Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Developing A Framework For Determining The Contribution Of Transportation Project To Sustainable Development, Karim Ahmed Abdel Warith

Open Access Dissertations

In the past few years, stakeholders in the transportation industry have been concerned with sustainability. However, transportation decision makers have had difficulty incorporating sustainability into transportation infrastructure decisions. This is mainly attributed to the vagueness of the term. Incorporating sustainability into transportation decision making has been a desire put forth by engineers for that past 10 years. However, with no apparent method of defining sustainability, designers and decision makers have not been able to fulfill this desire.

This investigation attempts to define sustainability in a comprehensive and quantitative manner. The research proposes a new methodology that relies on the objective …

Degree Program Changes And Curricular Flexibility: Addressing Long Held Beliefs About Student Progression, George Dante Ricco

Open Access Dissertations

In higher education and in engineering education in particular, changing majors is generally considered a negative event - or at least an event with negative consequences. An emergent field of study within engineering education revolves around understanding the factors and processes driving student changes of major. Of key importance to further the field of change of major research is a grasp of large scale phenomena occurring throughout multiple systems, knowledge of previous attempts at describing such issues, and the adoption of metrics to probe them effectively. The problem posed is exacerbated by the drive in higher education institutions and among …

The Competitive Effect Of Vouchers On The Performance Of Traditional Public Schools In Hamilton County, Ohio, Nathan Roy Lowe

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study is to determine the effect that educational choice, in the form of vouchers, is having on the performance of traditional public schools in Hamilton County, Ohio. The threat of losing students to vouchers creates a sense of competition for students, and ultimately the dollars that are attached to them. This competition is relatively new to public education and is being promoted by state legislators as a catalyst for public school improvement. All data sets were obtained from publically available data on the Ohio Department of Education website between 2001 and 2012. Between 2001 and …

Modeling The Marketability Of Tourism Small Businesses: Oman's Experiences, Hamed Ibrahim Al Azri

Open Access Dissertations

Tourism Small Businesses (TSBs) are vital factors in the prosperity of local communities and the development of authentic and satisfying tourism experiences. Because of their small size, they are unable to effectively use textbook marketing models and techniques. The purpose of this study is to help TSBs market their products in a way that suits their unique nature and business environment. Specifically, this study aims to develop a theoretical model of TSB marketing, identify the main factors affecting TSB marketing, and discern relationships between these factors. Since the aim of the study is to develop a theoretical model, the method …

Travelers' Route Choice Behavior In Risky Networks, Hengliang Tian

Open Access Dissertations

The accurate modeling of travelers’ route choice decision making when faced with unreliable (risky) travel times is necessary for the assessment of policies aimed at improving travel time reliability. Two major objectives are studied in this thesis. The first objective is to evaluate the applicability of a process model to route choice under risk where the actual process of decision making is captured. Traditionally, we adopt “as-if” econometric models to predict people’s route choice decisions. The second objective is to investigate travelers’ capability to incorporate future real-time traffic information into their current route choice decision making. Two separate stated preference …