It is critical to motivate tourists to behave environmentally friendly for the sustainable development of tourism. The concept of pro-environmental tourist behaviour has been the subject of many research studies. However, only a few studies have focused on the effectiveness of using informational strategies to promote pro-environmental tourist behaviour, and these studies indicate that current strategies are not so effective in achieving behavioural change. Although it is widely accepted that personal norms are the dominant determinant of pro-environmental tourist behaviour, there have been limited studies in the tourism field related to activating pro-environmental personal norms. Therefore, this research topic needs to be enriched. The emergence of social media has drawn increasing research attention and its significance for tourism industry has been highlighted. Viewing social media as a channel of interpersonal influence, this research aims to investigate the influence of social media on pro-environmental tourist behaviour by activating personal norms. A conceptual model is built in this research to investigate the way people internalise travel user generated content (UGC) to salient pro-environmental personal norms. The influence of social media is viewed from the informational and normative aspects in the conceptual model. Adopting a mixed research design, this research conducted a study of netnography to understand the research topic and build the measurements for survey research in the second phase. The data about 140 most frequently read Chinese travel blogs confirms that it is possible to use social media as a channel to provide rich environmental information by public participation and collaboration. 1787 sample observations were used to test the relationship developed in the conceptual framework. After validating the developed scales by factor analysis, both the measurements and structural models were tested using a structural equation model (SEM) with partial least square approach (PLS-SEM). The results generally confirm the original conceptualisations. Both the informational and normative influence of social media positively impacts the activation of pro-environmental personal norms. The hypotheses on the moderating effects of prior knowledge and social media engagement are partially supported. The results indicate that social media is an effective tool in promoting pro-environmental tourist behaviour by activating personal norms. Findings of this research may be of interest to social marketers and environmental activists who intend to be opinion leaders. This study also is helpful for the relevant Chinese government institutions in working out effective information to encourage sustainable tourism since they have a huge control over the Chinese internet. Meanwhile, Chinese travel website managers who want to contribute to sustainable tourist behaviour promotion may also use the findings of this research.

This study assesses the dynamics of soil loss rates of the Nqoe River Catchment. The assessment is made by numerical modeling of the stream water levels and flow, as well as the suspended and bed-load sediment. Literature states that accelerated soil erosion is a problem in the catchment, resulting in high rates of sedimentation of the 'Muela Reservoir. This erosion is blamed on the over-stocking of rangelands which leads to overgrazing and development of bare soil cover. As part of literature review, to better understand existing methods for estimation of soil erosion and stream sediment transport, thirteen (13) overland soil erosion equations and forty-two (42) channel erosion and sediment transport equations were coded in over eighteen thousand (18,000) lines of code. Analysis of these models informed the runoff model developed using the Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis model (GSSHA). The model was calibrated and validated for the Nqoe catchment, and its capability to adequately simulate in this data-sparse geographic region was assessed. It was found that the GSSHA model is robust in its simulations of both stream hydrographs and catchment soil loss. The value of the global gridded satellite rainfall data from the NASA GES DISC proved to be useful and accurate in running the GSSHA model for the data-sparse Nqoe catchment in Lesotho. This data was particularly useful while running land management scenarios for assessment of management activities (reforestation, urbanisation, cropland fallowing and rangeland stocking density) that could best serve to reduce soil erosion in the Nqoe catchment. It was found that reforestation and crop-land fallowing could be some of the most beneficial management strategies for reduction of catchment soil loss.

This thesis considers food insecurity in Bristol through an analysis of taste. Using a bricolage of ethnographic methods designed to bring the sensory elements of food practices to the fore, I worked with three projects in the city to examine the socio-materialities of food insecurity as they are felt within people’s daily lives. Working with an Emergency Food Aid (EFA) charity, a community bus scheme and a cookery course for socially isolated people, I contribute to geographical understandings of food insecurity by looking in places and attuning to senses, feelings and affects that are otherwise invisible. Inspired by material-semiotics – where nonhumans matter – and including ideas of affect, I move away from a static definition of food insecurity as ‘access to a good diet’ and instead develop ideas of taste, which I define as capacity for eating well. I use capacity to ground a critical analysis of inequality within the social and material relations of embodied life. I use eating well to bring the more-than-human collectivities into the frame, accounting for the care-full socio-materialities at play in food encounters. Importantly, I move beyond an ontology of individual rational agents and a focus on empowered choice as a solution to insecurity. The empirical material shows that practices of good taste are contingent and fragile, shaped by the material-affective conditions of food encounters; that interdependencies rather than individual empowerment enable us to eat well; and that precarious living conditions produce affects that can be decisive factors in whether we eat well or go hungry. Ultimately, this taste-full approach places a critical analysis of food insecurity within the messy entanglements of food practices and opens up new spaces for understanding and tackling the issue.

