RCAAP Repository

At-risk families live under circumstances that hinder their parenting competences, compromising their ability to fulfill their children’s needs appropriately. The complex and multiple-source nature of the adversities that they endure makes family preservation interventions challenging. Because their efficacy largely depends on the extent to which interventions fit participants’ needs and characteristics, the aims of this study were to draw the sociodemographic (individual, family, economic, labor, and child-related variables) and psychosocial profile (negative life events, parenting stress, and psychological distress symptomatology) of Spanish and Portuguese family preservation users while testing the inter-country differences. The results showed that the majority of participants had a low educational level, were unemployed, and were poor. Spanish and Portuguese participants had suffered an average of 5 and 4 negative life events over the past 3 years, respectively, with a high emotional impact. The most common were labor precariousness and economic hardship. Clinical levels of parenting stress were found in 48.1% of the Spanish participants and 39.1% of the Portuguese participants. An important proportion of the participants had clinical levels of psychological distress (Spain = 71.9%; Portugal = 45.8%), indicating the presence of mental health problems. Families’ support needs are discussed and guidelines for interventions aimed at improving parents’ and children’s well-being are outlined.

Promoting creativity and entrepreneurship has been identified as being essential for the development of countries; therefore, it is crucial to implement entrepreneurship educational training projects. Based on this assumption, the Entrepreneurship in the School Program was design and implemented with 281 students and 7 teachers. The results of its development show that participation in this program successfully developed the participants’ creativity, so it was considered appropriate to examine the activity of each pupil enterprise more closely. Through this analysis we found that all the pupil enterprises achieved the project’s objectives and some progressed even further. In fact, due to their dynamism and proactivity, some pupil enterprises carried out strategies that allowed them to maximize their profit margin. The total profit obtained by the pupil enterprises was about €3,400, of which €739.90 were achieved by a single company. On the other hand, the pupil enterprises spent about €10,000 on products from their 39 local suppliers.

The goal of this paper is to contribute to identify a set of resources and tourism products, which can enhance the development and sustainability of tourism in the low density municipality of Boticas, located in the north-east of Portugal. Therefore, this paper tries to: i) produce a first analysis of the tourism potential of the municipality of Boticas; and ii) identify different perceptions of different stakeholders regarding the tourism potential of Boticas. To this end, the content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2014 to local and regional social and political stakeholders were used. Likewise, in 2015 two focus groups were conducted with main local stakeholders. The results highlight three main facts: first, there are unexplored tourism resources with potential to attract certain niches of tourist demand; second, the region has been investing in the diversification of its supply of leisure and recreational activities, as well as available tourism equipment; and third, the region is facing serious difficulties in creating a local and regional stakeholder network in order to provide an integrated promotion of tourism. We conclude by identifying few policy recommendations on development issues for the municipality of Boticas or other rural areas presenting similar constraints.

Framed by the theoretical context concerning cooperation between tourism agents, the present paper aims to contribute for better understanding South Alentejo tourism agents’ perceptions on the areas in which they can cooperate for promoting development and competitiveness in the region. Furthermore, the paper also looks at the tourist agents’ perception on role that the dynamics of cultural resources play in promotion of development and competitiveness in the region. This paper reports results from a case study conducted in the frame of the thesis developed as requirement to get the PhD in Tourism. Data was gathered by a questionnaire developed for the study from a sample of tourism agents working in the public, private business and associative (non lucrative) sectors. The study results has indicated that valuation of the existing culture, integrated development of tourism resources and products and organization of promotional activities are the areas considered more relevant for the tourism agents to cooperate among them. In particular, leaders of different sectors agree with the need to cooperate focusing on the valorisation of local and regional cultural resources. This is important because the South Alentejo region has excellent cultural resources that, if strategically used, can provide a major differentiating factor.

Tourism is the leading economic sector in most islands and for that reason market trends are closely monitored due to the huge impacts of relatively minor changes in the demand patterns. An interesting line of research regarding the analysis of market trends concerns the examination of time series to get an historical overview of the data patterns. The modelling of demand patterns is obviously dependent on data availability, and the measurement of changes in demand patterns is quite often focused on a few decades. In this paper, we use long-term time-series data to analyse the evolution of the main markets in Madeira, by country of origin, in order to re-examine the Butler life cycle model, based on data available from 1946 onwards. This study is an opportunity to document the historical development of the industry in Madeira and to introduce the discussion about the rejuvenation of a mature destination. Tourism development in Madeira has experienced rapid growth until the late 90s, as one of the leading destinations in the European context. However, annual growth rates are not within acceptable ranges, which lead policy-makers and experts to recommend a thoughtfully assessment of the industry prospects.

