Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / The U.S. wool demand has declined since 1950s due to the increasing demand for synthetic fibers. This research aims to study U.S. consumers' preferences for wool attributes to help the wool industry developing marketing strategies targeting certain groups of consumers. This research can be divided into two parts: 1) examining consumers' willingness-to-pay for wool attributes including country-of-origin, organic, animal-friendly, environment-friendly, and 2) investigating whether or not the consumer segments can be identified from consumers' demographic and psychographic characteristics on product purchasing behavior with respect to the wool attributes. In order to achieve the purpose of this research, the choice experiment was applied to examine consumers' preferences for wool attributes. Both mail and on-line surveys were conducted. The mail survey included three versions: basic version, version with definitions of attributes, and version with both definitions and information about wool attributes, with ## responses received (a 29 percent response rate). The on-line survey contained the basic version and the version with both definitions and information about wool attributes, with 514 responses received. Conditional logit and multinomial logit models were used to examine willingness-to-pay for wool attributes and consumer segments, respectively. Results indicated that a certain portion of U.S. consumers preferred wool over acrylic products. Findings also suggested that it is likely beneficial for wool producers to differentiate their products by promoting products' attributes, such as organic, animal-friendly, and environment-friendly. Further, brief information on product attributes provided with labels could increase consumers' WTPs. Results here revealed that to increase wool producers' revenues effectively, it is necessary to advertise their value-added wool products to different consumer segments.

This thesis deals with the subject of keeping and using animals in primary schools. The theoretical part of this thesis reviews various scientific studies into the impact of animals on pupils during education and the possible benefits of animal breeding in schools. Furthermore, the conditions for safe breeding and the most frequently kept animals in schools are discussed as well as the risks and difficulties that their breeding and daily maintenance brings. Moreover, it discusses the need to evaluate the welfare of school animals and legislative precautions on the subject in the Czech Republic. The practical part of this thesis details investigations into the number of Prague primary schools where animals were kept in the school year 2017/2018. Through interviewing a representative sample of schools, it was found that 37 % of Prague's primary schools kept an animal. Furthermore, the different species of animals kept in the schools, their location within the schools, the person bearing responsibility for the animals and the usage and the frequency of it within the curriculum were studied. It was found that 52 % of teachers do not use the school animal more often than once a month. Another subject of the research was to find out the reasons for the absence of animals in schools; 92 % of respondents...