership Readiness Farmer have a key role in policy making of Agriculture: Farmer contact different higher management officials in order to register their suggestions and feedback: Farmers feel the officer decisions are biased: Farmer perceive strategy makers must do decisions on the basis of root cause situation Optimism Farmer knows mobile phone benefits: Farmer feel MAITS convenience in use: Farmer can use it in flexible timings: Farmer End-user readiness Farmer support MAITS system as thinking change is positive: Farmer feel MAITS model is source of relieve to them: Process Readiness Farmer think mobile phone services must be relevant to agricultural processes: Farmer opt for new processes in agriculture sector: Farmer understand processes can be improved through communities involvement: Farmer cannot access international markets due to strict process for licenses and other government approvals Information Richness Farmers think incomplete information mislead them, believe MAITS system will not convey complete message, Farmer would not like to get immediate information form MAITS: Farmer need a detail explanation to understand information: Farmer like information in form of video, audio and graphic wise Ease of Use Farmer perceive technology will be free of effort, understand MAITS System is easy to carry, experience sometime mobile phone complexities, feel difficulty to talk sometime without face interactions Trust Farmer is resistant to change due to MAITS newness: Farmer do not share relevant knowledge in name of business secret: Farmer 211 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah desire to have a new agriculture technology: Farmer can improve their skills: Farmer’s source of knowledge and information: Farmer can mold it easily according to their use: Farmer realize other uses of mobile phones than their personal use: Farmer understand demerits of partial information: Farmer well understand the MAITS proposed model: Farmers can manage their crops using this technology: Farmer can sell and purchase commodities, farm inputs: Farmers are not happy with existing agriculture system. Farmer do not have potential to use technology due to illiteracy and other factors: Farmer are frequent user of mobile so be for MAITS do trust in case they got decision choices Values and Goals Farmer believe MAITS will provide ways for profit maximization: Farmer through MAITS will able to sell and purchase their commodities to different markets Findings Mobile phone device perception to connect the other information enables farmer’s efficient accessibility to new data and information sources not available easily. The real-time option along with highly tailored information reflected Pakistani farmer readiness to adopt the same system, as they are optimistic to real benefits of mobile phone and well aware of implications these mobile phone will put in agriculture sectors. As a result of the interviews, the views of the farmers tend to suggest use of mobile phones in new ways for advancement in agricultural productivity increases mobile-enabled information services. Pakistani farmers have mobile phones but without agricultural information systems to take full advantage of information sources required in their working life. The farmers want to access the technology which they need the most. The farmers seem to be ready for the technology through 212 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan innovation readiness for change. They do not have control over the technology. Extensions services do not give details knowledge to understand by farmers. Sometime Extension Service Provider believes that technology uses are not for use by common farmer due to illiteracy factor. Farmers like to have less complex devices and feel discomfort with extra functions. The farmers are unhappy from these extension services as information provided to them is general and it is country or provincial level information but not relevant to their specific local requirements. Even though the farmers would like to get rid of middlemen and may be biased information providing by companies. They still believe that this is a double ended sword, adhering to a view from buyers' perspective that it is not possible to buy crops or products for the whole year whilst farmers can only provide products on a seasonal basis. The timely available current and appropriate information helped farmers to make decisions at specific times and locations. Furthermore, source and media trustworthiness guide a farmer’s trust in information sources. The information richness will convince farmers to trust the new sources of information. Farmers perceive that information could be more understandable through mobile phones if supported with audio, video or graphical explanations. Ease of use is important to evaluate farmers’ perception towards usefulness of the technology. In agriculture systems there is lack of technical support, physical infrastructure and agricultural technologies related information. Farmer connectivity through mobile phones would be feasible if existing and related networks were well established and interconnected. The agriculture technical equipment being expensive is not affordable by farmers and they have to rent that from either Government bodies or private sector. Farmers desire that a data base be maintained for renting that equipment on merit. For better connectivity farmer should remain well-connected through mobile phones with these networks to check the availability of related resources. Like other sectors, farmers dealing on mobile phone require to get help from financial, human and technical assets providing networks. Due to the lack of connectivity with financial institutions networks and other aiding agencies, farmers some time face severe shortage of money which effects their crop production. Currently farmers are taking loans either from Agriculture Development Bank in Pakistan or they approach to the middlemen. The lack in financial resources is too severe or is on such terms and conditions which is not convenient to farmers’ pocket. 