UK universities attract increasing attention from policy-makers searching for regional solutions to economic development challenges. Consequently, university spinout companies have featured prominently in UK policy-making, as they embody a transfer of knowledge of the most complex and comprehensive character. However, whilst the positive contribution of spinout companies to regional economies is widely accepted, little is known of how to ensure high quality outcomes from such knowledge commercialisation activities. This thesis aims to improve the understanding of this problem by examining the elements that contribute to the success of academic spinouts in the UK context. It investigates dual meaning of success: spinout formation and survival, conceptualised here as embedded in university networks composed of multiple actors. It is set within a post-positivistic paradigm and employs an explanatory sequential mixed methods research design. The quantitative part identifies the elements contributing to the success of spinout companies using data on 870 spinout companies extracted from university websites and supplemented with financial, economic and educational databases; and leads to the qualitative part, explaining differential performance of spinout companies across UK regions with data collected through semi-structured interviews conducted at four illustrative university networks. It is found that the success of spinout companies depends on networks, investment, and management teams. However, the formation and survival of spinout companies differs across a number of elements: technology transfer offices, business incubators, other actors, and geography; suggesting bi-dimensional complexity across space and success measures. The variable spatial performance of university networks determining spinout company outcomes is explained by connectedness, filtration and time: successful spinout companies originate from university networks that have capability to build and exploit network capital. It is suggested that regional innovation systems require designs oriented towards these diverse spinout success outcomes, formation and survival-based, with strong local adaptations.

This thesis recovers the practice of ‘armchair geography’ as an overlooked, yet significant aspect of the mid-nineteenth-century culture of exploration. These histories are popularly associated with such famed explorers as Dr David Livingstone and John Hanning Speke, who travelled across Africa. Yet, far from the field, there were other geographers, like William Desborough Cooley and James MacQueen, who spoke, wrote, theorised, and produced maps about the world based not on their own observations, but on the collation, interpretation, speculation, and synthesis of existing geographical sources. The dominant historical trope of geography through the nineteenth century is one of transition, shifting from an early modern textual practice of the ‘armchair’ to a modern science in the ‘field’. This thesis challenges such a limited view by demonstrating how critical practices continued to be a pervasive presence in the period 1830–1870, and how these two modes of geography co-existed and overlapped, and were combined and contested. It seeks to dismantle the static binarism that positions the critical geographer as both separate and in opposition to the field explorer. The chapters move to survey explorers that sit; explorers that read; critical geographers that move; books that travel; and libraries that lay out the world. In so doing, it identifies and attends to the unsettled physical and spatial boundaries between modes and methods of geography. It examines the role of the ‘armchair geographer’ in developing geographical thought and practice, and in negotiations concerning credible knowledge at the newly founded Royal Geographical Society. Crucially, this thesis expands the history of ‘armchair’ practices in geography beyond an entertaining tale of ‘conflict’ in exploration, and presents a critical examination of the many spatial manifestations of the ‘field’ and ‘fieldwork’ in geography’s disciplinary identity. This thesis contributes a spatially sensitive account of geographical knowledge making that interrupts and challenges current histories of the development of geography as a field of knowledge and set of practices in the nineteenth century.

