Residential satisfaction belongs to important elements of human's satisfaction with life. It is created by the unique set of different components to which the accessibility and quality of civic amenities in a neighbourhood may also be included. Nevertheless, the importance of this factor used to be underestimated and the real connexion between residential satisfaction and the presence of civic amenities has not come out so far (Swindell, Kelly 2005). Therefore, the diploma thesis focuses on the qualitative- analytical research of residential satisfaction in two differently served Prague's localities with the aim to deepen the current knowledge of this issue. The results show that the presence of civic amenities in the neighbourhood has a significant effect in creating residential satisfaction which is comparable to the quality of housing and neighbourhood features. However, this relationship is partly influenced by the assigned importance of services' presence that especially varies according to the locality type (housing estate or suburban) and the position of household in a life cycle. Keywords: residential satisfaction, civic amenities, Prague, housing estate, suburb

A park is a desirable feature when people are purchasing a property. Buyers are ready to pay more for properties surrounded by natural amenities, such as a pleasant park. However, if a park is perceived as unsafe by local residents, then it may have a negative effect on housing prices. The aim of this study is to investigate the importance of urban parks in Stockholm, capital of Sweden, and to find evidence of whether people in Stockholm are willing to pay extra for parks when purchasing an apartment. This study hypothesized that people’s willingness to pay for urban parks and green spaces is affected by crime. The methodology had two stages. An extensive field work was performed in a selected number of parks to help characterize the parks in Stockholm. This was later followed by the analysis of 2008’s apartment sales using hedonic modelling combined with Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. Results suggest that the effect of parks vary by park type. An aggregated measure of parks lower apartment prices but the effect turns out to be positive in some cases, or insignificant, when parks are broken down by types. For instance, parks with cultural features, forest feeling, skating and features of national interest increase apartment prices. However, if park have ball games, marina, boating facilities, skate board facilities and frequent social events – these features tend to reduce property values. These findings support the idea that the impact of park on property value depends on the type of park. Contrary to was expected, the park impact on prices does not seem to be affected by seasonal variations (e.g., summer versus winter), only individual months seem to affect prices. More interestingly, crime affects the quality of parks and, in its turn, the relationship between parks and prices. Results show that parks that originally show a positive impact on prices may affect prices negatively if they have relatively high rates of violence and vandalism. The study finalizes with a discussion these results and their implication for future research.

This dissertation explores the demographic, economic, political, and environmental characteristics that have helped define the "New West," reviews studies on individual attitudes and participation in response to these changes, and presents findings and conclusions from an analysis of two study areas: Bear Lake and Star Valley. Results suggest that residency status is generally not a significant predictor of resident attitudes towards aspects of community change. Non-residency status factors, such as high levels of place attachment, knowledge about community affairs, values for property ownership, and community satisfaction, were generally more influential upon residents' attitudes. Significant predictors of resident involvement in community affairs differed based on how involvement was measured; self-reported involvement in political affairs was most strongly predicted by permanent resident status, local social connections, knowledge of community affairs, and place attachment, while resident intention to participate in community affairs was positively correlated with greater personal efficacy, knowledge of community affairs, past leadership recruitment, place attachment, and altruistic motivation. Predictors for intention to participate also differed based on whether participation was measured by action type or by issue. Measuring participation by the type of action focused predictors on the skills, incentives, and resources needed to achieve those actions. Grouping participation by the type of issue, however, focused predictors on the characteristics that differentiated residents with regard to issue relevance. Out-migration, as an alternative to participatory action, was only predicted by non-economic factors. Additionally, the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intentions was only weakly predicted based on attitude ambivalence and specific scenarios. Study results highlighted several methodological considerations for future attitude and participatory studies. Use of general attitudinal statements may have yielded inflated response scores and therefore may not translate to shared acceptability of specific management decisions or trade-offs. This study also explored the notion of behavioral intentions as a means of identifying residents' "ideal" tendency for involvement. Local community leaders may be able to improve resident public participation by utilizing these findings to provide a shared goal for action, identifying appropriate audiences for specific issues, and recognizing how different participatory methods may yield obstacles and opportunities for resident involvement.