213 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah Thus, farmers need different type of knowledge about the new technology innovations needed in particular agricultural environment. Most of the farmers in interview have recommended that the knowledge can be provided through different sources like mobile social communities network and information mobile centers. Farmers take the leadership role while they represent farmers in different networks. Most of farmers state their good relationship and identify their role as policy maker in Organizational level decision making for agricultural purpose. Expert says it is necessary to take farmers on board for framing stable policies in agriculture sector. The management support in decisions of technology adoption is important. Farmers see the mobile phone information system success only if that fit to agricultural processes. Farmers face long waiting processes like as crop planning, seeding, purchasing of farm inputs, transporting, trading and loaning during connecting different fellow farmers, middlemen or market dealers and sometime mobile credit officers from Agriculture banks. The farmers perceive that in time information helps in sorting out problems faced by them .Farmers consider technology as a source of relieve, farmer will be in very clear position to plan for crops variety, seeding to harvesting and transporting produce for selling. In the farmer interviews, farmers show their ambition to get access to different markets and mobile agriculture information system to (i) minimize the middle men role and(ii) take maximum part and gain profits. To achieve their specific but different values and goals they are expecting some breakthroughs. The crop insurance facility, technical assets, sustaining competitive advantage, profit maximization, time and cost savings in crop production are the key values for the farmers to develop. Research Implication Farmer’s readiness to adopt mobile agriculture system revolves around mobile decision making support and accessibility to different networks. Any factor missing is prone to deviation from use of this technology. The analysis of the data retrieved from the interviews has suggested, the evaluation of readiness is not only the final place to decide whether farmers will adopt the new mobile information system or not. It is associated with the attitude which comes from innovativeness, optimism or inhibitor like discomfort which either helps farmers’ preparedness or unpreparedness before replacing the existing system with the mobile information system. Thus, 214 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan further analysis shows that potential to decide is related to farmers’ interaction because of some problem or cause. In particular situation Pakistani farmers have shown their unhappiness about the existing system. So, to adopt the mobile phone is greatest reason for discontinuing use of the existing system. Although farmers have a primary ability to assess the basic information, but access in depth; the farmers need more prominent information sources which give them the potential to properly assess the value of the new system. Thus, preparedness, potential and generating value are the key factors which lead farmers acquainted with other factors in readiness. Pre training involving demonstration, seminars and other related activities are important to convince farmers for new innovations in the field. Research limitations The research is limited to the primary data which has been collected from rural areas adjacent to four cities of Pakistan. The research describes the opinion of different farmers and experts from these four cities only. More suggestions could have been gathered and added for Mobile phones Agriculture and Information systems (MAITS) acceptance by including more farmers and retailers from other cities of Pakistan as well. This research has evaluated the Pakistani farmer readiness for adopting mobile phone information and trade system on the basis of different dimensions quoted in literature. The method used is qualitative in nature. However, a quantitative approach can be carried out using various quantitative methodologies. It would be intriguing to establish a global model for the whole agriculture world with all databases in technologies interconnected. Conclusion Pakistani farmers very well perceive the merits/demerits of mobile phone usages. They have begun to realize other usages of mobile phones rather than restricting only to personal uses. Thus, majority of the farmers are ready to manage crops, purchase farm inputs and sell commodities through MAITS. The innovative farmers are recognized because of their outward role advising other farmers. The current amenities and informal communication structures have led the farmers to rethink and opt for alternatives systems which could give value addition. 215 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah The overall conclusion is that farmers are ready to embrace new mobile phone information systems. However, it requires maximum level of optimism and innovativeness along with removal of the inhibiting factors which affect the readiness state. The inhibiting factors in MAITS adoption comprised of uncertainty factors and current faulty existing system services. There has been a complete consensus among the farmers to practice MAITS along with mobile decision support system because it can help them in crop planning, farm inputs (seeds, fertilizers, spray etc), harvesting, transporting and trading. The findings of this study will provide guidance to the relevant organizations when considering readiness and barriers towards implementing of MAITS. The results of the study will give insight to many extension service and policy makers to understand what farmers actually desire. References Agarwal, R., Mohan, T., & Wilemon, D. (1997). Assimilating information technology innovations: Strategies and moderating influences. