Geography Commons^™

Gauging The Role Of Personality In Risk Perception During A Health Crisis And Its Impact On Tourist Consumption Behaviour, Akshita Agarwal

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This study examines the influence of the tourist personality and the use of technology on the traveler behavior and the risk perception about travelling. The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between personality, risk perception, and travel behavior among French travelers. An online survey was conducted using a sample of 422 responses to examine individual variations in risk perception during a health crisis and their influence on travel behavior. The study was carried out using PLS-SEM, and a model was proposed that considered the substantial Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and Composite Reliability test findings. The findings demonstrated …

Climate Action And Indigenous Land Relations: A Case Study In Nagaland, Northeastern India, Osensang Pongen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research grew out of my interest in the implications of climate action, especially its effects in natural-resource-rich peripheral regions like my home state of Nagaland. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the ways in which global ecodevelopment programs expand and mutate at the micro-scales in Indigenous communities. This includes structural transformations to their Indigenous socio-economic and political lifeworlds, their cosmologies, and their affective relations with their ancestral lands and environment. More broadly, the study draws attention to the growing challenges confronting Indigenous peoples in the Global South who are being seduced by …

Using Gis-Based Land Use Strategies To Minimize The Impacts Of Urbanization On Agricultural Land And Forest Cover: Case Study Of The City Of Limbe, Cameroon, Lucy Ebude Deba Enomah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization is one of the most dominant phenomena of the 21st century; it is propelled by natural growth and rural-to-urban migration. This latter is typically a product of rural residents moving to urban centres in search of economic opportunities. This phenomenon is accompanied by immense land use and cover changes – predominantly agricultural and forest lands to urban land uses such as buildings and infrastructure. The goal of this research was to contribute to efforts to minimize the impacts of urbanization on agricultural land and forest cover in Limbe, Cameroon, and to develop GIS-based strategies to allocate suitable land for …

Human Mobility, Hospitality, And Tourism Industries: A Perspective On Catastrophes, Asif Hussain

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The coronavirus outbreak has resulted in a significant reduction in peoples’ movements, migration and trade at both local and global levels. Lockdowns and travel restrictions all over the world have led to a rapid retrenchment of the world’s hospitality and tourism sector. This is not new. Historically, catastrophes impacted human mobility. Drawing from the historical connections between catastrophes, especially health crises, this paper highlights the impacts of catastrophes on the hospitality and tourism industries. This research shows that the relationship between pandemic and tourism is turbulent, and it explores the implications of the current health crisis for the travel industry …

Caring As A Fundamental Of Sustainability And Resilience In An Aboriginal Community, Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Caring is a fundamental of cultural/community sustainability and resilience among Aboriginal people. However, caring is not confined to community but, as this paper demonstrates can also be extended to both visitors and the wider society. The kindness engendered has application particularly in this time of COVID-19 for both tourism and mainstream society in general.

Marketing Transformation In Tourism Through Visual Ethnography, Isabel Coll-Barneto, Francesc Fusté-Forné

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This paper analyses the role of transformative tourism from the perspective of local establishments. The method is based on a visual ethnography study where 12 ecological accommodations located in Catalonia, north-eastern Spain, were asked to identify a photography that illustrates the philosophy of the establishments. Results discuss the meanings of the pictures focused on previous research in relation to the transformative facilitators. The physical, knowledge, social and psychological dimensions are analysed. The nature, the wood, and the relaxing areas are the most relevant elements provided by the hotels as part of their marketing strategy. Theoretical and practical implications are described.

Inland Tropical Cyclone Intensity Decay In The Continental United States, Yijie Zhu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tropical cyclone (TC) hazard preparation is mostly focused on coastal cities with less attention typically paid to inland regions. The impact of TCs that propagate far inland is often underestimated and can cause unexpected loss of life and economic loss. This dissertation aims to understand the decay process of TCs during the post-landfall stage by answering three main research questions: (1) What are the general patterns of inland tropical cyclones, including spatial variations, decay rates, and translation speeds? (2) Are there temporal changes in the intensity decay from inland moving hurricanes? (3) How is the hurricane post-landfall dissipation related to …

Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines the links between gender, mass violence, climate change, and displacement in South Sudan. I argue for risk-informed gender-sensitive strategies that incorporate local capacities and sources of resilience. When civil war engulfed South Sudan again in 2013, egregious human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, were perpetrated with near complete impunity. As the national army was divided along Dinka-Nuer ethnic lines, soldiers from each faction turned against each other in a deadly pattern of revenge and counter-revenge attacks that soon spread across the national territory. Inter-communal conflicts also intensified, often centering on competition over land for pasture, …

