Ecological tourism in the state image policy structure. Experience and problems of modern Russia

The article deals with the problems of ecological tourism in Russia. The authors give various approaches to the understanding of ecological tourism in modern science, analyse the reasons of interest in this kind of tourism, consider its types and identify specific features. The article provides an overview of the main regions and countries where ecological tourism is developed at a high level and considers some national policy models in the field of ecological tourism. Specific attention is paid to the analysis of the development of ecological tourism in Russia and its current status; the examples of different programmes aiming at support of ecological tourism are given. Specific impetus is given to Russia's resources for the development of ecological tourism, for example, natural landscapes, national parks and nature heritage sites. The authors explore the main challenges to ecological tourism in Russia, identify factors that hinder its development and suggest measures to improve the ecological tourism in the Russian Federation. The authors focus on the projects that promote the improvement of Russia's image as an eco-touristic destination. The authors pay specific attention to the analysis of international cooperation in this field. The article discusses various projects carried out within the framework of bilateral cooperation. The article discusses the role of ecological tourism as a tool for image policy. The article analyses in detail which elements of the Russian image are under the influence of ecological tourism and what are the future prospects of ecological tourism.     

An Empirical Segmentation of Users of Mobile Banking Apps

Digital technologies have squeezed the entire world into a small frame. Trade and transactions never stop, and they go where the customer is. Marketers must reinvent their strategies and toolkits to win in this hyper-connected world. Companies are creating new and improved ways for engaging and involving their consumers, and one significant tool now used by companies for these purposes is the app. Mobile phones have registered the highest growth among all technological evolutions, and mobile apps are proliferating. Apps are being used across a diverse range of industry verticals, including banking, e-commerce, travel, and tourism. This article studies a set of twenty different banking apps and segments consumers based on their adoption and usage of the apps. This article emphasizes the role of mobile technologies to change established channels and banking services, and also analyzes how the Indian banking sector has benefited from the adoption of mobile apps.     

Section 1. Description of the Riskworld project process

This paper describes the Riskworld project design and process in further detail and provides an indication of how the ideas, key themes and questions evolved at each phase.     

Here be dragons… exploring the ‘unknown unknowns’

Since ancient times, the phrase ‘Here be Dragons’ has been used to signify dangerous and unexplored territories. While wayfarers of the past realised that lack of knowledge necessitated increased vigilance and caution, today's ‘Here be Dragons’ generally remain hidden and unwanted. Human psychology, institutional frameworks and scientific convention have removed these unrecognised sources of ignorance from the mental maps of modern society. This omission is critical in today's interconnected, interdependent world. It is now time to counter current myopia by using the new digital tools available to draw on wider societal framing in conjunction with scenarios methodologies. This process could provide the meta risk analysis suitable to enable the ‘Here be Dragons’ to be identified, monitored and tackled, thereby ensuring that decision-makers and ultimately society become more aware of intractable uncertainty and adaptive in the face of inevitable change.     

Implementing property tax reforms in Bangalore: an actor-network perspective

Many municipal governments in developing countries are experiencing serious difficulties in dealing with the rapid growth of population in cities. Catalysed through processes of globalisation, the growth of cities, especially the so-called ‘mega-cities’, has not been matched by investments in infrastructure like roads and power due to the inability of local government organizations to collect adequate revenues from sources like property tax. Recognizing these difficulties, agencies such as the Asian Development Bank have initiated systems for property tax reforms in a number of Asian cities, including Bangalore. In this paper, we discuss the story of this reform process drawing upon the actor-network perspective on translations. We argue that such a perspective helps to go beyond studying innovation processes through the lens of ‘technology diffusion’, and provides a more interesting and insightful perspective of ‘technology translation’.     

An Analysis of Office Market Rents: Some Empirical Evidence

This paper provides an empirical analysis of office building rents using data for a five-year period in a medium- sized city. The results indicate that rent levels respond to various factors in the expected manner: rents vary systematically across classes of buildings and locations, overall market conditions have a significant impact on rents, and contract variations are associated with rent differences. We also present the first evidence at the building level on the rent-vacancy adjustment process. The results show a significant relationship between rent changes and vacancies.     

Challenges of accountability in resource-poor contexts: lessons about invited spaces from Karnataka’s village health committees

Invited spaces have been discussed by development scholars and policymakers as a new and important means of promoting accountability in primary healthcare. Although numerous experiments have been initiated to establish such spaces in resource-poor contexts, we still have little understanding of how they are used and their effectiveness. Based on our longitudinal study of the Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees in Karnataka, we trace changes that have occurred in the frequency and quality of interactions between state, political and civil society committee participants as they come to understand the possibilities afforded to them, work out tactics and develop a set of practices that make them accountable to each other for improving village health. Our findings suggest that strengthening accountability within invited spaces can form an important basis for improving the primary healthcare system with implications for research and policy.