'Two-speed' Scotland : patterns and implications of the digital divide in contemporary Scotland

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Retirement Transition Migration : Implications for Rural Development

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Willingness to pay for the conservation and management of wild geese in Scotland

In past times wild geese were an important resource, providing a source of meat, grease for lubrication and waterproofing, and feathers for bedding and arrow flights. Today, with the sale of goose meat no longer allowed in law, the only current market for geese is commercial shooting of non-endangered species such as the pink-footed goose. However, there are other benefits associated with geese which are not priced in the marketplace, but are valued. For example, some people positively value the opportunity to observe geese in the wild (a use-value), while others may take pleasure from simply knowing that they exist (a non-use value). These benefits cannot be provided by conventional markets because it would be prohibitively expensive to exclude people from watching geese and impossible to exclude them from caring about geese. In recent years a number of techniques such as Contingent Valuation (CV) and Choice Experiments (CE) have been established to establish the monetary values of non-market benefits. These techniques aim to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) of beneficiaries through the establishment of hypothetical markets

Technology for Older Adults: Maximising Personal and Social Interaction : Exploring Opportunities for eHealth to Support the Older Rural Population with Chronic Pain

Funding The TOPS project is supported by an award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, award reference EP/G066051/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Geographies of the rural and the Covid-19 pandemic

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Healthy Ageing in Smart Villages? Observations from the Field

In the context of demographically ageing communities across rural Europe Smart Villages have considerable potential to promote ageing healthy. Whilst in principle supporting healthy ageing in the context of the Smart Village might appear a relatively straightforward endeavour, in operational terms, successful development of smart, 21st century villages relies upon, and sometimes assumes, an appropriate interplay of socio-technological factors. Articulated through a lens provided by the digital ecosystem model advocated by the European Network for Rural Development (2018), this paper offers some observations from the field. We acknowledge the challenges faced by remote rural places in their journey to become ‘smart places’ and identify formal and informal interventions that could better position rural communities to become part of a wider, smart society

Using Wmatrix to classify open response survey data in the social sciences: observations and recommendations

We report here on our use of Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) and the USAS tagger (Rayson et al. 2004) as an alternative to more commonly used content analysis methods for sorting and coding open response survey data in the social sciences

‘It’s revolutionised how we do things’: then and now - a case study of Internet behaviours in a remote rural community

This document is the final version of a published work that appeared in final form in Proceedings of the XXVI European Society for Rural Sociology Congress: Places of Possibility? Rural Societies in a Neoliberal World, 18-21 August, Aberdeen, Scotland. To access the final edited and published work see http://esrs2015.hutton.ac.uk/sites/www.esrs2015.eu/files/Final%20ESRS%202015%20congress%20proceedings.pdfThe Digital Economy has opened up new opportunities for societal wellbeing across many domains of life. However, the market dependency of the landscape of connection has resulted in communities which have inadequate broadband infrastructure and are off the digital map. This form of digital exclusion is most notable in remote, rural areas. In this paper we draw upon the Rural Public Access WiFi Service research study that is focused upon enabling Internet connectivity for commercially ‘hard to reach’ rural areas in the UK. Enabling broadband connectivity to those who were previously unable to access the Internet demonstrates benefits, which translate into the positive role that improved digital connectivity can have on the wellbeing of individuals and remote rural communities at large

Centenary of the Department of Geography, University of Aberdeen

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