Sustainability through food and conversation: the role of an entrepreneurial restaurateur in fostering engagement with sustainable development issues

Food justice, food cultures and people's engagement with healthy food production and consumption are key contemporary concerns, with a growing sustainable hospitality and tourism literature. Efforts range from narrowly focused initiatives, such as promoting organic produce and fair trade, to more holistic challenges to current systems through initiatives like the slow food and locavore movements, which may represent systemic alternatives. However, little analysis is available on how cafés and restaurants might become sites for experimentation in profitable and just sustainable hospitality, and places for sustainability engagement and education. Focusing on the evolution of a sustainable café in Adelaide, South Australia, this article explores how one entrepreneurial restaurateur uses his café to engage customers and community in a collaborative conversation about sustainable development, food, hospitality and tourism, helping transform our food culture and even lifeways. Our findings indicate the value of deep local embedding as a pathway to meaningful sustainability. The study offers insights into how hospitality and tourism can contribute to dialogues on alternative consumption which may offer visionary pathways to alternative futures. It also explores the role of pioneers in sustainable business and hospitality, their drivers and their views. A forthcoming global research initiative is discussed.     

The Impact of Visitor Behavior on the Environmental Protection of Tourist Farms in Guangdong

Some tourist farms established in the Chinese province of Guangdong suffer from a dearth of farm management and a lack of awareness of environmental protection issues among visitors, leading to pollution problems in farm tourism. The study reported in this paper examined how the managers of two farms protect the natural environment using the setting factors of physical orientation, interactive exhibits and the presence of tour guides, following the mindfulness and mindlessness model. The findings of the study revealed that the quality of the natural environment in both farms was acceptable, indicating the effectiveness of the setting factors. However, it was found that some signs were discolored and broken, there were insufficient interactive exhibits, and no tour guide service was available for individual visitors. Based on these findings, some recommendations are offered for farm managers on how to protect the natural environment.     

Assessing the Role of Ecotourism Training in Changing Participants' Pro-Environmental Knowledge,Attitude and Behaviour

Ecotourism training is usually considered to be undertaken only by tourism practitioners for professional development. However, ecotourism training has a more important role to play, as it could be adopted as a long-term strategy for environmental conservation by altering people's attitudes and behaviours towards greater environmental responsibility. In this study, the role of ecotourism training with respect to pro-environmental knowledge enhancement as well as attitude and behavioural changes is investigated. A questionnaire survey was conducted on participants of an ecotourism training programme. Participants' environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviours were evaluated using a pre- and post-test method. The results indicated that participants demonstrated a significant increase in environmental knowledge after the training. Moreover, participants' demographic characteristics such as age group, occupation and salary are significantly associated with the improvement in knowledge, change in pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Participants tend to adopt environmentally responsible attitudes and behaviours after completion of ecotourism training.     

Environmental Scanning Practices of Travel Agent Companies in Singapore

The success of tourism firms relies heavily on their ability to adapt to the changing external environments. Environmental scanning, as the acquisition and use of information about external events and trends, has received greater attention in the tourism management literature. This study investigated the environmental scanning initiatives of travel agent companies in Singapore through a questionnaire survey. In total, 42 completed forms were returned from 319 invited firms. The findings discovered a positive relationship between the scanning frequency and the perceived strategic uncertainty of task environment. It was also found that human information sources were used most frequently for collecting environmental information due to their highest reliability, while electronic sources were under-utilized probably due to lack of computer-based information system and awareness toward the importance of online information.     

Urban Residents' Perceptions of Environmental Impacts

This article examines urban residents' perceptions of environmental impacts in the city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The study vies to contribute to knowledge concerning how citizens in Tennessee view tourism and its impact on the environment. A mail survey was administered to 400 registered voters. Factor analysis, Cramer's V statistical measures of association, chi-square tests, and Spearman correlation coefficients were employed for the analysis and interpretation of the data. Tests and associations support three hypotheses; residents' perceptions of the impact of tourism are influenced by employment status and short-term residency. Greater lengths of residency, age, and annual income do not influence residents' perceptions.     

The Dissemination of Marketing Knowledge in a Newly Emerging Democracy

No abstract available for this article.     

Export Performance on the Malaysian Wooden Furniture Industry: An Empirical Study

There has been a significant increase in the quantity and quality of international and export marketing research with respect to effective solutions toward export performance. However, an investigation on the impact of marketing strategy and export performance in a single industry is lacking. In addition, the influence of environmental factors to moderate the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance has received little agreement. This research aims to investigate the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance in the Malaysian wooden furniture industry as well as the influence of the moderating role of environmental factors on the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance. Personal, mail, and phone interview methods were used to measure export marketing strategy, newly developed environmental factor variables (which consist of the global economic situation and certification), and export performance. The findings show that there is no direct relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance. Uniquely, the moderating effect of certification appears to moderate a few relationships between product and promotion adaptation, distribution strategy, design strategy, and target market specification on export performance. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

Is it too late to stabilise the global climate?

Assessment of the feasibility of stabilising the global climate requires consideration of trajectories for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This study presents a simple and robust analysis of feasible emissions trajectories. Consideration of feasible trajectories suggests that if the current pace of mitigation efforts is sustained, the likely outcome will be stabilisation at concentrations close to 500 parts per million. Such an outcome will imply a higher than 50 per cent probability of substantial damage from climate change and an enhanced risk of a catastrophic outcome.     

我国环境治理政策研究

当前我国的环境问题与经济增长一样令世人所瞩目,而各种环境治理措施并未产生良好的效果,我国政府应深入思考其深层原因.本文介绍了我国的环保现状和治理环境手段,并对环境治理效果进行了分析,最终得出了导致环境治理手段失效的症结所在.     

西部水资源现状与可持续发展

简述西部水资源利用现状，提出以水资源的可持续利用支持经济和社会的可持续发展的观点，要保护生态环境，合理分配流域内的水资源，发展草原水利灌溉，加快实施牧区人畜饮水解困工程，创新水资源管理的体制和机制，挖掘节水潜力，依法保护水资源。