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The purpose of this study is to gauge and compare the impact of surface street traffic externalities on residential properties. Limited previous research indicates that negative externalities dominate for single-family houses. Our objective is to verify that this result applies to our sample, and to determine if the same result extends to multi-unit rental properties.

Hedonic regression is used to analyze data from 9,680 single-family house transactions and 455 multi-unit rental properties to measure the influence of surface street traffic on the price of the two property types.

Houses located adjacent to an arterial street sold at a 7.8 per cent discount, on average, compared to similar houses located on collector streets. Limiting the analysis to houses adjacent to an arterial street (where traffic counts were available), price and traffic count are negatively related. The results for multi-unit rental dwellings are dramatically different. Multi-unit properties adjacent to an arterial street sold at a 13.75 per cent premium compared to similar properties on collector streets, and when limiting the analysis to properties on arterial streets, no significant relationship was detected between price and traffic volume.

This is the first empirical study of the influence of surface street traffic on both single-family houses and multi-unit rental residential property. Evidence is provided that traffic externalities impact the two types of properties quite differently. To the extent that this result applies to other locations, the authors suggest planners may be able to use such information to reduce the negative effect of traffic externalities on residential property associated with changes that will increase traffic flow.

Building on the social marketing theory, this study aims to examine the relationship between family units and obesity in Nigeria; and the social marketing interventions used to reduce and prevent obesity in the Nigerian society.

This study adopted a semi-structured interview research design with 42 obese individuals in Nigeria.

The study findings show that the family unit an individual grows up in influences their consumption behaviour, which drives their obesity. The findings reveal that obese Nigerian citizens are willing to live a healthier lifestyle due to the direct and indirect medical costs associated with obesity. Furthermore, the findings disclose the social marketing interventions – local celebrity endorsements, healthy lifestyle promotions, reduced gym membership and affordable access to healthy foods and services – used to prevent and reduce the rising obesity rates in the Nigerian society.

The findings have important theoretical implication given the focus on consumption behaviour and obesity.

The study findings provide an avenue to guide government officials, policymakers and social marketers in shaping their public policy and social marketing interventions to encourage healthier consumption and lifestyle behaviours among families and individuals in the Nigerian society.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study to investigate how family units in the emerging market of sub-Saharan Africa drive obesity and the social marketing interventions used to reduce and prevent obesity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Italian case can be defined by means of the image of the three-sided revolution: from draft to AVF, from national to international oriented military, from all-male to mixed military. These great changes have given rise to a professional military with a lifelong career with frequent deployments abroad and formed by soldiers who are not single males anymore. Because of the rapid process of routinization of abroad deployments and the growing number of military families, the Italian military institution has been caught relatively unprepared, and it has been able to offer a kind of emergency psychological support in case of dramatic events, but less able to give rise to routine forms of family support for those situations where problems are much less tragic but anyway stressing for the private life of families affected by the professional activity of deployed soldiers. In this chapter, results from a qualitative inquiry are presented about military family situation, mainly as far as problems arising because of international deployments are concerned. Research observations have been taken from families where one member (usually the husband) belongs to units where deployment is a continuous problem to live with, but where the socio-cultural area where the unit is settled is different. Due to the country morphological structure, the territorial distribution of units gives rise to two different types of territorial family situation: a strong majority of deployable units are settled in the North of the country, whereas the large majority of soldiers comes from southern regions, that is from 500 or 1,000 kilometers of distance; but some units are on the contrary settled in the southern regions, and in these cases soldiers are really “locals.” This means that in the first type of unit, military families are often similar to migrant families, where both spouses come from far away and are cut off from their social and parental networks, or the young soldier gets married to a “local” girl and the new family can take advantage from the presence of parental and friendships ties of one of the two partners; in the second type, families and soldiers are locals, and they can maintain their basic social integration, their parental and friendship networks. This variety permits to understand to what extent deployment affects family life in situations where primary social support can be a solution, or it is absent and should be provided by the institution itself or by the society at large. Because of this variety, a number of different solutions can be tested to support military families, so that they can choose according to their true needs.

People with complex health conditions must often navigate landscapes of uncoordinated public, private and voluntary health-care providers to obtain the care they need. Complex health conditions frequently transcend the scope of typical health-care service systems. The purpose of this paper is to explore and characterize such unique assemblages of actors and services as “user-defined ecosystems”.

Building on literature on customer ecosystems, this paper introduces the concept of the user-defined ecosystem (UDE). Using an abductive approach, the authors apply the concept in an interpretive, qualitative study of ten families with special needs children.

This study uncovers complex UDEs, where families actively combine a broad range of services. These ecosystems are unique for each family and extend beyond the scope of designed service ecosystems. Thus, the families are forced to assume an active, coordinating role.

This paper shows how to identify ecosystems from the user’s point of view, based on the selected user unit (such as a family) and the focal value-creating function of the ecosystem for the user.

This paper highlights how service providers can support and adapt to UDEs and, thus, contribute to user value and well-being. This can be used to understand users’ perspectives on service and systems in health and social care.

