Several research projects all over the world have considered transport pricing measures and policies as promising attempts to solve urgent traffic problems in urban areas. One important precondition for the successful implementation of pricing strategies is public acceptability. However, empirical findings have shown that the acceptability of such strategies in general is very low. Aim of this dissertation is to analyse the reasons for the low acceptability of road pricing. The dissertation is organized as follows: Firstly, the problems related to transport and the measures to cope with these problems are outlined. The focus is thereby on economic measures such as road user fees, whose economic and traffic-related assumptions are discussed. Then, a definition of the terms used is given and main European results concerning the current acceptability level of various travel demand management (TDM) strategies are reported. Moreover, a theoretical framework is developed which attempts to identify the essential factors determining transport pricing acceptability. In two empirical studies (N1 = 923, N2 = 667), it is investigated whether and to what extent these factors contribute to the explanation of acceptability. Finally, conclusions are drawn and some recommendations for future research are given. / Straßenbenutzungsgebühren für den privaten Autoverkehr sind vielfach als sinnvoll und wünschenswert vor allem zur Lösung der zahlreichen Verkehrsprobleme in städtischen Ballungsräumen begründet worden. Bisher ist es jedoch nicht zu einer nennenswerten Umsetzung dieser Maßnahmen gekommen. Es herrscht in der Literatur Einigkeit, daß die geringe Akzeptanz von Straßenbenutzungsgebühren in der Bevölkerung und die deutliche Ablehnung bei den betroffenen Autofahrern die wesentlichen Gründe für den fehlenden politischen Willen sind, road pricing einzuführen. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, die Ursachen und Bedingungen für die mangelnde Akzeptanz von Straßenbenutzungsgebühren bei den betroffenen Autofahrern zu untersuchen. Die Arbeit ist wie folgt aufgebaut: Im ersten Abschnitt wird die Ausgangslage und der Problemhintergrund dargestellt. Es wird erläutert, welche negativen Konsequenzen des motorisierten Individualverkehrs vorliegen, und mit welchen Maßnahmen ihnen begegnet werden kann. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf preispolitischen Maßnahmen wie Straßenbenutzungsgebühren, dessen ökonomische und verkehrswissenschaftliche Annahmen dargestellt werden. Dem gegenübergestellt wird die gesellschaftspolitische Realität: zum einen in Form der massiven Ablehnung von Straßenbenutzungsgebühren durch Bevölkerung und betroffene Autofahrer und zum anderen in Form der zahlreichen, erfolglosen und gescheiterten Versuche, Straßenbenutzungsgebühren einzuführen. Dies mündet in die Ableitung erster Forschungsfragen und in die Entwicklung des Untersuchungsansatzes. Im darauf folgenden Abschnitt werden die theoretischen Grundlagen zur Untersuchung der Akzeptanz von Straßenbenutzungsgebühren gelegt. Dabei wird zunächst geklärt, wie sich der Begriff "Akzeptanz" definieren läßt und in welche relevanten psychologischen Theorien er sich einordnet. Im Anschluß wird das Modell zur Akzeptanz von Schlag vorgestellt und analysiert. Darauf aufbauend werden die zentralen Variablen des Modells auf ihre theoretische und empirische Relevanz und unter Berücksichtigung potentiell konkurrierender Ansätze dargestellt und untersucht. Ziel ist die Klärung der logischen und kausalen Struktur des Modells und der Beziehungen der Variablen untereinander. Dies führt schließlich in die Ableitung überprüfbarer Hypothesen in Form eines erweiterten Akzeptanzmodells. Zur Überprüfung des Modells, der aufgestellten Hypothesen und Forschungsfragen werden zwei Untersuchungen berichtet (N1 = 923, N2 = 667), die inhaltlich aufeinander aufbauen. Diese wurden im Rahmen der EU-Forschungsprojekte TransPrice und AFFORD durchgeführt. Generelles Ziel ist die Validierung der Modellkonstrukte und ihrer angenommenen Beziehungen. Im letzten Abschnitt werden zusammenfassend und basierend auf den beiden Studien die wesentlichen Ergebnisse rekapituliert, sowie offene Forschungsfragen und Anforderungen abgeleitet, die sich zukünftigen Studien stellen. Schließlich wird diskutiert, welche Implikationen sich aus dieser Untersuchung ziehen lassen und welche Aspekte zu berücksichtigen sind, wenn Straßenbenutzungsgebühren der Öffentlichkeit präsentiert werden. - Die Druckexemplare enthalten jeweils eine CD-ROM als Anlagenteil: 490 KB - Nutzung: Referat Informationsvermittlung der SLUB

