This study investigated the effect the price of oil has on enabling political establishments to maintain their presence within the business environment. The study consists of three different case studies with each of the states (Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) being chosen based upon their level of state involvement within the business community. Each case study investigated whether the price of oil had any effect on influencing the amount of political involvement within the business community, property rights or trade freedom. The findings for all three case studies suggest that the price of oil has little to no effect on determining the amount of influence the state possesses within the business environment. Based on the results of this investigation, recommendations were made to improve the United States relationship with each country. Additional analysis and recommendations were made concerning the future economic impact of Iraq relying solely on oil as its revenue source.

This study contributes to the discussion of managing tourism to a protected area in a developing country (Galapagos, Ecuador). The first part of the analysis provides quantitative data about preferences of tourists and potential impacts on park revenues from price discrimination. It uses the data from a choice experiment survey conducted in the summer of 2009 in which these four attributes of a tour of the Galapagos were described: tour length, depth of naturalist experience, level of protection of Galapagos from invasive species, and price of the tour. On average the Galapagos tourist would be willing to pay slightly more than 2.5 times for a trip with a high-level of environmental protection than for a trip that is equivalent on all other characteristics but has a lower level of environmental protection. The mean marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for a trip with an in-depth naturalist experience is 1.8 times more than that for a trip with a less detailed naturalist experience but equivalent on other characteristics. The relatively inelastic demand for travel to the islands would allow managers to adjust access fees to shift the distribution of length of trips while not affecting the revenues. The second part of the analysis evaluates the influence on travel to the islands by depicting Galapagos as a standard market commodity as well as depicting it as an environmental commodity. This analysis compares the results obtained from two different choice experiment surveys given to tourists finishing their trip to Galapagos. One survey design portrays the archipelago as a standard holiday island destination while the other design highlights the uniqueness and vulnerability of the islands' biodiversity and the challenges that tourism poses to the islands' conservation. Results suggest that additional information modified an individual's decision-making process. In the first design case (which excludes environmental information), the influence of attributes such as length and depth of natural experience is attenuated. The MWTPs estimated for these attributes are smaller in absolute terms although differences on the MWTP are not statistically significant.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purposes of this study were to examine 1) understandings of science expressed in formal salmon recovery policy discourse; 2) rhetorical practices employed to justify or undermine claims about salmon policy 3); and patterns of understandings of science and associated rhetorical practices between social categories of actors. This research contributes to scholarship in public understanding of science, discourse studies, and natural resource policy. A constructivist discourse analysis was conducted using qualitative methods to analyze transcripts from over one hundred congressional hearing witnesses representing a wide diversity of stakeholder groups. Multiple coders organized discourses into analytic categories, achieving a final proportional agreement of 80% or greater for each category, at the finest scale of analysis. Stakeholders employed a collection of prototypical understandings of the nature of science, boundaries of science, and roles of science in decision-making. The process of science was described as impartial and ideal, a way to reduce uncertainty through consensus and peer-review, and subject to changing paradigms. Scientific knowledge was sometimes represented as "truth" and other times as tentative, and scientists were portrayed as independent and objective as well as captured and interest-driven. Witnesses described science as separate from and superior to politics and management. Testimony included descriptions of science?s role in developing decision alternatives, selecting among alternatives, and evaluating and legitimating alternatives. Stakeholders used these understandings of science to construct justifications to support their claims about salmon policy and undermine opposing claims. Science-based justifications included externalizing devices, construction of consensus, category entitlement, and extreme case formulations. Other justifications invoked local control, treaty rights, and local knowledge, or relied on interest management. This study has extended the theory and method of empirical discourse analysis, and produced a taxonomy of understandings that should be transferable to studies of similar policy settings. Additionally, conclusions from this study about differences between social groups in the presence, distribution, and frequency of expression of the discourses might be developed into propositions for further testing. Finally, the study has implications for communication about the role of science in collaborative natural resource decision-making processes. / Ph. D.

