Business and Economics Research Journal

591-607

Authors: Onur Ozdemir

This study investigates the human capital-income inequality nexus for 19 advanced economies. The whole sample covers the period between 1990 and 2017. The econometric analysis considers two fundamental panel data methods, namely the fixed-effects and two-step system GMM, to test whether the correlation between human capital development and income inequality is negative or not. The empirical findings of these two particular panel data methods reveal that while the initial stages of accumulating a higher degree of human capital through increasing the average years of schooling and returns to education reduce the level of income inequality, the later stages show that this negative relationship turns into positive by way of widening the unequal distribution of national income. In addition, the economic globalization appears to be positively correlated with income inequality, meaning that globalized economic relations widen the scale of inequality where the statistical significance of human capital-income inequality nexus still prevails. All these estimation results show that they are contradicted with the mainstream findings, each of which puts forward that higher level of human capital reduces the level of income inequality.

621-634

Authors: Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, Sumanjeet Singh

The scorning of gross domestic product (GDP) is as old as its birth. Income inequality and ensuring human well-being are few out of many causes of its fulmination. Existing literature on the concern issues reveals that, where there are great disparities in wealth, there are heightened level of social distrust. Poor countries having reasonable distribution of wealth are much better in terms of health and happiness of people than in rich countries having unfair distribution of wealth. It has also been found that, people’ health are better in the more equally income distributed societies than the societies having highly skewed distribution of income. It has repercussion effect in the form of reduction of workforces’ productivity, upsurge in national expenditures on health, and diversion of resources from prolific endeavours to somewhere else. These are results of growth driven policies which ensure improvements in GDP indicator without assuring improvements in the human well-being. The status of income inequality raises questions on the sustainability of GDP driven development. Hence there is a need for an alternative. This paper is an attempt to discuss the issues concerning rise in income inequality and to shift our focus towards Human Well-Being approach as an alternative to GDP approach.

769-791

Authors: Kaouther Dhahak, Farid Huseynov

In the world of business, gamification is considered to be a quick-rising technique, with numerous organizations embracing gaming techniques and game-style rewards to grow customer interest and engagement and influence customer’s attitude toward their brands. This study has investigated the factors of gamification influencing online customers’ attitudes and intentions to purchase fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). This study presents a research model based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and previous empirical studies. There are seven factors in this model which are perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, perceived social influence, perceived trust, attitude and intention. Four out of seven factors are independent variables and attitude is mediator variable in the proposed research model. This study used quantitative research techniques and study data was collected from 200 participants who downloaded the gamified Oreo application, played with the app for certain duration, and later filled the study questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS statistical software. In this study, it has been found that perceived usefulness, perceived social influence, and perceived enjoyment positively influence attitude. However, it has been found that perceived ease of use does not influence attitude and perceived usefulness does not influence purchase intention. Trust and perceived ease of use have been found to positively influence perceived usefulness yet perceived enjoyment has not been found to influence perceived usefulness.

807-821

Authors: Erkan Ozdemir, Mine Sonmezay

The purpose of this study is to reveal the effect of consumer perceptions on the benevolence, integrity and competence of e-commerce companies on consumers’ perceived trust, purchase intention and attitudinal loyalty. The research data were collected by online survey method. The convenience sampling method was used in the study. The research was conducted between November 29 and December 29, 2019. As a result of the data collection process, 297 questionnaires were collected. The research model was tested with structural equation modeling by using Smart PLS. As a result of the research, significant effects of the integrity and competence characteristics of e-commerce companies on the perceived trust by the consumers was found. However, effect of the benevolence of e-commerce companies on the consumers’ perceived trust wasn’t found. As a result of the research, it was found that the perceived trust has significant effect on the purchase intention and the purchase intention has a significant effect on attitudinal loyalty. As a conclusion, e-commerce companies should improve benevolence, integrity and competence which are the antecedent variables affecting trust in order to increase the consumers’ perceived trust. As the perceived trust increases, the level of purchase and attitudinal loyalty of consumers will increase considerably.