Place change and tourism development conflict: Evaluating public interest

As a set of economic activities, tourism trades on the character of special places. Conflict can emerge where local residents perceive that tourism development proposals challenge the special qualities of place, and where place meaning and attachments are compromised. A key function of government in mediating conflict is to protect public interests, yet explicit consideration of public interest in tourism development conflict is unusual. This paper argues for a reinvigoration of public interest in the mediation of tourism development conflicts. It explores the concept of public interest and how governments interpret and give meaning to it in development debates. In a case study of a cruise ship terminal proposal on the Gold Coast, Australia, the state adopted a neoliberal interpretation of public interest wherein increased global competitiveness of the destination was the overriding common good pursued. Local and diverse interests were marginalised in the debate. The paper concludes that in order to reinvigorate public interest, a public interest evaluation framework for tourism development is needed.     

政府投资工程最高报价值的评审

目前国内财政投资建设工程项目在招投标阶段的工程造价管理多数实行最高报价值的规定。文章首先从最高报价值评审的意义出发,以评审的原则、方法和内容作指导,以编写最后的评审报告为目的,阐述了对最高报价值进行评审是从源头上对资金进行控制的主要方法,从而论证了对最高报价值进行评审的重要性。     

Local participation in cultural landscape maintenance: Lessons from Sweden

Local participation has evolved as a strategy in the conservation and maintenance of biological and cultural values in cultural landscapes. The meaning(s) of the concept, however, are fuzzy, and conditions for fruitful implementation have only been investigated to a limited extent. In this article, a couple of Swedish cases serve as points of departure for a better understanding of the prerequisites and critical aspects as regards an increased local involvement in landscape management. A review of research on community participation reveals some essential aspects; power relations, participants, the institutional framework, organisation, communication, knowledge building, monitoring and contextual factors. These aspects have formed the structure for the analysis of two cases within which local involvement is considered successful; Southern Öland, where community involvement in seminatural grassland management has been experienced in LIFE-projects and in the process of becoming a UNESCO World heritage site, and Mälarhagar, an integrated restoration and beef production project carried out in close collaboration with farmers. The results are discussed in terms of successful ingredients, counterproductive aspects and operational difficulties. The findings show that trust, communication and local influence are vital ingredients in a participatory approach. Communication and co-management are pointed out as central areas of competence for executives working with landscape management and planning. There are, however, collisions between directives concerning nature conservation and directives concerning public participation. For successful local involvement, the subject for collaboration has to be broadly defined. Furthermore, the strong emphasis on collaboration in participatory approaches demands that democratic aspects have to be considered.     

Trajectories for Modernizing Local Governance: Revisiting the Flanders Case

Local government plays a central but altering role in local governance. Together with the shift from a night-watchman state to a welfare state , the models of governance provision changed. Government itself became larger and more scattered throughout the local community. Moreover, government was no longer the only governance provider. Many actors were involved in governance with a diversity of steering relations. In our time, governance continues to change. What are the emerging models of local governance today? After sorting out some terminological and methodological issues, we describe four emerging ideal-type models (i.e. the holding model , the autonomous networks model , the implementation model and the reintegration model ), based on four societal scenarios (i.e. triumphant markets , hundred flowers , creative societies and turbulent neighbourhoods ). The models represent four possible local governance futures. Next, the models are applied on two management issues: organizational structure and financial management. Finally, some embryonic evidence is given on the emergence of the models.     

Applications of the Likelihood Theory in Finance: Modelling and Pricing

This paper discusses the connection between mathematical finance and statistical modelling which turns out to be more than a formal mathematical correspondence. We like to figure out how common results and notions in statistics and their meaning can be translated to the world of mathematical finance and vice versa. A lot of similarities can be expressed in terms of LeCam’s theory for statistical experiments which is the theory of the behaviour of likelihood processes. For positive prices the arbitrage free financial assets fit into statistical experiments. It is shown that they are given by filtered likelihood ratio processes. From the statistical point of view, martingale measures, completeness, and pricing formulas are revisited. The pricing formulas for various options are connected with the power functions of tests. For instance the Black–Scholes price of a European option is related to Neyman–Pearson tests and it has an interpretation as Bayes risk. Under contiguity the convergence of financial experiments and option prices are obtained. In particular, the approximation of Itô type price processes by discrete models and the convergence of associated option prices is studied. The result relies on the central limit theorem for statistical experiments, which is well known in statistics in connection with local asymptotic normal (LAN) families. As application certain continuous time option prices can be approximated by related discrete time pricing formulas.     

