Sustainable Management of Popular Culture Tourism Destinations: A Critical Evaluation of the Twilight Saga Servicescapes

Popular culture tourism destinations are made up of constructed realities transforming local communities into fictional servicescapes. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the unpacking of a key concept (servicescape), applied to destination management, can support the transition to sustainable destination development in the face of popular culture tourism. The aim is to unpack the servicescape concept by exploring how it is constructed focusing on Twilight Saga representations and production processes at four destinations. The data consists of photographs and video clips of the servicescapes and interviews with key stakeholders. The findings support previous servicescape research dimensions and elements but also identify critical areas of power, control, and conflict when introducing a process approach to the servicescape concept. The study provides insights into the complex exchanges that take place in the development of servicescapes at popular culture tourism destinations. The study thereby contributes to an elaborated and holistic servicescape model, stressing the importance of strategic design and local stakeholders’ early involvement in the preproduction of popular culture tourism phenomena.publishedVersio

The species paradigm in bacteriology: proposal for a cross-disciplinary species concept

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Community-based tourism in practice: evidence from three coastal communities in Bohuslän, Sweden

Local involvement in tourism development is defined as a key issue for sustainable tourism, however it is often questioned and less seldom implemented in reality. Reasons behind this condition are lack of knowledge and practical experience on community-based tourism as a bottom-up approach. In this paper it is argued that local involvement in tourism development is both a democratic right and a strategic destination management tool. The paper scrutinizes a process of collaboration and local participation in a tourism development project within three coastal communities on the Swedish West Coast. A mixed-methods approach was employed in the project with the specific aim of investigating attitudes to the community and tourism development and of involving community stakeholders in exploring alternative avenues of tourism development. The article describes four phases of the process of local involvement in a tourism development project: step 1, formation of a representative project group and negotiation of community-based approach; step 2, consulting local stakeholders and employing a mixed-methods approach; step 3, elaborating results with local stakeholders; step 4, increased community collaboration

Economic stress in childhood and adulthood, and self-rated health: a population based study concerning risk accumulation, critical period and social mobility

Background: Research in recent decades increasingly indicates the importance of conditions in early life for health in adulthood. Only few studies have investigated socioeconomic conditions in both childhood and adulthood in relation to health testing the risk accumulation, critical period, and social mobility hypotheses within the same setting. This study investigates the associations between economic stress in childhood and adulthood, and self-rated health with reference to the accumulation, critical period and social mobility hypotheses in life course epidemiology, taking demographic, social support, trust and lifestyle factors into account. Methods: The public health survey in Skane (southern Sweden) in 2008 is a cross-sectional postal questionnaire study based on a random sample, in which 28,198 persons aged 18-80 years participated (55% participation). Logistic regression models were used to investigate associations between economic stress in childhood and adulthood, and self-rated health. Results: Three life-course socioeconomic models concerning the association between economic stress and self-rated health (SRH) were investigated. The results showed a graded association between the combined effect of childhood and adulthood economic stress and poor SRH in accordance with the accumulation hypothesis. Furthermore, upward social mobility showed a protecting effect and downward mobility increased odds ratios of poor SRH in accordance with the social mobility hypothesis. High/severe economic stress exposures in both stages of life were independently associated with poor SRH in adulthood. Furthermore, stratifying the study population into six age groups showed similar odds ratios of poor SRH regarding economic stress exposure in childhood and adulthood in all age groups among both men and women. Conclusions: The accumulation and social mobility hypotheses were confirmed. The critical period model was confirmed in the sense that both economic stress in childhood and adulthood had independent effects on poor SRH. However, it was not confirmed in the sense that a particular window in time (in childhood or adulthood) had a specifically high impact on self-rated health

Mass media’s production of destination images: Majorca’s image in three Swedish newspapers, 1950-2000

This article deals with mass media’s role as producers of images of tourist destinations, and the extent to which mass media can be viewed as external actors in connection to the tourism industry. The aim is to describe and analyse the media images applied to one tourist destination in a selection of Swedish newspapers during the period 1950-2000, in terms of amount of space, media content and evolution over time. In spite of the fact that the production of media images has an impact on geographical phenomena such as human mobility and geographical consciousness, little direct work on the media has been conducted in human geography. In the tourism industry, media images of places influence tourist decision-making and thereby global travel patterns as well as local tourist-destination development. That is, both in terms of being efficient destination marketing tools and in terms of being conducive to negative effects on places. Hence, in order to understand the power of the production of media imagery in tourism and its geographical implications it is of relevance to study mass media’s creation of destination images within the field of human geography.Cet article traite du rôle des mass-médias comme producteurs d’images de destinations touristiques et de la mesure dans laquelle les mass-médias peuvent être vus comme des acteurs externes liés à l’industrie du tourisme. Il a pour but de décrire et d’analyser les images des médias appliquées à une destination touristique dans une sélection de journaux suédois d’entre 1950 et 2000, en termes de quantité d’espace, contenu des médias et évolution dans le temps. Bien que la production d’images des médias ait une influence sur des phénomènes géographiques comme la mobilité humaine et la conscience géographique, peu de travail direct sur les médias a été réalisé en géographie humaine. Dans l’industrie du tourisme, les images des lieux fournies par les médias influencent la prise de décision des touristes et, par conséquent, le modèle global des voyages ainsi que le développement des destinations touristiques locales. C’est-à-dire qu’ils sont aussi bien des instruments efficaces de promotion des lieux que des créateurs d’effets négatifs sur ceux-ci. Donc, pour comprendre le pouvoir de la production d’images dans le tourisme par les médias et son implication géographique, il est important d’étudier la création d’images des destinations des mass-médias dans le domaine de la géographie humaine

