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This chapter investigates the impacts of households’ residential self-selection, parents’ perceptions and travel patterns on their children’s daily travel mode shares, among single parent households.

To capture the complexity of the relationships between parent and children daily travel mode choices, an integrated model structure is introduced and the model estimated with simultaneous equation modelling.

The results show that, beside the daily activity-travel engagements of the parent, both parent’s perceptions and his/her residential self-selection reasons play significant roles in influencing their children daily travel mode shares. The parent’s perceptions play more significant roles in influencing children’s travel modes shares, whilst the residential self-selection reasons have more significant influence on the parent’s travel mode choice.

The finding of this study reveals a fact that wherever the children live, their travel behaviour tend to be ‘neutral’ and open to influence by their parents throughout their childhood.

This study adds to our understanding of the interactions between parents’ attitudes and behaviours with their children’s travel patterns. This study focuses on single parent households, on which there is very little literature.

The challenge for drug and health promotion services is to keep up‐to‐date with the dynamics of drug use patterns and trends both nationally and within certain groups (Kilpatrick, 2000). The traveller community present with lower but similar levels and patterns of drug use than the general population, but are particularly vulnerable to early onset of drug use and problematic substance use relating to their life circumstances. Drug use in the traveller community is facilitated and mediated by a combination of risk and resilience factors, which include lack of education, unemployment, comprised health and poor housing conditions.The research aimed to provide an explorative account of the issue of drug use in the traveller community and consisted of focus groups (N=12) of travellers (N=57) with a gender balance (47/53%) based on self‐selection and volunteerism. The focus groups (4‐5 individuals) were predominantly peer‐accompanied where a traveller guided the facilitation of the traveller focus groups and were also gender based. The focus groups incorporated the following key themes relating to the travellers and drug use; traveller culture and drug use, drug availability and dealing, gender differences in drug use, types of drugs used, reasons for drug use, levels of drug related knowledge, attitude to drug use, drug taking contexts and patterns, problematic drug use in the traveller community, drug awareness, perceptions of risk and experiences of drug treatment and community services.The travellers indicated increased drug availability in recent years. Some members of their community were dealing in and using drugs, as a result of unemployment, lack of education, depression, and increasing contact with the settled community. This has lead to a fragmentation of traveller culture. Traveller men are at heightened risk of substance dependency in terms of increased contact with drugs such as cocaine, speed, hash and ecstasy. In contrast, traveller women reported prescription medication abuse. The travellers described a fear of problematic drug use within their communities coupled with concern in terms of discriminatory experiences with health and drug services, lack of awareness of current service provision and the lack of culturally appropriate drug education material and addiction counseling.

The Education Reform Act and, in particular, the Local Management of Schools will demand different skills, understanding and differing roles of senior management in educational establishments. This text draws on written assignments and experience of teachers and headteachers who piloted an MBA programme, designed specifically for senior teachers. Topics such as customers, product, price, promotion and the notion of teachers as a salesforce are unfamiliar to educators. They draw attention to the kind of strategic planning which will take place in schools as they take over responsibility for delegated budgets. All of this is new territory for the majority of state schools and this collection hopefully provides a useful resource.

This research aims to analyse the housing demand in northern France with respect to socio-demographic variables and the distance between the residence and the workplace.

Econometrics with discrete choice models are used to study the three main dimensional choices of housing demand: tenure, type and location. A contribution is to use a heteroscedastic logit model where the variance of the error term is allowed to differ over alternatives and to capture in particular the heterogeneity of tastes. As a matter of fact, household characteristics are very likely to influence the magnitude of the scale parameter in the choice of housing alternatives and then influencing the results if it is not taken into account. Applications for housing demand are nearly non-existent. This paper fills this gap.

Econometric estimation confirms that residential choices are influenced by age, income and size of the household, as well as by the rent-to-income ratio. An increase in any of these variables decreases the probability of choices of all the alternatives other than the most often chosen alternative (which is for this application house ownership in the suburb). Moreover, the distance to work systematically influences the housing choice for single-parent families and two-earner households. Additionally, preferences are found to significantly differ between local housing markets, specifically between Lille (a large agglomeration and capital city of the North area) and Dunkerque (an industrialised area). The geographical areas are defined based on INSEE employment zones (“zones d’emplois”).

This research has been performed for the north of France and may not hold for other areas even though the methodology can be replicated and the mechanisms at play are quite similar elsewhere.

An important conclusion for sustainable development is the importance to improve city centre amenities relative to those of the suburb or to increase the services associated with high-density dwelling because clearly the most desired alternative remains a house in the suburb. The housing market in the Dunkerque area has some special features characterised by a strong industrial landscape (with port and heavy-duty industrial activities). In this context, amenities provided by the city centre offset the strong attraction of a house in the suburb.

This research shows that households with similar characteristics tend to prefer the same type of real estate property. Therefore, to avoid social segregation, it is important that housing supply respond to different household preferences and needs in the different segments of the housing market. Moreover, the housing supply should take into account the specificities of the geographical areas (both in terms of population who may have a different profile) and in terms of amenities.

This research is one of the very few conducted ones on discrete housing choices in France (with the notable exception of De Palma et al., 2007 for the choice of location). Three simultaneous choices are considered: tenure (including social housing which is almost always ignored), type of building and location. The authors have shown that it is important to take into account the heterogeneity of the preferences in the econometric model with a heteroscedastic logit model.

