The purpose of the study was to explore what types of digital content cultural institutions implemented during COVID-19 temporary closures and their effects on social media engagement. Existing research identified the role of digital content and social media in cultural institutions, but only in times of normal operations. The study adds to the existing literature by exploring types of digital content implemented, impacts on social media engagement, measures of social media engagement, and future implications in regard to COVID-19 temporary closures. The study recruited 16 cultural institutions from across the United States to take part in in-depth semi-structured phone interviews to fulfill the research goals. Museums, zoos, aquariums, performing arts organizations, heritage foundations, and historical societies were represented. The results indicated that cultural institutions implemented digital content to build communities through live and serialized content, partnerships, fundraising, increased transparency, and increased accessibility during temporary closures. Using primarily Instagram and Facebook with their digital content, cultural institutions increased social media engagement during this time. Although there was no consensus on best practices in measuring social media engagement, many institutions highlighted tracking active engagement such as likes, comments, and shares. As a result of the success of the digital content, cultural institutions planned continued digital content campaigns such as videos, blogs, partnerships, and paid educational content in times of normal operations.

This thesis investigates the way the national identity of Sardinia was perceived in travel literature – and more particularly the way writing about travel experiences contributed to shape identity, both of the visited place and of its inhabitants. The thesis draws from different sources (travelogues, belles lettres, history books); the work reflects therefore a rather eclectic panorama. For obvious reasons the research field has been circumscribed in time and space, but , but aims at drawing general conclusions, i.e. assessing whether national identities are the result of an endogenous process, or rather are influenced by exogenous elaborations. As regards geographical delimitation we restricted our inquiry to the island of Sardinia for two main reasons: i) it is isolated not only geographically but also culturally and has never been a conventional destination along the Grand Tour routes; ii) up to the first half of the twentieth century the island had a reputation for being an “unknown” or “forgotten” land. As regards time, the choice was to concentrate on modern times, that is approximately between the second half of the 18th and the first half of the 20th century. Thereafter, the coming of the post-industrial society, mass tourism, faster means of transport, the standardizing effect of globalization changed the idea of travelling, leading some to argue that the birth of post-modern tourism implied the end of travel, or at least a totally new attitude towards travel, that has been defined post-modern. When D.H. Lawrence wrote that Sardinia had “no history, no date, no race, no offering” he was drawing from a consolidated image of the island as an unknown land rather than on its millenary history. The Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda challenged this idea in the first quarter of the 20th century by countering the codes elaborated in the island – namely the language code, the common law and the rustic life and passions – to the civilized way of life of industrialized European societies. The thesis concludes that the making of the identity of Sardinia was the result of the interaction between these two views.

This thesis focuses on an under-researched area of tourism - individualised travel - by examining non-institutionalised solitary travellers. The purpose of the study is to discover precisely why non-institutionalised solitary travellers travel alone. In order to understand the travel behaviour and motivation of solitary travellers, they are contrasted with group tourists. To be able to tackle this research problem, Grounded Theory is chosen as the most appropriate approach, for the following reasons. First, Grounded Theory is a methodology which makes its greatest contribution in areas about which little is known. Second, its aim is to generate rather than to test theory. Based on the computer-assisted content analysis and interpretation of relatively neglected qualitative data obtained from interviews and diaries, sixteen socio-psychological justifications for solo travel are empirically identified. From these responses, a taxonomy of non-institutionalised solitary travellers is inductively constructed. It consists of two basic types. First, there are those who travel alone because they simply have no available travel companion, referred to as "solitary travellers by default". Second, there are those individuals who deliberately travel on their own, and who are regarded as "solitary travellers by choice". The elaboration of such a distinction is the primary contribution made by this research to tourism knowledge. A secondary contribution is realised by confronting the data on solitary travellers and group tourists with the extant literature on tourist typologies - an exercise that raises a number of issues about the mythical status of the former. As a result, an alternative taxonomy is generated that consists of two distinct types of tourists - individualistic and collectivistic. The individualistic tourist is someone for whom internal personal values. (e.g., sense of accomplishment) are the most important principles in life, who has motives stemming from ego-enhancement (e.g., personal development), and for whom travel means the investment of personal cultural capital. The collectivistic tourist, on the other hand, is someone who assigns greater priority to external personal values (e.g., sense of belonging), whose motives originate in the anomic conditions of society, and for whom travel is little more than a short break from routine.