Field-scale spatial variation in yields and nitrogen fixation of clover-grass leys and in soil nutrients

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) plays a crucial role in organic farming and red clover (Trifolium pratense) is cultivated widely in boreal grasslands for BNF. A geostatistical method, model-based kriging, was used to determine the spatial variation in yield, clover content and BNF of clover-grass leys as well as soil chemical properties throughout two fields in 2004-2006. Based on this variation, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to determine the similar patterns of variation. On one location, total dry matter yields of the leys decreased over three production years from 9 700 to 4 100 kg ha-1, clover content from 53 to 26% and BNF from 150 to 40 kg N ha-1, whereas on the other location the yields increased from 6 500 to 7 100 kg ha-1, clover content from 52 to 62% and BNF from 100 to 120 kg N ha-1. Nutrient concentrations in soil also varied greatly within the fields, although this depended on the nutrient species. Kriging combined with PCA described the spatial variation of ley parameters very informatively, but was not as powerful for describing the pattern of nutrients. Based on the spatial dependence determined in the two fields investigated, it seems that the sampling distance should be 80 m for soil nutrients, 100 m for yield and 60 m for clover content and BNF determination, respectively

Advantages of grass-legume mixture for improvement of crop growth and reducing potential nitrogen loss in a boreal climate

Peer reviewe

Effects of Pediococcus parvulus 2.6 and its exopolysaccharide on plasma cholesterol levels and inflammatory markers in mice

Intake of dietary fibres may reduce the prevalence of physiological risk factors of the metabolic syndrome, such as high plasma lipid levels and low-grade inflammatory state. Dietary fibres are usually of plant origin however microbial exopolysaccharides (EPSs) have analogue structures that could potentially exert similar physiological effects. Pediococcus parvulus 2.6 (Pd 2.6) excretes a ropy EPS and has previously shown probiotic potential. The aim of this work was to evaluate physiological effects of Pd 2.6 and its EPS in vivo. The live Pd 2.6 (both the ropy and non-ropy isogenic variant) and its purified EPS were fed to hypercholesterolemic LDL-receptor deficient mice for 6 weeks to investigate their effects on cholesterol levels and the inflammatory tone of the animals. Both variants of Pd 2.6 survived passage through the mouse gut fulfilling an important criterion of probiotics. The ability to produce EPS was conferring an advantage to survival (faecal recovery of 3.7 (1.9-8.7) vs. 0.21 (0.14-0.34) *108 CFU, P < 0.001, median and 25th and 75th percentiles). The ropy Pd 2.6 decreased the levels of soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 compared to the EPS alone (591 ± 14 vs. 646 ± 13 ng/ml, P < 0.05). An increase in liver weight in mice fed the purified EPS was observed, but with no change in liver lipids. No changes in blood lipids were detected in any group. Further the EPS induced growth of the caecal tissue and increased the amount of caecal content showing bulking properties like that of a dietary fibre

Legumes in Finnish agriculture: history, present status and future prospects

Legumes are important in world agriculture, providing biologically fixed nitrogen, breaking cereal disease cycles and contributing locally grown food and feed, including forage. Pea and faba bean were grown by early farmers in Finland, with remains dated to 500 BC. Landraces of pea and faba bean were gradually replaced by better adapted, higher quality materials for food use. While grain legumes have been restricted by their long growing seasons to the south of the country, red, white and alsike clovers are native throughout and have long been used in leys for grazing, hay and silage. Breeding programmes released many cultivars of these crops during the 1900s, particularly pea and red clover. A.I. Virtanen earned the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on both nitrogen fixation and silage preservation. Use of crop mixtures may appear modern, but farmers used them already in the early 1800s, when oat was used to support pea, and much effort has been devoted to improving the system and establishing its other benefits. Although international cultivars have been easily accessible since Finland’s 1995 entry into the European Union, the combination of feed quality and appropriate earliness is still needed, as < 1% of arable land is sown to grain legumes and an increase to 9–10% would allow replacement of imported protein feeds. Climate change will alter the stresses on legume crops, and investment in agronomy, physiology and breeding is needed so that farmers can gain from the many advantages of a legume-supported rotation