This thesis explores a network of international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs), donors, development subjects and materials, in order to understand the politics of designing mobilities for development. It does this by tracing the flow of second-hand bicycles from their production in the Global North to Namibia, sub-Saharan Africa. An analytical framework of Script Analysis is used to examine the social and technical meanings that are written into second-hand bicycles as they are re-valued for use in the Global South. Following the bicycles to Namibia, the thesis examines how users subscribe to, reject and adapt the bicycles’ social meanings and physical properties in local contexts in order to suit their needs. The thesis finds that the bicycle is prescribed singularly as an object that intends to technologically modernise homogenous utilitarian subjects in inaccessible ‘rural’ Africa. A scene is set onto which an appropriate piece of machinery is inserted. Desirable industrious activities are promoted and less productive practices, such as play, embodied sensory experiences of mobility and identity performance, tend to be discouraged. The thesis finds that with little opportunity for negotiation between designers and users, the needs and desires of Namibian consumers are being dictated. The proscriptions and politics of the network are further compounded by the second-hand materiality of the bikes, which reduce the flexibility of producers to respond to users. NGOs are also operating under pressure to align to the current trends and expectations of donors. Meanwhile, in a local context bicycles are proscribed by sand and thorns, a lack of infrastructure and gender norms, for example. The thesis demonstrates the complexity of design, which goes beyond a linear process, also includes heterogeneous social and material entities that relationally act in conflict with a prescribed and universal ‘tool’ for mobility imagined by NGOs.

There is a large number of underground utilities buried in urban areas, which is one of the most complex networks in the world. It has been estimated that only 50% of buried utilities are accurately recorded. However, failure to identify accurately the location of existing buried utilities results in numerous practical problems, costs and dangers for utility owners, contractors and road users. The underground utilities positioning accuracy requirement is 100 mm for both the accuracy of positioning system and the accuracy of detection devices. While the accuracy up to 300 mm would be acceptable for many respondents. This aim of this thesis is to research various means of improving the accuracy of positioning systems and the accuracy of detection devices for underground utilities in urban areas. GNSS is mainly used to find and record the position of utilities. However, the performance of GNSS is constrained by an insufficient number of visible satellites, poor satellite geometry and multipath in urban areas. The combination of GNSS systems increases the possible visible satellite number. Moreover, the geometry of satellites will be improved by integrating different GNSS constellations. This thesis evaluates the performance of different GNSS constellations such as GPS, GLONASS, BDS and QZSS and multi-GNSS integration in a controlled environment at UNNC and Ningbo city centre. The results provide evidence that using more than one GNSS constellation will significantly increase the availability of GNSS positions and improve the satellite geometry. There are 75% markers (21 out of 28) on campus of UNNC obtained the positioning error within 10cm either by GPS, BDS or GPS and BDS integration. In Ningbo city centre static test, 47% positions (7 out of 15) obtain ambiguity fixed solutions by GPS and BDS. For the underground utilities detection system, this thesis develops a low-cost IMU and odometer integration system to estimate the position of an approximately 30m long test pipeline. Moreover, a tightly coupled integration between IMU and odometer is developed to decrease error caused by the odometer installation attitude error and scale factor error. Besides this, a novel approach to this application of using a Robust Kalman filter is developed to remove the effect of odometer measurement outliers due to wheel-slip. Compared with the loosely coupled integration method, the use of loosely coupled integration with scale factor correction, tightly coupled integration and tightly coupled with Robust Kalman filter provide a horizontal position improvement of 11%, 41% and 43%, respectively. Similarly, the height accuracy is improved by 14%, 50% and 57% before the wheel-slip. The Wheel-slip leads to wrong odometer measurement that makes the positioning results far away from the truth. After applying Robust Kalman filter, the positioning error is reduced to 0.61 m in the horizontal plane, and 0.11 m in the height. Moreover, if using the forward and backward Kalman filter with known start and end positions, the test pipeline positioning maximum error in height is 4 cm, and the maximum horizontal error is 10 cm.

This thesis combines analysis of the political economy of Mexico with the global value chain approach to study the trajectory of the development of the Veracruz cluster and the governance structure of vertical inter-firm relationships in the locality. The petrochemical cluster located in the state of Veracruz is formed by a pool of state-owned and local private companies and is arguably the largest agglomeration of industrial firms in southern Mexico. These firms are linked to one another through output-input relationships. State-owned petrochemical complexes, which are part of Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico's oil and natural gas company, supply industrial raw materials that local private firms use to process intermediate petrochemical inputs. Empirical evidence demonstrates that state-owned firms exercise a disproportionate degree of authority over input transactions. The latter assertion is illustrated by the fact that PEMEX-Petrochemicals is the only domestic producer (and therefore supplier) of a large number of inputs demanded in the locality. This, along with the hazardous nature of petrochemical inputs and spatial proximity, has contributed to locking local firms into captive transactional relationships. The significance of studying the Veracruz cluster and the nature of inter-firm transactional relationships lies in the fact that both are heavily influenced by drivers inherent in the development path the country has followed in past decades, which is characterised in the first place by the adoption of import-substituting industrialisation (ISI) policies in the 1960s and 1970s and later by the implementation of market-orientated policies in the 1980s and beyond. The discussion is therefore situated in a much broader empirical setting that pays considerable attention to economic, political, and institutional factors. For instance, external determinants such as the extent of state intervention in economic planning in the 1960s and 1970s, the economic liberalisation process embarked on by Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s, the institutionalisation of sectoral regulatory policies, the reliance of the government on PEMEX revenues, and the implications of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), among others, will help us understand the trajectory of the petrochemical industry and the governance of inter-firm transactional linkages in southern Veracruz.

