A clear understanding on the impact of the built environment on travel behavior is crucial for land use and transport planning. However, previous land use-transport studies are largely constrained to a single individual in the household and a single long-term choice (i.e. residential location). The individual was commonly used as the unit of analysis, while both long-term location/mobility choices (residential location, work location and car ownership) and daily travel behaviors could be household level decisions. Besides, previous land use-transport research usually assumed the residential location as a decision that independent with the work location, while these two location choices may be associated with each other. Ignoring intra-household interactions in travel decisions and the interdependencies between different long-term choices would lead to an incomplete understanding on the land use-transport relationship. This thesis fills these research gaps by providing a new household perspective to rethink and reexamine the relationships among the built environment, travel attitudes, and travel behavior. It extends the"individual-based"analytical framework of land use-transport research to a broader"household-based"one. Specifically, this proposed analytical framework takes the household as the basic unit of analysis, and considers interactions among different household members as well as different long-term choices. This research challenges the underlying assumptions of existing land use-transport research, and has the potential to guide the research design and model specification of future travel behavior studies. Three empirical studies were conducted to examine the proposed household-based research framework. Data was derived from a household activity-travel diary survey in 2016 in Beijing, China. The results of empirical studies indicate that: Self-selection exists in different long-term choices, including residential location, work location, commuting distance and car ownership; Travel attitudes of different household members play different roles in self-selections regarding these long-term choices; The partner's travel attitudes affect an individual's long-term choices and travel behaviors simultaneously, thereby could be additional sources of the self-selection effect; The built environment has indirect impacts on the male head's travel behaviors through the female head's travel choices; Besides, residential location has indirect impacts on travel behavior though the work location choice, and vice versa. In general, this dissertation confirms the significance and necessity of investigating the impact of the built environment on travel behavior from a household-based perspective. Findings in this dissertation contribute to a better understanding on the process and mechanism of household members' long-term and short-term travel choices, and further both the direct and indirect impacts of the built environment on travel behavior.

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The adoption process is an information seeking and information-processing activity (Rogers, 1983,p. 21). Fashion information which consumers receive from various sources directly affects their decision to adopt or reject a style (Sproles, 1979, p. 173). Research has shown that consumers vary in their use of fashion information sources during the adoption process based upon their level of fashion leadership and demographic characteristics such as age and sex. However, little is known about the influence of cultural values on the fashion adoption process. As apparel manufacturing and retailing companies increase global marketing efforts, further understanding of cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior during the fashion adoption process is needed. The present study explored the influence of cultural values on fashion information seeking during the adoption process. The purpose of the present study was to compare Korean and U.S. college women's fashion information seeking. Comparisons were made on two levels: (1) between fashion leaders and followers within each culture and (2) between Korean fashion leaders and U.S. leaders. The type of information sources (categorized as marketer dominated, consumer dominated and neutral sources) used at the selected stages of the adoption process model as depicted in Sproles model (1979, p. 197) (awareness of object, interest and evaluation) was investigated. Frequency of use and variety of fashion information sources used by consumers were also examined. The subjects of the present study were a purposive sample of 95 Korean and 82 U.S. college women, recruited from clothing and merchandising courses at Chungnam National University and Seoul National University in Korea and at Oregon State University during 1993 Spring term. Data were collected through the use of a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of four parts: (1) fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership scales, (2) questions asking fashion information sources used at the selected stages of the adoption process, (3) a scale to measure frequency and variety of fashion information sources used, and (4) questions asking demographic characteristics of the subjects. The questionnaire was first developed in English and translated into Korean. To confirm the equivalency of the two versions, the Korean questionnaire was back-translated into English. The questionnaire was also pre-tested for clarity with subjects from the same population as the sample. The data were analyzed by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and chi-square analysis. Fashion leaders were those who were self-identified as fashion opinion leaders or fashion innovators. 31.6% of the Korean sample (n=30) and 47.6% of the U.S. sample (n=39) were classified as fashion leaders. Korean fashion leaders were found to use marketer dominated sources at the awareness of object stage more than did U.S. leaders. No differences were found in the type of information sources at the interest and evaluation stages between Korean fashion leaders and U.S. leaders. Through all the stages of the adoption process, the Korean leaders used foreign fashion magazines and non-fashion magazines (advertisements and fashion columns) as fashion information sources more than did U.S. fashion leaders. U.S. fashion leaders showed a greater frequency of use of consumer dominated sources than Korean leaders. No difference was found in variety of fashion information sources used by Korean fashion leaders and U.S. leaders. For both Korean and U.S. consumers, fashion leaders had a greater frequency of use and a greater variety of fashion information sources used than followers. Similar to what had been found with U.S. consumers, Korean fashion leaders may prove to be an effective target for fashion marketing efforts. / Graduation date: 1994

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [247]-255).

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Lincoln University, 2008. / Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Hous.M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-84). Also available in print.

Scholar transport in South Africa remains an area that needs to be addressed in the interest of all communities, rich and poor alike. The National Development Plan 2030, provides a clarion call for nation building to develop highly knowledgeable South African citizens for building innovative capacity for the nation as a whole(NDP, 2014).

With more consumer product companies analysing the requirements for successful entry into African markets, the main factors they seek to determine are concerned with understanding the African consumer, so that these companies are enabled to provide products and services that relate to the inherent needs and wants of these consumers. This research study analysed the factors that affect the consumer decision-making process in East and West Africa. The countries that were focused on for this study were Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana. The results of the study revealed that there is a unique macroeconomic environment in both East and West Africa that has resulted in the rise of low-end and high-end consumers. Profiles of each of these consumer types, as well as regionally specific nuances have been provided. It was also established that there are many factors that affect the consumer decision-making process in these regions. These can be grouped into product factors, marketing factors, environmental factors and purchasing factors. These behavioural nuances can be used by consumer product companies to properly prepare market entry strategies for East and West African markets in order to meet customer demands. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Thesis (M. Com. (Economics))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic & Business Sciences, 2017 / In this study, I use a computer game based lab experiment to investigate the existence of the Endowment Effect. Previous empirical evidence has been criticised for failing to adequately account for the effects of transactions costs and other frictions. The structure of the game used in this study allows me to control for these effects, and the results provide evidence in support of the existence of an Endowment Effect. The effect is found to be stronger when transactions costs are present. / GR2018