Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Diver Perceived Value And Satisfaction On The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ka'lon Duncanson

Honors Theses

The Mississippi Gulf Coast is known for its coastal beauty and the tourism that comes from the recreational activities associated with the water. However, there appears to be an underserved segment of the tourism industry. The coast provides opportunities for local scuba divers to take part in a range of diving activities, but there is minimal support for this tourism activity in Mississippi. There is a need for greater understanding about what local divers value in their diving experiences and how this might lead to greater satisfaction with this activity. Along with overall perceived value, the argument is made that …

College Girl's Guide To Fayetteville, Ar, Sydney Johnson

Human Nutrition and Hospitality Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission behind creating the College Girl’s Guide to Fayetteville, AR was to ease the adjustment from high school to college for females attending the University of Arkansas. This is one of life’s most monumental transitions, often resulting in anxiety, depression, and loneliness, specifically among the female demographic. With that in mind, the intent of the guidebook was to develop culture, confidence, and community on campus. In the aftermath of Covid-19, loneliness on college campuses has become an epidemic in need of a university-wide solution to increase student satisfaction and retention. A research aspect that heavily impacted the project was …

The Value Of An Integrated Marketing Campaign To Grow Interest In Visiting The U.S. National Parks, Hermine Granberry

Honors Theses

When the centennial celebration of the National Park Service was approaching in 2016, the National Park Service launched a two-year campaign to only commemorate the last century of NPS, but to also reconnect Americans with the parks. Ten years have passed since the initial creation of the campaign. This thesis researches the value of how another integrated marketing campaign could increase visitation to the U.S. National Parks in the future.

Through evaluating the previous Find Your Park campaign and current trends in travel and vacation, this research investigates not only future campaign ideas but also the use and incorporation of …

Tourism, Mapping, Retail And Recreational Trails: A Case Study Of Connectivity Between Trails And Adjacent Downtowns In Anniston, Alabama, Usa, Jennifer Green

Theses

This study examines the estimated increase in economic impact on a geography’s local economy by creating cross-marketing efforts between expanding an established outdoor recreation trail to a closely located city downtown commerce district. This research will analyze the resulting potential rise in sales/lodging tax revenues for that city by mapping the trail and downtown district, and cross-marketing the other to users of both or either venue. Potential increase in economic impact will be estimated utilizing IMPLAN methodology by assessing the economic impact on the local economy that a percentage range of increased spending resulting from this cross-marketing effort could generate.

The Influence Of Social Media On The Tourism Industry: A Content Analysis Of Culinary Tourism Brands Via Instagram, Angela White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tourism industry in the United States is constantly changing and being influenced by social media, specifically Instagram. Culinary brands use Instagram to advertise their restaurants and dishes in a creative, visual way. As a result, Instagram is now being used as a tool by tourists and both potential and current customers to share their dining experiences and find these locations based on the visual appeal. This study provides a content analysis of Instagram account information and photo composition within eight popular culinary tourism destinations by examining the strategies used by the accounts. 50 randomly selected photos were used from …

"Airbnb Go Home:" Tourism Frictions And Short-Term Rentals In New Orleans, Madeline R. Fussell

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the concerns and conflicts around short-term rental (STR) properties in New Orleans neighborhoods. Using data from collected from critical discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews and social media posts, this paper analyzes the ways the city of New Orleans, residents of the city, STR hosts, and platforms like Airbnb discuss issues of safety, displacement, rising costs of living, as well as responsible STR practices. To understand the complexities of the issues people, have with short-term rental properties, this project approaches STRs from a housing and gentrification lens to understand the role these properties play within in the daily atmospheres …

Airbnb Release Of Latent Economic Value And Return To Equilibrium, Daniel Joseph Trujillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We empirically consider Airbnb’s effect on a new variable in Short Term Rental (STR) research, second homes, employing a model pre-Airbnb diffusion (2009), and post-Airbnb diffusion (2019). In doing so we test our hypothesis that second home use will be converted to short-term rentals with the advent of Airbnb. We do so through a natural experiment examining housing stock. We create a schema to segregate tourist and non-tourist counties based on economic variables and deploy these in our research framework observing a shock to housing supply. Notably, we observe a structural change in the use of second homes resulting in …

Leadership And Community In The Arts: A Case Study Of Legend And Culture In Chiusdino, Italy, Amanda Svetlak

Arts Administration Masters Theses

The complexity of culture goes beyond artistic expression, nationality, race, and religion. Culture shapes our communications, interactions, and our perceptions of the world around us (Hall, 1989). Studies show that self-awareness of our own culture through exposure to the unfamiliar leads to intercultural competences (Herlo, 2015; Crossman, 2011; Hermond 2018; Hall 1989). As technology, travel, and community diversity continues to shrink our world and diversify our workplaces, these intercultural competences support modern processes of marketing, community engagement, and organizational leadership. This thesis is a case study of the community culture, organizational culture, and structure of arts institutions in Chiusdino, Italy. …