Characterizing And Explaining Prevalence And Factors Associated With Non-Fatal Opioid Overdose In Florida, Jesse M. Bell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many factors contribute to the opioid epidemic in Florida, including, but not limited to, physician over prescribing, opioid manufacturer malfeasance (direct marketing to physicians, hospitals, and universities, as well indirect political contributions, and deliberately obfuscating the impact of the addictive properties of their various drugs), and as the epidemic approaches its 25th year, sociodemographic characteristics. This body of work examines three of these. First, because an opioid naïve persons’ typical initial encounter with the drug is through a physician, we sought to shed light on the impact of direct pharmaceutical marketing to physicians. We identified opioid providing physicians from the …

Geothermal Development In Kenya: Gender Based Socio-Cultural And Socio-Economic Implications, Faye N. Ricker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnographic case study that analyzes the gendered socio-cultural and socio-economic implications for a community that was displaced in order to develop a geothermal energy system in Kenya. The implications are rendered particularly interesting because the displaced community is also one of the communities served by the geothermal power grid. The analysis employs a composite framework of Feminist Political Ecology and the Political Ecology of Climate Change Mitigation. This work explores gendered perceptions and control of energy, livelihood activities, place attachment, and the cultural/spiritual significance of geothermal energy.

Geothermal energy is a potentially promising source of low-carbon …

A Statistical Method For Quantifying Animal Interaction; Combining Time Geography And Simulation, Zachary J. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic interaction (DI) describes the synchronous interaction of one or more individual animals over time. Current methods to quantify DI from tracking data are lacking. They typically require synchronized tracking data which limits their applicability to most studies. They also often do not have built-in tests of significance to evaluate interaction, and if so, rely on random walk models that lack biological realism. This research aimed to develop and evaluate a new way of measuring animal interaction that overcomes these limitations. The goal was to create a statistical method for quantifying and evaluating interaction that is relevant across computational, behavioural, …

Assessing Changes In Actual Air Quality And Public Perceptions Of Air Quality In Kathmandu Valley Nepal Pre And Post Covid-19 Lockdown, Robin Margherita Rives

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Air pollution is a global concern. Cities around the world fail to meet air quality standards set by the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines, which has a significant impact on public health. As the capital city and largest metropolitan region of Nepal, Kathmandu is a hotspot for urban pollution in South Asia. Nepal faces emissions from both internal and external sources. External sources include emissions from Nepal’s neighboring countries of India and China and emissions resulting from tourism. Internal sources of pollution in the country include brick and cement factories, consumption of energy from traditional sources such as biomass, …

“Fast Policy” And “Rule By Aesthetics”: A Preliminary Study Of Water Street Tampa –The “Worlding” Of An Aspiring “Icon Project”, Nousheen Rahman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the age of “global urbanism” (Sheppard et al 2015; Chen and Kanna 2013), we are witnessing a markedly increased preference for mega-gentrification policies and projects by public officials seeking to revitalize deindustrialized and abandoned landscapes within their cities. The goal of this study is to describe how neoliberal public and private actors and institutions in the City of Tampa, specifically along the newly minted “Water Street” near the old Channel District of downtown, have adopted the discourses and practices of “fast policy” (Peck and Theodore 2015), “rule by aesthetics” (Ghertner 2010) and “worlding” (Ong and Roy 2011). To that …

Regenerative Tourism Model: Challenges Of Adapting Concepts From Natural Science To Tourism Industry, Asif Hussain, Marie Haley

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The study proposes a regenerative tourism model. The application of the natural science ideas of regeneration needs to be clarified before the tourism industry can adopt a regenerative tourism model. Without such clarification, there is a high risk of ‘green washing’ and inappropriate adaption of a regenerative model. The borrowing of natural science to industry and its application in social sciences confuse the essence of the true concept of regeneration. In a regenerative agriculture context restoring a holistic system that mimics nature and includes social and economic spheres contributes to improving the whole system. When a social system aims to …

International And Domestic Tourist Hunting: A Critical Review On Environmental And Socio-Economic Implications In Sub-Saharan Africa, Abel A. Mamboleo

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Tourist hunting is a regular consumptive wildlife utilization occurring within and outside core protected areas for trophies and leisure attainments. It is one of the most renowned tourism undertakings which involve the killing of animals for recreational purposes. In essence, hunters acquire trophies for different purposes including production of decorations and traditional medicines. Currently, there is a hot debate on whether to continues or cease tourist hunting as animal activists, some conservation stakeholders believe that hunting is cruel to animals and threat to ecosystems. In this paper, the author reviewed and analyzed various documented evidences which opponents and proponents of …

