Conscious governments in the developing countries try to keep abreast of developments, by offering better services to their citizens; one of the important services is to preserve the natural water resources. Implementation of constructed wetlands part of sustainable water resource management and ecosystem is a new approach for water treatment and biological disposal of contaminants, therefore families can contribute to these treatments through the use this system in their houses.  In order to meet the demand of daily water consumption by separating greywater from wastewater and for its reuse after treatment constructed wetland systems are one of the successful ecological treatments to reduce the concentration of pollutants in greywater. In view of the acute water crisis supply in Iraq, the best solution found for covering the daily consumption of householders is to apply the constructed wetland for treatment of greywater. The implementation of green roofs technique is one of the best ways to intercept rainwater. Especially in Iraq, where this technique can be used to provide thermal insulation, and an appropriate environment, to use the roofs for sleeping at night in the summer season.

The aim of this study is, using the Swedish expression “kulturtant” (cultured lady) as starting point, to understand how and why women consume the products of the culture industry more eagerly than men. The study is using the concepts put forward by Pierre Bourdieu; fields, capital and habitus. It is a qualitative study based on discussions in focus groups, interviews and material gathered through Google Alerts. In the literature this gap between the sexes with regard to the higher consumption on behalf of women has been referred to as the “puzzle” of women´s cultural consumption. The empirical results show that the women in the study are well aware of what they want to gain by participating in cultural activities like reading, going to concerts, watching plays or going to the movies. There are three main results: The first result is that the women in the study want to participate in activities with peers that respect them. The second result is that the women are eager that their cultural activities should give them durable experiences. The third result can be described as a wish of the women that taking part in cultural activities will help them to develop as human beings, to become better persons. The women have made what can be called a culture journey that in analogy with a class journey may be argued to be non-reversible.

According to Onkvisit and Shaw (1987), many products and possessions can be perceived as extensions of consumers' self-identity.  Some consumers might even try to enhance their image through conspicuous or status consumption. According to Mosteller (2008), possessing a pet is closely related to the theory of the extended self. Among other types of conspicuously consumed goods, rare or unusual animals may be purchased to satisfy the consumer's need for status (Hirschman, 1994). In 2011, more than 70 million households in Europe kept a pet. The direct and indirect industry of pet breeders, veterinarians etc. creates more than half a million jobs throughout Europe. Although in recent years many studies have been conducted from psychological or medical point of view of companion animals' and their owners' interactions, the academic knowledge from consumer behaviour perspective is still scarce. Authors of this thesis employed attitudes, various self and conspicious consumption theories in order to dig deeper into the topic of pets as status symbols, in particular rare and pure-bred cats and dogs. With the help of convenience sampling technique, internet survey was distributed. Authors questioned 165 students in Jönköping International Business School and created a data sample which was later used in statistical analysis. By combining descriptive statistics, Principal component analysis and Cluster analysis, a research design for the topic at hand was developed, which allowed to squeeze out every bit of valuable information. According to the statistical analysis, four most important factors influencing pet-related conspicuous consumption are (in order of importance): Ostentation, Social Recognition, Conformity and Materialistic Indulgence. With regards to these factors, all participants were grouped in four clusters: Blue Blooded People, Indifferent Boasters, Status Candidates and Approval Seekers. This research design resulted in vast array of managerial implications and creation of academic knowledge in respective consumer behaviour field.

No description available.

China and India have many in common, are geographically large developing countries with enormous populations, but with notably different economic systems. This paper focus on exploring the relationship between GDP and consumption behaviors in China and India over the period 1978-2006. We use GDP as a proxy to represent income and household final consumption as a proxy to represent consumption. The long run relations are estimated by ARDL (1, 1) model. We find that India’s consumption is in the line of theory. But the relationship between GDP and consumption in China is unique, in terms of a negative intercept, a negative time trend and a larger than one marginal propensity to consumption. This may due to two possible explanations. First, after almost 30 years high growth households in China are optimistic to their future incomes. They prefer to borrowing for smoothing their consumptions. Second, there might have winding income what are not in the statistics. Finally, we adopt a series of diagnostic tests to check if selected models are strong enough and analysis the results.

