REF 2021: Unit of Assessment 17

UOA 17: Business and Management Studies

REF 2021

Bournemouth University Business School (BUBS) is a globally accredited business school that inspires people and organisations to grow in a responsible and empathetic way through the fusion of innovative education, research, and practice. We ensure that our research makes a difference and that our work collectively contributes towards the BUBS mission.

Our research has been a driver of change, helping to address important societal issues such as providing advice to governments and businesses on Brexit and promoting responsible business growth.

Find out more about the impact of our research:

Understanding and helping to minimise the effects of terrorism on tourism destinations

Staff conducting research: Dr Anna Hillingdon, Professor John Fletcher, Professor Stephen Page, Dr John Beavis, Dr Gregory Kapuscinski

The increasing incidence of terror attacks in popular holiday destinations in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt in recent years has led to concerns amongst tourists about their safety while abroad, as well as a popular perception that such incidents negatively impact tourist flows to those destinations. However, there is a lack of research underpinning these perceptions.

BU research has led to a better understanding of risk perception, improvements in the ways that levels of risk are disseminated to the public, and recommendations to improve these communications.

This has helped to enhance tourism in countries such as Tajikistan, creating increases in employment and living standards. The work has also informed NATO and UK government policy regarding the risk posed by hybrid threats.

Using economic modelling to inform UK airport expansion

Staff conducting research: Professor Adam Blake, Dr Neelu Seetaram

Bournemouth University (BU) researchers have developed improvements to economic modelling techniques that more precisely model the economic consequences of infrastructure development policies. This type of modelling allows governments to more accurately assess the economic impacts of large-scale investment projects.

The technique was influential in the 2016 decision by the Airports Commission to recommend the construction of a third runway at Heathrow ahead of other UK airport expansion options at Gatwick, and of the final decision by the UK Government in June 2018 to back Heathrow expansion.

BU’s development of a novel, robust economic modelling technique provided the Airports Commission and the UK government with a more accurate and detailed analysis of the airport expansion options than could otherwise have been obtained. The economic modelling techniques used to inform the Heathrow decision has expanded the capability of economic impact modelling to analyse the impact of proposed major investment projects in the future.

Find out more

Restoring consumer trust in the insurance industry

Staff conducting research: Dr Julie Robson, Professor Juliet Memery, Dr Elvira Bolat, Dr Samreen Ashraf, Kok Ho Sit

Consumer trust is vital for the insurance industry but is also their biggest ongoing challenge due to mis-selling and other misdeeds. By 2017, trust in the insurance industry had reached an all-time low, and a range of damaging practices, such as mis-selling, were assumed to be the cause. However, research was needed to identify accurately the specific causes and establish how to repair consumer trust.

BU research projects have provided a greater understanding of trust, specifically the measurement of trust, trust erosion and trust repair - including identifying the actions that organisations took to repair trust and how these actions influenced consumer attitudes towards, and trust in, the company and wider industry sector. The outcome of the projects was a new management trust repair tool to help businesses better understand and respond to trust challenges.

Dr Robson worked with the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) to develop a new Public Trust Index – shaped by BU’s own trust repair tool – to measure and track changes in consumer confidence in insurance. The Index identified that the key problem in building consumer trust was the practice of dual pricing – whereby new customers get cheaper insurance than loyal customers. Based on this finding, the CII worked with the industry regulator to produce new guidelines which prevent this practice, therefore protecting customers from overpayment, and repairing industry trust.

Delivering analytical capacity and advice to inform Government of the effects of Brexit and future trade arrangements on UK food prices

Staff conducting research: Professor Tim Lloyd

Underlying the econometric modelling of food inflation is price transmission – the mechanism describing how price changes move through a supply chain. Much of Professor Lloyd’s research career has been devoted to understanding the theory, methods and data that economists rely on to analyse the price transmission mechanism

In 2017, Professor Lloyd was commissioned, with Exeter University colleagues, to undertake a confidential UK food pricing project for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to assess the impact of Brexit on food prices in Britain, particularly among disadvantaged groups.

The modelling work has provided Defra and other government departments with informed, rigorous and objective analysis of the consumer price effects of trade scenarios arising from Brexit and the internal capacity to assess the impacts of future trading arrangements and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic.