Assessing preference elicitation methods in choice experiments : a case study of tourism facilities at Kenyir Lake, Malaysia

PhD ThesisThe aim of this thesis is to explore methodological issues in a choice experiment (CE); to ascertain how they might be used to improve the reliability of valuation estimates. Three methodological issues are explored; whether the status quo (SQ) is relevant as one of the alternatives in the CE choice sets; whether respondents ignore any of the attributes presented in the choice set, and the implications this has for estimating willingness to pay; and the effect of different distributional assumptions of random parameters in the Mixed Logit Model: does it matter what distributional assumption is employed? These issues were explored through a study of recreational visitors to Kenyir Lake in Malaysia. Currently, no entrance fee is charged to visitors using Kenyir Lake. But there are government plans to develop Kenyir Lake which involve public investment. Public authorities need to understand visitors’ preferences towards facilities, and whether the benefits of improving these facilities justify the cost. The main findings are: 1) including the SQ on choice card does not affect the results substantially, 2) it is important to account for attribute non-attendance, and 3) except for the lognormal distribution, different specifications of the mixing distribution do not make that much difference in WTP values. This study delivers two fundamental contributions. Firstly, it demonstrates the importance of taking into account methodological issues in a CE, and in the analysis of the CE models. The study also provides methodological recommendations for future CE studies. Secondly, it investigates visitors’ preferences for tourist facilities and offers policy recommendations regarding the improvement of these facilities. Accounting for methodological issues in a choice experiment is shown to help and provide a deeper understanding regarding the challenges of applying this method; and this thesis offers recommendations on how to apply CE in the future.Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education and University Putra Malaysia (UPM

Opinion Behavior Analysis in Social Networks Under the Influence of Coopetitive Media

Both interpersonal communication and media contact are important information sources and play a significant role in shaping public opinions of large populations. In this paper, we investigate how the opinion-forming process evolves over social networks under the media influence. In addition to being affected by the opinions of their connected peers, the media cooperate and/or compete mutually with each other. Networks with mixed cooperative and competitive interactions are said to be coopetitive . In this endeavor, a novel mathematical model of opinion dynamics is introduced, which captures the information diffusion process under consideration, makes use of the community-based network structure, and takes into account personalized biases among individuals in social networks. By employing port-Hamiltonian system theory to analyze the modeled opinion dynamics, we predict how public opinions evolve in the long run through social entities and find applications in political strategy science. A key technical observation is that as a result of the port-Hamiltonian formulation, the mathematical passivity property of individuals’ self-dynamics facilitates the convergence analysis of opinion evolution. We explain how to steer public opinions towards consensus, polarity, or neutrality, and investigate how an autocratic media coalition might emerge regardless of public views. We also assess the role of interpersonal communication and media exposure, which in itself is an essential topic in mathematical sociology

Consumer satisfaction and dis-satisfaction with long-haul inclusive tours

This research is a qualitative study of consumer behaviour in tourism and specifically consumer satisfaction and dis-satisfaction (CS/D) with long-haul inclusive tours. An emphasisis placed on the supposed antecedents of CS/D - expectation, performance, disconfirmation, attribution, emotion, equity - and the change in CS/D through time. The research rationale was orientated to both the academic world and the world of practical management. A literature review and a series of interviews with senior management and directors of long-haul tour operators in Britain was followed by a participant observation case study on a long-haul tour of Malaysia and Singapore. A three-way perspective was sought on CS/D - from management, consumer service personnel and consumers. An interpretative framework, which synthesises the description and analysis in the literature search, primary interviews and participant observation, outlines the process of CS/D formation. This includes the interaction of a vortex of antececedents - with performance at the core - which then passes through a filter relating to both the specific and general context surrounding the long-haul tour. Either immediate or delayed CS/D judgements for micro events is followed by subsequent action or inaction by an individual consumer and/or other consumers in a group, a tour leader, a ground handler and/or a tour operator. A feedback loop completes a micro event cycle and engenders a cumulative development of consumer certainty with regard to the judgement of CS/D through time. Additionally, the study demonstrates the application and potential of participant observation - in lieu or in conjunction with other more familiar techniques - within both an academic and practical management perspective

Tourism in Metropolitan Manila - Philippines: An Analysis

Tourism has become important for (mega)cities in Southeast Asia. Metropolitan Manila competes in the tourism market, but its tourism is scholarly unexplored so far. This Ph.D. thesis takes the approach, that urban tourism is a system comprising interacting stakeholders at the supply and consumer side, and visitor attractions. This dissertation analyses and characterizes Metropolitan Manila`s tourism system referring to its stakeholders, visitor attractions and services. Metropolitan Manila is able to tap the domestic and international tourism market with various attraction resources. But Metropolitan Manila`s supply-side stakeholder field appears highly diverse. The relations among these stakeholders can be characterized through discontinuous links, unequal participation, and non power-sharing. This adverse status is aggravated through the absence of tourism policy, obsolete tourism planning approaches and the dominance of top-down deciding political elites. Consequently, a consensual, goal-oriented acting is inhibited. Instead stakeholders act mutually exclusive or compete with each other. Tourism is predominately seen as a valuable economic tool. As a result, other important dimensions of tourism like socio-cultural, experiential, and infrastructural aspects are negated to a great extent. The current visitor is a short staying stop-over traveller who recognizes the capital`s built heritage as unique. Visitor activities and spatial flow are mainly confined on the heritage of the city centre. But the visitor`s impression of the capital is negative and dissatisfaction with public sector services occurs. Valuable visitor attractions are difficult to access and the tourism infrastructure is perceived as weakly developed. This emphasizes that the tourism officials are not able to create a fully convincing tourism product and they neglect other metropolitan-wide tourism potentials. Recommended future measures should improve the cooperation of supply-side stakeholders and tourism planning embracing the whole metropolis. Moreover, measures must improve tourism infrastructure, public sector services, marketing, and destination image of the capital in order to enhance its competitiveness