Over the last couple of decades, a significant amount of research has been carried out on rural water supplies in developing countries, and have identified the fact that the communal water supply model is not sustainable everywhere, especially in sparsely populated rural areas; factors obstructing sustainability include lack of spare parts, management systems and private/public capacity. Despite their enormous contribution to the water sector, the extant studies stay within the subsidized communal water supply and capacity building, post construction support or management system. In other words, very few studies have been done into household (private) level water supply. The Self Supply model is an approach which provides support to households/communities to complement their efforts and accelerate sustainable access to safe water incrementally through improvement to traditional water sources (hand dug wells) by putting in their own investment. The Self Supply model may give significant benefits for sustainable safe water supplies, especially in sparsely populated rural areas, in comparison with the communal water supply though to date there has been little monitoring and systematic analysis of what impact these changes have made at the grassroots level. The standpoint of this study is pragmatic, and herein, mixing quantitative and qualitative methods was justified in order to design the research methodologies. The research was conducted in the Luapula Province of Zambia using a concurrent triangulation strategy to offset the weakness inherent within one method with the strengths of the other. The data was collected through inventory and sanitary surveys, water quality testing, household surveys, document analyses, focus group discussions and key informant interviews to determine the most appropriate water supply model for safe, accessible, sustainable, cost-effective and acceptable water supplies for households in sparsely populated rural areas of Zambia. The principal argument of this study is that reliance only on a communal water supply model limits the achievement of increased sustainable access to a safe water supply; hence a Self Supply model is needed which does not compete with the communal models but works alongside them in sparsely populated rural areas of developing countries for the purpose of increasing access and achieving sustainability. It was strongly defended by the overall findings that a Self Supply model could significantly reduce the faecal contamination risk in water quality and deliver a higher per capita water use and better convenience of access than the communal model; however its reliability with respect to the water source drying up needs to be monitored. Further, this does not mean that the communal model is not sustainable anywhere, rather that it is important to build blocks for a sustainable environment to access safe water in a symbiotic way between the communal and Self Supply models under the condition that the government and NGOs/external support agencies overcome the temptation to provide a water supply to rural dwellers as a giveaway social service.

This study examined the effects of a parent-led intervention focused on developing children's early literacy skills within the home setting. The lesson plans contain scripted steps for completing activities to teach letter names and phonological awareness skills. Archival data were analyzed from a study conducted with 26 families from three Head Start centers. Thirteen families completed the intervention and thirteen families were enrolled in a control condition which provided information on shared reading strategies. Children in the intervention group performed at statistically significant higher levels on measures of letter naming, phonological awareness, vocabulary/oral language, and comprehension. Parents rated both the intervention and control conditions as highly acceptable. Most parents (n= 10) within the intervention group completed the vast majority of the lesson plans. Changes within the home revealed that parents in both groups engaged in the same types of early learning activities, but that parents in the intervention group reported engaging in these activities more frequently than the control group. This study contributes to the literature by creating a method of parental involvement in preschool targeting phonological awareness and letter naming abilities.

No description available.