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Thesis advisor: Claudia C. Olivetti / Thesis advisor: Theodore T. Papageorgiou / This dissertation consists of a collection of three essays in Labor Economics, all studying the careers of young American workers. The first two essays, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, analyze the early-career gender wage gap among recent cohorts of highly educated US workers. The third essay, Chapter 3, analyzes long-run changes occurred over the last four decades in the supply of overtime work among American employees. Chapter 1 provides an in-depth analysis of the evolution of the careers of Millennial American college graduates from labor market entry to five to ten years later. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997) I neatly reconstruct workers' careers from labor market entry and provide a variety of reduced-form evidence showing that gender differences in the wage gains that workers obtain when they change jobs determine a large portion of the early-career gender wage gap and of its expansion over years of experience. I show that these results are robust and hold irrespective of young workers' marital and parental status. In light of the results provided in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 I study the contribution of the main determinants of wage gains from job changes to the early-career gender wage gap among highly-educated American workers. Specifically, first, I estimate a structural model of hedonic job search to estimate the extent to which men and women differ in terms of search frictions, of preferences for valuable amenities (flexibility and parental leave) and of the wage offers received conditional on the provision of amenities. Second, I use the model estimates to perform a series of counterfactual analyses and quantify the impact of search frictions, preferences and wage offers on the early-career gender wage gap and on its expansion due to job search and job changes. I find that young men and women share similar preferences for amenities. Compared to men, however, women are offered lower wages, and predominantly so in jobs that provide benefits. Since these jobs typically offer higher wages too, the gender pay gap expands as workers climb the job ladder to enter employment relationships that offer better wage-benefits bundles. The higher price that women pay for amenities explains 42% of the early-career growth in the wage gap that the model attributes to job search and job changes. The remaining portion is explained by the lower wages offered to women in jobs that do not provide benefits (25%) and by women's stronger search frictions (33%). In Chapter 3 I study the determinants of long-run trends in overtime work. I document that work hours have been increasing in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and steadily declining in the 2000s and 2010s, and that these trends were predominantly driven by secular changes in the share of young, salaried employees working long hours (more than 40 hours per week) in relatively high-pay jobs. I then provide a model that explains the evolving long-run trends in overtime as an outcome of underlying changes in labor demand that affected the life-cycle wage gains that employees expect to obtain when supplying overtime work hours. I empirically test and validate the implications of the model, and show that long-run changes in the wage premia for working long hours can explain the rise and fall in overtime work that I document. Finally, I estimate long-run trends in persistent and transitory wage dispersion and show that persistent wage dispersion grew in the 1980s and 1990s and declined later on. To the extent that shocks to wage gains from working long hours result into an increase in the spread of permanent income across employees typically supplying different amounts of work hours, I show that a rise and fall in wage premia for overtime work reconciles the observed reversed-U shaped trend in both overtime work and persistent wage dispersion. These results are suggestive that, after surging in the 1980s and the 1990s, the “fortunes of the youth'” may have been declining later on, due to shifts in labor demand that flattened the life-cycle wage profiles that young, salaried employees can obtain when supplying long work hours. These results can also help reconcile recent evidence that the demand for skill and cognitive tasks and the college wage premium have been declining, while the age wage gap has been increasing. Conversely, the results I obtain question theories that explain long-run trends in US men's labor supply through secular increases in the marginal value of leisure due to improvements in leisure technology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

The implementation of agritourism in the U.S. has increased in recent years. Agritourism provides social and economic benefits to rural communities, leads small-scale farms to achieve financial viability, and offers clientele an entertaining opportunity to meet local producers. Although multiple resources exist to educate individuals interested in pursuing agritourism business ventures, related materials cannot be generalized to Mississippi due to inapplicable data. This study aimed to gain knowledge about Mississippi’s agritourism clientele by administering surveys to attendees of the 2021 Mississippi State Fair. The survey instrument was amended from a previous study conducted by Nasers and Retallick (2009) in Iowa. Although most of the results corresponded with findings in similar studies, numerous recommendations were made that were specific to Mississippi farmers and agritourism operators.

Job satisfaction of entry-level student affairs professionals has been an issue of interest to researchers and practitioners alike since at least the 1980s. A high turnover of housing and residence life live-on and live-in (LO/LI) professionals has led to a curiosity for the reason. Investigation into job satisfaction of these professionals is an ideal way to determine ways to help retain LO/LI professionals and enhance their overall job satisfaction. In this study, the personal demographics, institutional demographics, and amenities provided to entry-level housing and residence life professionals holding LO/LI positions, and what impact, if any, they had on job satisfaction were examined. Job satisfaction was measured by two separate means, both based on the theoretical framework, the Job Characteristics Model. A web-based survey was distributed to approximately 9,000 members of the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International, asking for all LO/LI professionals to complete the survey. Personal demographics slightly affected job satisfaction, and institutional demographics were not related to job satisfaction. Amenities were the strongest predictors of job satisfaction among the three areas examined. Specific amenities such as meal plans, reserved parking, and flexible work hours had a more significant impact on job satisfaction than others.

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