An Empirical Analysis Of Climatic, Geographic, And Cultural Determinants Of International Tourism, Ethan Straus

Honors Theses

Each year, billions of people visit different countries all around the world. For many of those countries, tourism is their primary industry, leading to millions of jobs and dollars in revenue. It is expected that by 2020 total International Tourism Receipts will reach 2 trillion US dollars annually. Currently, tourism employs an estimated 200 million people around the world. With the continued progression of climate change, the tourism industry is facing a newfound threat. Global temperatures and the seal level are both expected to rise significantly by the end of the century. Additionally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

Exploring The Role Of Irish Local Authorities In Tourism Development: A Senior Management Perspective On Tourism Development In Cork County Council, Monica Moisuc

Masters

In an Irish context, the government's engagement in tourism and its role in developing the sector is acknowledged across most Irish government publications. However, despite efforts made to highlight the major role of the government in tourism, the number of studies that seek to understand how Irish local governments are engaging in tourism is limited. In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, this study brings a new contribution to the current relevant literature by exploring the role of the government in developing tourism within a local Irish context.

Using a qualitative case-study approach, the particular entity under investigation is …

The Impact Of Casino Revenue-Sharing On Tourism Efforts In Niagara Falls Usa: 2006-2016, Anthony L. Astran

Public Administration Master’s Projects

This qualitative case study examines the intersection of a Native-owned casino, revenue-sharing with its host community, and the impact of tourism marketing efforts vis-à-vis funds provided to the community’s tourism agency. Specifically, this report studies downtown Niagara Falls USA from the time period between 2006 and 2016, and seeks to determine whether and how funds from Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino boosted tourism marketing efforts by Niagara Tourism & Convention Corporation (NTCC). Background research and a series of elite interviews with city officials and tourism agency leaders uncovered overall positivity in terms of growth in Niagara Falls USA’s tourism efforts …

Application Of Heritage Tourism Development Frameworks To Jenkins County, Georgia, Shelby R. Herrin

Honors College Theses

With the decline of traditional agriculture and extraction industries, many small towns in the Southeast US are facing challenges of economic decline and looking for alternative development trajectories. The city of Millen in Jenkins County, Georgia is one of such small towns. With the discovery of a large Civil War heritage resource, Millen’s administration became interested in developing the town’s tourism potential. However, the community possesses neither the resources nor knowledge to develop and promote this potential. In this project, the combination of Gunn’s functioning tourism system model as a conceptual framework and Jamal and Getz’s three-step collaborative community tourism …

Discourse As Social Process In Outdoor Recreation And Natural Resource Management: Arguing, Constructing, And Performing, Monika Marie Derrien

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the language-based, discursive processes through which meanings and experiences are socially constituted in outdoor recreation and natural resource environments. Language use and discourse are seen as interactive, constructive processes, approached through the theoretical perspectives of argumentation, social constructionism, and performance.

Three qualitative studies, based in data collected at Acadia National Park and forest-related sites throughout Vermont, comprise this dissertation. The first study uses rhetorical analysis to examine the ways National Park Service managers and community leaders argue for the meanings and management of dark night skies in and around Acadia. The second study examines how national park …

The Influence Of Power Distance On Csr Programs In Hainan China, Carol Ann Hoshiko

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As China emerges as one of the world's top 5 economies, it attracts more multinational corporations (MNCs) that want to expand there and implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Despite this emergence, since China entered the World Trade Organization, it has not perceived or welcomed MNCs in the same manner as in the 1970s to 1990s. Further, MNCs have had challenges adapting Western-style CSR programs in China's local communities. There is no widely-accepted multidisciplinary theory that integrates CSR, organizational culture, and culture. Hofstede's theory of cultural relativism classified China as a high power distance country where the population has a …

The Effects Of Acquisition On Restaurant Firms’ Performance: Different-Sector Versus Same-Sector Acquisitions, Yongjin Lee

Open Access Theses

This study examines the postacquisition accounting performance of acquiring firms in the restaurant industry between 1992 and 2012. Specifically, this study investigates the effects of different-sector and same-sector restaurants acquisitions between full-service and limited-service restaurants on restaurant firms' performance. Additionally, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and regression model are used to examine return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) for the accounting performance of the acquiring restaurants.

The ROA and ROE reveal that the profitability is significantly negative up to 5 years after firms are acquired. However, negative effects are strongest within the first year after acquisition and decrease …

Golf Tourists At Two Courses In Las Vegas: A Demographic Profile, Brian Milford Jones

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focuses on the motivations and practices of tourist golfers at two Las Vegas, Nevada area golf courses: Rhodes Ranch Golf Club and Tuscany Golf Club.