<p>This study assessed the knowledge, attitudes and practices about MC as an HIV prevention intervention among adult males presenting for HIV Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) services at Onandjokwe District Hospital in northern Namibia. A high level of knowledge of MC, particularly its potential to reduce the risk of HIV infection, STIs and enhance penile hygiene exists among VCT attendees in Onandjokwe District Hospital. MC will most likely to be accepted in this study area, especially when it is implemented to reduce the risk of HIV infection. The study recommends a comprehensive education and information program targeting males and their partners and a training for traditional and medical circumcisers to ensure a high quality of MC services.</p>

Conic finance is a brand new quantitative finance theory. The thesis is on the applications of conic finance on South African Financial Markets. Conic finance gives a new perspective on the way people should perceive financial markets. Particularly in incomplete markets, where there are non-unique prices and the residual risk is rampant, conic finance plays a crucial role in providing prices that are acceptable at a stress level. The theory assumes that price depends on the direction of trade and there are two prices, one for buying from the market called the ask price and one for selling to the market called the bid price. The bid-ask spread reects the substantial cost of the unhedgeable risk that is present in the market. The hypothesis being considered in this thesis is whether conic finance can reduce the residual risk? Conic finance models bid-ask prices of cashows by applying the theory of acceptability indices to cashows. The theory of acceptability combines elements of arbitrage pricing theory and expected utility theory. Combining the two theories, set of arbitrage opportunities are extended to the set of all opportunities that a wide range of market participants are prepared to accept. The preferences of the market participants are captured by utility functions. The utility functions lead to the concepts of acceptance sets and the associated coherent risk measures. The acceptance sets (market preferences) are modeled using sets of probability measures. The set accepted by all market participants is the intersection of all the sets, which is convex. The size of this set is characterized by an index of acceptabilty. This index of acceptability allows one to speak of cashows acceptable at a level, known as the stress level. The relevant set of probability measures that can value the cashows properly is found through the use of distortion functions. In the first chapter, we introduce the theory of conic finance and build a foundation that leads to the problem and objectives of the thesis. In chapter two, we build on the foundation built in the previous chapter, and we explain in depth the theory of acceptability indices and coherent risk measures. A brief discussion on coherent risk measures is done here since the theory of acceptability indices builds on coherent risk measures. It is also in this chapter, that some new acceptability indices are introduced. In chapter three, focus is shifted to mathematical tools for financial applications. The chapter can be seen as a prerequisite as it bridges the gap from mathematical tools in complete markets to incomplete markets, which is the market that conic finance theory is trying to exploit. As the chapter ends, models used for continuous time modeling and simulations of stochastic processes are presented. In chapter four, the attention is focussed on the numerical methods that are relevant to the thesis. Details on obtaining parameters using the maximum likelihood method and calibrating the parameters to market prices are presented. Next, option pricing by Fourier transform methods is detailed. Finally a discussion on the bid-ask formulas relevant to the thesis is done. Most of the numerical implementations were carried out in Matlab. Chapter five gives an introduction to the world of option trading strategies. Some illustrations are used to try and explain the option trading strategies. Explanations of the possible scenarios at the expiration date for the different option strategies are also included. Chapter six is the appex of the thesis, where results from possible real market scenarios are presented and discussed. Only numerical results were reported on in the thesis. Empirical experiments could not be done due to limitations of availabilty of real market data. The findings from the numerical experiments showed that the spreads from conic finance are reduced. This results in reduced residual risk and reduced low cost of entering into the trading strategies. The thesis ends with formal discussions of the findings in the thesis and some possible directions for further research in chapter seven. / Thesis (MSc (Risk Analysis))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Conic finance is a brand new quantitative finance theory. The thesis is on the applications of conic finance on South African Financial Markets. Conic finance gives a new perspective on the way people should perceive financial markets. Particularly in incomplete markets, where there are non-unique prices and the residual risk is rampant, conic finance plays a crucial role in providing prices that are acceptable at a stress level. The theory assumes that price depends on the direction of trade and there are two prices, one for buying from the market called the ask price and one for selling to the market called the bid price. The bid-ask spread reects the substantial cost of the unhedgeable risk that is present