Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence Chinese consumers’ purchase of organic products, with a focus on organic tea. Design/methodology/approach A structured questionnaire was used to survey 202 shoppers in Guangdong Province, China. The data were analyzed using multivariate regression. Findings The study suggests two significant predictors of organic tea purchase intentions: perceiving organic tea as a healthier alternative to non-organic tea; perceiving the purchase of organic tea as a status symbol. Younger respondents and respondents with higher educational attainment reported greater organic tea purchase intentions. Non-significant predictors of organic tea purchase intentions were respondents’ knowledge of organic tea through media exposure, their gender and income. Research limitations/implications The findings help further research on consumer preferences regarding organic foods providing key insights for researchers and marketers as they strive to make informed decisions in the emerging organic food retail environment. Specifically, Chinese consumers perceiving organic tea as a healthy option and as a status symbol are more likely to state organic tea purchase intentions. These results point to the need for extended research on key antecedents of Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions of organic products. Originality/value Little was known about the motivations of Chinese consumers for purchasing organic food products, as the psychological and demographic factors that are associated with organic food purchase behavior in China were not well researched. Specifically, there is still a notable gap in the understanding of how consumers in China make organic tea purchase decisions. With organic foods occupying a progressively larger portion of Chinese diets and budgets, this research fills in some of the knowledge gap by examining how the social norms of status symbols influence Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions of organic tea.

This quantitative study investigates the effect of certificate-of-need (CON) regulation on the quality of care in the nursing home industry. It uses county-level demographic data from the 48 contiguous US states that are extracted from the American Community Survey (ACS) and cover the years 2012, 2013, and 2014. In doing so, it employs a new set of service quality variables captured from a variety of county-level data sources. Instrumental variables results indicate that health survey scores for nursing homes that are computed by healthcare professionals are about 18–24% lower, depending on the type of nursing home under consideration, in states with CON regulation. We also find that the presence of CON regulation leads to a substitution of lower-quality certified nursing assistant care for higher-quality licensed practical nurse care, regardless of the type of nursing home under consideration.

Despite the conventional consensus that interest rates are efficient mechanism of allocating loanable funds and the most influential monetary policy instrument in modern economies, the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, prohibit the use of interest and consider charging interest as an act of exploitation and extortion. Several passages and verses in the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran make their position on interest clear and definitive, from the Bible's dictum, "Do not charge your brother interest" to the Quran's exhortation "give up what remains of your demand for usury. " This paper reviews those passages and verses, provides different scholars' perspectives on these verses, and relates them to the current financial system. The paper also presents several recent events that support the religious position by showing the negative impact of interest on countries, societies, and individuals. These events have, in fact, inspired many economists and financial institutions to seek alternatives to the current system.

The number of dual-income households has been steadily increasing over the past few decades. This study supports the hypothesis that given a household’s desire to remain above a minimum threshold standard of living, the rise in the number of dual-earner households is inevitable mostly due to inflationary pressures in product markets including rising housing prices and child care costs coupled with relatively flat wage trends. Mitigating uncertainty and risk associated with shifts in retirement plan offerings—moving away from defined benefit plans such as pensions toward defined contribution options such as 401(k) plans—was also cited as a factor contributing to the rising number of dual earners. This study highlights the costs and benefits of dual-earning decisions and the intertemporal implications for households, labor markets and overall societal welfare.

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