Past research has largely portrayed job choice as a relatively rational and goal‐directed behavior where applicants make decisions contingent on organizational recruitment activities, or evaluations of job and organizational attributes. Research now informs us that job choice decisions may also be based on social comparisons and social influence. The purpose of this paper is to add to this body of knowledge by examining reasons why social influence is a key factor in job choice decisions of relatively young job seekers.

The study is based on in‐depth interview data from graduating seniors at an elite business school in India.

Respondents did not see themselves as acting based on social influence as much as they perceived others around them to be. Reasons they noted for others’ socially influenced job choice decisions were: peers and seniors are seen as more accessible and trustworthy than organizations; organizations do not share all and/or objective data, driving job seekers to other sources; job seekers are clueless and hence follow a “smart” herd; and job seekers make decisions for social status signaling. Respondents pointed to socially influenced job choices as being rational behaviors under certain conditions.

Generalizability of findings may be limited to young job seekers or to the Indian context, and the authors encourage replication. The authors also acknowledge the importance of individual difference variables in job choice decisions, a factor not considered in the present research.

Given that job seekers rally around others’ notion of an attractive job or an organization, the paper outlines several implications for managerial practice.

This study, in a yet unexamined cultural context, points to the simultaneous and combined importance of normative and informational social determinants of job choice, bias blind spots in one's own job choice perceptions and decisions, gender specific socialization influences on job choices, and the notion of job fit in terms of fitment with expectations of important reference groups.

This study explores whether and how Internet usage improves the subjective health of middle-aged and older adults by analyzing the mediating role of social engagement and heterogeneity of different living arrangements.

Based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method is adopted to explore the relationship between Internet usage and the subjective health of middle-aged and older adults. Propensity score matching method (PSM) is used to alleviate self-selection bias in the samples. The bootstrap method is adopted to test the mediating role of social engagement, and generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) is employed to resolve endogeneity. A permutation test is adopted to examine the heterogeneous effects of Internet usage on different living arrangements.

Internet access can help relieve depression among middle-aged and older adults and enhance their self-rated health, leading to perceived changes in health status. However, Internet usage is not directly associated with health satisfaction among middle-aged and older adults. Nevertheless, Internet usage can enhance middle-aged and older adults' subjective health by facilitating social engagement and significantly influences middle-aged and older adults living with their children.

This study reveals the underlying role of Internet usage among older adults and provides insights for governments and families to help middle-aged and older adults actively adapt to a digital society and improve their health.

Work–family balance is important for working parents, their children, and their family functioning. However, little research has considered how one’s sense of work–family balance may influence parenting behavior. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether perceived work–family balance of fathers of infants predicts engagement behaviors and whether stress mediates this relationship. The sample (n = 64) completed a phone survey, and data analysis consisted of linear regression tests and path analysis models for mediation. Perceived work–family balance did not significantly predict overall father engagement, but did predict fathers telling stories to their infant more often (B = 0.91, t(55) = 2.22, p < 0.05) and dressing their infant more often (B = 0.70, t(55) = 2.05, p < 0.05). Although perceived work–family balance was found to have a significant negative effect on father stress (r = –0.48, p < 0.001), stress did not mediate the relationship between perceived work–family balance and the two engagement behaviors. Greater perceived work–family balance may encourage engagement in behaviors above and beyond the stereotypical fathering behaviors (e.g., playing) and basic caregiving behaviors (e.g., changing diapers). Limitations include a small sample size, cross-sectional nature of the data, and self-report measures. It is recommended future studies use longitudinal designs, larger samples that differ in family type, and include mothers. This study provides preliminary evidence that one’s perceived work–family balance may influence parenting behaviors; thus, workplace policies that increase work–family balance, through greater job flexibility, for example, could promote positive family outcomes and reduce stress.

The family has the potential to be a breeding ground for entrepreneurs and may be key place where the entrepreneurial spirit is ignited. However, to date there has been little empirical research on how parents may influence their children's subsequent decision to start a new venture.

This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate, via in‐depth semi‐structured interviews, the experiences of 50 entrepreneurs (25 men and 25 women).

Parents influenced participants' decision to create a new venture in a number of ways and two key gender differences were noted in this parental influence. The first related to how the participants were influenced differently by their mothers and fathers, with fathers playing the primary role in the new venture creation decision. The second was differences between how the women and men participants described the ways they were influenced by their parents. Many women entrepreneurs looked to their parents for advice, support and encouragement, while some men desired independence from their parents (primarily fathers) or were trying to compete with them.

Limitations exist due to the sample size and the complexity of motivations for starting a new venture. This study should be followed by more extensive research, addressing the further research questions and directions that are posed.

This empirical study contributes to the literature by enhancing our limited understanding of how parents influence the decision to start a new venture.

Theoretical assumptions for explaining travel behaviour changes are frequently limited to disciplinary boundaries. By combining the occurrence of key events with attitudinal dimensions in the ROA model and, furthermore, drawing on the model of cognitive dissonance, an integrated theoretical framework is presented.

We review several streams of research in different fields of travel behaviour research and develop a theoretical framework for guiding future empirical work on travel behaviour research.

The theoretical framework proposes that due to a key event a window of opportunity opens for behavioural change and adaptation processes of attitudes and behaviour.

Further empirical research will have to show the validity and usefulness of the theoretical framework developed. A panel data analysis is proposed with attitudinal variables before and after a certain key event.