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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of family involvement on the corporate social responsibility (CSR)-firm performance (FP) relationship in the US hospitality industry. Building on agency theory, this study examines how family ownership, management and board control influence the relationship between CSR and FP. Design/methodology/approach: To examine the moderating effect of family ownership, family management and family board control, this study adopts the two-way fixed-effects model and performs a panel regression analysis with robust standard errors. The sample period spans 1994–2018 and 565 firm-year observations are included. Findings: This study finds that the impact of CSR on FP is positively moderated by the extent of a firm's family member involvement. In specific, all three aspects of corporate governance (i.e. ownership, management and board control) positively moderate the relationship between CSR and FP. Research limitations/implications: Findings of this study yield several recommendations for hospitality managers, including shaping strategic decisions for implementing CSR, by providing a unique perspective that the involvement of founding family members can be helpful in enhancing firm value through CSR activities. Originality/value: This study sheds light on the further understanding of the CSR-FP link in the hospitality literature. In addition, this study provides practical guidelines for hospitality firms in the context of CSR by revealing possible advantages of strengthened founding family involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study aims to examine previously identified hotel automated valuation models (AVMs) using a more extensive and updated sample of hotel sale transaction data, introduce economic conditions as a new determinant for hotel market value and test the moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between the previously identified indicators and market value, operationalized as sale transaction price.Design/methodology/approach This study performs simple and multiple regression analyses to examine the proposed relationships. The sample period is from 2000 to 2012, because the economy prior to 2000 is likely to have been a less-relevant economic environment for the contemporary business world.Findings As hypothesized, there is an insignificant main effect of economic conditions on hotel sale prices. A moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between average daily rate (and net operating income) and market value was found, while no moderating effect was found for occupancy rate and hotel size. Results also find certain support for AVMs previously presented in the literature, as described herein.Originality/value This study attempts to make contributions to the existing lodging and real estate literature by investigating a main effect of economic conditions on hotel sale prices and a moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between various hotel performance indicators and hotel sale prices. In addition, this study operationalizes a relatively extensive (large base sample size of 2,441 hotel sale transactions) and recent (since 2000) database compared to previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of different dimensions of national culture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of hospitality firms, including lodging, casino and restaurant firms.Design/methodology/approach This study performs a panel regression analysis to examine the effect of Hofstede’s national culture dimensions on the total CSR score, positive CSR score and negative CSR of the sampled hospitality firms. The sample period spans fiscal years 1993 to 2011and 365 firm-year observations are used for the study’s analysis.Findings This study finds a positive and significant effect of uncertainty avoidance on the total CSR score. Further, the study’s results show a positive and significant effect of power distance both on positive and negative CSR scores, while individualism appears to have a negative and significant effect both on positive and negative CSR scores. Masculinity reveals a negative and significant effect on the positive CSR score.Research limitations/implications Although the study’s results may not be generalizable to private or non-hospitality firms, according to the findings, multinational hospitality firms are encouraged to conceive a CSR portfolio consisting of localized CSR strategies that consider the effects of national culture on CSR.Originality/value This study contributes to the body of hospitality literature by filling the void regarding the relationship between national culture and CSR. At the same time, the findings of this study serve as guidelines for multinational hospitality firms’ implementing CSR activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of the current study is to investigate the possible existence of a synergistic effect of internationalization and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on a firm’s value performance.Design/methodology/approach To empirically test the argument, this study analyzed data from 40 US-based publicly traded restaurant companies (251 observations) from 2000 to 2011 by performing a two-way fixed-effects model.Findings This study’s findings support the hypothesis that when implemented simultaneously, internationalization and CSR have a negative synergistic impact on a restaurant firm’s value performance.Practical implications Restaurant managers might need to inquire thoroughly into the timing and content of CSR investment strategies while entering into new international markets. Restaurant executives may additionally need to focus more on effective risk management than other issues (e.g. growth or reputation) when developing both internationalization and CSR strategies simultaneously.Originality/value By suggesting and demonstrating a negative synergistic effect of internationalization and CSR on a firm’s value, this study presents new and unique insights into previous research regarding the combined effect of the two strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to invoke prospect theory to construct an empirical framework to predict idiosyncratic risk, and argue that when a firm performs better than its benchmarks, the firm tends to play safe by avoiding firm-specific risk to maintain its satisfactory performance level, but when a firm performs worse than its benchmarks, the firm may become aggressive with taking more risks to achieve an increased level of performance. Design/methodology/approach – This study tested the relationships between restaurant firms’ future idiosyncratic risk and the proposed firm financial characteristics. Heteroscedasticity- and autocorrelation-consistent (HAC) standard errors (Newey and West, 1994) were used to deal with potential problems of autocorrelations and heteroscedasticity. The