Investigation of Travel Behaviour of Visitors to Scotland

Tourism in Scotland is both an important and extensive land use and a major contributor to Gross Domestic Product. In 2005, it is estimated that Scotland received around 10.5 million visitors from outside Scotland. Just over 76% of the visits originated in the rest of the United Kingdom, with the remainder having an international origin. Tourism relies heavily on passenger transport both to access the destination, but also to travel around within it. However, there has been a lack of attention to the internal accessibility of Scotland from the visitor perspective. Whilst some attempts have been suggested and prioritised for facilitating tourists' travel around Scotland, such efforts are mainly undertaken by tourism organisations throughout Scotland, whose ultimate power to enable changes to transport systems is largely limited to lobbying. Moreover, without a clear picture of how accessible Scotland is internally as a destination, or of the transport demands of visitors in terms of internal accessibility, any measures taken to enhance visitor transportation remain largely uninformed. How tourists travel around Scotland, the extent to which they are reliant on public transport and the importance of existing transport provision in their travel behaviour and experience of the destination, including the areas they ultimately visit, merits further clarification. To this end, this study was commissioned by the Transport Department of The Scottish Executive to provide an overview of existing research into the travel behaviour of visitors to Scotland. The principal aim of the study was to review and collate existing sources of information on the use of transport by those visiting Scotland for leisure, recreation and business purposes. In conjunction with the objectives of the Scottish Executive, a thorough review of the literature and secondary data sources pertaining to the use of transport by visitors to Scotland for leisure, tourism and business purposes was conducted

The influence of urban form on car travel following residential relocation : a current and retrospective study in Scottish urban areas

Spatial planning and spatial policy continues to be used as a tool to bring about changes in travel behaviour. Policy suggests that by creating particular urban forms, demand for travel by car can be reduced. This paper uses data collected in 2006 from 280 households in Glasgow and Edinburgh to analyse the relationships between urban form and vehicle miles driven, with an emphasis on those who had recently relocated. Population densities, housing type, distance to urban centre and measures of mix were collected for the current residential location and previous, for those who had relocated in the previous three years. An ordinal regression model of change in urban form showed significant associations with reported change in miles driven, although the effect was small compared with the effects of socio-economic factors and car ownership. While the results give some weight to intensification as a policy to bring about a reduction in average distance driven, there may be an increase in distance driven in the intensified area. Whether or not such intensification can be enacted against a backdrop of preferences towards suburban, car oriented living is contentious. As such, this study calls into question the use of planning policy as a means to reduce car use in Scottish cities

Disengaging from Terrorism: A Northern Irish Experience

This article explores the disengagement and deradicalization experiences of Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC). Interpretative phenomenological analysis was employed to develop an understanding of how the former combatants interpreted and made sense of their disengagement from violence extremism in Northern Ireland after the Belfast Agreement. The analysis of the interviews focusses around push and pull factors which either promote or hinder their ability to move away from violent extremism. The results find a resonance with recent research exploring disengagement and deradicalization processes with terror groupings across the globe and the ideological spectrum. The findings are discussed in relation to a number of topics, including the role of prison, barriers to disengagement, continued commitment and radicalization after desistence from violent extremism, the role of life changes in promoting disengagement and how organizational pressures contain and influence individual disengagement

The effects of internal resonances in vibration isolators under absolute velocity feedback control

Conventional vibration isolators are usually assumed to be massless for modelling purposes, which tends to overestimate the isolator performance because the internal resonances (IRs) due to the inertia of the isolator are neglected. Previous research on the IR problem does not clarify all the characteristics of distributed parameter isolators. Furthermore, with the development of active vibration isolation, which can avoid the compromise in the choice of damping in conventional passive isolation systems, the effects of IRs in isolators on the control performance and stability for commonly used control strategies need to be quantified. In this study the effects of IRs on the control performance and stability of an absolute velocity feedback (AVF) control system are presented. A stability condition for AVF control system is proposed and a simple approach to stabilize the control system is studied. Experimental work to validate the theoretical results is also presented

Understanding radicalization and engagement in terrorism through religious conversion motifs.

"Although research into the processes and outcomes of radicalization has yielded significant discoveries regarding antecedent risk factors and the role played by societal circumstances and individual variables, research regarding the process of radical conversion remains in its infancy. We believe that the psychology of religion may hold the key to unlocking new insights into this conversion process. As a result of assessing both Lofland and Skonovd’s religious conversion motifs and Rambo’s integrative model of religious conversion, we suggest that issues of culture, society and the individual which are prevalent in first-hand accounts of conversion to terrorism provide crucial insight into the application of theories of religious conversion to the process of radicalization, and that this application is ripe for helping to further develop existing pyramid and staircase models of radicalization.

‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Ulster Loyalist Perspectives on the IRA and Irish Republicanism

This article draws on data from one-to-one interviews with members and former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Red Hand Commando (RHC), Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) to explore the dynamic and fluid perceptions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Fein among Ulster Loyalists. The article will illustrate now attitudes and perceptions are influenced by the shifting political landscape in Northern Ireland as Ulster Loyalists come to terms with the new realities created by the peace-process, security normalization, decommissioning and the rise in the threat of dissident Republican violence. The also illustrate that these perceptions are not purely antagonistic and based on the creation of negative stereotypical ‘enemy images’ fuelled by decades of conflict, but pragmatic, bound to societal and local events and influenced intragroup attitudes and divisions in addition to the expected conflictual ingroup vs. outgroup relationships. Finally, the paper will explore how Loyalists employ Republicanism and the transformation of the Provisional IRA in particular, as a mirror or benchmark to reflect on their own progress since 1994