in the market. The hypothesis being considered in this thesis is whether conic finance can reduce the residual risk? Conic finance models bid-ask prices of cashows by applying the theory of acceptability indices to cashows. The theory of acceptability combines elements of arbitrage pricing theory and expected utility theory. Combining the two theories, set of arbitrage opportunities are extended to the set of all opportunities that a wide range of market participants are prepared to accept. The preferences of the market participants are captured by utility functions. The utility functions lead to the concepts of acceptance sets and the associated coherent risk measures. The acceptance sets (market preferences) are modeled using sets of probability measures. The set accepted by all market participants is the intersection of all the sets, which is convex. The size of this set is characterized by an index of acceptabilty. This index of acceptability allows one to speak of cashows acceptable at a level, known as the stress level. The relevant set of probability measures that can value the cashows properly is found through the use of distortion functions. In the first chapter, we introduce the theory of conic finance and build a foundation that leads to the problem and objectives of the thesis. In chapter two, we build on the foundation built in the previous chapter, and we explain in depth the theory of acceptability indices and coherent risk measures. A brief discussion on coherent risk measures is done here since the theory of acceptability indices builds on coherent risk measures. It is also in this chapter, that some new acceptability indices are introduced. In chapter three, focus is shifted to mathematical tools for financial applications. The chapter can be seen as a prerequisite as it bridges the gap from mathematical tools in complete markets to incomplete markets, which is the market that conic finance theory is trying to exploit. As the chapter ends, models used for continuous time modeling and simulations of stochastic processes are presented. In chapter four, the attention is focussed on the numerical methods that are relevant to the thesis. Details on obtaining parameters using the maximum likelihood method and calibrating the parameters to market prices are presented. Next, option pricing by Fourier transform methods is detailed. Finally a discussion on the bid-ask formulas relevant to the thesis is done. Most of the numerical implementations were carried out in Matlab. Chapter five gives an introduction to the world of option trading strategies. Some illustrations are used to try and explain the option trading strategies. Explanations of the possible scenarios at the expiration date for the different option strategies are also included. Chapter six is the appex of the thesis, where results from possible real market scenarios are presented and discussed. Only numerical results were reported on in the thesis. Empirical experiments could not be done due to limitations of availabilty of real market data. The findings from the numerical experiments showed that the spreads from conic finance are reduced. This results in reduced residual risk and reduced low cost of entering into the trading strategies. The thesis ends with formal discussions of the findings in the thesis and some possible directions for further research in chapter seven. / Thesis (MSc (Risk Analysis))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Les systèmes complexes ferroviaires étant de plus en plus contraints par des autorités de décision placées à un haut niveau d'abstraction, il devient problématique d'imposer des critères à une autre échelle que fonctionnelle. Ainsi, dès lors que l'on descend plus bas, nous sommes confrontés à des spécificités des systèmes nationaux qui font perdre la généralité du travail des décisionnaires Européens. Le problème est qu'à chaque niveau d'abstraction, des méthodes d'évaluation du risque existent, mais sans être compatibles entre elles. Par ailleurs, la combinaison des couches et la vision fonctionnelle du système ne prennent pas en compte l'impact des fonctions les unes sur les autres, ni le lien entre le niveau global et les composants afin d'allouer la sécurité.Nous proposons donc une démarche harmonisée d'évaluation du risque, capable de répartir les contraintes définies au niveau fonctionnel abstrait sur les entités qui implémentent les systèmes avec leurs spécificités.Notre contribution est méthodologique. Elle part d'un modèle fonctionnel du système ferroviaire constitué en couches. Le but étant de représenter ce système sans dépendance entre les fonctions, il a fallu les traduire indépendamment des autres en faisant apparaître les entrées/sorties comme des places/transitions d'un réseau de Petri. A chaque couche de la décomposition correspond une classe de réseau de Petri. Ainsi, à la couche structurelle, nous associons les réseaux de Petri Temporels; à la couche fonctionnelle les réseaux de Petri stochastiques et à la couche logique les réseaux de Petri Prédicats Transitions / The railway systems are being more and more forced by decision authorities. As they are placed at a high level of abstraction, it becomes problematic to impose another criterion or scale. In fact, since we come down lower, we are confronted with specificities of the national systems which make lose the majority of the work of the European decision-makers. The issue is that, at every level of abstraction, risk assessment methods exist, but without being compatible. Besides, the combination of layers and the functional vision of the railway system do not take into account the impact of some functions