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.     

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.     

Transatlantic Similarities and Contrasts in Rural Development PoliciesTransatlantische Ähnlichkeiten und Gegensätze bei den Politiken zur Entwicklung des ländlichen RaumsPoints communs et divergences transatlantiques sur le développement rural

Transatlantic Similarities and Contrasts in Rural Development Policies
The United States (US) and European Union (EU) share many general policy aims for rural areas, but they differ in the ways in which they try to achieve these aims. The principal difference lies in the role envisioned by agriculture in overall rural development. EU policies treat agriculture as a provider of public goods, and many of its 'rural' programmes target agriculture. In the US, very few Federal rural development programs are focused solely on agriculture. Differences of approach may be linked to different farm distributions, population densities, historical settlement patterns, and the historical policy process per se . In particular, in the US rural development policy does not cover the environment or income support to farmers; these are addressed through other programmes. In contrast, the EU classifies its agri-environmental programmes as rural development, claiming that more environmentally-friendly farm practices bring benefits to the broader rural economy. US State and local initiatives emphasize many themes found in the EU's Pillar II programmes, such as value-added or sustainable agriculture. Overall, although there are marked differences in the ways in which policies are implemented, the coverage of these policies in the EU and US is rather similar.     

Market Liberalization,Regulatory Uncertainty,and Firm Investment

This paper analyzes the effects of regulatory uncertainty regarding labor costs on investment in a liberalized market. We distinguish between the external investment margin (market entry) and the internal investment margin (technology), and establish that regulatory uncertainty affects these margins differently, encouraging market entry, but discouraging technological investment. As a consequence, the impact of regulatory uncertainty on competition in liberalized markets is a combination of these two countervailing forces.     

The victim matters – experimental evidence on lying,moral costs and moral cleansing

In an experiment on moral cleansing with an endogenously manipulated moral self-image, we examine the role of the addressee of an immoral action. We find that cheating is highest and moral cleansing lowest when subjects cheat at the expense of the experimenter, while cheating is lowest and moral cleansing highest once cheating harms another participant. A subsequent measurement of subjects’ moral self-image supports our interpretation that the occurrence of moral cleansing crucially depends on the moral costs resulting from immoral actions directed at individuals in different roles. Our results can help to explain the different propensity to cheat and conduct moral cleansing when immoral actions harm either another person or representatives of organizations.     

Pre‐sale information and hammer prices for Australian Indigenous art

Using sales data from 1987–2011 we investigate the role that pre‐sale price information plays in determining hammer prices for Australian Indigenous artworks. Importantly, we control for the degree of market concentration as this might influence buyers’ perceptions of fairness in relation to price estimates which are provided by auction houses. Auction houses therefore act as important intermediaries between art sellers and art buyers. The results suggest that pre‐sale estimates and market concentration have a differential impact on hammer prices, depending on the point in the conditional realised price distribution under examination.