Immigration of Latinx people into the United States has grown in recent decades, with immigrants from Mexico making up about a quarter of the immigrant population. Similar trends are observed in Texas higher education institutions. This expansion of racial-ethnic diversity calls attention to the importance of understanding how social dynamics and personal beliefs may play a salient role in intercultural encounters within academia. Guided by contact theory and anxiety/uncertainty management theory, the current study adopted a multidimensional approach to understand pre-existing attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs that may influence an individual's willingness to interact with an outgroup member. Undergraduate participants (N = 302) from an Hispanic serving institution (HSI) completed a survey that included measures of culture and interaction that may precede intercultural contact. Findings suggest that (a) willingness to interact interculturally was inversely associated with ethnocentrism and negative attitudes toward immigrants, (b) negative attitudes were positively impacted by ethnocentrism, and (c) intergroup anxiety was an important predictor in the study of willingness to interact interculturally. Discussion includes applied and future research implications.

People who have better relationship and help each other in an organization will be helpful to an organization, because they will have higher sharing willingness. Knowledge is not like the tangible products that we¡¦ll lose them if we share them with other people. In contrast, we can enhance the value of knowledge by sharing. Because human resource strategy is relative to everyone in an organization, and knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge sharing obstructions will also effect the knowledge sharing willingness, this thesis focus on the relationship among human resource strategy, knowledge-oriented culture, knowledge sharing obstructions, and knowledge sharing willingness. I use inducement strategy, investment strategy, and involvement strategy addressed by Dyer & Holder (1988) as foundation to analyze the difference of these strategies in knowledge sharing willingness. And I use eight characteristics of knowledge-oriented culture addressed by Wu (2001) as a moderator between human resource strategies and knowledge sharing willingness. Moreover, I also summarize knowledge sharing obstructions from literature and use factor analysis to divide many obstructions into four types to understand the relationship between sharing obstructions and knowledge sharing willingness. The four types are obstruction of interaction and development, obstruction of resource providing, obstruction of self satisfaction, and obstruction of communication. The samples are employees and managers of human resource department. After statistic analyzing, the results are summarize as following: 1¡BIn human resource strategies, inducement strategy has more influence on knowledge sharing willingness than investment strategy. 2¡BIn knowledge-oriented culture, higher degree of professionalism and openness, initiative of learning, experience sharing, and relationship and harmony will help involvement strategy to cause higher knowledge sharing willingness. 3¡BIn knowledge sharing obstructions, obstructions of cooperation and development, resource providing, and self motivation will influence knowledge sharing willingness. And obstruction of self motivation has stronger influence. 4¡BHuman resource strategies and knowledge sharing obstructions a.Using inducement strategy will cause fewer obstructions of cooperation and development, resource providing, self motivation, and communication. b.Using investment strategy will cause fewer obstructions of cooperation and development and resource providing. 5¡BKnowledge sharing obstructions and the interaction of human resource strategies and personal and organizational characteristics a.When using involvement strategy, people with longer seniority will cause fewer obstructions of resource providing. b.When using inducement strategy, high-tech enterprises will cause higher obstruction of communication. c.When using involvement strategy, foreign enterprise and joint venture will cause higher obstruction of communication. According to the conclusion, this thesis proposes some ideas and recommendations to relative authorities and following researches.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Agricultural Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2023 / The agricultural sector plays an important role in South Africa regardless of the small contribution of 1.88% it has to the GDP of the Country. Small-scale maize farmers’ decisions to adopt adaptation options in response to climate change and variability are influenced by socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental factors, indicating that decision patterns can be very specific to a given locality. The study aimed to analyse the determinants of small-scale maize farmers’ willingness to pay for changing planting dates in the face of climate change. This study had two main objectives, to identify and describe the socio-economic characteristics of small-scale maize farmers, and to determine factors influencing the small-scale maize farmer’s willingness to pay for changing planting dates in the face of climate change in Makhuduthamaga Local Municipality. The study used primary data with a sample size of 150 small-scale maize farmers. Descriptive statistics and the Probit Regression Model were employed when analysing data. The study employed purposive sampling in the data collection process and three villages were selected. Probability was proportional to sample size and was used to select the number of small-scale maize farmers for the sample frame of each village. About 58% of the sampled small-scale maize farmers were willing to pay for changing planting dates in the face of climate change, as opposed to 42% of those not willing to pay for changing planting dates. Empirical results from the analysis reported that age (10%), educational level (1%), level of income (1%), years of farming (10%), total output (1%), exposure to climate information services (5%), and use of indigenous forecast (1%) out of twelve explanatory variables were found to be significant. Based on the empirical findings of the study it is recommended that government officials together with other stakeholders such as NGOs and research institutions should invest in the education of small-scale maize farmers through knowledge systems such as (presentations, conferences, seminars, abet etc). Government policies and strategic investment plans that support improved small-scale maize farmers’ accessibility to climate information are also recommended.