Verging Gardens

Webster\u27s gives as an archaic meaning for the verb design to indicate with a distinctive mark, sign, or name. For the kind of photograph which is essentially taken, not made, the idea of indicating is more appropriate than concepts of building up from a blank sheet of paper. The correct exclamation when this photographer thinks a success has been completed is Eureka! : I have found it! This paper identifies the topographic landscape as a type of photographic practice, examines the characteristics of the topographic landscape, and traces its development. The concepts of density and the garden in the topographic landscape are introduced, and a model is offered. An impression of a tradition in the topographic landscape is painted, the antecedent to the photographs represented in the Plates. In the polemic The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe exaggerated the state of modern art to make a point: the work of art itself is foremost; theory cannot finally carry the piece. The hope here is that the photographs of Verging Gardens do not depend simply on their place in the pictorial lineage for value. As a non-verbal, yet referential, format, the topographic landscape can bring to attention ideas not easily accessible to other methods of expression. The topographic landscape is seen as a vehicle for getting at the real subject, the world, with a kind of poetic objectivity

An exploration of the flow experience among selected collegiate athletes

The purpose of this study is to explore Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory in sport as perceived by collegiate athletes. The Sport Flow Q Sort developed by Progen and revised to more comprehensively represent flow theory constructs generates the data. The Q sort contains 80 items and employs a forced format for arranging the items in a normal distribution. Responses of 358 men and women collegiate athletes, collected in the 1980 spring and fall semesters, include members of 39 intercollegiate teams from 22 institutions of higher education. Respondents participate in eleven sports: baseball, basketball, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, softball, tennis, track, and volleyball

A study of the experiential service design process at a luxury hotel

This thesis explores the process of designing experiential services at a luxury hotel. These processes were surfaced by means of a methodology that used the principles of jazz improvisation. Due to similarities between experiential service design and elements in jazz improvisation, representing experiential service design through the jazz improvisation metaphor leads to a new framework for exploring the process of experiential service design that is iterative in nature. A gap in the service design literature is that experiential service design is not operationalized in organizational improvisation, and one contribution from this study will be to fill that gap. This study contributes to the field of knowledge by exposing a new perspective on how experiential services can be better designed by adapting some of the design tools from this luxury hotel; a second contribution is a recommendation for how the improvisational lens works as an investigative tool to research experiential organizations. In the process, some new dimensions to understanding complexity are contributed. The research process utilized qualitative research methods. Frank Barrett (1998) identified seven characteristics of jazz improvisation which I have used as a heuristic device: 1) provocative competence (i.e., deliberately creating disruption); 2) embracing errors as learning sources; 3) minimal structures that allow for maximum flexibility; 4) distributed task (i.e., an ongoing give and take); 5) reliance on retrospective sensemaking (organizational members as bricoleurs, making use of whatever is at hand); 6) hanging out (connecting through communities of practice); and 7) alternating between soloing and supporting. This research is grounded in the body of literature regarding complexity, organizational improvisation, service design and experience design. The role of heterogeneous minimal structures that are fluid and optimize uncertainty is central to this investigation. Themes such as sensemaking and the role of story, meaning-making, organizational actors' use of tangible and intangible design skills, and embracing ambiguity in efforts to design experiential services are explored throughout the dissertation. The anticipatory nature of experiential service design is a principle outcome from the data that is incorporated into the new conceptual framework highlighting a "posture of service"

Federal Search Commission - Access, Fairness, and Accountability in the Law of Search

Should search engines be subject to the types of regulation now applied to personal data collectors, cable networks, or phone books? In this article, we make the case for some regulation of the ability of search engines to manipulate and structure their results. We demonstrate that the First Amendment, properly understood, does not prohibit such regulation. Nor will such interventions inevitably lead to the disclosure of important trade secrets. After setting forth normative foundations for evaluating search engine manipulation, we explain how neither market discipline nor technological advance is likely to stop it. Though savvy users and personalized search may constrain abusive companies to some extent, they have little chance of checking untoward behavior by the oligopolists who now dominate the search market. Against the trend of courts that would declare search results unregulable speech, this article makes a case for an ongoing conversation on search engine regulation

Artificial intelligence as religion: an evolutionary account and philosophical study

Religions and religious behaviours have been documented in biological and evolutionary terms. This research considers how religions emerged as distributed, de-centralised biological extensions and evolved into centralised cultural organisations. This provides a model of the evolutionary mechanisms that contributed to the origin, development, and proliferation of religions. It establishes that religions encouraged, curated, and leveraged a specific mentality that has not disappeared despite humanity’s move toward secularism. This research interrogates whether the religiously primed mind will attempt to fill a cognitive void with artificial intelligence (AI) systems in a post-religious society. This comparison provides an evolutionary account for how AI systems will use existing religious mechanisms and behavioural tendencies to develop and proliferate from de- centralised extensions of cognition to centralised cultural systems. This research finds that the scenario described above has significant implications with regard to human individuality, moral responsibility, and individual freedom. The thesis will conclude with a proposal for the necessary requirements for retaining these three features in a future where significant amounts of cognitive processes are outsourced to AI systems