The film industry is one of the creative industries and is often referred to as cultural economy. The filmmakers are trying to maximize their profits and attract as many consumers as possible. One of the most important indicators for producers are box office sales of cinema tickets. The thesis examines national film preferences in Europe, based on these revenues. The aim is to reveal how feature film genre preferences differ among countries in the European Union. The first part of the thesis focuses on the theoretical background and setting the issue in the context of economics. It is followed by construction of data-set, which is then examined by regression analysis. The dependent variable is represented by box office sales. Finally, the results of the analysis are interpreted and explained.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy D. Keane / Naturalistic landscapes have increased in popularity, especially in the landscape architecture profession, due to the push for greener and more sustainable landscape designs in civic spaces. The increase in popularity and resulting use of naturalistic landscapes by landscape architects creates a need to understand users’ preferences for naturalistic landscapes. Users need to have moderate to high preference levels for the naturalistic landscape spaces in order for such spaces to be successful. This work identifies and explains civic spaces, characteristics of traditional landscape designs, characteristics and history of naturalistic landscapes, and characteristics and details of previous preference studies that focused on people’s preferences for natural areas. This study also identifies current preference levels and background characteristics of respondents, which are used to determine who does and does not prefer naturalistic landscapes in civic spaces and why. A survey questionnaire targeted toward users of naturalistic landscapes identified opinions, preferences, and statistical data relevant to this study. A total of sixty-one surveys were completed and collected from two separate survey sites. Survey results were used to determine: 1. Preference levels of the respondents. 2. Background characteristics and values of the respondents. 3. Correlations and patterns between respondents’ preference levels and their background characteristics. 4. Correlations and patterns between respondents’ preference levels and their values and opinions. 5. Differences between the results from the two survey sites. Survey results and analyses indicate that perceived safety is a major factor that influences preference levels. Background characteristics such as the level of formal education and the participation in classes and seminars that focus on topics relevant to naturalistic landscapes are also significant indicators of preference levels. Another of the indicators is the participation in outdoor activities of all sorts. Along with determining the indicators of preference levels, the survey results were used in the comparison of the results from the two survey locations.

Master of Science / Department of Horticulture, Forestry, and Recreation Resources / Kimberly A. Williams / Despite extensive evidence that appropriate use of floral preservatives extends postharvest longevity of most fresh flowers, their use by traditional full-service florists has been observed to be highly variable. This research was developed to determine if knowledge about floral preservatives increases consumers’ perception of quality, purchase intention, and price of a floral arrangement. A survey was administered to 222 participants at two locations in Manhattan, Kansas during April 2010. Seventy-three percent of respondents fell within the age range of Gen Y. The survey instrument contained four levels of presentation of a floral arrangement that were associated with increasing knowledge about the use of a floral preservative on consumers’ perceptions about the quality and price of that arrangement. Results were analyzed via within-subjects ANOVA, Bonferroni post-hoc tests, t-tests, and regression analyses. Participants of the survey rated the quality of a floral arrangement higher from Level 2 (presence of floral preservative not explicit) to 3 (presence of floral preservative explicit) and Level 3 to 4 (after reading 191 word count message about floral preservative function and effectiveness). Their intent to purchase the floral arrangement generally increased with each level of presentation. Participants increased the price that they were willing to pay for the floral arrangement at each level of presentation, starting at $25.49 at Level 1 (no floral preservative use indicated) to $29.17 at Level 4. Participants were more knowledgeable about the benefits of floral preservatives and believed that floral preservatives increased the value of floral arrangements after reading a message describing their function and effectiveness more so than before reading the message. Younger participants were more willing to pay more for floral arrangements with floral preservatives than older participants. As consumers become more aware of the use of floral preservatives and more knowledgeable about how and why they are effective, they attribute higher quality to floral arrangements with preservatives, are willing to pay more for arrangements with preservatives, and their purchase intention frequency increases. Florists should consider providing a message about the function and effectiveness of floral preservatives to their customers, and then market their use of these materials.