Taiwanese Travel Behaviors and Intention of Minsu Inn Consumption Abstract Amid the lifestyle trend which increasingly emphasizes leisure and travel, the questions of ¡§what are most important underlying motivation of travel in Taiwanese consumers?¡¨ ¡§what are the characteristics in Taiwanese travelers during vacations?¡¨ and ¡§how much are their intention to try to stay in the currently popular mingsu inns?¡¨ are worthy studying. Focusing on these issues, the study has integrated theories and literature of travel behaviors, proposed a theoretical model for travel behavior study on Taiwanese people, and hereby developed a scale to assessing travel motivations of Taiwanese people and established a model for empirical study in intention of mingsu inns consumption. The mainly participants of the study include professionals and technicians in Taiwan. The sample size is 445. The main results are summarized as follows: (1) Five main factors underlying Taiwanese travel are refreshment, family fusion, knowledge extension, socialization, and self-improvement. (2) The main sources of travel information are family members, media coverage, agency promotion, friends and relatives, and non-profit organization. There is a statistically significant and positive correlation between knowledge extension and agency promotion information source. (3) Major considerations in vacation planning include board and room, transportations, activities, itinerary, Nature access, and shopping. No significant correlation was found between motivations of travel and consideration about itinerary and shopping (4) Many positive and significant correlation were found between any vacation motivations of travel and intention of minsu inns consumption. (5) Negative and significant correlation between age and length of overseas travel was found, while the relationship between age and travel length significantly positive.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Abstract only. Title from OhioLINK abstract page.

This paper examines how many and the most common type of side stops a traveler or travel party makes during long-distance travel of over 100 miles or more. The research uses the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS) because it is one of the few data sources that collects information on stops and side trips for long-distance trips. The paper utilizes two models to estimate side stop behavior: 1) an ordered probit formulation for modeling the number of side trips during long distance travel, and 2) a mixed multinomial logit formulation for modeling the most common side stop purpose during long-distance travel. A variety of variables, including trip and household characteristics, are considered in the model specification. The factors that play the largest role in determining side stop behavior are the primary purpose of the long-distance trip, whether the trip is a planned vacation or not, and the ethnicity of the travelers.

Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2008. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 46-05, page: 2671. Adviser: Herbert DuPont. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-67).

Objectives: The purpose of this investigation was to determine the incidence and character of pediatric emergencies on a US-based commercial airline and to evaluate current in-flight medical kits. Methods: In-flight consultations to a major US airline by a member of our staff are recorded in an institutional database. In this observational retrospective review, the database was queried for consultations for all passengers up to 18 years old between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2002. Consultations were reviewed for type of emergency, use of the medical kit, and unscheduled landings. Results: Two hundred twenty-two pediatric consultations were identified, representing 1 pediatric call per 20,775 flights. The mean age of patients was 6.8 years. Fifty-three emergencies were pre-flight calls, and 169 were in-flight pediatric consultations. The most common in-flight consultations concerned infectious disease (45 calls, 27%), neurological (25 calls, 15%), and respiratory tract (22 calls, 13%) emergencies. The emergency medical kit was used for 60 emergencies. Nineteen consultations (11%) resulted in flight diversions (1/240,000 flights), most commonly because of in-flight neurological (9) and respiratory tract (5) emergencies. International flights had a higher incidence than domestic flights of consultations and diversions for pediatric emergencies. Conclusions: The most common in-flight pediatric emergencies involved infectious diseases and neurological and respiratory tract problems. Emergency medical kits should be expanded to include pediatric medications.

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