Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: the role of sustainability-focused events

Tourism is a potential setting for encouraging sustainable behaviour. One popular mechanism is to stage events with a sustainability focus, aimed at fostering behaviour change amongst attendees. This paper reports on a study of a sustainability-focused event in Australia. The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) was used to explore if and how this event could potentially promote pro-environmental behaviour change amongst attendees. TTM provides a five-stage framework, linked to a series of 10 processes of change, with both attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. The stages comprise pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. Findings suggest that this event attracts individuals already significantly committed to sustainable behaviour who are using the event as a source of encouragement and positive feedback for their lifestyle choices. They are not the audience that the organisers need to reach in order to achieve their aim of behaviour change on a broader scale. This event did, however, support the processes of change, particularly for those in the “action” and “maintenance” stages. This paper considers the implications of these findings and TTM as a research tool for the future promotion and marketing of these events to tourists, possible applications to tourism fairs and exhibitions, and to behavioural change in tourism generally.     

The Effectiveness of Post-Disaster Recovery Marketing Messages—The Case of the 2009 Australian Bushfires

An understanding of how best to communicate with the tourism market in the wake of a disastrous event is essential for destination marketing organizations seeking to manage the misperceptions and media-imposed attitudes held by potential visitors. To date, the literature remains silent in terms of the types of messages destination marketing organizations are best to employ when a disaster has hit and consequently marketers often take an “ad hoc” approach to their post-disaster communications that may or may not be effective in terms of encouraging visitation. In response to this knowledge gap, the research presented in this article adopted an experimental methodology to examine the effectiveness of nine disaster recovery message themes commonly used by destination marketing organizations. The messages were presented to respondents via a print advertisement promoting the Victorian region of Gippsland—a tourism region severely affected by the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires. The results revealed that a marketing message endorsed by a well-known and well-associated celebrity figure is likely to be most effective in encouraging tourists to return to or visit a disaster-affected destination 12 to 24 months following the event. The findings also revealed a significant relationship between past visitation and the time frame in which visitors will visit a disaster-affected region. Those who had visited the region four times or more were much more likely to return within 6 months of the event than less frequent visitors. A final important message revealed in this study was the fact that the tourism market is not averse to disaster recovery promotional activities, a concern often considered by destination marketers when planning their post-disaster recovery campaigns.     

Expectations,Strategies and Prospects of Farmers in View of Croatia’s Pending EU Accession

In Croatia, farmers prepare themselves for the impending EU accession and consider their future economic opportunities in and outside agriculture. This study on farmer's strategies reviews empirical evidence of a unique household survey conducted in early 2007 in Croatia. The main objective of this paper is to present new insights on the transition dynamics in one of the EU candidate states with good prospects to accede within the coming years. Based on empirical data we present a multinomial regression model on drivers of farm household’s livelihood strategies. Farm exit, farm expansion and the combination of farm and non-farm incomes are the main strategies which are tested against socio-economic variables with a potential influence on them.     

Economics at the FCC 2020–21: Closing the Connectivity Gap,COVID-19 and Telehealth,Spectrum Auctions,Communications Marketplace Report,and Economic Research

Review of Industrial Organization - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is responsible for regulation in the communications marketplace and for management of the nation’s non-federal...     

An economic assessment of options for operating within plantation forestry water entitlements and tightening cap and trade policy

The Green Triangle (GT) region of southern Australia is one of only two jurisdictions globally to licence plantation forestry's groundwater use. In response to declines in groundwater resources caused by historical plantation expansion, reductions in forest water allocations (~50%) are likely for some parts of the region, presenting novel challenges for forest managers in maintaining revenues and timber flows. This article presents a mathematical programming model evaluation of water trade opportunities for plantation forest owners to adapt to reduced water entitlements and explores how tightening groundwater policy could affect forestry returns and land use mix for the region. Results suggest that even absent opportunity to sell water, relatively limited 11% reduction in return could be expected for a large (−50%) water entitlement and (−48%) land-use change out of forestry. Results suggest that opportunities for forestry companies to sell water entitlements may allow them to maintain or even increase combined returns from forestry and water sales. Whilst the results highlight the adaptive capacity of the plantation forestry sector to operate within reduced water entitlement, a significant sectoral and regional economy adjustment would be likely. The discussion focusses on the potential to realise optimisation model-identified adaptation opportunities accounting for real-world thin markets, transaction costs and market friction.     

Planting food sustainability thinking and practice through STEM in the garden

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has been identified as a keystone teaching and learning area for...     

Moral leadership and investor attention: An empirical assessment of the potus’s tweets on firms’ market returns

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Drawing upon investor attention and moral leadership theories, we examine the impact of President Trump’s tweets on firms’ market...