1,579 research outputs found

    Tradespeak : an interdisciplinary study of business communication in international trade deals : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Business Studies at Massey University

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    In the course of history, English has become the dominant lingua franca of intercultural interaction. About 600 million people world wide are either English native speakers or have at least some speaking ability in the English language.¹ Naoki Kameda, Jeremiah Sullivan, "English as the lingua franca of the Far East", in: Multinational Business Review, 4 (1) Spring 1996, pp. 52 - 62 [ABI-Database copy], p. 5. With its basic inflection system, English has proved to be particularly accommodating to second language learners. It is a well adaptable language. English has been also called a "hybrid language² Kameda, Sullivan, p. 10. giving its speakers the freedom and flexibility in use for their special purposes, especially business purposes. Business English is regarded as a key advantage and necessary condition for export oriented development and upward mobility in Asia.³ Anonymous, "Britannia rules Asia's soundwaves", in: Corporate Location (ABI-Database copy), p.1. It is important to stress that these modified versions of English are "(...) by no means [to be classified as] a pidgin speech. A pidgin English is a ludimentary impoverished use of English arising in situations when parties do not share a common language and when accurate grammatical English is not important."⁴ Kameda, Sullivan, p. 10. Opinions diverge as to whether the feature 'accurate grammatical English' distinguishes Business English from pidgin English.. On the one hand, the view is held that only a balanced bilingualism enables successful and effective communication. English language assessment tests ( TOEFL, TOEIC), for example, aim at determining a profile of the English proficiency required for educational purposes (TOEFL) or different job positions in a company (TOEIC)⁵ Matthew Sindlinger, "An international business language", in Business Mexico, 4 (1,2), 1994 [ABI-Database copy, p. 1].. On the other hand, there is the 'insider opinion' of regarding problem solving skills and flexibility in language use as more relevant than abiding by rigid grammar rules and conventions. [From Introduction

    Estimating community benefits from tourism: The case of Carpentaria Shire

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    The small rural communities in Australia's tropical savanna landscapes depend upon the region's natural resources for income and employment. Historically primary industries - including mining, grazing and, in the case of coastal communities, fishing - have been the pillars of economic activity in those regions. More recently, tourism has emerged as an additional nature-based industry, which offers new development and employment opportunities for populations in remote regions. Net benefits from tourism accrue from the balance of economic, social and environmental interactions of tourists with a destination. This paper presents a model of tourism impact in the Carpentaria shire of North West Queensland. A methodology is developed for tracking and quantifying social, economic and environmental impacts. Data from an in-progress research project are presented and analysed to test the hypothesis that community benefits could be improved without an increase in visitor numbers, by changing the composition of visitors to the region. Interpretations are offered as to how both, sectorial and regional planning and management can effect improved community benefits from tourism.tourism impact, net benefit, savanna regions, destination management, host community, grey nomads, Environmental Economics and Policy, Marketing,

    Thar she bursts - Reducing confusion reduces bubbles

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    To explore why bubbles frequently emerge in the experimental asset market model of Smith, Suchanek and Williams (1988), we vary the fundamental value process (constant or declining) and the cash-to-asset value-ratio (constant or increasing). We observe high mispricing in treatments with a declining fundamental value, while overvaluation emerges when coupled with an increasing C/A-ratio. A questionnaire reveals that the declining fundamental value process confuses subjects, as they expect the fundamental value to stay constant.Running the experiment with a different context (“stocks of a depletable gold mine” instead of “stocks”) significantly reduces mispricing and overvaluation as it reduces confusion.Experimental economics, asset market, bubble, market efficiency, confusion

    The effect of marketing spending on sales in the premium car segment: New evidence from Germany

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    This paper assesses empirically the relationship between marketing expenditures and sales in the premium car segment in Germany. We employ a new data-set which contains model-specific data on sales (i.e. registrations), restyling activities and marketing expenditures at a monthly basis for the years 1998 to 2007. The richness of our data in the time dimension allows for a systematic modeling of product life cycle effects which have been partly ignored in the existing empirical literature. We find a robust positive marketing-sales relationship, even after common characteristics of the product life cycle have been taken into account. Furthermore, our results indicate that the launching of a new model, face lifts and customized packages appear to exert a positive and sizeable effect on sales in the German premium car segment