Vertical integration has received much attention in the last 25 years and there are well-known theories that explain this behavior. However, the one common thread that runs through virtually all of this research is the assumption of private property rights. Very little attention has been paid to how firms behave when the property rights structure under which they operate changes. The commercial fishing industry is a prime example of an industry where property rights have shifted. Due to problems of over-fishing and over-capitalization, economists have championed the conversion of fisheries from common property or open access resources, to private property through the use of quota programs. Research shows that quota management is effective in reducing capitalization in fisheries, yet there are questions about other effects the programs might have. Among these is a concern over increased vertical integration. Some argue that this is leading to a loss of the independent fisherman that is a part of U.S. history, much like family farms. There is also concern that increased vertical integration is in turn leading to decreased competition in these markets; by owning the quota that is required to fish, processors are increasing their power over the market for unprocessed fish. In response to these and other concerns, the United States Congress imposed a moratorium on the implementation of individual transferable quota-style (ITQ) programs in 1996. Speculation aside, however, there is no empirical evidence to confirm or refute that the use of quota management actually leads to increased vertical coordination. Three fisheries are used as case studies to analyze what affects the decision to vertically coordinate in commercial fisheries. The traditional reasons for vertical integration are to lower transaction costs or to foreclose a market. But now a new factor, shifting property rights, is also considered. Results indicate that the individual characteristics of the fishery are more important than the management or property rights regime itself. This gives some direction to designing management programs that meet our desire to reduce over-capitalization and over-fishing, yet avoid increasing vertical coordination, all the while minimizing the loss of resource rent in the fishery. / Ph. D.

<p> </p> Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution refers to pollution entering receiving waterbodies from diffuse sources, and is one of the main causes of water pollution in the United States. Best management practices (BMPs) and low impact development (LID) strategies are water and land management practices geared at reducing the effect of NPS pollution. This research focused on residents in northwestern Indiana and assessed their interest in adopting BMPs and LID strategies across the urban-to-rural gradient. Resident groups of interest include medium/large-scale farmers, small-scale farmers, rural non-farming residents, suburban residents, and urban residents. Specifically, this research explored residents’ awareness of and attitudes towards water quality improvement practices, their likelihood of adopting these practices, and factors that influence their likelihood of adoption. Data was collected through a household survey that was mailed to residents of Porter and LaPorte counties. In addition to survey questions measuring respondents’ awareness, attitudes, perceptions, likelihood of adoption, and demographics, the survey also contained an experimental component in the form of an information page. By using descriptive, bivariate and multivariate statistical procedures to analyze survey data, this research found that respondents generally reported high levels of awareness of and positive attitudes towards BMPs and LID strategies. Despite this, 41% of respondents reported a likelihood of adopting any water quality improvement practices. This research found that resident groups differed in their awareness of water quality improvement practices, as well as their descriptive and subjective norms associated with adopting these practices. Respondents valued improved environmental quality and reduced flash flood risk as benefits of adopting water quality improvement practices, and identified not knowing enough about specific conservation practices and concerns about how to install and maintain the practices as main barriers to adoption. Generally, respondents who were younger, perceived more problems with various potential water pollution sources, were more aware of water quality improvement practices, had more positive attitudes, had a stronger sense of personal responsibility, sought information in the past about water quality problems, or perceived stronger social expectations from peers (i.e., subjective norms) were more likely to be interested in adopting water quality improvement practices in the next year. The role of information was more ambiguous. While information about how to choose, install and maintain specific water quality improvement practices may be useful for residents, the information treatment about the responsibility of each resident group for NPS pollution did not seem to affect respondents’ likelihood of adoption. However, this research did find that respondents reacted differently to the information provided based on their initial self-reported likelihood of adoption prior to receiving any information. Based on these results, this research suggests strategies that may be used by public and private entities to motivate residents’ adoption of water quality improvement practices, including but not limited to: (1) developing education programs that highlight both the broader environmental quality benefits and geography-specific practical benefits of water quality improvement; (2) developing technical assistance programs that help residents identify appropriate conservation practices for their homes and properties and that facilitate installation and maintenance of such practices; (3) developing communication strategies to help residents establish a sense of self-responsibility and align their perceived water quality problems with their own actions; and, (4) developing outreach programs to help establish and facilitate descriptive and subjective norms in favor of adopting water quality improvement practices at the watershed scale. <br> Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution refers to pollution entering receiving waterbodies from diffuse sources, and is one of the main causes of water pollution in the United States. Best management practices (BMPs) and low impact development (LID) strategies are water and land management practices geared at reducing the effect of NPS pollution. This research focused on residents in northwestern Indiana and assessed their interest in adopting BMPs and LID strategies across the urban-to-rural gradient. Resident groups of interest include medium/large-scale farmers, small-scale farmers, rural non-farming residents, suburban residents, and urban residents. Specifically, this research explored residents’ awareness of and attitudes towards water quality improvement practices, their likelihood of adopting these practices, and factors that influence their likelihood of adoption. Data was collected through a household survey that was mailed to residents of Porter and LaPorte counties. In addition to survey questions measuring respondents’ awareness, attitudes, perceptions, likelihood of adoption, and demographics, the survey also contained an experimental component in the form of an information page. By using descriptive, bivariate and multivariate statistical procedures to analyze survey data, this research found that respondents generally reported high levels of awareness of and positive attitudes towards BMPs and LID strategies. Despite this, 41% of respondents reported a likelihood of adopting any water quality improvement practices. This research found that resident groups differed in their awareness of water quality improvement practices, as well as their descriptive and subjective norms associated with adopting these practices. Respondents valued improved environmental quality and reduced flash flood risk as benefits of adopting water quality improvement practices, and identified not knowing enough about specific conservation practices and concerns about how to install and maintain the practices as main barriers to adoption. Generally, respondents who were younger, perceived more problems with various potential water pollution sources, were more aware of water quality improvement practices, had more positive attitudes, had a stronger sense of personal responsibility, sought information in the past about water quality problems, or perceived stronger social expectations from peers (i.e., subjective norms) were more likely to be interested in adopting water quality improvement practices in the next year. The role of information was more ambiguous. While information about how to choose, install and maintain specific water quality improvement practices may be useful for residents, the information treatment about the responsibility of each resident group for NPS pollution did not seem to affect respondents’ likelihood of adoption. However, this research did find that respondents reacted differently to the information provided based on their initial self-reported likelihood of adoption prior to receiving any information. Based on these results, this research suggests strategies that may be used by public and private entities to motivate residents’ adoption of water quality improvement practices, including but not limited to: (1) developing education programs that highlight both the broader environmental quality benefits and geography-specific practical benefits of water quality improvement; (2) developing technical assistance programs that help residents identify appropriate conservation practices for their homes and properties and that facilitate installation and maintenance of such practices; (3) developing communication strategies to help residents establish a sense of self-responsibility and align their perceived water quality problems with their own actions; and, (4) developing outreach programs to help establish and facilitate descriptive and subjective norms in favor of adopting water quality improvement practices at the watershed scale.

