ATTITUDES OF STATES' ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ADVISORS TOWARD FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

AHMAD YOUSIF DASHTI, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract

The general purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of inward foreign investments' characteristics on the nature and intensity of the attitudes of host nationals in an advanced country. Specifically, interest was focused on the following aspects of inward foreign investments in the U.S.; (a) national origin of investments (countries included are Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, England, West Germany, Holland, and Japan); (b) types of foreign investment operation (types of investment included are farming, manufacturing, petroleum, real estate, and retailing); (c) foreign investors' forms of entry into the U.S. (forms covered are foreign de novo and foreign acquisition); and (d) extent of foreign ownership (using the 25 and 75 percentages of equity ownership). In addition, the study also investigated any variations in the attitudes prevalent among the host nationals toward the four aspects of foreign investments, based on demographic variables. The demographic variables included were: age, religion, ethnic background, personal contact with particular foreigners, overseas travel experience in general and to specific countries, place of birth based on geographic and level of income regions, geographic mobility, place of work based on geographic and level of income regions, occupation, education, and political philosophy. The objective here also includes, as a corollary, an examination of the existence of stereotype, prejudice, and ethnocentric tendencies. Concepts from social psychology, sociology, and marketing provided the theoretical framework for this study. The method used to measure attitude was adopted from the theoretical models of affective-cognitive consistency formulated by Rosengerg and Fishbein. In an international investment context, these models suggest that a host national's attitude about investment will be a function of the relationship between an investment and its attributes and the importance of these attributes to the individual in his acceptance decision. The study utilized primary data collected from 397 industrial and economic advisors in 32 states of the Union. Subjects were requested to complete a questionnaire designed to measure their attitudes on nine attributes, with some variation in their numbers and phrasings, toward the four sets of foreign investment characteristics. The questionnaire also consisted of three attitude statements designed to measure respondents' international orientations and a section to collect demographic data. The findings of this research study indicated that subjects, as a whole, appeared to be differentiating the value of inward foreign investments from the five nationalities and in the five sectors of the economy. There was also a general significant agreement in favor of the forms of de novo and portfolio investments over foreign "take-over" and direct investments. However, in further analysis of the effect of demographic variables, the relationships were altered to a certain extent by most of the variables. The results pointed out that the incidence and intensity of negative attitudes (stereotype, prejudice, and ethnocentric views) varies, to a significant extent, by differences in sub-groups' demographic characteristics. A number of implications were also revealed by the study and discussed in the dissertation. These were related to "theory of host national attitudes toward foreign investments," present and potential foreign investors in the U.S., and U.S. public policy makers and politicians (both at the local and federal levels).

Subject Area

Business community

Recommended Citation

DASHTI, AHMAD YOUSIF, "ATTITUDES OF STATES' ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ADVISORS TOWARD FOREIGN INVESTMENTS" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8109981.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8109981

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