    The travel cost method: an empirical investigation of Randall's difficulty

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    Randall (1994) argued that the Travel Cost Method, TCM, cannot do what it is supposed to do - generate monetary measures of recreation site benefits for use in Cost Benefit Analysis. Randall argues that what is relevant to recreational decision making is the subjective, and unobservable, price of travel, whereas what TCM uses is the observer assessed cost of travel. Hence, the best that can be expected from TCM is ordinally measurable welfare estimates. This paper formulates ‘Randall’s difficulty’ as an estimation problem and derives some results for that problem. A survey data set and Monte Carlo simulations based upon it, where many of the problems usually attending TCM application are absent, are used to illustrate and quantify Randall’s difficulty. The meaning of, prospects for, and usefulness of ordinal measurement are explored, and the question of the existence of a solution to Randall’s difficulty is considered

    Resident perceptions of the relative importance of socio-cultural, biodiversity, and commercial values in Australia\u27s Tropical Rivers - Report for the North Australia Water Futures Assessment<br />

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    EXECUTIVE SUMMARYBackground and overview of project (chapter 1):This report describes research that was commissioned by the Northern Australia Water Futures Assessment (NAWFA) Cultural and Social program. The NAWFA Cultural and Social program has funded a number of research projects to help fill some of the critical information gaps about Social and Cultural values associated with Australia&rsquo;s Northern Rivers.The TRaCK NAWFA Social and Cultural project was comprised of three research activities that were carried out by CSIRO, Charles Darwin University (CDU), James Cook University (JCU) and Griffith University (GU) as part of the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) program. The three activities ran in parallel from March 2011 for a period of 12 months, and were:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &bull; Sub-project 1 &ndash; Social and cultural values in the planning cycle (CSIRO and CDU);&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &bull; Sub-project 2 &ndash; Relative values of water for trade-offs (JCU); and&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &bull; Sub-project 3 &ndash; Developing management models for Indigenous water strategies (GU). This report relates to Sub-project 2 &ndash; Relative values of water for trade-offs.The overarching aim of this project was to improve our understanding of the Social and Cultural values associated with Australia&rsquo;s Tropical Rivers. Its specific objectives were to improve our understanding of:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. the relative values of water for different stakeholder groups;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. the rate at which different stakeholder groups are willing to trade-off &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; economic development for those values;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3. the extent to which stream flow and/or water quality could change before there was a &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &lsquo;significant&rsquo; impact on Social and Cultural values; and hence&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4. the likely response of stakeholders to the consequences of upstream development scenarios and &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; to potential changes in the downstream uses of water.The project was undertaken within a limited timeframe. Although data collection processes ensured that a reasonable cross section of views were obtained, these views are not considered to be&nbsp;&nbsp; representative of the views of all residents of Northern Australia. Furthermore, although researchers have been able to conduct a relatively detailed analysis of much of the data and&nbsp; produce useful results, there is scope for further, more sophisticated analysis that may generate further insights. As such, this work should be viewed as generating &lsquo;preliminary&rsquo; findings.Generic methods (chapter 2):A hammer is not capable of fixing all building problems. Likewise, no single valuation method can be used in all situations. One needs to consider a variety of different issues, including data availability, ethical and information requirements.Social and Cultural values are only loosely associated with the market (if at all). As such, many valuation techniques (particularly those which rely on observable market prices) could not be used to asses ALL values of interest. Instead, stated preference techniques were chosen since they alone are able to assess a full range of values (irrespective of whether or not they are associated with the market).However, researchers were aware of the fact that if they used stated preference techniques to measure preferences at an individual level by asking about Willingness to Pay (WTP), and if they then added those &lsquo;preferences&rsquo; across multiple individuals (each with a different income), they would create what is &ndash; in essence &ndash; a weighted index of value (where the weights are a function of income). Researchers therefore decided to use both dollar and non-dollar denominated stated preference techniques.Sampling (chapter 3):Researchers were cognizant of the fact that the work was commissioned by NAWFA, with the overarching goal of providing information (about Social and Cultural values) to assist water planners. These planners work, almost exclusively, with local residents. So, researchers decided to assess only the &lsquo;values&rsquo; of residents in the tropical river&rsquo;s region &ndash; although great care was taken to ensure that information was collected from a broad cross-section of those residents.A questionnaire was mailed out to more than 1500 residents across Northern Australia. Researchers received 252 usable responses, which were supplemented by interviews that were conducted with 39 residents of the Upper Mitchell River, QLD. The upper part of this catchment was chosen for an intensive case study for three reasons: (1) it is in the formative stages of water policy and planning, so a study such as this was well-timed to provide information that might assist those involved in the planning process; (2) Researchers needed to ensure that data were collected from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents, and they had already worked with several Indigenous people in and around the upper reaches of the Mitchell, making it relatively easy to engage with various groups in a short study period of time; and (3) development issues confronting those in the Mitchell Catchment are likely to precede those in other TR catchments (with the exception of regions in and around Darwin), meaning that lessons learned from this case-study could be useful in other regions in later years.The entire sample included a smaller percentage of Indigenous people, large families, young people and people who did not go to university, than the population from which the sample was drawn. The&nbsp; sample did, however, contain observations from a broad cross-section of most of our targeted&nbsp; &lsquo;stakeholder&rsquo; groups, namely residents who depend upon the agricultural, mining, government and &lsquo;other&rsquo; sectors for income and employment, allowing many important observations to be drawn.Readers are cautioned not to simply look at aggregate measures (e.g. means), and assume that those measures can be used to draw inferences about the population at large. Instead readers should first check to see if the variable of interest is &lsquo;consistent&rsquo; across stakeholder groups. Where differences exist, readers should look at the information most pertinent to the group(s) of interest, rather than at aggregate measures. If used in this way, the information generated in this report is likely to be very useful.Readers are, however, urged to exercise extreme caution when seeking to use insights from this study to draw inferences about Indigenous values in other parts of the TR region. This is because of the relatively low number of Indigenous responses received, and the fact that most Indigenous respondents came from one small area of the TR region. But readers should even be cautious about trying to draw inferences about the values of other Indigenous people within the study area; our Indigenous sample did not include people from ALL traditional owner groups in the Upper Mitchell.Objective 1 &ndash; (chapter 4):Researchers sought to assess the relative importance which a wide variety of residents of Northern Australia place upon nine different goods/services associated with Australia&rsquo;s Tropical Rivers, including the values associated with the &lsquo;use&rsquo; (consumptive or otherwise) of rivers for: supporting human life (referred to as Life); for supporting Biodiversity; for use in Commercial ventures; for future generations (termed Bequest); for simply &lsquo;being there&rsquo; even if never used (termed Existence); for recreational Fishing; for other types of Recreation; for Aesthetics; and for Teaching.Importantly, the list of values comprised six examples of Social and Cultural values, and three examples of other (non-Social/Cultural) values. These other values were included to enable researchers to gauge the importance of Social and Cultural values RELATIVE to other &lsquo;values&rsquo;.Respondents were presented with a list of those values and asked to indicate (i) how important each was to their overall well-being; and (ii) how satisfied they were with it. When not completely satisfied, they were asked to explain why. The data were analysed using several different approaches, clearly highlighting the following:&bull; In terms of importance, the top three values identified by respondents were Biodiversity,&nbsp; Life, and Bequest.&bull; The highest satisfaction ratings were associated with Biodiversity, while Life, Bequest and&nbsp; Aesthetics were equally second highest.&bull; Many of the stated causes of dissatisfaction related to concerns about what might happen in the &nbsp; future (rather than to concerns about what was happening now).&bull; Most stakeholder groups held similar views about the ranking of values (in terms of &lsquo;importance&rsquo;) &nbsp; from highest to lowest, although some socio-demographic, economic, and sense of place factors were &nbsp; found to have a minor influence on importance scores.&bull; One of the highest policy priorities seems to be that of Commercial values. This is not&nbsp; because such values were considered to be important (they were rarely in the &lsquo;top three&rsquo;), but &nbsp; because the satisfaction scores associated with these values were so low. Evidently, the issue here &nbsp; is not one of protecting Commercial values, but of addressing problems, and concerns relating to &nbsp; the commercial use of water. Resident concerns included, but were not limited to issues associated &nbsp; with: pollution (past, present, or potential future), pricing, overuse, lack of certainty in &nbsp; supply, allocation and lack of monitoring. Interestingly, there were no systematic or predictable &nbsp; differences in the responses of different stakeholder groups in either the satisfaction scores or &nbsp; the indices of dissatisfaction associated with Commercial values; evidently respondents were &nbsp; consistently &lsquo;dissatisfied&rsquo; with this value (although for many different reasons).A small