Estimating visitors’ travel mode choices along the Bear Lake Road in Rocky Mountain National Park

The National Park Service (NPS) in the United States of America (USA) is looking to alternative transportation systems to provide visitors access to the national parks in a manner that potentially reduces traffic congestion, enhances visitors’ experiences, and more effectively protects park resources. However, shuttle bus systems without adequate planning and management may lead to unintended consequences such as eliminating the constraint to visitor use levels associated with parking lot capacities. As a consequence, the demand for recreation use in the area increases the potential impacts to the visitor experience and park resources. This study examined the trade-offs Rocky Mountain National Park visitors were willing to make about transportation mode choice using a stated choice survey to inform park managers about visitor acceptance of potential transportation related management actions. Results indicate that visitors prefer to use their private vehicles over the parks transit system but are willing to make trade-offs to ride the shuttle bus in order to avoid crowding along the trail at Bear Lake and vehicle traffic along the Bear Lake Road. In addition, there were statistically significant differences among choices of transportation mode trade-offs among different age groups (i.e., less than 40 years of age, 40–60 years of age, and more than 60 years of age) Specifically, results suggest that visitors less than 40 years are more willing than the older age groups to make trade-offs among transportation options to enhance their chances of being on the trail system at Bear Lake with fewer other people. The significant and interacted relationships with shuttle bus use, visitor use, and vehicle traffic levels found in this study provide RMNP managers opportunities to influence visitors’ transportation mode choices.     

Alchian and Allen Revisited: Law Enforcement and the Price of Weed

Alchian and Allen (1964) theorized that the imposition of a fixed fee or a unit cost in a market with multiple quality grades of the good would encourage consumption of the higher quality grades. Using newly available data on marijuana prices by state, we empirically test the hypothesis that the price of higher quality marijuana will be higher in states with more strict enforcement of marijuana possession laws. Consistent with the Alchian-Allen theorem, the relative price of both medium- and high-quality marijuana are found to be greater in states with stricter law enforcement, suggesting an increase in demand for such varieties.     

Trying to Serve Two Masters is Easy,Compared to Three: Identity Multiplicity Work by Christian Impact Investors

Journal of Business Ethics - While research has focused on financial and social goals in impact investing, we add to the limited research that focuses on how individuals manage identity...     

Integrating fundraising and campaigning

• The world in which we are all fundraising is changing—and changing fast. We are seeing a new generation of donors coming through and the environment (not least the economy) that we operate in has also changed. And, on top of this, our need to engage people in different aspects of our organisations develops all the time.
• As we become more integrated in the way we work, so our donors need us to be more integrated in the way we communicate with them. This paper explores why this is good for the charity and the donor and some of the ways that organisations are making this happen.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of time pressure and information load on decision quality

This study attempts to identify conditions under which consumer information overload occurs. A theory which states that information overload will occur when the time-related task demands exceed the capacity of the system is suggested and tested. An experiment is reported in which an inverted U-shaped function relating decision quality to information load occurred when time pressure was present, but did not when it was absent.     

The Economics of Experience-Based Higher Education

This article examines the relative costs and benefits associated with experience-based higher education in comparison to traditional lecture-based courses. The spreading of fixed costs that has been heavily relied upon in recent years to slow the accelerating cost of a college education is more difficult to accomplish with experience-based courses. In addition, certain intellectual capital costs must be invested in the transition to a curriculum balanced by adequate opportunities for experiential learning. The benefits of the latter, however, are also high, perhaps disproportionately so. After reviewing the evidence regarding the benefits that accrue to students, colleges, and communities, it is concluded that economic analysis supports the inclusion of experiential education in most baccalaureate programs. Further empirical work is needed to educate decision-makers and the public about the tradeoffs involved.

Consumer decision making within a goal-driven framework

Research and theory in consumer decision making has been dominated by a perspective that assumes that a consumer knows what product category he or she needs. This limited view has resulted in equating consumer decisions with brand choice. The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for considering a wider range of consumer decision-making processes by linking them to different goals that consumers might pursue. A hierarchical goal structure consisting of four levels of goals; abstract principles or values, action programs, more concrete product acquisition, and brand acquisition goals, is proposed as the theoretical construct which ties together a wide range of consumer decision making phenomena. An experiment in which consumers think out loud in contemplating two levels of more familiar or unfamiliar goals reveals that their thoughts are constrained by the proposed goal hierarchy. The goals provide a useful framework for understanding decision-making processes involving product level consideration, set generation, and the evaluation of those self-generated sets. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Generating Regional-Scale Improvements in SME Corporate Responsibility Performance: Lessons from Responsibility Northwest

This paper describes the research carried out into small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and corporate responsibility (CR) in the Northwest of England during Phase I of Responsibility Northwest, a partnership programme designed to significantly increase the CR of the region. By engaging with significant numbers of SMEs and SME support providers across the region, key insights were gained in three key areas: