AHFE Open AccessCross-Cultural Decision Making
Editors: Atsuo Murata, Javed Sheikh
Topics: Cross-Cultural Decision Making
Publication Date: 2022
ISBN: 978-1-958651-20-9
DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001848
Articles
Cross-cultural differences in thought and risk behavior – Implications for safety management
It has been pointed out that thoughts are affected by culture. While eastern people have a more holistic way of thinking, western people have a more focused analytic way of thinking. Western people tend to behave based on internal attributes. On the other hand, eastern people tend to behave based on the interaction between internal attributes and situational factors. In summary, Western people cannot see the forests for the trees, which generally means that they cannot review the overall situation before discussing the details, and that they seem to infer causes based on effects. To the contrary, eastern people cannot see the trees for the forests and tend to have comprehensive belief and thus judge that they cannot know trees without seeing forests.The cross-cultural difference in thought is expected to lead to the cross-cultural difference in risk behavior. We have clarified cross-cultural differences in baseball game and working hours. Cross-cultural differences are also identified in a variety of fields such as corporate, finance, investment, policy making, management, or traffic behavior. It has been pointed out that individualism has a positive association with corporate risk-taking, whereas uncertainty (risk) avoidance and harmony have negative associations with corporate risk-taking. It has also been demonstrated that apparent differences in risk preference in buying prices for risky financial options were associated primarily with cultural differences in the perception of risk of the financial options. The cross-cultural differences in simulated driver risk-taking behavior have also been clarified. The frequency of risk-taking behavior differed among countries. Risk-taking was found to be higher for domestic firms in countries with low propensity of risk aversion and high individualism (cannot behave more holistically).In this manner, it is expected that cross-cultural difference matters in thoughts and risk behavior of corporate, finance, investment, and management, etc. This paper reviewed cross-cultural differences in thoughts and risk behavior and gave some implications for irrational decision making that took account of cross-cultural differences especially in safety management.
Atsuo Murata, Toshihisa Doi
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Advertising and Values: A Study on Cultural values Manifested in Advertising Targeting the Urban Middle Class in China
Advertising is the mirror that reflects social and cultural trends and is capable of shaping society (Sivulka, 2012). We are influenced subtly by the meanings advertisers create in advertisements; in turn, our lifestyles and value priorities can affect the strategies of advertising design and branding. However, this mirror is distorted since advertising reflects only selected attitudes, values, lifestyles, and philosophies that work for sellers’ interests (Pollay, 1987). This paper examined the advertisements launched in nine of the most popular lifestyle magazines in China, to identify the frequently used values manifested in advertising, and its influences on the lifestyles of Chinese consumers. Two key theories are adopted in the value and advertising study: Hofstede’s five dimensions of national culture (1984) and Schwartz’s theory of basic values (1992). 525 print advertisements were selected. The advertising appeals were coded to identify the values that appeared most frequently in the advertisements. Pollay’s measurement of values manifest in advertising (1983) is used as the basic measurement guide. The value theme categories selected for content analysis were based on Schwartz’s value system. 12 values are finally adopted in the coding process: Family, Kinship affection, Accomplishment, Enjoyment, Social status, Love, Sense of belonging, Social responsibility, Utility, Self-fulfillment, Economic value, Authority power. After content analysis, we found that “utility,” “enjoyment,” “social status,” “accomplishment,” and “authority power” are the top five most frequently used values in advertisements targeting the Chinese middle and elite classes. This finding suggests that advertisements in China still play an important role in delivering utility information in product functions and effectiveness. Enjoyment is the second most frequently used value in these advertisements. Enjoyment is considered a typical western value (Cheng, 1997), which was forbidden in Confucian tradition. In Confucian tradition, enjoyment is discouraged. Working hard and not spending more than necessary are considered virtues (Hofstede and Bond, 1988). Nowadays, enjoyment is legitimated by mass media, western movies, and advertisements. Pursuing good quality life and enjoying it is considered a reward for hard work. The value of social status is the third frequently used value theme in magazine advertisements. As elite magazines are targeting the Chinese middle class, their audiences are readers who desire to move upward to a higher social status. These people are likely to have status consumption. They want to express their social status through consumer goods. The status meanings of consumer goods are usually delivered via advertisements using “social status” value. The frequent use of social status value in advertisements shows the strong need of Chinese consumers for social status. When values of consumers are consistent with the values reflected in advertising, the likeability toward advertisements, products, and brands will increase, and consequently, advertising will be more effective (Polegato and Bjerke, 2006). This study examines value and lifestyle issues from the perspective of advertising in emerging markets. The mediating role of advertising enables us to better understand the formation of and changes in the values and lifestyles of the new middle class in emerging markets, such as China. The findings of this study can also contribute to advertisers and designers by enabling them to understand the value themes in advertisements that attract them the most.
