Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Vita. Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Litt. et Phil.)--University of South Africa, 2003. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 1, 2006). Includes bibliographical references (p. 330-346).

<p>Rapid global urbanization over the last few decades has intensified the challenge of providing adequate water and sanitation services to urban residents. Meeting this challenge has been the focus of domestic and international development efforts, including Millennium Development Goal 7.C. This research studies three institutional and governance attributes theorized to improve government service outcomes, testing hypotheses that the attributes are associated with greater country progress on providing urban water and sanitation access. The attributes are: a) decentralized services; b) sector-wide strategy and investment coordination; and c) civil society engagement. Country-level experience is analyzed using a series of ordered logistic regression models for a sample of 75 low- and middle-income countries. UN GLAAS survey data is used to derive country-specific variables for the three attributes. These, along with control variables representing country background conditions, are analyzed relative to four country progress outcome variables, two each for water and sanitation. The outcome variables, (covering the 2000 to 2012 time period), are derived from the UN JMP dataset that tracks urban access rates by country. Based on results from these models, four country case studies look in-depth at implementation of the attributes and highlight aspects that can help or impede country progress. Overall, findings show that decentralization is helpful to sanitation progress, but not water progress, likely due limitations of capacity and funding faced by sub-national levels of government. Three explanations are proposed for why decentralization may impact water and sanitation differently. Results for sector planning were mostly inconclusive, except that it was shown helpful to water progress over the 12-year period. Study of this attribute would benefit from additional wide-scale data collection. Civil society engagement was consistently shown to help country progress in both water and sanitation, and several examples of engagement are profiled to demonstrate how it can improve service outcomes. The last chapter relates findings to theories about government provision of public goods. The extent to which the three attributes help achieve efficiency, supply, equity, and social welfare goals is discussed. Finally, practical recommendations for strengthening sector institutions and governance are presented with application to governments and international aid donors.

The fall of the Eastern Block, the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent enlargement of the European Union to include former socialist countries contributed to an increase in the movement of people from Eastern to Western Europe which began about a decade earlier. Among them, the Roma are probably the most clearly recognizable group and surely the ones that received, and keep receiving, more media attention. While their presence in the media as subjects of discussion is a topic worth analyzing, the present work is about their presence in a particular medium, the Internet, as actors and producers of content. As a population of Indian origin spread across Europe over the past five centuries, Roma have often been regarded as a diaspora. Ethnographic studies about diasporas and their usage of the Internet have often described diasporic websites as discoursive spaces in which new, hydrid identities are negotiated and stereotyping and marginalizing discourses about diasporic subjects are challenged. The role of languages in these websites, however, has often been neglected. On the other hand, sociolinguistic studies have highlighted how the Internet provides a space for vernacular language usage in which the relaxation of language norms and users’ creativity play a crucial role in overcoming the limitations in text transmission imposed by the medium. A partial bridge between these two trends of studies has been provided by the analysis of code-switching in diasporic websites, which has shown how meaningful language alternation is used to flag users’ hybrid identities. The study of the relationship between diasporic languages and identities on the Internet clearly appears to be in its infancy and only few case studies have looked at the interactions between each diaspora’s specific cultural and sociolinguistic settings and the usage of the Internet. Furthermore, many diasporas, including the Roma, speak unwritten languages which have not been or are just starting to be standardized. Processes of language standardization have always involved both identity and language policies and have often been pivotal in struggles for nationhood or minority rights recognition. While so far such processes tended to be mostly centralized and top-down, the Internet is offering a space for the spontaneous transition from orality to literacy. Thus, analyzing the interaction between diasporic, non-standardized languages and the identities of their speakers as manifested on the Internet can provide new insights into the relations between diasporic languages and identities and into language standardization processes. The present work investigates these issues by analyzing the on-line usage of Romani, the Indic language spoken by many Roma. The study draws on data collected through an online ethnography from Radio Romani Mahala, a website created and used by the recently dispersed community of the Mitrovica Roma. The data are analyzed both qualitatively, using discourse analytic methods, and quantitatively, using traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Combining such approaches allows drawing a nuanced picture of the phenomena under observation accounting both for micro level, individual patterns of usage and macro level trends shared by all users involved. Particular attention is also paid to the emerging Romani spelling and the role played by individual users in the establishment of shared writing norms. The interdisciplinarity of this approach will show how the interplay between diasporic identities and attitudes, non-standard language ideologies and the possibilities offered by the Internet is leading to effective language codification without the intervention of a central authority and outside the frame of any nation-state policy. Such findings call for a re-thinking of current notions on linguistic human rights. Based on the viability of the Romani model, I thus propose a theory of linguistic pluralism in trans-national contexts centred around the notion of cosmopolitan sociabilities, non-utilitarian, everyday interactions creating open and inclusive relations across and even despite perceived cultural divides.