As a critical component of the city, urban infrastructures emerge through the interactions with the socioeconomic environment. Managing the complexity behind the interactions can make the city more sustainable. By this, we mean if we provide more sustainable amenities that people desire, a greater adoption of more sustainable infrastructures will likely occur. Two categories of infrastructure have emerged in recent years as exemplars of more sustainable development: green infrastructure and transit-oriented development. At the same time, new digital tools have emerged to better predict market acceptance of these infrastructures. This dissertation employs agent-based modeling, a latent-class analysis of survey results, and an online survey to model the potential of adoption of these infrastructures and the public benefits. The principal research content of the dissertation consists of two parts. First, understanding social preference and adoption of green infrastructure (e.g., low-impact development (LID) to control storm water), and transit-oriented development (TOD) to reduce car dependence and incentivize denser land use; Second, by developing an urban model that accounts for the complexity of the urban system, the purpose is to predict the emergent property of the city (e.g., land use, water consumption, tax revenues and carbon emissions). These two aspects constitute the research content of this dissertation. The principal findings of the dissertation are: 1) the use of digital feedback tools to inform the modeling of complex urban systems; 2) the future development of the metro Atlanta area can be more compact and sustainable with implementations of LID, TOD, and the proper policy. This dissertation consists of four sections. In the first section, I have developed an agent-based model (ABM) to predict the land use pattern. The ABM is an approach suited to simulating and understanding the dynamics of the complex system. To reduce the complexity and uncertainty of the ABM, the model simulates the decisions and interaction of agents (i.e., home buyer, the developer and the local government) at the neighborhood scale. The output of the ABM serves as the baseline scenario of land use pattern for evaluating the effect of tax investment and fees on the adoption of green infrastructure designs and more compact land use patterns. Second, with the help of the ABM, I evaluated and compared the policies (i.e., impact fees, subsidy) on the adoption of green infrastructure designs and more compact land use pattern. I developed a more sustainable development (MSD) scenario that introduces an impact fee that developers must pay if they choose not to use LID (i.e., rainwater harvesting, porous pavement) to build houses or apartment homes. Model simulations show homeowners selecting apartment homes 60% of the time after 30 years of development in MSD. In contrast, only 35% homeowners selected apartment homes after 30 years of development in a business as usual (BAU) scenario where there is no impact fee for LID. The increased adoption of apartment homes results from the lower cost of using LID (i.e., rain garden, native vegetation and porous pavements) in public spaces and improved quality of life for apartment homes relative to single-family homes. The MSD scenario generates more tax revenues and water savings than does BAU. Third, as an initial effort to calibrate the home buyer’s preference for community design in the ABM, I developed an analytic model based on an existing community preference survey. The data available for this effort is from National Association of Realtors’ 2011 community preference survey. I applied a latent class choice model to this data, and discovered four classes of individuals that reveal distinctive behaviors when choosing smart growth neighborhoods, based on the interplay between aspects of community design, socioeconomic characteristics and personal attitudes. Linking the results of the latent class choice to an agent-based market diffusion model enables planners to evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed smart growth neighborhood design in inducing less sprawling development. In the fourth section, I developed a survey that focuses on preferences of metropolitan Atlanta residents for LID and TOD. With the responses collected using Mechanical Turk, I developed a latent-class residential community choice model of four distinctive classes that reveal heterogeneous preferences for community designs. Spatial distribution of the four classes was mapped out to visualize the locations of the demand for different community designs in metropolitan Atlanta. The analysis of the impact of increase in housing price on the adoption of LID and TOD shows a low risk of investing in LID and TOD in metro area. Residents are willing to adopt the community with LID and TOD as compared to the corresponding one without LID and TOD. It turns out that LID and TOD have a great potential for adoption in metro Atlanta. Further, I integrated the individual residential community choice simulation into an agent-based market diffusion model to predict the emergent land use pattern and explore polices that can drive the adoption of more compact development. Results show that the current policy requiring single-family houses to implement LID based on individual sites should be switched to one that requires community-based LID for single-family houses. Such a policy switch will lead to a higher adoption of apartment homes with LID and TOD. Lastly, I estimated a 28% carbon emission reduction from more compact development driven by LID and TOD. This thesis is the very beginning of using digital feedback tools to anticipate market responses to more sustainable development alternatives. On the basis of the progress made in this dissertation, future work is recommended in terms of the development of an integrated platform that supports the integration of individual modules (e.g., land use, traffic simulation, air quality, and water resource management) for modeling the complexity, big data analytic techniques (e.g., Twitter, GPS data, sensors) for uncovering the interdependencies between infrastructures and socioeconomic development, and the exploration of sustainability metrics for public communication to build citizen capacity for sustainable cities.