The present study aimed to evaluate the understanding of the touristic value of Portuguese overseas monuments during Estado Novo, having as case-study the then colony of Angola between 1959 and 1974, years marked by the creation of the Information and Tourism Centre and the fall of the regime. Thus, considering the reality of the metropolis, we aimed to identify and analyse the evolution of tourism in this territory, as well the understanding and use of historic monuments by a nationalist regime as points of touristic interest and legitimisers of the national colonialism. We argue that during two different but totally complementary moments devoted to the relation between tourism and historic monuments of Angola, there was a real understanding of their touristic value. Besides that we claim that the believers of the touristic value of those monuments were very often advocates of the preservation or restoration of their pristine characteristics, an idea that we can affiliate to the thought of António Ferro to whom the success of tourism was extremely dependent on preserving and emphasizing the picturesque and idiosyncratic characteristics of those tourist destinations. To achieve our goals we have identified and analysed some tourism-related periodicals, thematic studies and legislation.

Attractive public spaces are crucial for tourism. After all, most tourists that visit a city, experience it by foot and increasingly by bicycle. Public spaces have to meet a few minimum requirements. If not, tourists will feel uncomfortable. For instance; a lot of rubbish and graffiti, worn out and damaged street furniture can cause a feeling of unsafety. Attractive public spaces are the ones that invite tourists to stay a bit longer than strictly necessary and sit down and relax. Some of these spaces are quit and green, others more vibrant, well dimensioned and furbished. In this paper I describe a method for defining and measuring the quality of public space and also for predicting the conclusion tourists may draw based on this; “will I revisit this place or not ?” In some cities inhabitants, local shop owners and local institutions voluntarily take the initiative to upgrade the quality of public spaces or even act as ‘city hosts’ to welcome visitors. These kinds of civic participation help to provide the unique experience many tourists are looking for.

This study examines patterns of order and structure in street networks and its relationships with spatial life of two urban neighborhoods (housing estates). It explores the concepts of “tree” and “semi-lattice” as two different ways of looking and thinking about the structure of cities, each one generating a different form of life and community place (Alexander, 1965). The authors propose a configurational analysis of street networks of two urban plans designed according to different city ideologies and historical background. Based on space syntax methodology the street network was represented both as convex spaces and axial lines as nodes of a graph. The network was then analyzed in terms of the mathematical properties of the graph. The objective was to address a comparative study of structural properties of the urban street networks in order to speculate some implications on social life of each neighborhood. Syntactic measures have shown that conceptual designs have different spatial and social patterns both at global and local scales. It was corroborated that the difference between the characteristics of topological properties which reflects the mathematical principle of tree and semi-lattice is responsible for the different character of public life we found in each urban area.

In the last decade, the European Union has approved and launched measures to promote Intercultural Cities, Diversity Management and the Integration of Immigrants in Europe. Despite this European framework, we are now at a crossroads between solidarity and humanity and an important restriction of refugees’ human rights across Europe. In this paper, we try to compare the international approaches to the refugee crisis in different countries in Europe. Data were extracted from Twitter. We obtained thousands of tweets about “refugees”, using this word in six different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish) from end November 2015 to 27 February 2016 as search strings. We performed a discourse analysis, focusing on the comparison between countries. A qualitative analysis with the help of both Atlas ti and T-Lab software was performed. The results showed a diversity of current discourses in Europe about refugees and the refugee crisis (from solidary to xenophobic ones), some of them very characteristic of particular countries or of local events experienced in these countries. These results allow us to reinforce the idea that we are at a key moment for the future development of Europe, especially regarding aspects concerning living together in cities and villages.

Today’s competition is tough, due especially to emergent information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) support. Managers must continuously cope with challenges to keep their businesses innovative and sustainable. They take most of their decisions based on considerable amounts of data. An important step is to employ strategies based on open innovation: partnerships with people who know the technology better, or how to conceive or run a certain activity, product or process. All these issues and potentials have been explored and supported in the so-called innovation accelerators or ‘boot camps’, either for launching new businesses or supporting their IT/IS platforms. These initiatives are based on a dynamic entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary ambience, which introduces the candidates (mainly start-ups, spin-offs) to consultants, investors, managers, designers, innovators, etc. This study determines where Portugal stands in terms of innovation in general, open innovation (cooperative or firm-based), venture capital adherence and innovation sustainability. It then discusses the results of some Portuguese innovation accelerators (such as ‘Beta-i’ and ‘Cria’) from the point of view of target sectors/markets and the sustainability of accelerated firms over time.

