How veganism impacts tourists attitudes toward tourism destinations: An empirical study

The purpose of this study is to examine the structural relationships of the veganism motivations on the vegan tourist attitudes towards the tourist destination offers, and consequently on satisfaction, intention to revisit and recommend. Food and tourism are intimately related in many ways, and a growing trend towards vegan food consumption and lifestyle could pose a challenge for the tourism sector. This paper presents the conceptual framework and research design of the study. Multivariate analysis techniques, such as reliability analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation modelling will be used to validate the proposed measurement and structural model. This study intends to contribute with new insights on the vegan tourist and how vegan tourist destinations can improve this type of tourist experience in this growing segment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How cool is to be engaged with Drunk Elephant? An analysis of usergenerated content campaigns on Instagram

This study aims to understand the effect of user-generated content (UGC) campaigns on consumers’ perceptions of brand coolness and its influence on consumer brand engagement. The trendy concept of coolness in the beauty industry is studied through UGC, assessing if brands encouraging consumers to post about their experiences leads to consumers perceiving brands as cool and creating a deeper sense of engagement with that brand. This research intends to assess the interactions incited by a UGC campaign led by the prestigious beauty brand Drunk Elephant. Researchers employed a netnography methodology followed by a sentiment analysis technique to conduct that analysis. Data was retrieved from Instagram for one year using a text-mining tool capable of extracting the comments (67,321 interactions) and analysed using Natural Language Processing tools. Results confirm that adopting UGC campaigns can lead to consumers perceiving a brand to be cool and positively influencing consumer brand engagement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Acousto-optic modulation in a microstructured plastic optical fibre Bragg grating

The present work addresses the control of the mPOF Bragg grating spectrum properties through acousto-optic modulation. For the first time, the interaction of a flexural acoustic wave, generated by longitudinal excitation of different frequencies, with the Bragg grating will be presented. Also it will be demonstrated the quasi linear relationship between PZT load and maximum reflected power/ 3dB bandwidth of the reflected spectrum

Analysing consumer-brand engagement through appreciative listening on social network platforms

The evolution of technology changed the external environment surrounding businesses creating a plethora of new opportunities and challenges. Particularly, social network platforms became attractive to companies due to their interactive nature as they increase consumers’ and brand opportunities for developing long-term relationships and engagement. In this sense, the main goal of this article is to understand whether appreciative listening can contribute to the improvement of consumer-brand engagement using these platforms. We develop two studies based on Starbuck’s facebook page whereby findings from study one are used as inputs to study two. Results demonstrate that appreciative listening can actually improve consumer-brand engagement.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Assessing the performance of a plastic optical fibre turbidity sensor for measuring post-fire erosion from plot to catchment scale

This study is the first comprehensive testing of a novel plastic optical fibre turbidity sensor with runoff samples collected in the field and, more specifically, with a total of 158 streamflow samples and 925 overland flow samples from a recently burnt forest area in north-central Portugal, collected mainly during the first year after the wildfire, as well as with 56 overland flow samples from a nearby long-unburnt study site. Sediment concentrations differed less between overland flow and streamflow samples than between study sites and, at one study site, between plots with and without effective erosion mitigation treatments. Maximum concentrations ranged from 0.91 to 8.19 g L−1 for the micro-plot overland flow samples from the six burnt sites, from 1.74 to 8.99 g L−1 for the slope-scale overland flow samples from these same sites, and amounted to 4.55 g L−1 for the streamflow samples. Power functions provided (reasonably) good fits to the – expected – relationships of increasing normalized light loss with increasing sediment concentrations for the different sample types from individual study sites. The corresponding adjusted R2 values ranged from 0.64 to 0.81 in the case of the micro-plot samples from the six burnt sites, from 0.72 to 0.89 in the case of the slope-scale samples from these same sites, and was 0.85 in the case of the streamflow samples. While the overall performance of the sensor was thus rather satisfactory, the results pointed to the need for scale of site-specific calibrations to maximize the reliability of the predictions of sediment concentration by the POF (plastic optical fibre) sensor. This especially applied to the cases in which sediment concentrations were comparatively low, for example following mulching with forest residues.publishe

Optical Sensors Based on Plastic Fibers

The recent advances of polymer technology allowed the introduction of plastic optical fiber in sensor design. The advantages of optical metrology with plastic optical fiber have attracted the attention of the scientific community, as they allow the development of low-cost or cost competitive systems compared with conventional technologies. In this paper, the current state of the art of plastic optical fiber technology will be reviewed, namely its main characteristics and sensing advantages. Several measurement techniques will be described, with a strong focus on interrogation approaches based on intensity variation in transmission and reflection. The potential applications involving structural health monitoring, medicine, environment and the biological and chemical area are also presented

Sensitivity optimization of POF sensors based on an intensity low-cost configuration targeting chemical and biochemical sensing

We report the development of RI POF sensors for water quality assessment using simple, fast and low-cost methods. The modification of the surface roughness of the POF's sensing region allowed to increase the sensor's sensitivity. The optical monitoring was performed through an intensity-based low-cost system comprising a LED, an optical coupler and two photodetectors. These sensors can be used for liquid refractive index sensing with 10-4 RIU resolution and future developments aim chemical and biochemical sensing using selective layers

Design and performance assessment of a plastic optical fibre-based sensor for measuring water turbidity

A turbidity sensor based on a plastic optical fibre is presented. The sensor is based on transmission and 90◦ scattering variations with the total suspended particles in a solution. Transmitted and scattered output signals were characterized and evaluated for different configurations for a large range of clay concentrations. The developed system, in comparison with the OBS-3+ standard system, is more robust, of low cost and has a user-friendly design. A good correlation between the systems was accomplished.publishe