subset of respondents (interviewees) were also asked to participate in a cognitive mapping exercise &ndash; the aim being to determine the extent to which the values assessed in the survey could be viewed as complementary or competitive. Biodiversity, Life and Social/Cultural values were viewed as being largely complementary to each other. In contrast, Commercial values were consistently viewed as quite separate from &ndash; and often competitive or detrimental to &ndash; these other values (with the important exception of tourism).Objective 2 (chapter 5):Respondents were also presented with a series of (hypothetical) development &lsquo;scenarios&rsquo;. First, they were asked to indicate how much they would be willing to pay (WTP) to prevent development that would impact upon Social and Cultural values. Then they were asked to indicate how much they would be willing to accept (WTA) as compensation if development caused damage to their Social and Cultural values. Finally they were asked how much they would be willing to pay to reduce current&nbsp; development, thus increasing their opportunity to enjoy Social and Cultural values.Data were analysed using a variety of different methods, highlighting the following:1) A large proportion of respondents were strongly opposed to the development scenarios, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; evidenced by the fact that&nbsp;- Fewer than 33 per cent of respondents indicated that they approved of the development scenarios &nbsp;&nbsp; presented in the first two scenarios &ndash; even when the impact on Social and Cultural values was &nbsp;&nbsp; relatively small.- A relatively large percentage of respondents refused to consider any trade-off at all (between &nbsp; 30% and 70%, depending upon the format of questionnaire presented).- Some respondents noted that they had already spent thousands of dollars fighting development &nbsp; proposals in and around &lsquo;their&rsquo; rivers.- Of the group that agreed to &lsquo;play&rsquo; the trade-off &lsquo;game&rsquo;, approximately 5 per cent were WTP/A &nbsp; significant sums of money to avoid damage or to &lsquo;repair&rsquo; damage to their Social and Cultural &nbsp; values) with maximum values cited in the survey of 1millionandmanyvaluesinexcessof1 million and many values in excess of 10,000. &nbsp; These maximum values generated highly skewed distributions with mean WTP/A ranging between almost &nbsp; 6000perannumperhousehold,toalmost6000 per annum per household, to almost 28,000; median values were much more modest (between 15   and 100).- More than 50 per cent of respondents indicated that they would be willing to accept a DECLINE in income if it was associated&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; with improved opportunities to enjoy their Social and Cultural values.This strong sentiment is not altogether surprising given the fact that the previous chapter clearly showed that Commercial values were, almost always, rated as being less important than some Social and Cultural values &ndash; particularly Bequest. Moreover, it is consistent with previous studies in the region (e.g. Straton and Zander, 2010).This strong sentiment may also at least partially reflect an assumption on the part of respondents that the scenarios would affect more than just Social and Cultural values (i.e. they may be assuming that the development will also impact values such as Biodiversity which are viewed by some as essentially inseparable from Social and Cultural values).2) When outliers (i.e. the very high WTP/A dollar votes) were excluded, researchers found that:- WTP was strongly linked to ability to pay, but that those on low incomes are willing to sacrifice &nbsp; a much higher proportion of their income to protect their rivers than those on high incomes (three &nbsp; to four times higher). This is also consistent with previous findings of Straton and Zander (2010).- The importance which people place on Biodiversity is, almost always, a positive and statistically &nbsp; significant determinant of their WTP to protect Social and Cultural values (reinforcing earlier &nbsp; observations about the complementarity of these values).- People&rsquo;s expressed willingness to accept compensation for &lsquo;damage&rsquo; to Social and Cultural &nbsp; values (which they are unable to prevent from occurring) is significantly higher than their &nbsp; expressed willingness to pay to avoid the damage from occurring in the first place. The potential &nbsp; policy significance of this is discussed in chapter 7 (summarised under issue 3, page vi).Objective 3 (chapter 6):Respondents were asked to consider a range of hypothetical scenarios that involved changes to stream flows and water quality in nearby rivers. Specifically, they were asked to indicate (on a five point Likert scale) how these changes would affect their satisfaction with Social and Cultural values. Analysis of the data highlighted the following issues:&bull; Any change which stops the flow of perennial rivers &ndash; even if only for a month or two &ndash; is likely &nbsp; to have a significant, negative impact on Social and Cultural values. (The term significant &nbsp; indicates that more than 50% of respondents said that such a change would either reduce or greatly &nbsp; reduce their satisfaction.)&bull; Respondents were generally positive or ambivalent about changes in stream flow which reduced dry &nbsp; periods. In other words, those who live near an intermittent river system stated that they would &nbsp; either have increased or consistent levels of satisfaction with their Social and Cultural values if &nbsp; the dry periods were shortened (or if the river becomes perennial). The important exception to this &nbsp; occurred with respect to perennial but UNPREDICTABLE flows. Perennial flows are viewed positively &ndash; &nbsp; as long as the flows are constant, or related to natural, seasonal fluctuations.