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 44(4), 347-358. Alsop, S. (1999). Have I told you lately that I hate windows? Fortune, July 5, Pp 177-78. Akhtar, D. S. (2007). Expanding microfinance outreach in Pakistan. State Bank of Pakistan. 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Innovation characteristics and innovation adoption implementation: A meta-analysis. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 29 No. February, (1982), 28-45. Telenor (2009). E-Mandi grading booklet. Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://www.emandi.mobi/blog/?cat=6 Thomas, B. (2011). Pakistan's agri-sector registers significant growth in three years. Retrieved June 8, 2011, from http://carbon-basedghg.blogspot.com/2011/04/pakistans-agri-sector-registers.html 218 Journal of Economic and Social Studies �Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Interview Guide 1. 2. 3. How the latest technologies of communication affect your life. At present what type of communication technologies are you using? Do you use mobile phone, what type of merit and demerit of cell phone do you experienced? 4. Do you use mobile phone for only making calls or you also use it for SMS or any other services. 5. From where you get the latest information about new technologies for crop production. Is it easily available or you experiences difficulties? 6. Do you want to adopt new technology by which you can get all latest information about crop production at your door step? How can u compare this new method of getting the information with the old traditional one? 7. Do you like that a mobile company provide you all information starting from sowing to selling, weather forecast, cost of fertilizers and pesticides, new varieties at your door step. How much you will be benefited from this new intervention. 8. Is the way of Government for the dispersal of agricultural related information hinders or favors the adoption of Mobile phone information systems? Do you agree with the government policy about agricultural like supporting price of different crops? Whether you like to take this information on your mobile phones? 9. If a mobile phone company eliminate/minimize the role of middle man and it will increase you profit do you ready to adopt this system. 10. If Mobile phone information system increases the number of buyers of your product and gives your information about, how to increase your profit by going to various markets, what will be your degree of willingness to use the above mentioned Mobile Phone information system? 11. If a mobile company provide you the information of the latest rate of crops of different markets of the country, will it increase your profit and can you able to sell your commodities there. 12. If a mobile company provide you all information at a nominal cost which save your traveling cost to enquire information from different sources do you adopt this, if no why. (Follow up Questions) 219 �Muhammad Rehan Shaukat, Iqtidar Ali Shah Progressive farmers: The farmer who run his form mechanically i.e. mechanized forming by adopting latest agriculture technologies. i 220 Journal of Economic and Social Studies � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2411 Title A name given to the resource Farmers Inclination to Adoption of Mobile Phone Agriculture Information and Trade Systems in Pakistan Author Author Shaukat, Muhammad Rehan Shah, Iqtidar Ali Abstract A summary of the resource. This research studies three aspects relating to farmers readiness for the proposed mobile phone information and trade system (MAITS) namely (a) farmer readiness to adopt newly proposed mobile information and trade system (b) key factors that affect farmers mobile decision support systems (c) farmers readiness to connect with mobile enterprise networks. These were investigated using a qualitative research method. After a careful selection of a set of questions, interviews were conducted with selected farmers from four cities of Pakistan including Lahore, Faisalabad, Vehari and Khanewal. The analysis revealed that farmers readiness to embrace new mobile phone information systems requires maximum level of optimism and innovativeness along with deal of the inhibiting factors which affect the readiness state; inhibiting factors in MAITS adoption comprised of uncertainty factors and current faulty existing system services; and there has been a complete consensus among the farmers to practice MAITS along with mobile decision support system because it can help them in crop planning, farm inputs (seeds, fertilizer, sprays etc), harvesting, transporting and trading. The findings of this study will provide guidance to the relevant organizations when considering readiness and barriers towards implementing of MAITS. The results of the study will give insight to many extension service and policy makers to understand what farmers actually need. