The effects of different factors influencing commuterline in Indonesia

Commuterline plays an important role for transportation planning in Indonesia, and it is essential to learn more on how to motivate people to actively use this public transportation facility. This paper presents an empirical investigation to explore different factors influencing the use of this publica transportation facility. The proposed study develops a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 374 people who had good experience of using commuterline in their daily lives. The questionnaire is designed to learn the effects of environmental, individual, consumer resources and psychological factors. Using some statistical techniques, the study has determined that psychological factors are the most important elements influencing consumer behavior to use this public transportation followed by consumer resources, product knowledge and individual characteristics.

Leftover Consumption as a Means of Food Waste Reduction in Public Space? Qualitative Insights from Online Discussions

A considerable amount of food is discarded in canteens every day. This waste has created a countermovement, where groups of mainly students purposefully choose to eat other consumers’ plate leftovers instead of buying fresh meals. This phenomenon highlights two opposing narratives: leftovers as food waste versus leftovers as edible food resources. Using a thematic analysis, we investigated 1579 comments from German news sites and their corresponding Facebook sites related to this countermovement. Thereby, we aim to better understand what consumers associate with the consumption of other consumers’ plate leftovers. Our study demonstrates that the consumption of plate leftovers is shaped by the regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive system. Furthermore, associations with the consumption of plate leftovers depend on whether this food decision is perceived as a collective or individual consumer decision. From a consumer movement perspective, food leftover consumption is associated with a sense of community and food waste reduction for idealistic or environmental and social reasons. From an individual consumer behavior perspective, food leftover consumption is associated with satisfying hunger but considered a threat to health and social order. Our findings can inspire food service organizations to develop targeted interventions for plate leftover reduction.

Individual consumer surplus in the Edgeworth Box

Subject. The consumer surplus conception is an important part of the modern microeconomic theory at the introductory and intermediate levels. Consumer surplus measures the change in the consumer’s real welfare. The article addresses the peculiarities of generation and the main property of the generalized individual consumer surplus, using the Edgeworth Box case. Objectives. The purpose is to find the main property of individual consumer surplus in the Edgeworth Box economy. Methods. The study draws on methods of logical and mathematical analysis. The generalized consumer surplus is correctly constructed, using the mathematical theory of curve integrals of the second type (the theory of line integrals in the Western mathematics). Results. The generalized individual consumer surplus is defined through the respective curve integral along some admissible trajectory in the simple exchange economy (Edgeworth Box). The paper also introduces the notion of the marginal individual consumer surplus, and demonstrates that consumer surplus is a correct individual welfare measure in the Edgeworth Box, and that consumer surplus is zero along any given indifference curve. I consider the numerical example of individual surplus calculation and presentation in the Edgeworth Box. Conclusions. The generalized individual consumer surplus is a correct measure of consumer’s utility change along monotone (weakly monotone) trajectories in the Edgeworth Box. Geometrically, the consumer surplus is presented as an area limited by the reservation price curve from the top and by the reallocation line (curve) from the bottom.

Complicity and Solidarity

The ethics of our individual consumer behavior regarding the work of immoral artists is complex. Some commentators claim that it is morally wrong to continue engaging with the work of artists who commit immoral acts. After dismissing consequentialist arguments in favor of this position, this chapter argues that we have considerable moral latitude when it comes to our private choices about art consumption. Our public art consumption, on the other hand, can have a social meaning that is independent of our intentions. The chapter argues that, ultimately, ethical consumption of art is about how we engage with art rather than what art we engage with.

Exhibiting Nordic Values: A Critical Look at the IKEA Store

IKEA proposes a distinct showroom experience for its stores globally—a successful model that is frequently imitated by competitors and widely analysed by academics. In this chapter, the IKEA showroom is considered as a cultural institution rather than a store: a museum of modern living. The ‘IKEA Museum’ is evaluated for its cultural impact, focusing mostly on the narrative that it offers to the visitor regarding his/her own role and agency in the Anthropocene. Drawing on authors such as Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Carol Duncan and Naomi Klein, it is argued that the choices in showroom design and brand messages portray many known tropes of neoliberal culture, reducing the citizen to an individual consumer rather than empowering his/her political awareness. The chapter ends with a suggestive subversion of the current situation, as the IKEA showroom is briefly re-imagined as a more ethical and culturally responsible version of itself.

SURROGATE TOURISTS ON INSTAGRAM: AN(OTHER) KIND OF MIMETIC GAZE

From influencers to established travel brands to casual consumers, there are a number of existing organisms in the online ecosystem of Instagram simultaneously producing and consuming content. At first glance, the nature of these relationships seems simple - sharing and engaging via a visual medium - but upon prolonged review, deeper questions about the interwoven complexity existing between these organisms and their content emerge. The authors illuminate several discernible patterns through a deep theoretical framing of the gaze, mimetic reproduction and ownership followed by a conceptual modelling through a review of everyday Instagramic practices. What becomes apparent are a number of stages of development in this process. Firstly, the practice of photographic mimicry becomes a form of consumption in which the consumer ‘consumes places’ vicariously across space and time, making image reproduction an embodied practice. Secondly, the Instagram fee of an individual consumer (or influencer) becomes a sort of living autobiography, curating and aggrandizing the glossiest images which form a projected extension of self that is not grounded necessarily in authenticity, but in reproduction. Finally, the proliferation of communication between consumer and consumer reproduces a surrogate type that creates a constantly evolving circular content loop where the flow of influence and information becomes muddled and originality becomes less distinguishable. This paper critically explores how Instagram has collapsed traditional influence and consumer relationships particularly in how tourist experience and imagery are shared, resulting in a complex online community that resembles a cultural colonial organism fed by communication feedback loops. The result of this paper is the positioning of a surrogate tourist embodied within a collection of individual entities performing specialized tasks dependent on other individuals in the community in which the function and nature of the individual recedes in importance to the relationship existing between organisms.

Promising Services of Multi-Satellite Space Systems

The paper considers prospective directions of improving consumer services rendered with the help of multi-satellite space systems. Based on a study of trends in the development of thematic geoinformation services, the conclusion is made about the need to form personalized complex queries, including those containing suggestions concerning putative solutions for the mass user. The multi-satellite space infrastructure currently under development, which is considered as a single space information system, can serve as the technical means for adopting such an approach. Based on an analysis of development trends of the existing system of geoinformation support, a conclusion is made about the feasibility of the intellectualization and personalization of services, which are targeted at a specific customer, with the expansion of the range of possible consumers to a mass individual consumer. The article proposes several approaches, the further development of which can result in the creation of system-wide services that implement the “from data to solutions” concept at the level of integrated solutions.