Wenhua Li, Ziqi Ye
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
On Localization Design in Transnational Marketing - The Example of Starbucks
Under the impact of the economic globalization across the world and the dual incentive of the flourishing information exchange, local multinational enterprises begin to emerge. Nowadays, the enterprises from all walks of life are under ever increasing pressure from competition at home and abroad. Under such background, let’s take Starbucks as an example herein to specify the cross-cultural barriers the multinational companies have to tackle in their marketing, such as language differences, religious beliefs, cultural values, etc., and interpret their marketing strategies in China in view of such differences: how to well understand accurate market positioning and market segmentation, attach importance to brand localization design to improve the popularity and recognition of multinational enterprises in China, and then consolidate and expand the brand consumer market. The Chinese elements with regard to localization design will be exemplified in aspect of application strategy, festival strategy and regional strategy, with the classified research through the analysis and presentation of these strategies.The localization design of Starbucks is of great help and enlightenment to the brand shaping and marketing strategy of Chinese local coffee brands. China's local coffee brands should pay close attention to transnational marketing strategies, and constantly innovate design to keep up with the market progress and consumer demand, in an effort to balance the localized design and the service of enterprises, and discover the connotation of localized design under the trend of globalization.
Ifumi Akasaka
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
A world of diverse opportunities – on the need for proactive career capital renewal in the globalizing society
Contemporary discourse on such issues as the quality of the globalizing world providing diverse opportunities, factors determining changes in the social system, and the condition of the human being seeking their place in the reality undergoing permanent change, is one of the most important research orientations. The contemporary social context opens up a wide range of opportunities for individuals to build their own careers. Thus, it seems justified to inquire about the proactivity in the career planning process and to determine whether and how an individual can be prepared to develop, manage, and monitor his/her career to ensure a satisfying experience of oneself and one’s place in the reality of the globalizing world. Contemporary career studies advocate taking into account the process of investing in career capital, the immanent characteristic of which is the subject’s orientation towards proactivity.What becomes an important feature of the individual’s mind is the prospective temporal orientation towards the following: the anticipation of events and their unintended effects, the ability to forecast and plan future actions and to assess the consequences, but above all, the ability to create future desired states of affairs, creating new options of participation and action. Undoubtedly, an important issue that requires inclusion in the course of a person’s life is career development and renewal of career capital. The research on careers means the study of both changes of individuals and changes of organizations, as well as transformations in society. In the discontinuous space-time and heterogeneous system of cultural meanings in the world of global change, career development and the formation of an individual’s own professional identity becomes a cognitive practice based on individual experimentation. The contemporary social configuration in which the search for identity has become a flexible point of reference opens up a range of numerous possibilities for an individual to create his/her own career in the course of life. Continuous development has become an inherent property of career capital renewal. The multiplicity, fragmentation, variability, and complexity, which characterize the organization of social life in the globalizing society, determine changes in the perception of career development and overcoming the tension between the experiences of the past and the possibilities of the future.
Agnieszka Cybal-Michalska
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Approaches to Extending Game-Theoretic Analyses to Complex, Real-World Scenarios
In domains ranging from military engagements to business to politics to games, competitors take actions to gain an advantage over others. Game theory has been used extensively since the 1950s to analyze such domains and to gain insights into the best moves for all competitors. While it is a powerful tool for analysis, game theory often falls short when applied to real-world encounters. Game-theoretic approaches over-simplify by assuming each side is composed of rational actors that attempt to maximize a single-valued utility function. Even with that simplification, real-world scenarios are often difficult to formalize as a solvable “game,” and even when the problem can be defined as a game, it is computationally expensive to calculate the best actions for each actor.We will present research that extends game theory to include multiple forms of utility for each actor. This enables us to recast traditional, albeit simple game-theory games like the Prisoners’ Dilemma and the Ultimatum Game, which produce results at odds with real-world expectations when confined to traditional measures of utility (i.e., minimizing jail time and maximizing money). By adding utility measures like commitment and fairness, we can generate a Pareto-optimal set of solutions that are better at recreating and explaining real-world behavior than traditional single-utility game theory. In our formulation, the actors are still acting rationally, they are just factoring in a more complex set of tradeoffs that our multi-utility game theory can naturally model.We will also present research into a game representation scheme that lets the scenario modeler express real-world action-to-action constraints like “enables” and “blocks.” These constraints support basic reasoning about ordering of actions without having to build full search tress or reason about time generally. Accounting for these constraints also significantly reduces the space of possible solutions, making it tractable to find exact solutions for certain classes of complex scenarios.Finally, we will present a software toolkit that simplifies the process of defining a game and analyzing the plausible outcomes. The model building tool helps analysts capture the goals and motivations of each actor, the actions available, and how those actions affect goals or other actions. Using these models, the analysis suite calculates the Pareto-optimal choices for each actor in that scenario and helps analysts navigate the plausible outcomes. With these tools, decision makers can assess the value of their strategic options, even in cases where adversaries may choose actions traditional game theory would label incorrect.We have used the software toolkit to create and analyze several models, from simple games like rock-paper-scissors to a real-world political gray-zone conflict with 3 nation states, 23 possible actions, 18 different motivations, and 10^21 possible solutions. The results were computed in seconds and align with behavior of the real-world actors. Policy analysts without a background in computational modeling have also used the toolkit to create “backcasting” models of historical situations. These models successfully explained the behavior of the actors involved. These evaluations show that the toolkit is both useful and usable for analyzing real-world multi-actor interactions.