The Massachusetts model illustrates the latest approach to smart growth—the incentive based program. This study examines the reasons for and actual outcomes of local smart growth efforts through one of the Massachusetts' smart growth incentives—the Commonwealth Capital (CC) Program. The main objectives of this research are built on two conceptual models through a mixed approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method is mainly utilized to evaluate the implementation of the CC program. The results indicate that the program is a good measure of municipal smart growth efforts representative of goals of the state. Communities with diverse land bases have some advantage, as a variety of zoning methods can be employed. It is not obvious that communities have changed their own zoning in response to the stimuli of the CC program. The first model is applied through various statistical tests to investigate the relationships among the towns' characteristics and CC data. Homeownership, education and access to the highway system are significant factors related to municipal smart growth efforts in Massachusetts. Wealth, population and quantity of open spaces are only significant for certain type of communities (e.g. maturing suburbs, developing towns etc). Municipal political preferences (e.g. forms of municipal governance, DEM/GOP preference etc) and municipal planners' efforts have some influence on the adoptions of smart growth policies, though the specific outcomes might vary case by case. The second model tests the statistical relationships between CC data and the Urban Sprawl in Massachusetts. The urban sprawl are defined by Urban Sprawl Indicator (USI) as the amount of residential land consumed per building permit in the five past years per community in Massachusetts. The CC scores and USIs negatively fit the regression line well, indicating that local smart growth efforts have generally controlled land consumption in the past. In particular, the USIs in developing suburbs appear more responsive to the CC data. The spatial lag model shows sprawl is a net-effect phenomena and the cluster of sprawl in a region might weaken the effectiveness of particular municipal smart growth efforts. Lastly, this research suggests that the design of state land use policies ought to follow the nature of geographic segmentation of municipal smart growth preferences.

This study identifies informal networks as the most accepted method of sharing information. Enhancing service delivery is shown as being a key trigger of coordination while rigid funding approaches are perceived to be a major inhibitor. Organisational type, position, practice approaches and location are shown to influence people's perception of coordination.

The role of food in tourism has recently received increased attention within the spheres of destination marketing, tourism development, and academia. Cuisine appreciation is an indelible aspect of the holistic, polysensual experiences that travellers seek thesedays (Crouch & Desforges, 2003; Everett, 2009). The experience of cuisine is the overarching theme for this study. It addresses a contextual gap concerning the concepts of image, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions (which have been abdundantly researched from a destination perspective) applied to cuisine and the travel experience, in India. Specifically, this study’s purpose was to determine foreign travellers’ likelihood to recommend India for culinary tourism based on their perception of its cuisine and satisfaction levels with culinary experiences during their travel to the country. Additional aspects of the culinary behaviour of foreign travellers to India, such as their frequency of patronising Indian culinary establishments, types of establishments they visited, key sources of cuisine knowledge, and their opinion on cuisine knowledge based on culinary experiences in the country, are also revealed in the study. As well, the study incorporated a comparative analysis between how Indian cuisine is perceived vis-à-vis Thai, another globally popular cuisine. A cross-sectional quantitative research design was employed in this study. A questionnaire comprising of six-point Likert scale questions for cuisine image, satisfaction with culinary establishments, and recommendation for culinary tourism, and a combination of additional close and open-ended questions was posed to a convenience sample of foreign travellers to India. Data analyses consisted of frequency analyses, and parametric and non-parametric tests to address the research questions and establish correlations between the study’s central concepts. The results indicate that the sample of foreign travellers’ perception of Indian cuisine was positive overall and equivalent in comparison with that of Thai cuisine. A majority of respondents were satisfied with their culinary experiences in the country and recommended India for culinary tourism, in spite of the culinary challenges faced. The results also indicate that cuisine experience featured prominently as one of the most enjoyable aspects of their trip and that foreign travellers patronised Indian culinary establishments on a frequent basis. Respondents used affective as well as cognitive sources of cuisine information and a majority felt that culinary experiences in India had an ameliorative effect on their overall cuisine knowledge. This study carries particular pertinence in light of recent efforts on the part of the Ministry of Tourism, India to promote culinary tourism as a distinct tourism segment. Although the study cannot claim to be wholly conclusive as it is limited to a small convenience sample, the results provide valuable insight on this previously under-researched topic. Acknowledging the aforementioned caveat, implications and recommendations for three stakeholders are presented: culinary tourism marketers, owners/managers of culinary establishments, and the academic community. It is suggested that stakeholders contextualise the learnings from this study to their unique needs from a culinary tourism promotion and managerial standpoint. Being that this is an exploratory study, further research is recommended to explore the nuances of the study’s central themes with respect to phenomenon of culinary tourism.

