Citizen involvement in promoting sustainable mobility

This article proposes a methodology for promoting public involvement in the planning process for the promotion of sustainable mobility. The concept of the focus group (FG) is widened and a method based on holding larger groups defined as mega focus groups (MFG) is proposed. These MFG allow all sections of society to be represented in the participation process, thereby involving the population at a strategic level in subjects of general interest to society and later, holding smaller FGs on more specific subject matters (tactical level).The advantage of the larger MFG over the smaller FG is that they can obtain more information (between 40 and 60 people take part) from easily run meetings (similar to the FG). The MFG also provide a territorial representation of peoples’ opinions and serve as a mechanism for selecting the participants in the smaller focus groups. The information extracted from both the MFG and FG about people’s perceptions of sustainable mobility provides the background to the design of pilot surveys on urban mobility. For a better understanding of the development of this method and its possible applications in any town or city the article includes its practical application in the medium sized city of Santander (Northern Spain).     

乡村旅游创业动机的性别差异研究——以台湾为例

以往有关乡村旅游经营者创业动机的研究主要局限于拉力创业动机和不同性别创业者拉力创业动机研究。旅游研究学者提出应该对乡村旅游经营者动机进行更为理论化和系统的研究,并对乡村旅游经营动机的性别差异做进一步的探讨。该研究以台湾地区为例,比较性别差异下中小型乡村旅游经营者的创业动机模式。探索性因子分析结果显示,乡村旅游经营者拉力创业动机包括善用农业资源、社交、更换工作与政府政策鼓励等4个因子;推力创业动机则包括工作压力、自我压力与生活压力等3个因子。后续的多元方差分析(MANOVA)结果表明,女性的拉力创业动机明显高于男性,而男性的推力创业动机则明显高于女性。研究表明,女性从事乡村旅游产业经营主要是为了追求理想的生活方式与获得利益,而男性从事乡村旅游产业经营主要是因为对过去生活不满意。     

Mainstreaming sustainable tourism with user-centred design

Abstract

Efforts to design and communicate sustainable tourism products have been based on the premise of explicit market demand for sustainability. This study tests whether it is possible to design mainstream sustainable tourism products that circumvent customer scrutiny of their sustainability features, by making sustainability implicit (as part of quality product design) and communicating hedonistic benefits instead. This is akin to using the peripheral route of communication, as explained in the Elaboration Likelihood Model, as the central route emphasises the consumer-driven message of overall quality of experience; the approach lessens the need for customers to be conscious of the sustainability consequences of their actions. The methodology proposed to achieve this is user-centred design (UCD), which places insights into customer needs, values and demands at the heart of new product design. We designed sustainable tourist activities using UCD and then appraised customer demand for them. Although this may seem counterintuitive, the results show that it can be more effective than traditional methods in mainstreaming sustainable activities, through choice-editing of unsustainable ones and normalising the appearance and communication of sustainability, provided a focus on sustainability is maintained by the product provider.     

Why Do First-Time and Repeat Visitors Patronize a Destination?

Most studies of tourists' destination choices have either focused on how to attract more tourists or on developing stable relationships with existing ones. Therefore, the fit of a conceptual model incorporating relational (destination attachment) and transactional (destination image) antecedents to patronizing intentions (revisit, recommend, and resist change) was tested on a sample of first-time visitors and on a sample of repeat visitors to a hot spring destination in Taiwan. The findings indicated that first-time visitors' intentions to patronize the destination were mainly affected by destination image and that repeat visitors' intentions to patronize the destination were primarily affected by destination attachment. These findings highlight the importance of destination attachment and destination image in predicting tourists' patronizing intentions and future behavior, and reveal that researchers have overlooked that the antecedents of tourists' patronizing intentions differ depending on the type of relationship they have with the destination. As a result, this study provides compelling evidence for the need to clearly situate studies of destination choice in the transactional-relational continuum and questions the generalizability of previously published work that neglects to do so.     

Orthorexia Nervosa: Can Healthy Eating Food Trends Impact Food Companies Marketing Strategies?

The purpose of this article is to explore foods companies’ knowledge of food trends and assess how orthorexia nervosa may affect food companies’ marketing decisions. Data was gathered through a multiple case-study approach, and four semi-structured interviews to CEOs/CMOs of food companies from four distinct non-competing sectors of the food industry. The results show that although marketing managers are conscious of the existence of consumer behavior changes regarding food habits, they are not particularly concerned neither interested in micro-segments as they are not profitable. Despite the deficiencies on CMOs’ knowledge of particular food trends they declare to be attentive to the changes in consumer behavior and prepared to respond to competitors moves. This research adds to the existing knowledge on the food industry since it is the first study to explore the impact of food trends on food companies’ management marketing decisions from the company point of view.     

Local stakeholders,role and tourism development

Building sustainable communities, as well as sustainable forms of livelihood, including tourism, has been a key objective among many government agencies and community stakeholders. Against this background, and through the lens of role theory, the present study investigates the potential for sustainable tourism to be developed in a rural community. Data were gathered among business owners and residents of Bridgetown, Western Australia. Four key groups of participants emerged, each emphasizing participants' role as community, and therefore, as tourism stakeholders. Alignment with various perspectives of role theory, including functional, “symbolic interactionist”, structural and cognitive was noticed; similarly, consensus, conformity and role taking were identified as key concepts. Whether currently involved in tourism or not, participants' pro-active role suggesting practical ways to enhance the sustainability of local tourism could be a powerful tool in this and other communities seeking to build their destination image.     

Management sub-advising in the mutual fund industry

This is a study of how contractual mechanisms can mitigate agency conflicts in sub-advised mutual funds. Sub-advising contracts allow fund families to expand their product offerings to include new investment styles and thereby gain market share. We show that costly contractual arrangements, such as co-branding, multi-advising, and performance-based compensation, can mitigate agency conflicts in outsourcing and protect investors from potential underperformance. Fund families will find it cost-effective to implement such incentive mechanisms only when investors are sophisticated in assessing manager skill. The findings help to explain why a large percentage of fund families outsource their funds to advisory firms.     

Representative dissonance: India’s Self and Western Image

Western media have often been criticized for portraying Third World destinations through a colonial prism via images of primitiveness and exoticism. Contrastingly, some destinations have begun to resist those representations with media campaigns of their own. The purpose of this study was to critically construe the differences between ways that India is represented in American tourism media and how it is represented by the Indian government itself. The findings revealed that these two representations are different in ways that reflect the colonial nature of international tourism and the postcolonial stage of India’s nationalism. Moreover, the study of representative dissonance is proposed as a tool for understanding the conflicting ideological forces that shape destination images.     

Risk Determinants of Suicide Attempts Among Adolescents

A bstract .   In this article we present evidence about the factors that determine four gradual decisions on the part of adolescents to attempt suicide. To that end, we estimate a series of binary choice models by using data drawn from the U.S. National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys corresponding to 1991, 1993, 1995, and 1997. Our results show that the decisions to attempt suicide are motivated by both demographic and psychosocial variables, such as gender, age, ethnicity, education failure, possession of a gun, habitual participation in sporting activities, individual weight perception, and taking pills or provoking vomiting to lose weight. Moreover, we also find that a significant degree of influence is exerted by another group of factors, such as the consumption of drugs, sexual relationships, and, finally, pregnancy.