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The problem of this study was to determine the relationship between selected factors and the grade-level preference of elementary student teachers. The factors studied were self-concept, academic achievement, commitment to teaching, and personality traits.

Understanding how memory, learning and reward work in unison to form adaptive and sometime maladaptive behaviour is at the forefront of modern neuroscience. The largest unmet need in treating maladaptive reward learning behaviours such as addiction is maintaining long-term abstinence and preventing relapse after re-exposure to drug-associated cues. Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) have been implicated in responses to drugs of abuse other than nicotine (Rahman et al., 2015) and the aim of this work was to characterise the role of α7 nAChRs in morphine reward learning using conditioned place preference (CPP). The α7 nAChR antagonist methyllycaconitine (MLA) was used to determine if these receptors contribute to specific stages of drug-paired learning, namely acquisition, expression, reconsolidation or reinstatement of morphine-CPP. In 7-8week old C57BL/6J mice MLA (4mg/kg, s.c), given 20 minutes prior to a conditioning dose of morphine (10mg/kg, i.p) or post-test trial, had no effect on the acquisition, reconsolidation or expression of morphine-CPP. However, when given 20 minutes prior to a priming dose of morphine (5mg/kg, i.p), MLA (4mg/kg, s.c) significantly inhibited drug-induced reinstatement. The mechanisms of this effect were investigated using glutamate receptor autoradiography. Changes in 2-Amino-3-(3-hydroxy-5-methyl-isoxazol-4-yl)propanoic acid (AMPA) and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) binding were examined in mice treated with either saline or MLA at morphine reinstatement. There were no significant changes in NMDA receptor binding (using [3H]MK-801) but morphine reinstatement significantly increased [3H]AMPA binding in the CA1/2 of the ventral but not dorsal hippocampus, or in any other brain regions examined (including mPFC, nucleus accumbens, amygdala and VTA). The selective increase in the hippocampus was partially antagonised by MLA, linking α7 nAChR activation to glutamatergic synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. Intracranial infusions of MLA into the ventral but not the dorsal hippocampus or medial prefrontal cortex blocked reinstatement to morphine-CPP in male Wistar rats.

Conditional preference networks (CP-nets) model user preferences over objects described in terms of values assigned to discrete features, where the preference for one feature may depend on the values of other features. Most existing algorithms for learning CP-nets from the user's choices assume that the user chooses between pairs of objects. However, many real-world applications involve the the user choosing from all combinatorial possibilities or a very large subset. We introduce a CP-net learning algorithm for the latter type of choice, and study its properties formally and empirically.

The objective of this research was to constructively replicate the research of Brabham and Thoreson (1973) and Mitchell and Frederickson (1975) that led to the conclusion that handicapped counselors are preferred. Subjects were 337 male and female volunteers enrolled in psychology 101 which was taught during the Fall Quarter, 1984, at Utah State University. All subjects were asked to indicate their preference when considering 20 hypothetical problem situations for one counselor from among six photographs of handicapped and non-handicapped counselors. The 20 situations consisted of three types (personal, vocational, and educational). Each subject's score was the total number of times that the subject selected a handicapped counselor. T-tests for independent means were conducted to determined whether or not the group had a statistically significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when the subjects were considering all problems together and when subjects were considering specific problem types. Results indicate that subjects have no significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when all problems were considered. For Personal problems subjects preferred handicapped counselors. For vocational problems subjects preferred non-handicapped counselors. For educational problems subjects had no statistical significant preference. Interpretation of the results suggested preference for a handicapped or non-handicapped counselor is differentially affected by the problem type. It was recommended that much research remains to measure the magnitude of these preferences and the influence of these preferences on the process and outcome of therapy.

Genre is a very important characteristic for movies and generates utility for the audience, therefore, it is very useful for producers and investors to study the correlation between annual genre performance and consumer preference of the audience. How are genre elements reflecting the audience’s taste every year? Does it change over time and does this change have a pattern? With Lancaster’s characteristic consumption theory as an approach, we explored the balance and shifting trends of the popularity of genre elements, thus providing guidance and predictions for the producers and investors for decision making reference. A study based on 15 years of movie performance in box offices and award ceremonies indicates that consumer’s preference on genre elements follow certain patterns and could be predicted. The importance of genre elements deserves more attention from decision makers, and perhaps a special unit on genre studies should be established  economy-wised to much more deeply exploit their value.