Sea-level rise is one of the most certain impacts of climate change that will have major long-term implications for tourism in the Caribbean. Sea-level rise will impact coastal tourism through inundation and erosion, damage to tourism infrastructure, (e.g., hotels/resorts, transportation) and also essential coastal resources (e.g., beaches and coral reefs). The study examines the implications of projected scenarios of sea-level rise for tourism in St. Lucia. Using geospatial analysis that integrates elevation data from satellites and digitized locations of tourism properties, transportation infrastructure (airports and cruise ports) and areas that have been zoned for future tourism development, this study identifies tourism assets that would be at risk to permanent inundation from a 1 m sea-level rise, flooding from storm surge associated with a 1/25 year storm event under 1 m sea-level rise, and exacerbated erosion associated with 1 m sea-level rise. The results indicate that while 1 m of sea-level rise would cause permanent inundation at only 4% of the 73 tourism properties assessed (impacting 7% of 4947 of rooms on the island), the additional exposure to storm surge and waves under a 1/25 year storm event would cause flooding damages at 30% of 73 tourism properties impacting 54% of rooms on the island. This study also found that erosion associated with 1 m of sea-level rise would impact 100% of the coastal resorts with inventoried beach assets. The study uses Google Earth and field observations to examine the potential of inland retreat as an adaptation strategy for coastal tourism resorts. Results indicate that 24 of 37 coastal tourism properties assessed would be unable to retreat due to current development or physical barriers, (e.g., water surfaces, protected areas). The study reviewed 16 national policies and planning documents to examine to what extent sea-level rise was considered in tourism planning and development, and found that only two policy documents referred to sea-level rise within the context of tourism. The thesis concludes with a discussion of additional research needs and recommendations for long-term planning and decision-making that are aimed at improving tourism adaptation to climate change and sea-level rise in St. Lucia.

Tourism is one of the largest economic sectors globally. It is a climate sensitive sector, with climate being one of the most important attributes for a destination. The Tourism Climate Index (TCI), developed by Mieczkowski (1985), is the most widely used index for assessing a destination’s climatic suitability for general tourist activities. Major deficiencies such as the subjectivity of its rating system and component weightings have been identified in the literature, and the need to develop a new index has been identified by researchers for almost a decade. This study aims to fill the research gap by developing a new index, the Holiday Climate Index (HCI), for the purpose of overcoming the deficiencies of the TCI. The HCI was compared with the TCI in rating both current (1961-1990) and future (2010-2039, 2040-2069 and 2070-2099) climatic suitability for tourism of the 15 most visited European city destinations (London, Paris, Istanbul, Rome, Barcelona, Dublin, Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid, Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw, Munich, Athens and Venice). The results were also compared with monthly visitation data available for Paris to assess whether the HCI ratings more accurately represent visitation demand than the TCI. The results show that there are key differences between the HCI and TCI in rating the tourism climate suitability of the selected European city destinations, in particular in the winter months of the northern, western and eastern European city destinations where the performance of the TCI had been questioned in the literature. The comparison with leisure tourist visitation data in Paris also revealed that the ratings of the HCI were more reflective of seasonal pattern of tourist arrivals than the TCI ratings. Because the TCI has been widely applied (15 studies), these findings hold important implications for future research in assessing current and future climatic suitability for tourism.

Adopting green energy initiatives is deemed significant in reducing the carbon footprint of the hotel industry. In general, energy-efficient and renewable energy technologies offer wide applications in the hotel industry. The adoption of these technologies improves energy performance and reduces dependence on fossil fuels. Hotel organizational commitment towards sustainability is highly inconsistent across the industry. Essentially, this industry represents a continuum of adopters; some hotels are leaders who proactively adopt innovative and state-of- the-art technologies, while others adopt only basic practices, such as reusing towels. There exist several challenges to shifting hotel organizations toward implementing green energy measures. Sharing best practices and learned lessons is essential to convince less committed hotel organizations to take action. Along with sharing information, it is important to identify similarities and differences in decision-making on green energy measures in both committed and less committed hotels. This study explores factors affecting decision-making on green energy measures in the hotel industry. In particular, it examines the business case for these measures and identifies challenges that prevent hotel managers from taking action. The study findings suggest that similarities and differences among best practice and other hotels are related to the approaches taken in decision-making by hotel managers in the adoption of green energy measures in terms of short/long term energy planning, resource intensity and views about sustainability. The study further highlights success factors contributing to increased use of green energy measures and areas that need to be addressed in order to encourage hotel managers to adopt green energy measures.