Advances in information technologies have led to the storage of large amounts of data by organizations. An analysis of this data through data mining techniques is important support for decision-making. This article aims to apply techniques for the classification of the beneficiaries of an operator of health insurance in Brazil, according to their financial sustainability, via their sociodemographic characteristics and their healthcare cost history. Beneficiaries with a loss ratio greater than 0.75 are considered unsustainable. The sample consists of 38875 beneficiaries, active between the years 2011 and 2013. The techniques used were logistic regression and classification trees. The performance of the models was compared to accuracy rates and receiver operating Characteristic curves (ROC curves), by determining the area under the curves (AUC). The results showed that most of the sample is composed of sustainable beneficiaries. The logistic regression model had a 68.43% accuracy rate with AUC of 0.7501, and the classification tree obtained 67.76% accuracy and an AUC of 0.6855. Age and the type of plan were the most important variables related to the profile of the beneficiaries in the classification. The highlights with regard to healthcare costs were annual spending on consultation and on dental insurance.

This paper is focused on the concept of business ecosystem, which is a relatively new field in management research. Furthermore, there is a second emerging research approach in social sciences named “complexity theory” that considers ecosystems, and business ecosystems, as complex adaptive systems. The main aim is to connect both by bringing new insights under the basis of a smart vision of tourism. In particular, we propose a theoretical discussion of the aforementioned concepts by applying them to the specific context of Industrial Heritage Management. The Industrial Heritage (i.e.: mining sites, old infrastructures, museums and historic places related to industry…) is chosen because it appears well representative: it is characterized by a complex and dynamic structure which consists of an interconnected population of stakeholders and several tangible and intangible resources to recover, organize and then manage. It follows that the management of this ecosystem should take into account many factors simultaneously. Based also on the emergent initiative of Smart Tourism, a conceptual model is presented, in which each component is explained and the focal complexity aspects appearing in this business ecosystem are highlighted. We conclude with a set of propositions for recommending new paths for future studies.

The Algarve is a mature destination in the south of Portugal and is mainly well-known for its offerings of sun and sea. In addition to strong seasonal changes, the region also faces strong competition from other nearby destinations, which has affected its ability to better attract tourists. Regional stakeholders have recognized the need to diversify the tourist experience, and a strong effort has been dedicated to the development of complementary tourist products, with special attention to eco-tourism. The present study uses data from a survey of tourists who visited the Algarve in December 2010 (low season) to determine the extent to which tourists visiting the region would actively search for nature-related activities, and the profile of these individuals. In particular, the study aims to understand whether these tourists share environmentally friendly values or, instead, have chosen the Algarve based on its attributes of traditional appealing climatic conditions and beaches. Depending on whether nature-based tourism in the Algarve is a fact or a myth, strategies for repositioning the destination can be adapted, new tourist products can be proposed and communication campaigns may need to be rethought.

Central theme in society these days, the diet went through several phases during the evolution of the human being. Currently human’s advanced civilizational, deplete resources, develops forms of reproduction and rapid growth of animals, genetically alter plants to make them more resilient and artificially prolongs life. All these factors lead to an overload in nature and revolve to a group of environmentalists and animal rights. Sustainability is part of everyday life of political and social discourse as the fundamental way to our relationship with the environment. Sustainable food systems are those that are able to survive over time, promoting sustainable use of resources and a balance in the economic, social and environmental aspects. Changing diet to the Mediterranean Diet would bring benefits: on the health level, with better nutrition and increased use of some processed products; economic, by encouraging the consumption of local and national production of products; social, with the creation of jobs in agriculture; and environmental, using organic production and the reduction of transportation needs. The Mediterranean Diet encourages a more balanced and healthy eating style, with great positive impact on the environment. With the globalization phenomena is was gradually lost, but is now being revived due to the awakening to health and ecological problems.

Citrus are native to southeastern Asia, but are present in the Mediterranean basin for centuries. This group of species has reached great importance in some of the Mediterranean countries and, in the case of orange, mandarin and lemon trees, they found here soil and climatic conditions which allows them to achieve a high level of fruit quality, even better than in the regions where they came from. Citrus fruits are present in the diet of the peoples living on the Mediterranean basin, at least since the time of the Roman Empire. In the 20th century they became the main crop in various agricultural areas of the Mediterranean, playing an important role in the landscape, in the diet of the overall population, and also in international trade. They are present in the gardens of palaces and monasteries, but also in the courtyards and orchards of the poorest families. Their fruits are not only a refreshing dessert, but also a condiment, or even a major component of many dishes. Citrus fruits have well-documented nutritional and health benefits. They can actually help prevent and cure some diseases and, above all, they are essential in a balanced and tasty diet.

