Taking into account that traditional agricultural methods reduce the farm performance and make agriculture economically ineffective, development of intelligent machinery is essential for improving the quality of crops and agricultural activities. The most important issue in development of agricultural technologies lies in users’ willingness to adopt it. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the key factors of Davis’s model in automation acceptance in agriculture. Presented paper describes an applied research with a survey approach through a questionnaire. Questionnaire data were collected from 378 people and respondents include university students, farmers and experts in a randomized sampling from the Ministry of Agriculture. Firstly, the questionnaire data were described in a form of statistical numerical characteristics. Secondly, in order to verify the data normality, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was calculated in SPSS and the relationship between the variables was investigated in the conceptual model. Subsequently, hypotheses were tested via appropriate statistical models using LISREL and SPSS software. The results showed that for all hypotheses, the T-test exceeds 1.96 and the significance level is less than 0.05. In such a manner, all hypotheses were confirmed at 95% level, and the path coefficients in the hypotheses H1, H2 and H6 were negative – indicating the negative effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable in the hypothesis. In the other hypotheses, these were positive – indicating the positive effect of the independent variable on dependent variable. By means of modelling, it was found that there was an inverse relationship between social and individual factors with perceived usefulness, as well as an inverse relationship between social factors with perceived ease-of-use, while there was a positive and significant relationship between other factors. According to a set of fitting indices, the research conceptual model was appropriate and Cronbach’s coefficients for each factor were greater than 0.7, suggesting that the questionnaire was valid. On the basis of findings, the better a person understands the usefulness of automation, the more likely this person is to adopt it. Since the risk and issues related to it play an important role in farmers’ decision making, it is recommended that future studies address the issue of risk in adopting precision farming technology.
This study investigated different companies' capital structures using a comparative approach in a developing country (Iran) and a developed country (Australia). The purpose of this study was to identify the factors affecting the capital structure based on the company's characteristics in Iran and Australia. The main characteristics of the companies used in this research are mainly based on the variables used in Pecking order theory and the Trade-off theory namely tangibility, firm size, profitability, and business risk. Three other variables including liquidity, asset utilization ratio and speed of adjustment were also investigated. Two indicators of total debt ratio and long-term debt ratio have been used as corporate leverage index. The population of this study included 178 Iranian companies listed on Iran's stock exchange and 187 Australian companies listed on Australia's stock exchange from 2009 to 2015. To test the hypotheses, Panel data and Eviews software were used. To ensure robustness of the results, the speed of adjustment was estimated using GMM and OLS (with fixed and random effects).The results of this study showed that dynamic trade-off theory could better explain the changes in capital structure in Iran and Australia. The results also revealed significant differences in factors affecting the capital structure in Iran and Australia.
Behavioral science in the field of finance and investment is among new topics raised in recent years. The relationship between financial sciences and other fields of social sciences such as financial psychology has caused researchers to do many researches regarding the behavior of investors in the financial markets and their reactions to different situations. Based on the theories of financial behavior, shareholders' decision to buy and sell stocks is under the influence of internal and external psychological factors. Through designing and experimental testing of the model of investors' financial behavior in the Tehran Stock Exchange with an emphasis on brand, this study was an attempt to investigate the influence of these factors. To this end, financial, psychological and social factors were considered as the most important external factors influencing the behavior of investors and, considering the mediating role of brand awareness, their impact on perceived risk and perceived return as well as investment intention was tested. The research population consisted of all individual investors in the Tehran Stock Exchange. In order to determine the sample size, considering unlimited population, Cochran formula was used and hence the sample size was determined to be 145. For data collection, standard questionnaire was used. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire and the research hypotheses were tested using path analysis. The results showed that psychological factors have a positive impact on perceived risk and returns. Financial factors had a positive impact on perceived risk but no impact on perceived return. The impact of social factors on perceived risk and perceived return was not confirmed. Moreover, the results showed that brand awareness has a moderating role in the relationship between social factors and perceived risk and return. However, its moderating role was not confirmed in the relationship between the psychological and financial factors and perceived risk and return. Perceived risk had a positive effect on attitude toward the brand. However, the impact of perceived return on attitude toward the brand was not significant. Finally, the attitude toward the brand had a positive effect on shareholders' investment intention.
Markets around the world, especially those for holiday home, become international. Holiday homes refer to the places that are used on holidays and leisure times and are usually located out of the users' residence. In this regard, foreign tourists are considered as the main part of holiday home markets in different countries of the world including Cyprus. Given the fact that the Cyprus economy is dependent on tourism activities, it can be expected that a significant percentage of the investments on holiday homes are done by the foreign tourists visiting Cyprus. Literature review of the research suggests that marketing activities is one of the most important factors influencing tourists' decisions. This study is also an attempt to evaluate the effect of marketing factors including tourism marketing mix on the decisions of tourists in buying holiday homes. In order to collect data, 101 questionnaires were distributed among the foreign tourists in different cities of Cyprus. For data analysis, structural equation model and Lisrel software were used. The results of the study showed that all elements of tourism marketing mix including product, price, promotion, place, physical environment, process and people have had a significant and positive impact on the tourists' decisions to buy holiday home in Cyprus.
The role of marketing in explaining firms’ business performance has received significant attention throughout the history of the marketing discipline. Over the past two decades, researchers have considerably enhanced the conceptual understanding of the role of marketing in enabling firms to create and sustain a competitive advantage. Recent advances in the marketing–performance interface have also begun to provide more empirical evidence of the impact of specific marketing activities and different types of marketing-related assets on firms’ performance. On the other side, results of studies in many academic fields that are conducted about a specific issue are usually confusing and contrasting. Meta-analysis is a research approach that helps the researcher to a large extent to identify the moderating variables in the results of previous studies. Despite various researches having been conducted, such contrast is also observed in the relationship between marketing activities and organization performance. Characteristics of the research topic can be referred to among the several reasons that have been mentioned for such divergence in similar studies. It was tried in the present survey to identify the role of moderating variables regarding the characteristics of the research topic in the relationship between marketing activities and organization performance using the meta-analysis approach. The results revealed that the moderating variables related to the characteristics of the research topic consisting of marketing activity indexes, organization performance indexes, researcher field and year of publication of the research have been led to a significant difference in the results of studies regarding the effect of marketing activities on performance of organizations. Keywords: Marketing activities, Organization performance, Characteristics of research topic, Meta-analysis approach.
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