No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study employs the Choice Modelling (CM) Technique, in particular the Contingent Ranking (CR) method, to measure the economic value of the Redang Marine Park (RMP) system in Malaysia. The reason for using CR is to understand which islands in the RMP system the tourists prefer. Knowing the islands’ ranking is crucial for the planning and development of this particular island as a tourism product and destination, and at the same time, for maintaining the islands’ ecosystem as a protected area. The study is divided into three major components. The first investigates destination choices amongst tourists. In this component, the attributes of interest include choices of island, types of accommodation available at the destination, facilities provided at the place of accommodation, distance of accommodation sites to the beach, and types of transportation used to reach the destination. These attributes are measured using the 3-day/2-night (3D2N) package prices offered as holiday packages to tourists. The second component measures the importance of environmental attributes, namely the status of available fish and coral species, the numbers of nesting turtles and the degree of congestion that the tourists experience while participating in water activities such as snorkelling and diving. These attributes are measured through the conservation fees collected by the park authority from tourists visiting RMP. The final part of this study is concerned with the members of local community on the island. Their perceptions towards tourism, their readiness to participate in tourism activities and their attitudes towards MP development are issues explored in this study. A total of 189 local tourists and 94 foreign tourists were interviewed in this CR study, while 200 local residents were interviewed in the community study. This study finds that, in terms of the choice of destination, different islands do matter and are statistically significant for both local and foreign tourists. In terms of overall ranking, both local and foreign tourists rank Kapas as their first choice, while Tenggol ranks last. The main attributes in the destination choice are statistically significant for local and foreign tourists, except for facilities provided at the sites of accommodation. WTP for almost all attributes concerned are higher for local tourists than for foreign ones, except for the reduction in distance between the accommodation sites and the beach. Specifically, the improvement in terms of types of accommodation ranges from RM113.33 to RM205.50 for local tourists and RM136.50 to RM169.71 for foreign tourists. WTP for improved travel time from the mainland to the island ranges from RM0.43 to RM1.75 for the domestic tourists, as opposed to the values given by foreign tourists, ranging from RM0.29 to RM1.50. WTP for the option of accommodation situated closer to beach areas ranges from RM3.14 to RM11.25 for local tourists. These values are lower than WTP given by foreign tourists, which range from RM10.55 to RM15.57. Further analyses on marginal WTP are also discussed. Regarding environmental issues, this study finds that all attributes are statistically significant for both local and foreign tourists. The local tourists’ WTP for changes in the number of fish and coral species ranges between RM4.31 to RM6.70, while foreign tourists’ WTP ranges between RM3.50 to RM6.73. As for the number of nesting turtles, locals are willing to pay between RM3.78 and RM4.76 while foreign tourists are willing to pay between RM2.28 and RM4.14 for different attribute levels. Finally to avoid congestion while participating in the water activities, WTP by locals ranges between RM2.80 to RM13.37, and WTP amongst ii foreign tourists ranges from RM1.99 to RM11.37. Similar to the destination choice, further analyses on marginal WTP are also discussed. Regarding the local community, this study deduces that community members perceive the tourism industry positively and are willing to participate in tourism-related activities. However, they have some reservations surrounding the presence of tourists in their village, based on social and religious grounds. Their attitudes toward the development of the MP are also positive. Finally this study highlights the economic potentials that players in the tourism industry may tap and capitalize upon, mainly through practising pricing mechanisms in selling and promoting holiday packages in RMP. To the park managers and local authorities, this study may suggest some guidelines for future development processes. Such processes should consider selective development as an option while safeguarding the natural beauty of RMP. The possibility of revising the current conservation fee to resemble tourists’ WTP is also highlighted in this study. Finally, the study recommends the implementation of price discrimination and peak-load pricing in charging and collecting conservation fees as methods, not only for the purposes of increasing revenue but also for acting as tools to monitor and control the number of tourists to RMP.

This work provides a new representation of the culture surrounding the practice of the football match, the ‘Football Field’, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam between 1910 and 1920. In particular the work represents the interaction of the individuals of the Football Field with spatial issues, the media and wider Dutch society; also adding to the knowledge of a period of Dutch history which is often overlooked. The work challenges some existing concepts regarding Dutch culture at this time and demonstrates inconsistencies between language and meaning, conflicts within values, the contested use of sport as a source of civic pride and challenges some existing ideas concerning Dutch culture and society in this period. Using a Postmodern historical approach emphasising the subjectivity of the author and a desire to represent the forgotten individuals in everyday life, synthesised with a Field framework, the work provides a nuanced representation of the Football Field and its interaction with other facets of culture. The work provides a representation of a varied and contested Field which was often the site for wider ideological or moral conflicts and indicates the inconsistencies in how these were displayed. Further to this, the work represents the many different practices concerned with football in the two cities at the time and attempts to highlight the interaction of individuals within it. I also demonstrate that by taking different individuals in the Football Field as the starting point for historic production it is possible to provide a wider cultural representation of everyday life which rather than obscuring people, brings them to the surface and permits a representation of their relationships and connections. Th is provides the possibility of more nuanced historiographic works which can include voices, lives or practices which are too often forgotten.