Remote Sensing And Gis Integration For Amazon Rainforest Wildfires Applications, Cong Ma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Known as the “Lung of the world”, the Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the oxygen of the world, which was originally a carbon pool for mitigating climate change, but in recent years it has become a significant carbon emitter due to wildfires. In 2019, a large-scale fire occurred in the Amazon rainforest, causing serious damage to the ecosystem and to humans as well. Therefore, managing wildfires effectively has become an urgent task for fire authorities. This thesis tried to incorporate spatial analysis and spatial statistics approaches to study wildfire from two aspects, namely the temporal and spatial distribution …

Assessing Morphological Response And Vulnerability Of Barrier Islands To Extreme Storms In Northwest Florida, Jacob Adam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Barrier islands shield the mainland coast from the effects of extreme storms such as increased wave energy and storm surge. During these events, however, barrier morphology can be altered by erosive forces. Thus, compromising the protection offered and leading to increased impact on the mainland. The St. Joseph Peninsula, located in the Northwest of the Gulf of Mexico, is one such barrier at threat from storm-induced erosion. Presented here is an assessment of morphology change induced by two major storms to impact the peninsula, Hurricanes Dennis 2005 and Michael 2018. These changes characterize the erosive/depositional patterns that can be expected …

Synthesis Of A Multimodal Ecological Model For Scalable, High-Resolution Arboviral Risk Prediction In Florida, Sean P. Beeman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

West Nile virus (WNV) and Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus (EEEV) represent the two greatest endemic arboviral risks to the state of Florida. Currently, no approved human vaccine exists for the prevention of either virus. In the absence of a vaccine, effective disease surveillance is paramount for public health. In Florida, WNV and EEEV sentinel chicken surveillance is conducted by mosquito control programs operated at the county, municipality, or special taxing district level. This program was implemented in 1978 following human outbreaks of St. Louis Encephalitis virus (SLEV) that occurred between 1959 and 1977, with initial sentinel coops placed in proximity …

Thoughts On How New Zealand Could Progress As A More Regenerative Tourism Host, Stephen Bradley

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

New Zealand has a chance to reset the way we view and manage tourism. We must take this chance to make some changes that will ensure that we have a clean green country to promote as a high quality tourism destination in the future. This perspective advocates that measures such as a high visitor levy, educating tourists and better management of the way tourists travel around the country, can lead to achieving more sustainable tourism industry.

Food Producers And Pandemics: A Mystery Shopping Analysis, Francesc Fusté-Forné

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Recent research has widely analysed the significance of food in tourism. Departing from the understanding of ‘cheese’ as part of the food tourism system of a destination, this paper aims to analyse cheese factory tours as a tourism service provided by food producers. A mystery shopping approach is used to study the 75 cheese producers under the Manchego quality cheese. Results show the response behaviour of Spanish Manchego cheese producers to an email sent by a ‘tourist’ who asks for a visit during pandemic times. As a segment of food tourism, cheese tourism is gathering a growing attention by academics …

The Most Important Thing, The People!, Marie Haley

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This paper looks at indigenous concepts from New Zealand Maori and American Indians that offer philosophy for long term resilience and human-centred decision making. For true resilience, individuals, businesses and governments need to be adaptable, decisive and make long term changes. Operational changes need to come from a change of mindset and cannot return to old systems. Covid-19 has highlighted placing humans at the centre of decision making. This paper looks at the case study of The Seventh Generation Tours, in Akaroa New Zealand and the indigenous concepts of turangawaewae, knowing our connection to place and environment, manaakitanga, hospitality and …

A Future Of Tourism Industry: Conscious Travel, Destination Recovery And Regenerative Tourism, Asif Hussain

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The tourism industry is a complex network of millions of suppliers and consumers who trade experiences and services. The traditional tourism model revolves around increasing the number of visitors to ensure economic return. The conventional tourism models often ignore the real cost of the travel industry’s health and the cost per tourist. Covid-19 has shown us the extent to which the travel industry can be affected. The tourism and hospitality industries is the worst affected industries globally and the continuous waves of the virus, and new variants, are forcing governments to impose strict lockdowns. Misinformation and disinformation are making it …

Government Response To Covid-19 And Gender Discrepancy: Tour Operator Perspective From New Zealand, Marie Haley, Asif Hussain