Data was collected from tourist golfers at these two results and they report the amounts of money spent on golf, the motivations to visit Las Vegas for golf the amounts of money normally spent to play golf at home. The study also provides evidence regarding other activities of these golf tourists while in Las Vegas, including where they stayed and courses played. This is an exploratory study. However, results show that further research …

Sex Tourism In St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands: An Exploratory Study, Elizabeth Estes

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, is similar to other tourism dependent Caribbean nations where the tourism industry is dependent upon the `4 S's'- sun, sand, sea, and sex. This researcher posited that the phenomenon of sex tourism exists in St. Thomas as it does in other tourist destinations in the Caribbean like Jamaica, Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Barbados (Bailey and Ricketts, 2003; de Albuquerque, 1998; Munshi, 2006; Ryan and Kinder, 1996). The lacuna of any U.S. Virgin Islands sex tourism literature prompted this researcher to conduct an exploratory case study in St. Thomas to learn whether or …

The Hotel Manager’S Perceived Conflict Of Providing For Hospitality And Security: Can The Two Exist In Harmony?, Silvano Cozzini

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The hospitality industry relies upon regular and repeat customers for its survival. No traveler or visitor will return to a hotel property where a bad incident occurred. Would a diner go back to any restaurant where they were sickened by their meal? Would a hotel guest return to any property where they were a victim of a crime? Bad experiences make us tell ourselves, “I will never go back there again!”

This same psychology holds true for criminals. At places where they have been deterred by a high security presence, it is unlikely that they would return there, either. A …

Sec Football Away Game Consumption: The Roles Of Motives, Subcultural Identification, Contextual Dimensions And Destination Image In Sport Tourism, Robert Bruce Daniell

Doctoral Dissertations

The popularity of college football, specifically Southeastern Conference (SEC) football, is at an all-time high. Extant research analyzes consumer behavior in sport consumption settings; however, the away game sport tourist is often overlooked. Given the economic impacts associated with sport tourism, a deeper understanding of the college football sport tourist is desirable. This study utilized a research model grounded in social identity theory and motivation theory to examine the relationships among various sport consumption motives, subcultural identification, and destination image applied to SEC football away game sport tourists.

The results of the study indicate that SEC football away game sport …

From Fandom To Tourism: An Examination Of Self-~Expansion Theory, So Jung Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In recent years, pop-culture tourism, in which individuals travel to destinations made famous through pop-culture or relative media themes, has come into the spotlight. The new market segment induced by pop-culture has created a specialized but dedicated consumer, called a "fan." This study examined the impact of pop-stars on a destination from the perspective of fans. Specifically, the research investigated whether fans at different degrees of fandom had different travel attitudes and behaviors with regard to motivation, satisfaction, attachment, and loyalty in the destination context by applying self-expansion theory. In particular, Korean pop-star's fans were chosen as the study example …

Bartenders Know Best: An In-Depth Analysis Of The Impact Of Tourism On Local Barbadian Culture, Pearl E. Jurist-Schoen

Honors Theses

The purpose of my thesis is, through my own field research, to analyze the impact of tourism on local Barbadian culture. Caribbean tourism draws strong criticisms from anthropologists due to the region’s geographical location and environmental landscape, its history of colonialism, and the economic vulnerabilities that result from the wealth discrepancy between the local people and the tourists that vacation there. On the very small and densely populated island of Barbados, nearly every person is impacted by tourism. The focus of my ethnography is the cultural exchanges between guests and hosts, most specifically bartenders. A bar harbors many important elements …

Perspectives On Timeshare Ownership: An Exploratory Study Of Markets In China, Kai-Li Chi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study aims to explore the attitudes of prospective customers in China about timeshares, and to identify potential marketing opportunities for timeshare companies targeting China. This exploratory study is the first of its kind and it intends to provide valuable information about the consumer potential for the timeshare industry in China. The findings indicate that consumer acceptance of timeshares in China is high. Six socio-demographic variables were identified as keys in predicting those with statistically significant likelihood of purchasing a timeshare within the next three years: age, occupation, marital status, annual household income, vacation frequency, and attendance at a previous …

Consumptive Water Use At The Mirage Hotel And The Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino In Las Vegas, Nevada, Johann A. Feller

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Las Vegas Valley is one of the driest regions in the southwest United States. Due to limited water supplies from the Colorado River, rainfall, and groundwater sources, the water requirements of the valley’s growing population is slated to surpass the current available water supply. The purpose of this comparative study is to quantify the amount of consumptive water used at a major Las Vegas resort/casino in one year. This, being of importance, because of the resort/casino industry’s role as one of the largest, most visible, and most resource intensive industries in the Las Vegas valley. The goal of this …