The Contribution of Sustainable Tourism Development in Poverty Alleviation of Local Communities in South Africa

ABSTRACT

For more than fifty of the world's poorest countries such as Thailand, Zambia, and Egypt, tourism is ranked first, second or third in terms of their economies, and tourism is the only service industry to show a positive balance of trade with flows from first world countries to developing countries exceeding those in the opposite flow by US$ 66 million. Yet tourism has only very recently been recogised by some aid donors, some international funding agencies, and some segments of the industry as an appropriate instrument for poverty reduction (WTO, 2000).

This article addresses the role of tourism as a development strategy in poverty alleviation, discussing the possible strategic senarios for future tourism in South Africa with special focus on local community involvement.     

Asian food: the global and the local

Advertising practice makes use of emotional cues and addresses consumers' rising desire for social connection. Research has investigated emotions within advertising, but mainly focused on negative or positive emotions. Traditional academic approaches to the analysis of persuasion according to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) tend to emphasize central processing and thus rational advertising cues. Moreover, the role of motivation within the ELM is underspecified. We introduce the Zurich Model of Social Motivation to the regulation of social distance and investigate the specific feeling of care and security. This feeling may serve as motivational component and emerge as persuasion instrument within advertising. We seek to find means to activate viewers, independent from involvement. As we initially apply the model, we match constructs from advertising research to the framework. The feeling of care and security is determined by the autobiographical fit, the amount of personal resemblance, and familiarity with the cue. Realism of the story describes the (psychological) distance, whereas emotionality of the story refers to relevancy of the objects shown. We apply a structural equation modelling approach to test our hypotheses with smart partial least squares. Autobiographical fit is the strongest driver, followed by the realism and emotionality of the story. The feeling of care and security significantly predicts attitude toward the advertisement Group comparison according to Chin by the level of involvement shows that all causal relations remain stable for both sub-groups. Our findings suggest that specific emotional cues may have a special role within information processing and that there is no need to always focus on the central route of processing.     

MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATES OF A US MULTIREGIONAL HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE SYSTEM

This paper applies the maximum-likelihood equation to a model that produces US regional household expenditure estimates using national-level data on average expenditures by type of household and regional data on the number of households by type. Empirical results follow the analytical properties of the model and demonstrate an impressive capacity to recover regional statistics. These findings are useful in applied regional studies since they demonstrate a general framework to assess the input data and the overall estimation model.     

Public capital and convergence in the Spanish regions

This paper discusses the preconditions and strategies of local development and turnaround in difficult surroundings such as peripheral rural communities. Its key premise is that local decision makers' beliefs of how such small economies function and of ‘proper’ interventions are critical. Such thought patterns were studied among Finnish rural municipality directors (RMDs), using comparative cause mapping. The findings show that while private initiative, entrepreneurship, is regarded as key for development, prevalent views of entrepreneurship, especially firm formation, are unsophisticated, stressing personal traits and social factors such as supportive cultures and role models. Paralleling these views, the current developmental doctrine is indirect, focused on resource provision and implying passive waiting for entrepreneurs to emerge before developers ‘can’ act. Considering their bleak perspectives, the paper argues that communities with weak autonomous turnaround capabilities need more interventionist strategies than those built-in the dominant paradigm, whereas current resource-providing models may be suitable in more benevolent environments. To augment the dominant thinking, the paper suggests an initiating ‘business-based development model’ as a parallel approach for a more effective local economic development in difficult surroundings.     

Fresh Choice Restaurants,Inc.—Good Practices in Neighborhood Marketing

Abstract

This article provides a case study of how Fresh Choice Restaurants use neighborhood or local area marketing to create positive community relations. Specific examples of how Fresh Choice implements neighborhood marketing are provided in the article.