William Neal Reilly, Leonard Eusebi
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Analysis on the preference intention and its influencing factors of standing passengers in subway carriages
Rail transit is an important part of urban public transportation and subway bears most of the urban public transportation volume as an important part of urban rail. The uneven density of standing seats in subway cars has always been a common problem. Passengers accustomed to gathering at the door will not only reduce the capacity of the vehicle, but also affect the comfort of passengers. The distribution of passengers in the compartment is affected by the passenger's personal attributes, travel characteristics and the layout of the facilities in the compartment. The first two types are subjective uncontrollable factors, while the third type of layout belongs to objective environmental factors.In this study, the factors influencing the position selection of standing passengers are focused on the differentiated layout of the compartment, and the standing space inside the compartment is divided into three areas, namely the door area, the transition area and the intermediate passage area. Based on the classification and summary of the layout of existing subway functional parts, three different layout factors that affect the preference choice of standing passengers are proposed. Including the number of center pillars (single carriage has 4 and more than 4), the door area handle type (vertical bar and high bar), seat layout (N+N type and N+2 type). A total of 184 people were selected to participate in the investigation of the attitude of preference for standing position. By introducing the concept of the preference degree of the standing position, the preference degree of the passenger standing position under the condition of the differentiated layout was compared, and the differentiated layout was shown on the paper prototype. And use the multivariate ordered Logit model to analyze the data.The results show that the number of central pillars in a single carriage is greater than 4 and the high ring bar in the door area is a risk factor for the transition zone to obtain a higher degree of preference. When the number of mid-pillars is greater than 4 and the door area is a high ring bar, passengers will The preference of the transition zone has declined; the N+2 layout is a risk factor for higher preference in the door area. With the N+2 seat layout, the passenger’s preference for the door area has declined; in a single compartment The number of uprights is greater than 4, the high ring bar in the door area and the N+2 seat layout are the protective factors for a higher degree of preference in the middle aisle area. When the number of columns in a single carriage is more than 4 or the door area is a high bar or the seat layout is N +2, passengers' preference for the middle aisle area will increase. The data results confirm that the layout of the compartment facilities will affect the preferences of passengers for different standing areas. The number and placement of the columns will guide the path of passengers, and the grip comfort of the handrail facilities is also an important factor that affects passengers’ willingness to choose. While, the degree of influence of the transition zone and the intermediate channel zone is exactly the opposite.
Ke Liu, Canqun He, Zhelong Hu
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Design Strategy Based on Consumers' Cognition of Cantonese Cultural Product in the New Era
Cantonese culture is an important part of Chinese culture. From the perspective of the consumer side, with the way of in-depth interview and questionnaire, the paper conducts a research on the consumers’ cognition of Cantonese cultural product, and proposes a corresponding design strategy. The research shows that although consumers are interested in Cantonese culture, not many consumers pay attention to Cantonese cultural product. The main reasons include the lack of category, practicality and innovation of Cantonese cultural product and so on. To strengthen consumers’ attention and consumption of Cantonese cultural product, it is suggested that the appearance, visual symbol of Cantonese, product function diversity and the addition of technology and nostalgic should be considered for designers.
Xingyi Zhong, Taiwei Sun
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Interactions of job satisfaction with personality could avoid emotional exhaustion among customer service employees
This study examined the link between personality characteristics and emotional exhaustion among customer service workers. The live survey application S was employed to conduct a web-based questionnaire survey of customer service workers in the United States in March 2021 with 50 questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents (65.78%) reported that they had felt emotional exhaustion. This study used descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and moderated regression analyses to test the hypotheses. Results suggested that employee emotional exhaustion was caused by environmental, situational, and social phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic at the time rather than individual characters. The result also indicated that employees with high levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and job satisfaction can quickly reduce and control their emotional exhaustion when experiencing conflicts.
Noriko Okabe
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Identifying Satisfaction Factors in Long-Term Use of Digital Products for Young Japanese Consumers
The present study examined the factors leading to good UX that affect overall satisfaction in long-term product use. This finding would contribute to establishing design guidelines to enhance user experience (UX). A questionnaire was conducted to investigate overall satisfaction and impression of digital products. The four types of pleasures (physio-pleasure, socio-pleasure, psycho-pleasure, and ideo-pleasure) were considered aspects that constitute UX, and their impacts on overall product satisfaction were investigated. Moreover, what kind of product impressions lead to pleasure was also investigated. The effects of digital products' four pleasures and impressions on overall satisfaction were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Physio-pleasure and psycho-pleasure were found to contribute to the overall satisfaction of digital products.
Toshihisa Doi, Atsuo Murata
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Finnish Firms and the Employment of Foreign Workers
Developed countries have vastly depleted workforces because of their ageing populations. Finland is one of the countries suffering from labour shortages in all areas. At the same time, existing immigrants cannot find suitable work in Finnish firms due to language and integration barriers. This paper aims to explore the importance of the Finnish language in recruiting workers with foreign backgrounds, the need for a foreign workforce and the openness of Finnish firms to cooperation in solving these issues. The focus is on the recruitment barriers and the shortage of the workforce side of the data. The data have been collected from 36 firms from Finland in an interview form between 2020 and 2021 and qualitatively analysed and interpreted. The study explains the level of need for foreign workforces in Finnish firms and their willingness to cooperate with facilitating projects and funding bodies. It also connects the project findings to Finland’s official strategic focus for 2030.
Afnan Zafar, Marja Ahola
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
The autonomy of cultural inheritance and innovation from the process of Venus' Ideological Development
Venus’ ideology has gone through various stages, including the primitive reproduction worship in the Paleolithic Age, the classical goddess of love and beauty in ancient Greece and Rome, the humanism of decline and revival in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the secular humanity of vigorous development in the late Renaissance and the deconstructive cultural symbols after the twentieth century. The “Venus” is currently the convention of public aesthetics, the reconstruction of love and beauty, and the desire to impress people forever. It breaks the boundaries between classical art and public life, and stimulates the autonomy of cultural inheritance and innovation. This paper will specifically analyze the development of Venus’ ideology, and analyze the connotation and practical path of the autonomy of cultural inheritance and innovation through this example.
Ding Dianfan, Wuzhong Zhou
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Cross-Cultural Management of Chinese Traditional Theatre Industry Based on Broadway Operation Model
Broadway, as one of the leading commercial show districts in the West, has a mature commercial experience and operation model. The theatre industry on Broadway is different from other places, and its production and marketing methods have also proven to be highly successful. This paper analyses the business model, artistic concept, communication strategy, and user research of Western theatre based on Broadway at the academic level. At the practical level, the paper investigates the cross-cultural management and communication model of the Chinese theatre industry. The Broadway theatre management that operates separately for theatres and productions, together with the art form that focuses on scenery, stage art, and sound effects, is applied to the management and communication of the traditional Chinese theatre industry. The paper aims at promoting traditional culture and making traditional theatre more suitable for modern aesthetic needs and market demands. The contribution of the paper is to improve traditional Chinese theatre into a creator-centered theatre performance consisting of music, song, dance, and dialogue in a cross-cultural context, based on the Broadway operation model. A modern marketing campaign is used to promote exposure and sustainability. As a result, a framework for Chinese traditional theatre products based on cross-culture is constructed.
Xilin Chen, Tao Xi
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Construction of the localized knowledge production model based on social design method in the post-epidemic era
During the period when the new crown epidemic spreads and coexists with human beings on a large scale around the world, the process of globalization has been impacted. The existing international order, geopolitical order, and social order have also been challenged to a certain extent. Globalization is not homogenization that eliminates differences. Tracing the roots of diverse cultures requires that the research object be transferred to the most basic unit, knowledge production in localized communities. This paper expounds on the connotation and opportunities of the post-epidemic era from the micro and macro levels, combined with the method of social design, analyzes and draws the principles for the construction of the localized knowledge production model, and constructs the model.
Jiaqi Qian
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings