Do satisfying walking and cycling trips result in more future trips with active travel modes? An exploratory study

Previous studies have indicated that travel satisfaction - the experienced emotions during, and cognitive evaluation of, a trip - can be affected by travel mode choice and other trip characteristics. However, as satisfactory trips might improve a person's attitude towards the used mode, persons may be more likely to use that same mode for future trips of the same kind. Hence, a cyclical process between travel mode choice and travel satisfaction might occur. In this paper we begin to analyse this process—using a structural equation modelling approach on cross-sectional data—for people who engage in walking and cycling for leisure trips in the Belgian city of Ghent. The focus on walking and cycling reflects recent studies indicating that active travel is often associated with the highest levels of travel satisfaction. Results of this exploratory analysis offer tentative support for the idea of a cyclical process: the evaluation of walking and cycling trips positively affects the respondents' attitude towards the respective mode, which in turn has a positive effect on choosing that mode.     

Nature conservation for future sustainable shorelines: Lessons from seeking to involve the public

The soft coastline of eastern England is dynamic, with much of it subject to the risk of erosion or flooding. A number of internationally important coastal nature conservation sites are under threat. This paper explores the character and reasoning behind changing coastal management policies and governance practices in England. It reveals how Natural England is tackling these changes, notably with regard to establishing reconstituted nature conservation sites and re-designed coastlines. Such an approach requires the close involvement of policy leaders, agency officers, local maritime authorities and local residents. This paper explains how participatory processes play a critical role in the design of new coastlines that are ecologically and geomorphologically sustainable yet enable local communities to survive and flourish. A case study involving a visioning exercise at Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, UK, highlights the many practical difficulties around planning for the uncertain future of internationally important nature conservation sites, and local economies and communities. Future moves toward sustainable coastal alignments will have to involve a wide mix of public and civic bodies, as well as local communities, and will be underpinned by risk-based planning and well-researched adaptation and relocation arrangements.     

Towards sustainable tourism planning in New Zealand: Monitoring local government planning under the Resource Management Act

In the light of the increasing pace and scale of tourism activity in New Zealand, the concept of sustainable tourism has become a key ingredient in the nation's tourism strategy. This paper explores sustainable tourism planning in New Zealand at the level of local government, and in particular, focuses on the implementation of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) as a mechanism for achieving sustainable tourism. Using the findings of a survey of Regional Councils and Territorial Local Authorities, the paper explores public sector planning responses to tourism impacts and sustainability concerns in New Zealand. The paper extends the earlier work of Page and Thorn (1997. Towards sustainable tourism planning in New Zealand: public sector planning responses. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 5(1): 59-77; 2002. Towards sustainable tourism development and planning in New Zealand: the public sector response revisited. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 10(3): 222-238), which identified major issues of concern at local council level with regard to tourism impacts and argued the need for a national vision for tourism to ensure that the RMA achieved its original goals. Since then, a national tourism strategy has been published and changes in legislation have further empowered local authorities to further progress the sustainability agenda. This paper examines these developments and the ensuing implications, concluding that significant progress has been made in developing tourism policies at the local level, but that a number of constraints and issues limit the development of New Zealand as a sustainable destination.     

Moving freight on public transit: Best practices,challenges, and opportunities

Freight on Transit (FOT) refers to an operational strategy where public transit vehicles and/or infrastructure are used to move freight. Examples include moving goods alongside passengers on buses, attaching cargo trailers to transit vehicles, and operating freight vehicles between trains on subway lines. This paper describes the methods and results of a three-round Delphi study engaging 34 transportation experts to explore challenges and opportunities of FOT and to conceptualize and evaluate potential FOT operations in Toronto. Traditional Delphi methods were used for the exploration of FOT challenges and opportunities, and a modified approach was formulated to integrate experts' opinions and develop new FOT concepts for Toronto. The results support previous claims that technical challenges of FOT may be easier to overcome than institutional barriers. Evaluation of potential FOT operating strategies in Toronto suggests that while the current public transit network does not have capacity to support additional movements, there may be realistic opportunities to include freight service in future projects as a means of offsetting operating costs and reducing the impacts of goods movements.     

Business models among SMTEs: identifying attitudes to environmental costs and their implications for sustainable tourism

This paper examines how environmental resources and costs feature in business models of small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs). Several studies have pointed to the generally positive nature of the relationship between the economic and environmental performance of tourism firms. Yet, although business models act as a vector between these aspects of firm performance, they have been overlooked in sustainable tourism discourse. The paper reports findings from discussion groups of SMTE businesses in South West England during the global economic downturn. Environmental costs and cost control were afforded relatively little importance in terms of value creation; conversely, there was a strong and predictable emphasis on revenue generation. Indirect tactics emerged for dealing with guests’ environmental behaviours which reflected this prevailing commercial logic. Green credentials were routinely de-emphasized, sometimes regarded as liabilities, in a form of greenhushing. Responses were framed by reference to social media and how online reviews may negatively impact on future value capture. Conceptually, the business model emerged as an important lens for understanding how environmental resources and costs were valourized. The paper highlights the need to ensure that contemporary approaches to environmental management in SMTEs reflect the current and fast-changing conditions that frame business models.     

Augmenting the eye of the beholder: exploring the strategic potential of augmented reality to enhance online service experiences

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers’ online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers’ privacy concerns.     

The influence of advertising on the demand for chocolate confectionery

This paper addresses the impact of advertising on the size of five European chocolate confectionery markets: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It is prompted by suggestions that advertising may be responsible for excessive consumption of confectionery by children. The literature on whether advertising affects the total market size is not one-sided but the balance of previous research indicates market effects to be less likely. Chocolate confectionery in Western Europe is a mature market in slow decline. We found no significant association between the weight of advertising and market growth with either contemporaneous or lagged effects. There was, however, negative correlation between market size and price, as was to be expected. The results were consistent across the five countries.     

A framework for comparing socially responsible investment markets: an analysis of the Dutch and Belgian retail markets

The increasing popularity of socially responsible investment among individual investors throughout Europe reveals the need for a framework that allows the comparison of socially responsible retail markets in different European countries. This article proposes such a framework, containing 16 different characteristics of socially responsible retail markets describing the size, institutionalization and nature of this market and correcting for differences in the size of countries and financial markets. When this framework was applied to the Dutch and Belgian socially responsible retail markets, differences were found with respect to the nature of both markets (specifically the use of non‐financial criteria, the asset allocation, the number of solidarity funds and investors' preferences for socially responsible savings products). Similarities were found with respect to the (absolute and relative) size and the degree of institutionalization of the socially responsible retail markets.     

An Examination of ERR and Asset Allocation in Public Pension Plans

In this paper, we examine the usefulness of expected rates of return (ERR) for public pension plans. Specifically, we test the correlation between the expected rate of return on plan assets and asset allocation. We also examine the predictive power of ERR on the actual returns of the pension assets. We find that the correlation between expected return and the percentage of assets that are equity securities is relatively weak. Further, we find that the percentage of assets that are equity securities is a much better predictor of actual returns than the disclosed expected return in public pension plans. These results provide evidence to support SFAS No. 87 , which requires the disclosure of plan assets and against recently promulgated SFAS No. 132 , which eliminates this disclosure requirement. The evidence also supports GASB 25'sStatement of Net Plan Assets .