&bull; Scenarios that reduce water quality (be it due to increased levels of turbidity or algae) are &nbsp; likely to create a significant negative impact on Social and Cultural values; improvements are &nbsp; likely to generate a significant positive impact.&bull; Respondents viewed reductions in water quality more negatively than reductions in stream flow, &nbsp; and were consistently more positive about scenarios that involved improvements in water quality &nbsp; than about scenarios that involved increases in stream flow. This may be at least partially due to &nbsp; the fact that respondents are used to living in regions that have extremely variable climates. &nbsp; Changes to stream flows may thus be considered somewhat &lsquo;normal&rsquo;.Concluding remarks and recommendations (Chapter 7):Objective 4 asked researchers to determine:What is the likely response of stakeholders to consequences of upstream development scenarios and to potential changes in the downstream usages of water?Chapter 4 clearly showed that Commercial values are considered to be less important than&nbsp; Biodiversity, Life and some Social/Cultural values, while chapter 5 clearly showed that at least some people are WTP substantial amounts of money to prevent development that impacts upon their&nbsp; Social/Cultural values. As such, it seems that developments which impact upon downstream usages of water are likely to be met with quite a negative reaction.The opposition is likely to be characterised by significant disquiet amongst a possibly vocal minority (those refusing to consider any trade off at all, or WTP very large sums of money to prevent the development from occurring) and a present, but less significant disquiet amongst a larger group of other residents.Those most willing to accept trade-offs for development include the wealthy and/or people who place highest values on Commercial uses of rivers; those who place a high value on Biodiversity (a significant proportion of respondents) and/or those who are relatively poor seem to be much less willing to trade their Social and Cultural values for greater income flows.Other important comments/insightsISSUE 1: Interviewee data indicates that Biodiversity, Life and Social/Cultural values are somewhat&nbsp; complementary to each other, whereas, Commercial values are almost always viewed as quite separate from &ndash; and often competitive or detrimental to &ndash; these other values (with the important exception of tourism). Moreover the larger (mail out) data set showed a strong correlation between WTP to protect Social/Cultural values and stated importance of Biodiversity values.Evidently, for many Northern Residents, the existence of biodiversity may be a necessary pre-condition for maintenance of many Social and Cultural values. Determining whether or not the existence of biodiversity is also a SUFFICIENT condition for the preservation of Social and Cultural values, stands as a vitally important topic for further, more thorough, research. Why is this so important?&bull; If the existence of high quality biodiversity values is both a necessary and sufficient condition &nbsp; for the existence of high quality socio-cultural values, then preservation of the former &nbsp; guarantees preservation of the latter. However, if the existence of high quality biodiversity &nbsp; values is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the existence of high quality socio- &nbsp; cultural values, then preservation of the former does not guarantee preservation of the later; &nbsp; other steps may be necessary (e.g. guaranteeing access to areas of high biodiversity value).&bull; Moreover, if the Biodiversity and Social/Cultural values that are derived from one &lsquo;area&rsquo; are &nbsp; non-rivalrous (meaning that society can benefit from both, simultaneously), then their values &nbsp; should be added together1 before being traded off against other competing uses of that &lsquo;area&rsquo;. This &nbsp; is analogous to the situation where a private property owner seeks to determine how much land to &nbsp; devote to cattle and how much to wheat: he/she should firstly estimate the value of &lsquo;cattle&rsquo; by &nbsp; considering potential income from both beef and leather, and then compare that (combined) value to &nbsp; the potential income that can be earned from the alternative (wheat). Failure to do so, would be to &nbsp; under-allocate resources (e.g. land, or in this case, possibly aquatic resources) to activities &nbsp; that generate multiple values (e.g. cattle, or in this case, possibly biodiversity and &nbsp; socio-cultural values).Until we are able to learn more about these important issues2, planners may, therefore, wish to adopt a pre-cautionary approach (as advocated by the NWI). That is, they may wish to proceed as if these values are non-rivalrous, perhaps setting aside MOREthan the &lsquo;bare minimum&rsquo; that is required to maintain biodiversity values, and also ensuring that other steps are taken to facilitate the appreciation of socio-cultural values (e.g. ensuring residents have access to important areas).ISSUE 2: Respondents were particularly concerned about changes which impact upon water quality, although those who live near perennial rivers were also very concerned about any change that would stop their stream/river flowing for even a short period each year. Moreover, comments made during focus groups and in interviews (as well as comments written on returned, mail-out questionaries) indicated that (a) many respondents have a holistic view of their environment (incorporating&nbsp; social, cultural, economic and biophysical values); (b) they did not feel as if all local environmental management issues were being dealt with effectively; and that (c) their oppositio