standard error of residuals from the Fama-French three-factor model (Fama and French, 1993) was estimated to proxy for restaurant idiosyncratic risk. Findings – The main analysis reveals that five financial characteristics are significant predictors for restaurant firms’ future idiosyncratic risk in accordance with the proposed, negative relationship based on the prospect theory. Practical implications – Managers may predict their competitors’ future risk-taking behaviors using the current study’s findings, which will provide competitive advantage in a highly competitive business environment that we have now. Also, in practice, restaurant investors may consider findings of this study in forecasting future risks of their portfolio to help evaluate and revise their portfolios. Originality/value – First, this is a new endeavor of its kind dealing with the restaurant industry, filling the void in the literature in predicting the risk-taking behavior of restaurant firms in a time of crisis. Second, this study forms a prediction model that establishes “predictive causality” (Diebold, 2001) motivated by prospect theory. Third, building upon prior research, this study comprehensively examines relationships between the firm characteristics that capture firm-specific strategies (Ou and Penman, 1989) and the idiosyncratic risk that are “associated with firm-specific strategies” (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009) in a restaurant setting. Finally, the findings of this study bear significant implications for practitioners and other parties of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of the current study is to investigate the existence of a negative synergy effect of internationalization and firm size on firm performance for publicly traded US hotels. Design/methodology/approach – The study performs the two-way fixed-effects model to investigate the proposed negative synergy effect. Findings – The findings do not support the proposed negative synergy effect, but support the positive synergy effect of internationalization and firm size on performance. Originality/value – This study examines the hypothesis developed based on the agency cost theory using the hotel industry's unique monitoring cost argument. However, findings support the opposite, implicitly suggesting that the hotel's monitoring cost in the international franchising context may not be severe as some expect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify determinants of involuntary cross-listing (CL) of US restaurant companies on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes a mixed method design with an interview and a pooled logistic regression analysis with panel dataset using the company-clustered standard error to develop and test the hypotheses. Findings – The empirical investigation identified determinants of involuntary CL by examining ten factors, including size, firm growth opportunities, leverage, financial flexibility, international operation, profitability, overall German economic condition, industry growth opportunities, restaurant type, and local operation. The study found three determinants – large size, favorable economic condition in Germany and positive industry growth opportunities – utilizing the sample that covers the entire periods of involuntary CL of US restaurant companies on the FSE. Originality/value – This paper uncovers the phenomenon of involuntary CL, which many stock exchanges have strategically adopted by simplifying listing requirements for companies already listed in other stock markets, focusing on US restaurant companies. The number of involuntarily cross-listed US restaurant companies greatly increased to 50 percent of domestically listed US restaurant companies while those companies are largely unaware of the phenomenon. The research advances understanding of involuntary CLs, which previously received little attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine evidence indicating the presence of economies of scale among Atlantic City casinos at the property-level and between multi unit and single unit operators. Design/methodology/approach – The study extended two previous studies by performing a vertical analysis of financial performance data and by using multiple regression analysis to study costs and revenues over time. The study collected 320 annual property observations for the main analysis for the period of 1980 to 2009 and used detailed financial performance data for the 2007-2009 period. Findings – Findings from both forms of analysis support the existence of scale economies in Atlantic City at both the property level and for multi unit operators. Originality/value – Results of this study suggest that there are economies of scale for casinos in Atlantic City. Additionally, larger size was associated with better performance even during the current economic downturn. Managers or owners of casinos in Atlantic City may consider developing large physical size of their casinos when it is feasible. Additionally, the success of multi unit operators compared to single unit operators has implications for acquisitions while property values are depressed. Replication as a tool to aid generalization of results across time and situation contexts is illustrated and a number of future research lines are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This study sets out to examine the potential curvilinear relationship between capital intensity and firm value for the US hospitality industry, specifically including publicly traded US hotels and restaurants, during the period 1990-2008. Design/methodology/approach – This study performs a pooled regression analysis to examine the proposed relationship. The sampled companies are from the period 1990-2008, consisting of 281 and 1,406 observations for the hotel and restaurant industries, respectively. The study additionally performs the analysis for the 1990s and the 2000s separately for a comparison purpose. Findings – The findings support the U-shaped relationship between capital intensity and firm performance during the 2000s for both hotels and restaurants, while no relationship exists during the 1990s. Research limitations/implications – While the results may not be generalizable to private or non-US hotels and restaurants, the findings should provide hotel and restaurant executives and managers with valuable information for developing their strategies with regard to the capital intensity level. Originality/value – Based on the two perspectives regarding capital intensity's impact on a firm (i.e. positive and negative), a possible proposal suggests that the relationship between capital intensity and a firm's value may not be linear, but possibly curvilinear. Considering the importance of capital intensity in the hospitality industry, examinations of the issue would be beneficial for the hospitality industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]