Deregulation of Trading Hours: Evidence from Western Australia

Abstract

DR.R.W.ARMSTRONG AND C.ONG ARE with the Department of Management at the University of Western Australia. Within the last twentvy years, there has been a general debate concerning trading hours of small businesses. This debate has occurred repeatedly in several countries. This studied reviews the potential social effects of deregulation of trading hours on Westerrn Australian small business; additionally, the study compares these results with those of other researchers internationally. Service station retailers in two states, Western Australia andTasmania, are still under restricted trading hours,, Victoria and New South Wales have had unrestricted trading hours since 1964 and 1970 respectively, while South Australia deregulated its trading hours in 1986 and Queensland followed suit in 1987. In view of these changes towards deregulation in other states and the 1986 Kelly Report that recommended a progressive deregulation scheme for Western Australia, the objective of this study is to determine the impact of longer trading hours on profitability of service stations and the operators' family and social lives. The perceptions of the service station operators on their business viability, site securitty as well as competitiveness in a deregulated environment are also examined. The results show that 87 percent of the respondents favoured the restricted trading hours and there is no significant difference in attitudes between those from high volume self-service sites and low volume conventional sites. The regression analysis yielded two statistically significant variables, business viability and family/social life, as determining factors for the attitudes of the operators towards the roster system. The relationships indicate that deregulation would not receive support from Westren Australian service station operators.