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This thesis deals with the economic and environmental problems of biofuels in the Czech Republic and abroad. The goal is retrieval and analysis of economic studies that address economic and environmental impacts associated with the introduction of biofuels policy. Individual economic studies on the environment that are at work that are evaluated by using biofuels policy of macroeconomic and microeconomic models. Results of studies show that the introduction of biofuels policy creates economic and environmental impacts such as deforestation, environment, prices, employment and competitiveness of farmers.

It is generally assumed that in order to learn a language, learners need to master reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, merely possessing the skills and abilities to communicate is not sufficient; one must have the will to use the language. In order to formulate a model that can accurately describe the willingness to communicate, Mac-Intyre et al. (1998) formulated a model that attempts to do just this. The goal of this study is to verify the veracity of the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) model in terms of to what extent students’ self-reported WTC correlate with their actual WTC in the class-room. To accomplish this, this study utilized interviews with Swedish EFL students in southern Sweden, based on the WTC framework, and classroom observation in order to collect data on said connection. The results of this study showed that self-reported WTC and actual WTC do not necessarily correlate with one another; for some students, they spoke English more than they reported, some spoke less, and others’ WTC reflected their self-assessed WTC. Although the WTC model could account for the students’ actual WTC, it could not account for this discrepancy. However, this discrepancy may not be due to the model itself, but rather to the situational factors that, to a certain degree, influenced the outcome of this study. Based on this study, teachers are recommended to consistently speak English, as this raises the students’ own WTC, and to encourage English usage among students themselves. For future research, it is therefore recom-mended that non-linguistic factors be taken into account, possibly through factor analysis, in order to produce more nuanced data, as well as conducting a longitudinal study.

Closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) that integrate the activities for reclaiming residual values in postconsumer products with the traditional forward supply chain activities are important from financial and environmental perspectives. This thesis develops models and analyses on three topics novel to the field of CLSC research with a goal of advancing knowledge about effective decision-makings in CLSCs. In the first part of the thesis, we study joint control of stochastic forward and stochastic reverse material flows in CLSCs. With an application to a CLSC where postconsumer products are collected for warranty service purposes, we demonstrate that the benefit of coordinating two production activities could be significant. We develop a model that can be used to obtain an effective inventory control policy for coordinating forward and reverse material flows. Through Monte Carlo simulation and global sensitivity analysis, we identify major influential factors that affect system's warranty cost savings performance. The results indicate that joint control of forward and reverse material flows greatly improves warranty cost savings performance as well as system's robustness to uncertainties. The second part of the thesis develops a differential game model for characterizing decentralized time-varying competitive decision-making in a CLSC. The differential game model is particularly useful for studying time-varying interactive decision-making in CLSCs that involve many stakeholders who pursue different objectives in forward and reverse production activities. We identify optimal prices and production strategies that evolve over time under fluctuating market demand. Also, the model provides a quantitative scheme that can be used to obtain an efficient apportionment of product recovery processes. The third part of the thesis describes the relationship among consumers' risk-aversion, product cannibalization of new products by remanufactured products, and growth of CLSCs through price optimization models. Whereas price is one of the most effective variables for managing market demand, previous CLSC research has mainly focused on operational problems without paying much attention on the interface between CLSCs and markets. We develop models that jointly determine optimal prices in forward and reverse channels considering consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for remanufactured products, consumers' willingness-to-accept (WTA) for a buyback price, and consumers' risk aversion to uncertain quality perceptions. The results show that consumers' active participation in CLSC is an important factor for the viability and growth of a CLSC. Also, we show that companies can benefit from product remanufacturing although it may be accompanied by production cannibalization.