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This thesis is the first major study of gaming in England between c. 1540 and 1760. Gaming - which may be defined loosely as games of chance played for stakes hazarded by the players, especially cards and dice - was rife in early modern England. People from virtually all social groupings played at cards and at dice and engaged with gaming in many different ways. Chapter one provides a narrative of the development of the playing card trade, and the ways in which it was taxed, in order to place gaming in a broader economic context. It shows that over one million packs of playing cards were being produced by the late seventeenth century and examines the fraud and forgery that occurred after the Stamp Act of 1710 greatly increased the tax on cards. Much gaming was illegal; and through an analysis of legislation and legal records chapter two investigates the ways in which gaming, and especially gaming houses, were policed. Chapter three focuses on the places in which gaming was conducted, including coffeehouses and alehouses. It also discusses gaming in the home and, more generally, the ways in which gaming was a part of socialising and sociability. Chapter four examines printed debates about the morality of gaming, explores attitudes towards recreation, and explains the ways in which gaming contributed to early ideas about chance, providence and probability. Seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury gaming manuals are also considered in detail. The final chapter interrogates attitudes to cheats and cheating and addresses the ways in which credit - both social and material - might be constructed or lost at the gaming table.

This document summarises the submitted research which has investigated online knowledge exchange and related it to the philosophical field of social epistemology. The broad aims have been: firstly to investigate what social epistemology theory can offer in the way of guidance and evaluative frameworks for the design of knowledge systems; and secondly, to determine what the empirical study of knowledge exchange platforms can tell us about epistemology as emerging from online practice. The submitted work consists of six papers that are a mixture of review/position papers and reports of empirical investigation. These have been published in information science journals and conference proceedings. However, following the established tradition of information science, the work is positioned as being cross disciplinary in ambition. After introducing the submitted papers and the inspiration for the research, the main theoretical positions of the research are outlined and justified. These were a naturalised social epistemological position, inspired by Alvin Goldman, but widened to a situated and systems-oriented view. The naturalised view of epistemology allows for consideration of evidence from psychology, and here some key theories in social and cognitive psychology are outlined. Finally, as the subject is human-computer-human interaction, the sociotechnical setting is established. Further, the main platforms of study in the empirical work — social question answering systems — are introduced and described. The main methodology and research approaches followed are presented next. A mixed methods philosophy was deemed suitable for this area of research and — alongside the review work — the broad web science method of combining network and data investigation with qualitative methods is justified. Review work included early collaborations with an information scientist and a philosopher which helped to bring together and clarify epistemological and sociotechnical themes. The discussion section presents some of the main themes and conclusions of the submitted work, including: 1) The identification of knowledge patterns and practices online; 2) Criteria for online knowledge exchange distilled from the social epistemology literature; 3) Some triangulations where theory from philosophy and psychology seemed to corroborate and serve to explain online behaviour; 4) Socio-temporal aspects to online knowledge exchange that are perhaps under developed in philosophy but apparent in practice; 5) Credibility cues and bias, seen as crucial to a rounded study of user interaction with online sources; and finally 6) Interventions suggested by the research which would aim to raise the quality and effectiveness of social media knowledge systems. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for further work are presented. These follow on from the submitted strands of research and present possibilities for how the work may be extended and improved upon. In common with the research, these combine philosophy, modelling, interaction design and qualitative methods. Such a combination is seen as essential to developing an enhanced understanding of how the web serves and could serve as a platform for human knowledge.

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Music’s capacity to bring about positive change in the areas of well-being and health for marginalised groups is well documented. This study examines the outcomes of musicking for a group of asylum seeking mothers who face particular challenges in the British socio-political landscape, in the areas of language and communication, cultural understanding and identity, and social and psychological well-being. This research interrogates notions of integration and examines ways in which the UK asylum system has further ‘othered’ the participants, whose sense of identity is dislocated, and those anxieties may be transmitted to their children. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how musicking has been influential in addressing some of these challenges. The progress of five mothers with children under three, who attended a Music for Mothers Seeking Asylum project, was followed for over three years. A journal, kept throughout the project and beyond it, and interview data were both analysed using an approach based on grounded theory. The use of an interpreter in interviews necessitated the use of back-translation in order to facilitate analysis of two of the interviews, which raised issues in the area of communication. This study examines how musicking impacts on mood, self confidence and identity, language acquisition, and development of maternal and social interactions. It was found that group musicking has the capacity to provide a setting in which the participants experience ‘collaborative flow’ and the creation of liminal space, leading to the emergence of communitas. This was found to be dependent upon the type of space in which musicking took place. Musicking provided a safe rehearsal space for the trying-out of new identities, contributed to increased self-confidence and led to language acquisition, closer maternal and social bonding, increased cultural understanding, and heightened mood which lasted beyond the musicking, into their daily lives.