El Niño is typically viewed as an episode of destructive weather anomalies that can last from a few months to several years. The majority of research looks at the negative impacts of this event. However, not all impacts of El Niño are necessarily bad. This study outlines areas of the United States that are most highly impacted by anomalous temperature and rainfall during El Niño years and determines whether these anomalies affect energy consumption. These effects will be examined on both a national and regional scale. Areas of the northwestern and southeastern United States exhibit anomalous temperatures during El Niño years. The southern US and Great Plains area receives positive anomalous precipitation during El Niño years while an area of the east central US experiences negative anomalous precipitation. Natural gas consumption in the northwestern US is reduced by the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During an ENSO event consumers actually save money because less is spent on natural gas for home heating purposes. Hydroelectricity may also be affected by ENSO in the southeastern US but the results at this time are inconclusive. At the national level, ENSO influences the consumption of nuclear electricity.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is one of the food assistance programs targeted at low-income women, infants and children up to age five by providing foods, nutrition education and other services. Recent updates in food packages provided by WIC include the addition of fruits, vegetables and whole wheat products as well as the removal of whole milk for women and children two years and older. This thesis concentrates on preschool children participants in the WIC program and their milk consumption habits prior to programmatic changes. Analyzing diet preferences of these children is crucial since a quarter of the population of children aged one thorough five participates in the WIC program; as well, they are not eligible to receive whole milk with WIC food packages after the implementation of revisions. The objective is to describe the profile of preschool WIC children and their milk consumption attributes based on the National Food and Nutrition (NATFAN) questionnaire designed and conducted by the Institute for Obesity Research and Program Evaluation at Texas A & M University before the release of the revised WIC food packages. Additionally, findings of the study are compared with the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2006 dataset results. Milk consumption preferences of WIC children are analyzed nationwide and impacts of race, ethnicity, regional, and other demographic characteristics are observed. Using both NATFAN and NHANES datasets provides a comparison of actual and self-reported participation outcomes. Discrete choice models were used in this analysis, in particular binary logit and multinomial logit models. The results of the thesis indicate that WIC preschool children mostly drink whole milk (36.17 percent) and 2 percent fat milk (49.94 percent). Two year old participants, children located in the South and participants whose caregivers are younger and less educated are more likely to consume whole milk. Caucasian children are less likely to choose whole milk and more likely to choose reduced fat milk; African Americans are more likely to select whole milk. Furthermore, diet preferences and knowledge of parents/caregivers play a major role on milk consumption of children. Children whose caregivers are willing to give low-fat milk to children aged two to five are less likely to drink whole milk.

This thesis proposes a methodology for determining sensitivity of building energy consumption of HVAC systems to sensor error. It is based on a series of simulations of a generic building, the model for which is based on several typical input parameters. There are a total of eight scenarios considered in this simulation. The simulation tool was developed based on Excel. The control parameters examined include room temperature, cold deck temperature, hot deck temperature, pump pressure, and fan pressure. All of the parameters considered are varied in order to analyze the sensitivity of building energy consumption to their variation. In this tool, different operation schedules for equipment, occupancy, and lighting are considered. By changing each control parameter, the sensitivity of energy use to sensor error is simulated, a regression model is generated, and the energy consumption change is expressed as a function of sensor error and outside air percentage. Two applications of this methodology are presented in this thesis. One is a SDVAV system and the other is a DDVAV system. The outside air percentage changes the trend of the sensor error curve. After the sensitivity study is discussed, some recommendations regarding the calibration intervals of the sensors are given.

IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol uses two techniques to avoid interference ¡V physical carrier sensing and RTS/CTS handshake (virtual carrier sensing). Ideally, these two techniques can solve most of interference problem. But in normal situation a host cannot receive packet successfully unless the power of receiving signal is much higher than that of interference signal. This fact leads that other host can interfere the reception in farther distance than the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. When the distance between the transmitter and the receiver is larger than certain value, some hosts that are out of the range covered by RTS/CTS packet may still interfere the receiver. This problem can be solved by using a very large physical carrier sensing range, which is limited by antenna and will reduce the network throughput. So it¡¦s not suitable to avoid large interference problem. So far some schemes were proposed to solve or improve this problem, but most of them cause power waste at the same time. In this thesis, we will propose a scheme to look after both interference and power consumption. Simulation results verify that our scheme can solve most interference caused by large interference range with less power consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to use the consumption models from industrialized countries to analyze China¡¦s urban and rural consumers. Consumption models will be discussed by analyzing the model framework and through empirical studies. The objective of this research is to find whether consumption models from industrialized countries are suitable for China¡¦s consumer and whether they can analyze the essential factors affecting consumer behavior in different external environments. This paper has found that: (1) Some of the essential elements of the western consumption model are not compatible with China¡¦s situation due to fundamental systemic and economic differences, although there are still some elements of the model which can still be applicable to China. (2) The government¡¦s fiduciary loan policy, reform of the social security system, degree of income stability and gauge of liquidity constraints are the main factors causing different consumer behavior in urban and rural Chinese consumers.