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-07-15 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed H Social Sciences (General) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2748 Title A name given to the resource Farming of Pangasius for Sustainable Aquaculture Author Author HEKIMOGLU, Muge Aliye GUNER, Yusuf YAVUZ, Sirma AKCAN, Gulcin GULEC, Fatih Abstract A summary of the resource. Fisheries are the fastest growing food production system in the world. Global production has grown considerably in aquaculture and this disposition is being expected to increase. In this regard, a new way of species search has commenced in aquaculture. Aquaculture of Pangasius sp. has a significant place in this search among sustainable tropical species. Among other cultured species pangasius is the 4th most commonly cultured species in the world after salmon, shrimps and tilapia. The tremendous potential of the pangasius sector directs the attention of world fisheries market. In turkey, there is not a recorded pangasius production data. There have been cultivated as a hobby for the aquarium fish. In this study, information regarding general characteristics and production techniques of pangasius fish has been presented and samples from around the world have been addressed. The purpose of this research when the state and contribution of the genus pangasius, which is accepted as fast growth, a significant food source for having high protein rate and being able to adapt to various food diets, are considered, pangasius aquaculture in an aqua environment suitable for its environmental demands is the contribution to the development of fisheries. Also, it might be targeted to provide energy conservation and decrease the costs of aquaculture by obtaining the necessary hot water supply from geothermal sources, which have high potentials and which are sustainable, renewable and cheap. Keywords: pangasius spp., pangasius catfish, aquaculture, sustainable aquaculture Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-06 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 2233 - 0054 T Technology (General) https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/0ae9b46478b5ebfa0f09120942e2880d.docx bb541b71f0cb05da7a2335feff260b20 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/73f5290771e9cea9f9dc17317c64b7a0.pdf e268f722c28d8da15d12afb8169b0076 PDF Text Text FARMING OF PANGASIUS FOR SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE Müge Aliye Hekimoğlu Ege University, Izmir, Turkey muge.aliye.hekimoglu@ege.edu.tr Yusuf Güner Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Sırma Yavuz Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Gülçin Akcan Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Fatih Güleç Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Keywords:Pangasius spp., Pangasius catfish, Aquaculture, Sustainable Aquaculture. ABSTRACT Fisheries are the fastest growing food production system in the world. Global production has grown considerably in aquaculture and this disposition is being expected to increase. In this regard, a new way of species search has commenced in aquaculture. Aquaculture of Pangasius sp. has a significant place in this search among sustainable tropical species. Among other cultured species pangasius is the 4th most commonly cultured species in the world after salmon, shrimps and tilapia. The tremendous potential of the pangasius sector directs the attention of world fisheries market. In turkey, there is not a recorded pangasius production data. There have been cultivated as a hobby for the aquarium fish. In this study, information regarding general characteristics and production techniques of pangasius fish has been presented and samples from around the world have been addressed. The purpose of this research when the state and contribution of the genus pangasius, which is accepted as fast growth, a significant food source for having high protein rate and being able to adapt to various food diets, are considered, pangasius aquaculture in an aqua environment suitable for its environmental demands is the contribution to the development of fisheries. Also, it might be targeted to provide energy conservation and decrease the costs of aquaculture by obtaining the necessary hot water supply from geothermal sources, which have high potentials and which are sustainable, renewable and cheap. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2076 Title A name given to the resource FARMING OF PANGASIUS FOR SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE Author Author HEKIMOGLU, Muge Aliye GUNER, Yusuf YAVUZ, Sirma AKCAN, Gulcin GULEC, Fatih Abstract A summary of the resource. Keywords:Pangasius spp., Pangasius catfish, Aquaculture, Sustainable Aquaculture. ABSTRACT Fisheries are the fastest growing food production system in the world. Global production has grown considerably in aquaculture and this disposition is being expected to increase. In this regard, a new way of species search has commenced in aquaculture. Aquaculture of Pangasius sp. has a significant place in this search among sustainable tropical species. Among other cultured species pangasius is the 4th most commonly cultured species in the world after salmon, shrimps and tilapia. The tremendous potential of the pangasius sector directs the attention of world fisheries market. In turkey, there is not a recorded pangasius production data. There have been cultivated as a hobby for the aquarium fish. In this study, information regarding general characteristics and production techniques of pangasius fish has been presented and samples from around the world have been addressed. The purpose of this research when the state and contribution of the genus pangasius, which is accepted as fast growth, a significant food source for having high protein rate and being able to adapt to various food diets, are considered, pangasius aquaculture in an aqua environment suitable for its environmental demands is the contribution to the development of fisheries. Also, it might be targeted to provide energy conservation and decrease the costs of aquaculture by obtaining the necessary hot water supply from geothermal sources, which have high potentials and which are sustainable, renewable and cheap. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-24 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 2233-1565