This study develops the concept of the UDE, which represents a customer-focused perspective on actor ecosystems and contrasts it with a provider-focused and a distributed perspective on ecosystems. This study demonstrates the practical usefulness of the conceptualization and provides a foundation for further research on the user’s perspective on ecosystems.

Sociologists view the family, the most basic unit of social organization, as the cornerstone of society. As societies continue to evolve, social changes such as urbanization produce changed family structures. This has recently happened in Zimbabwe, creating new family forms such as the “small house practice”: the trend among married men to maintain a single woman as a quasi-permanent sexual partner outside official marriage. This relationship is considered subsidiary (small) compared to the official marriage; yet, it is important to the welfare of both man practicing it and the unmarried woman being looked after. The study focused on the development of the “small house practice” in Zimbabwe and its impact on the traditional family unit. The economic crisis in Zimbabwe, between 2000 and 2010, in particular, affected families negatively and also led to the proliferation of the small house. The study reveals that the family unit in Zimbabwe continues to evolve.

The need to care for families has been a command focus within the United States military for a number of years. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the resulting risk and family separation, have made the care of families and their satisfaction with military life enormously important due to their impact on retention, morale, and readiness. The US Army has taken a two-pronged approach to caring for families: (1) family friendly leadership; and (2) family friendly programs and policies. Like many other organisations, the Army has invested heavily in family friendly policies and programs, such as family support groups, affordable childcare, medical care, and systems so spouses can communicate during periods of separation. Over the last 15 years, the Army's focus on families has produced a much improved system of support, resulting in almost two-thirds of spouses rating the Army's family support as excellent or good during the war in Iraq.¹ (Ricks, 2004, p. 9) While family friendly policies and programs are important in reducing work–family conflict and developing commitment, they are only part of the solution, and are much more effective when combined with supportive leadership. By themselves, policies and programs offer an incomplete solution that would achieve only partial success at best, particularly as the level of demands made by the organisation increase.

This qualitative phenomenological study examined the experiences of patients, their family members, and the nurses in the intensive care unit during critical illness. Five participants from each category participated in two interviews over a period of five months. Content analysis of the interview transcripts revealed five integrating common themes, each reflecting concepts from the Roy Adaptation Model (RAM). The ICU experience among all participants is interdependence. Adaptation in the ICU integrated family as a unit, physical care/comfort, physiological care and psychosocial support, resulting in transformation.

The purpose of this study is to learn about data structures in relation to decisions about family travel being influenced by sellers (i.e. agents), spouses/partners, spouse, kids and friends/relatives (i.e. influencing units). Concern is with units affecting decisions about duration, budget, destinations, restaurants, daily tours and accommodation facilities.

Research is on survey data collected from British family groups visiting Turkey in the summer of 2007. Data allowing study of a range of matters were collected by haphazard but not necessarily random selection of respondents in an airport departure lounge.

The study identifies independent effects of influencing units on aspects of decision but also shows that demographic factors affect aspects of decision making such as the choice of destination. Methodologically, the study identifies questionnaire structure and analysis methodology to use in examining further research.

Results suggest how influencing units (e.g. self, spouse) affect aspects of decision making aiding practitioners in understanding influences on decisions.

The research opens a new area of investigation by implementing a questionnaire structure, developing analysis avenues and establishing results for further examination (i.e. to establish their generality).

The chapter seeks to reflect on the dynamics of the reconstruction of family farming and peasant agriculture in agrarian reform settlements (“assentamentos”) in Brazil, exploring the limits and potential of government food purchases from family farming, particularly the Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos – PAA), in the creation of alternative paths of rural development. The work analyzes the different strategies through which farmers and their organizations mobilize public policy instruments and market connections, expanding their room for maneuver and agency capacity. Research was conducted in the Baixo Sul Territory of the state of Bahia, focusing the heterogeneous web of social organizations involved in the implementation of the Food Acquisition Program in this setting.

Research ethics and integrity stipulates that research must be conducted with responsibility towards the research community and should benefit the intended population. This chapter will share insights from an ongoing research programme to reduce family conflict in the context of dementia care while discussing the accompanying ethical considerations. Research into dementia care has primarily focused on improving outcomes for the care dyad, leaving the influence and input of the wider family unit under investigated. Family conflict can detrimentally impact the quality of care provided and leave caregivers vulnerable to psychosocial difficulties. Family conflict occurs in the context of dementia care but there is little research on how to reduce, or prevent, such conflict occurring. In this research programme, a systematic review investigated the effectiveness of interventions that include the wider family unit to reduce family conflict; only one study was included which evidenced the lack of interventions in this area. A qualitative scoping review was then conducted to explore the lived experiences of caregiving families with experience of family conflict and reported solutions. It was found that conflict occurred due to factors including care decisions and role transitions which impacted relationships and affected care provision. Solutions to conflict were less often reported, indicating an important gap in the literature. Interviews with Alzheimer's Society staff and volunteers revealed that stigma and denial surrounding dementia were prevalent, and families were often reluctant to seek external help. This research programme is currently establishing public patient involvement (PPI) to develop the research methodology and interview questions for people with dementia (PWD) and their family caregivers to explore their lived experiences and potential solutions to family conflict. To conclude, this research programme will propose a family-focused intervention aimed at systemic family conflict for those caring for someone with dementia.