Padang city is a coastal city in Sumatra. Padang is the region that is most likely to be devastated by a tsunami that may occur in the near future. The research estimated that the arrival of a tsunami (ETA) in Padang city could be about 20-30 minutes. Padang city is situated on the very flat liquefiable ground, with approximately 800,000 people in which 50% of residents live in tsunami inundation area. Therefore, it would be difficult to evacuate almost 400,000 people in a short time to a safe tsunami zone. There would not be enough time for people to reach a safe or higher place. The local government has made various efforts to develop local early warning systems and disaster management. These activities include preparing legislation, preparing evacuation infrastructure, building shelters, and preparing resources for government officials and for the community, and other support activities that must be done to anticipate the tsunami hazard. It is recognized that the provision of all infrastructure for evacuation requires a longer period, and is not an easy thing to do considering that Padang city is not a prosperous city, and it has low revenue. In the light of the condition, Padang city needs a tsunami evacuation planning. This study aims to evaluate the process of tsunami evacuation planning in Padang city, Indonesia. The evaluation will be through measurement and assessment of a disaster preparedness index of tsunami evacuation, with the assessment object given by the government and society. To achieve the aim and the objective of the research, the single case study is selected. This study implements a mixed method application, with semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey. Content analysis is used to analyse qualitative data, and the descriptive statistics technique is used to examine quantitative data. Based on the results of the survey, it is known that the knowledge of individuals in Padang city is apparently good. It is comprehended by their ability to understand the meaning of the tsunami disaster, the causes of the earthquake and tsunami and their characteristics. Mosque in tsunami zone is the basis in tsunami preparedness, because it has many advantages among them: as a vertical tsunami shelter, as a shortest-fastest way, as a facility to disseminate disaster/EWS and as a facility to educate students. People who work in BPBDs will stay/permanently there for five years. If the displacement remains the case, at least BPBD can recommend an employee who has the capacity in disaster and participates in a forum on the disaster in Padang city. Tsunami evacuation maps must be reviewed, both from the number of maps distribution and the ability and willingness of the public to read maps, the effectiveness of the placement of maps at the intersection and the road.

This thesis is about space, politics and the community. It examines how spatial politics constitutes a community through time. It explores the way that urban governance interacts with community politics, and more importantly, how people can rework politics through spatial practices. The thesis scales down to focus on a case study of Kinning Park Complex (KPC), an independently run community centre that was saved from closure by building users in 1996 following a 55 day sit-in. I track the trajectory of this space since 1996, to investigate the resourcefulness of the community to withstand multiple crises at local and national levels. KPC is a valuable social and political space that continues to exist in, against, and beyond neoliberalism. I focus on the paradoxical nature of KPC, as the space appears in-line with the current government plans to expand third sector projects in a context of austerity, whilst simultaneously striving to function as a non-hierarchical and not-for profit space. It is both an important site of social of reproduction and a symbolic community space. Through participatory methods and ethnographic observations, I have explored the social practices at KPC to investigate what they reveal about social relations and the structural problems that independent spaces face in the context of austerity. I draw upon the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière to elucidate the contradictions in their theoretical disagreement by relating their ideas to the rich empirical material that I gathered at KPC. Finally, I draw upon Doreen Massey to bridge this theoretical divide and to provide an essential spatial context to my work. The thesis brings to light the complexities, contradictions and tangible forms of labour involved in simultaneously struggling against, and providing services autonomously from, the state during austere times.