This dissertation investigates people’s responses when access to or the level of local public goods is proposed to or actually changes. By understanding how people respond to potential changes in school assignment, construction of the interstate highway system, and the widening of existing highways, researchers can gain better insight into how to accurately estimate people’s valuation of local public goods and policy makers can pursue effective policies to relieve traffic congestion and mitigate the impact of new highway construction. The first essay examines if information regarding potential school reassignment causes cross-sectional capitalization estimation techniques, most notably the border method, to undervalue people willingness to pay for school quality. Using hedonic regression techniques and home sale data from DeKalb County, Georgia, I find that residents’ expectations of future school quality are important factors in determining the magnitude of school quality capitalization estimates. The second essay explores how the construction of the interstate highway system impacted agricultural land loss in Georgia. Since agricultural land provides many positive externalities while its loss leads to several negative externalities, the results inform policy makers seeking to preserve agricultural land and study the urban form. Using a historical dataset covering 1945 to 2007, I find that each additional highway mile constructed led to the conversion of 468 acres of agricultural land. Finally, the third essay investigates commuter responses to the widening of existing highways in order to evaluate the effectiveness of road construction as a traffic congestion relief measure. The results indicate that the elasticity for the demand of driving with respect to the road supply is 0.522 and that it grows over time. Taken together, the result for the estimated elasticity imply that road construction may provide some congestion relief in the short run but eventually the expanded roads will be just as congested as before. The results of the three essays suggest that researchers and policy makers should take into the consideration how people will respond to potential changes to public goods as well as the short and long term impacts on investments in public goods.

This study describes how consumers and providers of transportation services in a sparsely populated area valuate different transportation characteristics and estimates how these valuations might affect the total goods flows and the flows on individual Origin-Destination links. It also tests Stated-Preference methods as a tool for valuating transportation characteristics. The hypothesis was that transportation consumers in sparsely populated areas are more sensitive to changes in the transportation characteristics cost and frequency than they are to changes in goods safety, time accuracy, and delivery time. The reason for this assumption was that the supply of transport modes and transport operators in these areas is limited in comparison to more urban areas. Acceptable transportation costs, in the sense that transportation is economically feasible, and possibilities to obtain a certain minimum transportation frequency are essential. It might, therefore, be necessary to renounce demands for time accuracy, goods safety, and delivery time. The results indicate that the consumers were most sensitive tp lowered distribution frequency. The probability of accepting a transportation service dropped by .19 when frequency decreased from three times to once per week. Changes in the characteristics delivery time and time accuracy were also significant. Reduced frequency would, from a consumer perspective, also result in the largest impact on the total goods. However, a cost increase of 25 percent and lower goods safety would result in a greater reduction of the total goods flow than would longer delivery time and lower time accuracy. The providers, on the other hand, were very sensitive to increased costs and lower revenues. A drop in quantity from 90 percent to 40 percent vehicle utilization was also significant. However, respondents in the strata 'private trucks' assigned more importance to changes in frequency and quantity. The largest effect on the total goods flow would be caused by a 25 percent cost increase. High demands on time accuracy would affect the goods flow more than would lowered revenue. A significant conclusion is that the Stated-Preference method used is an adequate tool in valuating transportation characteristics. However, great care must be taken in formulating the characteristics and levels used. Also, in addition to the characteristics tested in this study, there may be other characteristics that help explain the probability that consumers and providers in sparsely populated areas will accept a transport / digitalisering@umu

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Material goods play an important role in ethical life and moral education. Judging which goods are preferable to which − and which are therefore worth pursuing over which − is an ethically crucial process. The currently dominant paradigms of moral education (virtue education, cognitive developmentalism and care theory) do not satisfactorily contribute to this important topic. I argue that the resultant lacuna may be resolved by attending to the insight of the classical Stoics and their modern day neo-Stoic interpreters. Stoicism, I argue, provides a unique set of philosophical resources that fosters critical deliberation and reflection regarding the attribution of value to material goods. I begin this study by detailing the extant lacuna via discussion of virtue education, cognitive developmentalism and care theory as they relate to material good education. Once the lacuna’s existence is established I move on to introduce Stoic philosophy (both classical and contemporary). From this philosophy I construct a moral educational framework. This framework is then applied to two topics related to the material good lacuna: consumer education and environmental education. I conclude that, while Stoicism must be softened and revised for a modern pedagogical audience, its core philosophy has much to offer moral educationalists. / Theoretical, Cultural, and International Studies in Education

Modularity is a means of managing product complexity by arranging components into hierarchical independent subassemblies of common purpose. It offers advantages to manufacturers and producers and is assumed to benefit users as well. The producers have received most of the focus, however. Designers must be able to ensure the needs of both parties are being met but too little is known about users' responses to modular designs and the designer's role in handling modularity. This thesis demonstrates that modularity has an impact on users. The research specifically focused on aspects of modularity available to users. It consisted of three phases: a review of existing literature, an interview phase, and a survey phase. The interview phase elicited common terms for discussing modularity in consumer products. The survey tested the traits that emerged. Both phases used object pairs with similar purpose but differing in degree of modularity. During the interview phase, participants were shown pictures of eight pairs of objects and asked questions about their use and maintenance. They were then asked to generate a series of word pairs, opposing descriptors that could be used to distinguish the two variants. The most commonly occurring pairs were transformed into survey questions. The survey used the same set of object pairs, each accompanied by descriptive phrases built around the traits elicited from the interviews. Survey participants were asked to identify which of the two variants was best described by each phrase and the strength of that association. The responses indicated that modularity generally increases users' perceptions of complexity, presence of replaceable parts, and versatility. Modularity also diminished perceptions of durability, ease of maintenance, and ease of use. Investigation of object groupings, both predefined and emergent in the data, revealed additional context sensitive relationships. Several traits also demonstrated strong correlations with each other. Establishing these relationships is necessary to convert assumptions into knowns before research can continue. This thesis offers designers insight into the expectations surrounding modular design. As manufacturers continue to push modular design, designers will need to understand its impact on end users to ensure the needs of all stakeholders are being met.

Thesis (MEng(TransportSystemsEng))--University of South Australia, 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, March, 2001. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on January 2, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.