    Recreation value of a new long-distance walking track

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    A large recreation value may be expected for a long-distance walking track which allows for hiking and camping in a tropical rainforest environment. When such a resource is new, sufficient data are not available for a primary study. A practical way to obtain a value estimate is by employing benefit transfer procedures. Using a travel cost analysis for the Thorsborne Trail as the transfer source, a consumer surplus estimate for the new Cannabullen Track was estimated at about Aus$300 per person per year. This value may contribute to management decisions about further development of facilities along the track and about user fees

    Southern Brazilian indigenous populations and the forest: towards an environmental history

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    Human societies and economies are inextricably linked to oceans and seas. Eight of the world’s ten largest cities lie adjacent to the ocean (UN Atlas of the Oceans, 2010) and about half of the world’s population lives within 200 km of a coast – a quarter within 100 km (IPCC, 2007). Oceans and seas provide a range of ecosystem services (including regulating, provisioning and cultural services) that enhance human well‐being in numerous ways (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003, 2005; Hicks, 2011). To the extent that climate change affects ecosystems, it will affect fisheries (as discussed in the preceding chapters of this book) and, by extension, human well‐being. In this chapter, we focus on provisioning and cultural services associated with fisheries. Although important, the ocean’s regulating and supporting services, including the fixation of atmospheric carbon, are not further discussed here (for further details, see UNEP‐WCMC, 2011). We describe the numerous contributions of marine‐based ecosystems to human well‐being and the ways in which climate change and other confounding factors are likely to disrupt relationships between fishers, fisheries and fishing communities. Our three case‐studies: small‐scale, artisanal and subsistence‐based fisheries of the western Indian Ocean (WIO), fishing of cultural keystone species in the Torres Strait, and commercial fishing in Australia, serve to highlight the various changes to fisheries likely to be brought about by climate change in three markedly different contexts
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