This chapter reviews the general procedures and methodologies used for validating growth and yield models. More specifically, it addresses: (i) the optimism principle and model validation; (ii) model validation procedures, problems and potential areas of needed research; (iii) data considerations and data-splitting schemes in model validation; and (iv) operational thresholds for accepting or rejecting a model. The roles of visual or graphical validation, dynamic validation, as well as statistical and biological validations are discussed in more detail. The emphasis in this chapter is placed on the understanding of the validation process rather than the validation of a specific model. The limitations and the pitfalls of model validation procedures, as well as some of the frequent misuses of these procedures are discussed. Several technical and practical recommendations concerning the validation of growth and yield model are made.

Awe is a self-transcendent emotion that can diminish one's focus on the self and serves as an important motivator of commitment to social collectives. However, the influence of awe on ecological behavior is not clear. This study examines the relationships between people's feeling of awe, their connectedness to nature, and ecological behavior. Three experiments tested the effect of awe on ecological behaviors including mediation tests. Compared with participants in the control condition, participants in the awe condition were more inclined to behave ecologically (Study 1 and 2) and reported a higher feeling of connectedness to nature (Study 2). Moreover, the relationship between awe and ecological behavior was mediated by connectedness to nature (Study 3). These findings indicate that awe helps broaden the self-concept by including nature and increase connectedness to nature, which in turn lead to ecological behavior. They also highlight the significance of connectedness in explaining why awe increases ecological behavior.

Although studies of nonrational consumer behaviour in the fields of psychology and marketing are widespread, few scholars have discussed this issue from the integrated perspective of individual characteristics and consumer welfare. Extant research has introduced the concept of consumer vulnerability to deepen the study of nonrational behaviour. The present research defines consumer vulnerability as an individual characteristic, that is, a tendency to be influenced by an external stimulation or temptation that leads to decisions harmful to the person's own welfare. To operationalize this concept, this study develops a consumer vulnerability scale. Results from exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis reveal the following seven dimensions of consumer vulnerability: product knowledge, product promotion, marketing and emotional stress, social pressure, purchasing power, refunds policy and discrimination ability. After verifying the scale's reliability and validity, this study confirms that it can be applied to measure the degree to which consumer welfare has been harmed and predict nonrational decision-making behaviour.Limitations and future research directions also are discussed. K E Y W O R D S consumer vulnerability, consumer welfare, disadvantaged consumer, nonrational consumer behaviour, scale development

In this study we examine the impact of customer experience (CE) on customer-based brand equity (CBBE) for tourism destinations. Breaking down CE into the constituents of service performance, word-of-mouth(WOM), and advertising, we use a structural equation model to test survey data gathered from Mainland Chinese outbound tourists. We found that destination service performance (DSP) has the most significant impact on destination brand equity, followed by WOM. Advertising does not show a significant effect. This study also confirms the structure of destination brand equity. Based on results, this study offers some managerial insights into the effective building of destination brand equity.

With more and more destinations relying on repeat travelers, the inclination of tourists to revisit some destinations has become a significant topic of study. Therefore, the reasons for travelers’ revisits have been addressed in many research studies. These studies have determined several factors of the revisit inclination, such as satisfaction, destination image, and perceived quality. However, in most of the previous studies about the relationships among the destination image and tourists’ satisfaction, as well as their behavioral intentions to the destination, the moderating variables were not considered. Consequently, we analyzed the moderator effects of certain characteristics of different travel arrangements on the theoretical relationship among the destination image, tourists’ satisfaction, and their behavioral intentions to the destination. This article first identifies the similarities and differences among these two types of Chinese outbound travelers in terms of their demographic and trip characteristics. It then confirms that these two types of travelers differ in terms of the relationships among perceived destination images, satisfaction level, and future behavioral intentions using an invariance test of structural model. According to the multiple group cause-and-effect analysis, the results show that travel arrangement can largely affect either the relations between destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions. Moreover, the relationship between either destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions is generally stronger for independent visitors. Finally, the influences are discussed from both theoretical and practical perspective.