<p>By presenting case studies from the village of Mahenye in Zimbabwe and the five villages of the Okavango Community Trust in Botswana, the study looks beyond the objectives, discourse and contests of policy and undertakes an investigation of what actions rural people are undertaking inside the institutions established by policy makers, and of governance outcomes at the local level. These case studies reveal that unfettered devolution can lead to elite capture and the perpetuation of poverty / that rural communities themselves have agency and the ability to exercise it / and that there is limited and shrinking political space in both countries which is reducing opportunities for rural communities to engage with political processes. The Botswana case studies demonstrates that an imported and imposed devolutionary initiative which lacks links to higher levels of governance can reduce political space at local levels. The Zimbabwe case study demonstrates that political space may be more effectively created through decentralisation. The lesson drawn from these case studies is that institutional arrangements and roles should be determined by context specific issues and circumstances and move beyond the structural determinism that has characterized much of the CBNRM debate to date. The study concludes with policy recommendations. These include the need for recognition of the synergy between CBNRM and democratisation as mutually reinforcing processes and the need to be context-specific...</p>

This thesis seeks to highlight the importance of a geographic and culturally specific knowledge base to guide natural resource management and governance policy, particularly within the West African context. In order to demonstrate the level of complexity that may exist within this realm, the Kedougou region of Senegal is used as a case study. Traditional Method of Subsistence (TMoS), Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and ethnic diversity are considered in order to validate the need to go beyond a superficial involvement of community within models such as Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Focus groups were conducted for this case study in order to identify areas of similarity and difference that exist along ethnic lines. Two areas of concern that all ethnic groups agreed upon was a depletion of water resources and a diminished growing season that leads to an annual food shortage in the region. Three primary areas of difference were found to coincide with traditional ethnic boundaries in the region: traditional religious belief, wealth accumulation and social hierarchy. The findings of this research demonstrate that while areas of cohesive community concern may serve as a focal point for CBNRM programs, it is also important to consider areas of ethnic difference which hold the potential to significantly influence sustainable and equitable resource management. For example, while traction methods for intensified agriculture are identified as important by all ethnic groups represented in this thesis: (A) traditional agricultural ethnic groups already have experience with these methods, and may only need access to assistance such as micro-credit opportunities, (B) the pastoral ethnic groups already have an abundance of traction animals, and so equipment may be what is primarily needed, while (C) the horticultural group may not have access to the land necessary for optimal traction agriculture. It is therefore suggested that CBNRM programs must be structured around community variables found along cultural lines in order to be of value to government and non-government conservation programs and policy formation in the region.