on the others, nor the link between the global level of risk and the components to assign the safety.Thus, we propose a harmonized approach for risk assessment. This approach allows us to distribute the constraints defined at the abstract functional level on the entities which implement both the systems and their specificities.Our contribution is methodological. It leaves a functional model of the layered railway system. The purpose is to represent this system without any dependencies between the functions. For instance, it was necessary to translate them independently by creating entrances/exits as places/transitions of a Petri net. A Petri net class corresponds to each layer. To the structural layer, we associate the time Petri net; to the functional layer, the stochastic Petri nets and to the logical layer, the predicate transitions nets

L’objectif principal de ce travail est d’explorer la frontière entre les erreurs grammaticales d'une part et les erreurs textuelles d'autre part, dans les productions écrites des étudiants francophones rédigeant en anglais langue étrangère (L2) à l’université. Pour ce faire, un corpus de textes d’apprenants en anglais L2 a été recueilli et annoté par le biais de plusieurs schémas d’annotation. Le premier schéma d’annotation est issu de l’UAM CorpusTool, un logiciel qui fournit une taxonomie d’erreurs intégrée. Les premières annotations ont été croisées avec d’autres annotations issues des métafonctions sémantiques que nous avons établies, en nous appuyant sur la linguistique systémique fonctionnelle.En plus de fournir des statistiques en termes de fréquence d’occurrence des erreurs spécifiques chez les apprenants francophones, le croisement des schémas a permis d’identifier certaines valeurs proprement phraséologique, sémantique et textuelle qui semblent poser des problèmes particulièrement épineux. A ce titre, une classification de ce que nous avons appelé des erreurs d’acceptabilité textuelle a été établie, dans le but notamment d’avoir une vue globale sur les erreurs identifiables à ce niveau d’analyse. En bref, le présent travail retrace donc le cheminement de l’ensemble de notre thèse de ses débuts conceptuels jusqu’à la proposition d’un modèle explicatif permettant d’établir la description de toute occurrence erronée identifiée en langue étrangère – qu’elle soit notamment grammaticale (c’est-à-dire, imputable au système linguistique) ou textuelle(c’est-à-dire, imputable au texte). / The main objective of this study is to try and pinpoint the frontier between grammatical (or sentence-level) errors on the one hand and textual errors on the other in university student essays. Accordingly, a corpus of English L2 learner texts, written by French learners, was collected and annotated using several annotation schemes. The first annotation scheme used is based on a model from the UAM CorpusTool software package, which provided us with an integrated error taxonomy. The annotations obtained were then cross-analyzed using the semantic metafunctions identified in systemic functional linguistics.In addition to providing statistics in terms of specific error frequency, our cross analysis has identified some areas that appear to pose particularly difficult problems, i.e. phraseology, and certain semantic and textual constructions. A classification of what we have called textual acceptability errors has thus been established. In short, the thesis begins with an examination of conceptual issues and ends with the proposal for an explanatory model that can describe erroneous occurrences identified in a foreign language – whether they are grammatical (i.e., linked to the language system itself) or textual (i.e. linked to the text) in nature.

L’objectif du travail de thèse a été de tester en laboratoire l’efficacité de deux variantes de taxe ambiante (Taxe Pigouvienne Moyenne et Taxe Ambiante Plafonnée) qui présentent l’avantage de réduire les charges en cas de taxation mais dont l’efficacité nécessite que les pollueurs coordonnent leurs efforts. Pour permettre cette coordination, trois formes de communication (communication gratuite ou « cheap talk », communication coûteuse endogène et exogène) ont été testées. Les résultats montrent que le sucker’s payoff et la taille des groupes sont déterminants dans le potentiel du cheap talk à induire de la coopération. Lorsque la communication est coûteuse et exogène, l’impact positif de la communication est limité dans le temps. Cependant lorsque la décision de communiquer moyennant un coût revient aux joueurs, ceux-ci choisissent de ne pas communiquer. Nous avons aussi montré que le cheap talk facilite la coordination vers l’équilibre Pareto-dominant et rend ainsi la Taxe Ambiante Plafonnée efficace. / The purpose of this thesis was to test in laboratory the efficiency of two variants of the ambient tax (Average Pigovian Tax and Capped Ambient Tax) that present the advantage of reducing the financial burden imposed through taxation but whose efficiency requires that polluters coordinate their efforts. To enable this coordination, three types of communication (“cheap talk” or costless communication, exogenous costly communication and endogenous costly communication) are tested.The results show that the sucker’s payoff and the size of the groups are crucial in the potential of cheap talk to induce cooperation. When the communication is costly and exogenous, cooperation is limited in time. However when the decision to communicate for a price is up to the players, they decide not to communicate. We’ve also shown that cheap talk facilitates coordination towards the Pareto-dominant equilibrium and makes the Capped Ambient Tax efficient.