No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines children’s (aged 11-12) ideas about climate change. Seventh grade children in 9 schools in Ontario were interviewed and submitted illustrated responses about climate change over a one year period of data collection. Qualitative grounded theory was used to allow themes from the data to emerge, and the use of computer software, NVivo7, was used to code and classify themes. The data were analyzed to answer three main research questions. First, the thesis explored if there were common similarities or differences between the children’s and adults’ responses (as gained from the literature). Second, children’s responses were grouped by geographical location. These locations included rural, urban, and suburban school. This was conducted in order to determine if any group differences exist among children in these three areas. The study found that children’s and adults perceptions are quite similar, and that in some situations, both groups tend to use substitution of other environmental knowledge (cultural models) in lieu of knowledge of climate change but that children also tended to use different cultural models to explain their ideas about climate change. The thesis concluded that no group differences existed among rural, urban, and suburban children and children in all groups tended to have much more detailed knowledge of mitigation strategies than the effects and causes of climate change. The thesis also concluded that a new educational framework, modeled after the Causes, Effects, and Mitigation Strategies of Climate Change (CEM Framework) ought to be used to redistribute this knowledge across these three areas.

Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world and it continues to grow at a rapid pace. Tourism is dependent upon weather and climate, particularly the length and quality of the outdoor recreation season for nature-based tourism, since it is directly affected by weather. Indirectly, the natural biophysical resources that outdoor tourism is based upon can also be altered by climate. Thus, climate change has the potential to affect nature-based tourism that takes place in national parks and other protected areas. Of the studies that analyse the impacts of climate change in national parks, the vast majority focus on conservation policy and planning rather than tourism. This study applies a single variable regression analysis technique to empirically evaluate the affects of climate change on the quantity and seasonal patterns of visitation to United States national parks under a range of climate change scenarios for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s (The Met Office Hadley Centre CM3 B21 (United Kingdom) and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation MK2B A11 (Australia) climate models were used for the Alaskan parks, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research PCM B21 (United States) and Centre for Climate Systems Research NIES A11 (Japan) models were used for the contiguous states). Fourteen parks are included in the study, representing 12 different climate regimes across the country and 58% of total visitation to all national parks in the United States in 2005. In general, the number of visits to parks in the northern regions of the country, excluding Alaska, is projected to increase annually, with the majority of increases occurring in the spring and fall shoulder seasons. In Alaska, there is no consistent pattern on an annual basis due to projections being calculated for only the low season (winter) for Denali, and for the high season (summer) for Glacier Bay. Based on these projections, visitation may increase during the low season and decrease during the high season for Alaskan parks. Parks in the south are projected to experience decreased annual visitation as temperatures become uncomfortably hot, particularly under high emissions scenarios. The largest changes in visitation are projected to occur in the 2080s, although some parks may experience noticeable changes as early as the 2020s in particular seasons. Small to moderate changes in visitation (up to 10% annually) are projected with the low emission climate change scenarios, even into the 2080s. Small to large visitation changes (up to 47% annually) are projected using the higher emission climate change scenarios. These visitation changes could lead to the need for substantial management changes in certain US national parks as revenue collected from user fees and operational costs are altered. Additional ecological and social impacts resulting from increased visitation will also need to be critically considered. Where fewer visits are projected, decreased revenue may lead to an inability to properly manage the park. The results of the study can be used by the National Park Service and regional and park managers to plan for visitation changes that might occur as climate change continues over the 21st century.

An investigation of factors in the persuasion process was conducted in this thesis. Personalitys factors of dogmatism and Internal-External locus of control were examined to determine whether they would be meaningful predictors of opinion change to a persuasive communication. The researcher also examined whether these two personality factors would interact with varying degrees of source credibility.The researcher had expected both personality factors would be significant predictors of a criterion of attitude change, and that once statistical control for dogmatism and Internal-External locus of control had been provided, there would not be a significant relationship at the .05 level between source credibility and attitude change.To test these assumptions a controlled experiment was conducted with 94 subjects drawn from three Ball State University Journalism classes. The subjects were administered a pretest to determine their initial attitude to an issue of tuition tax credits (i.e., a credit that may be deducted from parents' income tax for children attending college). Subjects were subsequently exposed-to a persuasive communication which argued against the tuition tax credit proposal, and then retested to determine whether there had been a shift in opinion. After subjects had responded to the posttest they were asked to argue for and against the topic. According to Rokeach's theory of the "open and closed mind," the researcher had expected to find argumentation to be related to a person's belief system, whether it was open or closed, and therefore also correlated with attitude change.Findings of the multiple regression analysis failed to substantiate the original assumptions and the research hypotheses predicting a significant relationship between the two personality factors and attitude change at the .05 level were rejected.Argumentation, however did prove to be related to attitude change, significant beyond the .01 level, but was unbound to the two personality factors. The researcher proposed that this relationship could have been the result of cognitive dissonance on the part of subjects when they were forced to choose between two positively valued beliefs: 1) a belief that tuition tax credits could help ease the burden of rising college costs, and 2) a more traditional belief that "each man whould pull his own weight in society."According to this theory, subjects who changed in their initial liking for tuition tax credits from the pretest to posttest felt compelled to offer counterarguments to justify their switch in opinion in the face of information that tuition tax credits could ultimately benefit them.