In this paper it is demonstrated that open-source GIS software may contribute to allow non-profit organizations and local food retailers to strategically locate food shops. This impacts realtors and other businesses as well. Areas are covered and clients served avoiding food deserts and increasing security in the health sector (Barnes et al., 2016). The methodology demonstrates how mapping may be processed, allowing people to get a good understanding of the food distribution. Also, decision making at corporate level improves due to better connecting to local production and organic retailers and to better reach out to local consumption. A major consequence of this exercise is likewise to educate users on the negative impacts of food deserts on health and improve awareness supporting the design and integration of sustainable and healthy lifestyles (Vaz and Zhao, 2016). This novel proposal that combines spatial and locational data visualization (McIver, 2003), as well as sharing of information of healthy food retailers within the urban nexus (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010) engage communities actively to participate in the integration of new consumer behaviours and make them clearly expressed.

Results show that the worldwide competitiveness of the low-tech Salmon Industry in the Los Lagos region has not developed the principal factors permitting the consolidation of a Regional Innovation System (RIS). On the contrary we identify important gaps in terms of the regional conditions such as “networking”, “knowledge creation and diffusion”, among others, capable to stimulate the innovation behavior of salmon firms.

Food reminds us every day that we are a part of nature and with our daily choices it is we who preserve or not biodiversity and species. It is we who promote or not the production of more health and fresh food. In an increasingly informed society about the benefits of having a balanced diet, meals started to be seen as tasting flavours and aromas, a moment of well-being, where the origin, production and method of preparation of agricultural products play a leading role. Because the market has changed, it is no longer anonymous it became personalized and essentially motivated by what you can enjoy, which implies a willingness to participate and build its own experience. In general, the companies believe that design collaboration is an advantage but if they do not have means of measuring design’s cost/benefit, it will not be easy to understand design as an investment that brings value to business. The purpose of this research is to draw the attention for the importance of design management, by evaluating the return of design’s investment in the Portuguese agro-food industry and by developing a model that allows them to assess the return on investment in design.

The study and academic training of citizens in issues of forest and protected areas shapes the environmentally friendly attitudes to graduates. Attitudes include public beliefs and assessments of ecosystem management activities. In education it is necessary to redefine our values ​​and ethical norms and obligations towards man and the natural environment. The field of study and gender have an impact on environmental attitudes and behaviors of students. The protected areas are subject to ample scientific research and have educational interest. The purpose of this research is to measure attitudes on Protected Areas (PA) of Forestry students in Greece. The questionnaire used as a research tool, based on the scale FVS (Forest Values ​​Scale) which is suitably adapted for PA. Based on the results of this survey it was found that the majority of the sampled students showing more biocentric attitude to Protected Areas which is largely due to the subject of their studies. With regard to gender on the positive attitude towards the environment was found to be statistically significant in favor of women. Students largely support positive environmental attitudes and found that there is a relationship between the level of knowledge about protected areas and the attitude towards the environment.

In this paper an empirical assessment of injury patterns is supplied as an example of social endurance - resilient societies can be built by means of geographical analysis of injury data, providing better support for decision makers regarding urban safety. Preventing road traffic collisions with vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, could help mitigate significant loses and improve infrastructure planning. In this sense, the geographical aspects of injury prevention are of clear spatial analog, and should be tested regarding the carrying capacity of urban areas as well as vulnerability for growing urban regions. The application of open source development tool for spatial analysis research in health studies is addressed. The study aims to create a framework of available open source tools through Python that enable better decision making through a systematic review of existing tools for spatial analysis. Methodologically, spatial autocorrelation indices are tested as well as influential variables are brought forward to establish a better understanding of the incremental concern of injuries in rural areas, in general, and in the Greater Toronto Area, in particular. By using Python Library for Spatial Analysis (PySAL), an integrative vision of assessing a growing epidemiological concern of injuries in Toronto, one of North America’s fastest growing economic metropolises is offered. In this sense, this study promotes the use of PySAL and open source toolsets for integrating spatial analysis and geographical analysis for health practitioners. The novelty and capabilities of open source tools through methods such as PySAL allow for a cost efficiency as well as give planning an easier methodological toolbox for advances spatial modelling techniques.