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The New Zealand government closed the international borders for the first time in history to pursuit an elimination strategy to COVID-19. This has had a severe impact upon tour operators who have been excluded from a free and fair market, to protect the broader economic and public health systems. This paper argues that the government response needs a focus at the whanau and community level, with a targeted focus on women empowerment in the communities that are dependent upon international tourism. The government should pursue an approach of engagement with systems to facilitate community lead COVID-19 recovery. Thus, allowing the …

Building Destination Tourism Alliances In The Central-Western Region Of Mexico For The Recovery Of Post-Covid-19 Tourism, Silvia María López Ruiz

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This study focuses on knowing the joint work between Mexico’s tourist destinations and the private sector, promoting proximity tourism for the recovery of tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic, through the creation of the “Central West Pact for Tourism” in Mexico. For the qualitative empirical analysis based on a case study, it is based on secondary data and an in-depth interview conducted virtually with two pioneering leaders of this pact and responsible for tourism management in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. In addition, a qualitative content analysis of the project’s official website (Viaja En Corto – Descubre El Centro de …

From Hurricanes To Pandemics: Community-Based Transformation And Destination Resilience In Utuado, Puerto Rico, Patrick J. Holladay, Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, Katja Brundiers

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Community-based tourism that is both sustainable and resilient lends strength to the community-based tourism system. Local mobilization of resources, cohesiveness, coordination, opportunities for change, healthy social and natural capital, economic diversification, strong leadership, and management that embraces creativity all build resilience. An example from Utuado, Puerto Rico is presented that illustrates these concepts with conceptual parallel of Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact to that of COVID-19. Post-coronavirus tourism should support local communities that could be resilient, creative, adaptive and transformative while it protects and provides long-term benefits to local communities and people.

Evacuation Decision Making And The Role Of Social Connections Across Evacuation Statuses During Hurricane Irma, Nathan D. Shull

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine the evacuation decision-making process during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Special consideration was given to the role of an individual’s social connections (SCs). Additionally, the dependability, density (i.e., social network size and number of connections), and diversity of SCs were compared between those who: (a) evacuated to a shelter in Pinellas County, (b) evacuated to somewhere outside of the Tampa Bay area, and (c) did not evacuate. Data for evacuees and non-evacuees from Collins et al. (2018) were used to perform this comparison, while the data for shelter evacuees were acquired via a …

“We Planted Rice And Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction In The Cambodian Genocide, Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, Sereyvothny Um

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide. Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identified as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention. We approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework, meaning we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, …

Participatory Mapping With High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: A Mixed Method Assessment Of Land Degradation And Rehabilitation In Northern Burkina Faso, Colin Thor West, Elisabeth Kago Ilboudo Nébié, Aaron J. Moody

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Sahelian West Africa is a region that has high population densities and that has frequent severe droughts and enormous pressure on natural resources. Because of these challenges, it is the place where the term desertification was originally coined. Recently, however, experts have identified large zones of greening where the amount of vegetation exceeds what one would expect based on rainfall alone. This pattern is well documented, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. This research employs participatory mapping linked with high-resolution satellite imagery to better understand the human role behind regional vegetation trends. Through a case study of three communities in …

Politics Vs. The Environment: The Spatial Distributions Of Mississippian Mound Centers In Tampa Bay, Adam J. Sax

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Safety Harbor culture that resided in West-Central Florida during the Mississippian period (~1000-1500 CE) was distant from the Mississippian heartland but built similar platform mound complexes and exhibited social hierarchies despite practicing an estuarine lifestyle that likely did not rely on extensive agriculture. To determine whether this coastal culture exhibited similar spatial patterns of platform mound centers to traditional inland cultures, GIS spatial analyses including distance matrices, density analyses, and least cost analyses (LCA) were performed within the Safety Harbor geographical nexus of Tampa Bay. The results were able to detect temporal changes in settlement patterns and estimate the …

Problematizing Florida’S Extended Reading Time Policy: A Critical Investigation Of Place, Demographics, And Curricula, Carrie L. Gentner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate Florida’s extended reading time (ERT) policy as enacted during the 2016-2017 school year. This policy requires elementary schools ranking among the 300 lowest performing in the state, as measured by state assessments, to provide an additional hour of reading instruction beyond the regular school day. Extending upon the work of a pilot study suggesting an overrepresentation of minoritized students within low 300 schools, this study presents the geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic distributions of the ERT mandate for a criterion sample of seven districts. Further, the pilot study indicated an underrepresentation of minoritized …