Washington University Senior Undergraduate Research Digest (WUURD), Spring 2018

From the Washington University Office of Undergraduate Research Digest (WUURD), Vol. 13, 05-01-2018. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Scienc

Breaking down the barriers – the participation puzzle

The purpose of my study is to understand the presence and nature of barriers that prevent SMEs entering into and or trading successfully in the rail sector or slow their rate of progress. The corollary to this is to understand why the upper reaches of the sector, are so poor at managing and developing their suppliers. My hypothesis is that the current difficulties in the supply chain are a direct result of the fragmentation caused by privatisation in 1992. Additionally, I address the hypothesis that a major barrier to entry for SMEs is the inadequate provision of testing and evaluation facilities. My research has established that the consequences of fragmentation remain the primary barrier and that this has fed an inclination towards exclusion and actions that amount to anti-competitive behaviour. The testing and trialling provision is thus but a small part of a wider malaise. Based on my research I recommend that further work be done to align collective and individual objectives in the rail sector such that the inherent structural weaknesses can be over¬come through the application of challenge-based approaches. An important consequence of this would be to address the background political imperatives behind the privatisation of the sector, to adapt the structures in the light of a changing environment and to diminish the tactical interventions of governments by clarifying their over¬arching strategic role

Transport and travel in a fragile rural tourist destination: a social representations perspective of residents' and visitors' mobility patterns.

It is a well established fact that visitors to rural destinations in the UK and other parts of Europe are highly car dependent. This car dependency has resulted in a variety of initiatives intended to tackle the associated undesirable consequences. While there are some success stories, the negative impacts of transport still pervade for residents and visitors in many destination areas. Few studies address the social assumptions that underlie travel behaviour decisions. When Moscovici's social representations theory is employed it suggests that we should develop and draw on shared perceptions, or theories, of the world around us in order to interpret our behaviour. Social representations theory offers a dynamic approach to understanding how social conceptions shape our understanding of transport and travel behaviour. This approach brings in a theoretical perspective that has been absent from tourism and local transport literature and is largely absent from the wider transport debate. The aim of the study was to enhance the understanding of tourism and leisure mobility in a rural tourism context by applying social representations theory. A case study approach was employed to provide an in-depth investigation of the transport issues in a fragile tourism destination area: Purbeck, Dorset, UK. The study includes exploratory research to define the important value concepts for the population in the study area relating to transport and tourism, followed by an examination of travel patterns and travel behaviour of visitors to the area through the use of a travel diary. Finally, a questionnaire survey was undertaken with visitors at various attractions in the area. A social representations perspective demonstrates the importance of examining the social reality and the social processes that underlie people's decision making. The findings indicate that there are pervasive representations of tourism and transport forming a socially constructed consensus which shapes views of transport and tourism. While the study shows that people would like public transport to be improved, this is essentially an idealised representation and an idea perpetuated by a public that makes little use of public transport and has little intention of leaving the car behind. Arguably, people have developed a social construction of how to deal with transport problems whereby the failure of public transport reinforces the existing situation of high car use and there is little attempt to restrict car use. This study challenges this strategy and discusses practical implications for managing mobility in sensitive rural destinations

THE CONSTRUCTION OF LOCAL ROAD SAFETY ISSUES: WHEN LAY AND PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSES COLLIDE

Highway Authorities in the United Kingdom have jurisdiction to control, maintain and improve the local highway network, and the Road Traffic Act 1988 places a duty on such authorities to take preventative measures to reduce road casualties. As such, engineers working for the Highway Authority are on the ‘front-line,’ and are required to deal directly with lay concerns relating to road safety. This study investigates the nature and characteristics of how local road safety issues are raised and how engineers respond to such issues in a local authority setting. A grounded theory methodology was applied in the collection and analysis of this data, and in the generation of subsequent emergent themes. Datasets were established containing textual data from correspondence between the lay public and the authority, and from local press reporting. This was augmented by 47 semi-structured interviews with engineers. The analysis demonstrates that road safety issues and their construction, form a distinct genre. There are certain characteristic structural elements and argumentative approaches, which are oft repeated, in lay formulations of road safety. Road safety issues are played out in a contested field, although engineers may have, in theory, the ‘expertise’ that grants them authority to assess, diagnose and implement mitigation measures; in practice they have little autonomy or control. Regulatory restrictions, political interference, resource impoverishment and a volatile public, severely limit engineers’ independence and discretion. In dealing with the exigencies and pressures of day-to-day front-line public service, engineers deploy certain strategies for ‘managing’ the public. These pragmatic strategies are examined in order to establish how engineers can best effect practical action, in the face of competing and often conflicting demands. In examining the rhetorical organisation of lay argumentative strategies, a ‘popular epidemiology’ of road safety is recreated. This term, borrowed from Brown (1992), encapsulates a folk philosophy with respect to accident causation and the measures that are considered necessary or appropriate to ameliorate/eliminate identified issues. It is suggested that in vivo formulations of road safety issues, such as the ‘accident waiting to happen’ are founded on vague premises, and constitute a category mistake. Projections from phenomenally troubling, yet largely unsubstantiable events, to those with profound material consequences, are neither necessary nor certain. In making decisions on substantial capital investments, engineers, by necessity, are required to assess competing sites on a more epistemically secure metric, namely the police road casualty record

2019 EURēCA Abstract Book

Listing of student participant abstracts