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.

The syllabus for upper secondary school states that interaction and communication are important for students’ oral production skills development. Also, the contemporary view on learning is that people learn a language by using it. This study examines how students and a teacher experience the ways in which classmates influence each other’s willingness to speak English in the classroom, if they believe it affects their oral production skills development, and moreover whether they think that some sort of ability grouping could support oral production skills development. The study was carried out among a total of eight students and one teacher at an upper secondary school located in Southern Sweden, using a qualitative methodology based on personal interviews. Four English 6 students belong to the natural science program, and four English 7 Cambridge Advanced English students belong to various academic programs. The teacher teaches both courses. The results showed that classmates is the factor in the classroom which affects students’ willingness to speak English the most in their different language proficiency, personality, attitude, focus, willingness to communicate in English, and relationship with each other. The students experience that these differences between them often affect their WTC negatively and thereby their oral production skills development. They want to interact with other students who are at their level or slightly above them, who want to speak English, who share the communication space, and who take the lessons seriously. Therefore, the students and teacher have a positive attitude toward some form of ability grouping in all English courses.

Thesis (MSc (Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / HIV vaccines are currently being developed and tested worldwide. This thesis reports on a qualitative study that was conducted to determine the concerns and problems regarding participation in future HIV vaccine trials. The sample for the study was selected from a peri-urban township, Masiphumelele, in Cape Town, Western Cape province, South Africa. The HIV-prevalence rate in Masiphumelele is 25%. A total of 10 participants between the ages of 19 and 30 were recruited for the present study. All participants’ first language was Xhosa and seven of them had English as a second language. Owing to a language barrier, an interpreter assisted the interviewer in conducting the interviews in the preferred language of the participants. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling and were asked to participate in two semi-structured interviews, under confidential conditions. The first interview addressed knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS, HIV vaccines and HIV clinical trials. The second interview identified the concerns and problems participants had regarding participation in future HIV vaccine trials. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and entered into Atlas ti., a computer program that assists in the analysis of textual data. The analysis of the data focused on the content of participants’ concerns about barriers to participation and their perspectives on facilitators to participation. The data collected on concerns and problems which, may influence participants’ willingness to participate in future HIV vaccine trials, was divided into two overarching themes, namely, barriers to participation and facilitators to participation. The barriers to participation included physical symptoms, stigma and discrimination, trypanophobia, distrust, psychological distress, sexual disinhibition and family responsibilities. The facilitators to participation included altruism, own protection from HIV infection, hopefulness, medical incentives, determining of HIV status, acquisition of knowledge, and equal treatment of participants in the experimental group and the placebo control group resulting from a double-blinded randomised trial. The question of participants’, recruited in the present study, willingness to participate in a future HIV vaccine trial are discussed in terms of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) theoretical work on ecological systems, the social learning theory and the Health Belief Model (HBM). These theoretical frameworks deal with individuals, their behaviour and their environment, and how these influence one another. The significance and future direction of this line of research helps to overcome the barriers to participation and enhance the facilitators to participation. Thus, the intended result of such efforts is to maximise individuals’ participation in future HIV vaccine trials.