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The seasonality in the behavior of travelers is something that goes back to the origin of the trips themselves. This seasonality is due to multiple factors, some easy to counteract and others difficult to solve. But, regardless of the causes, it is a phenomenon that generates significant negative impacts on society and the environment in which the phenomenon of tourist seasonality occurs. All tourist destinations have seasonality, but in some cases, it is very high and in others it has a minimal incidence. The objective of this chapter is to ponder the impacts and consequences of seasonality in regions with a strong tourism development, allowing to put into context the aspects of society impacted by this phenomenon and the positive implications that the reduction of seasonality would have. For this, an analysis of a theoretical model with two regions in opposite situations is carried out, raising the possible effects of a high seasonality. The cases of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands are also reviewed, as real examples of the regional typologies taken into consideration in the theoretical model. This seeks to ponder the problems attributable to seasonality. As a final reflection, the enormous typology of negative impacts generated and the need to continue analyzing the seasonality and its impacts are emphasized.

Theories of the business cycle can be classified into two main groups, exogenous and endogenous, according to the way they explain economic fluctuations – either as responses of the economy to factors that are external (exogenous shocks) or as upturns and downturns of the economic system internally generated (by endogenous factors). In endogenous theories, investment is generally a key variable to explain the dynamic status of the economy. This essay examines the role of investment in endogenous theories. Two contrasting views on how changes in investment and profitability push the economy towards expansion or contraction are represented by the insights of Kalecki, Keynes, Matthews and Minsky versus those of Marx and Mitchell. Hyman Minsky claimed that investment ‘calls the tune’ to indicate that investment is the only variable not determined by other variables, so that future profits, investment and the dynamic status of the economy are determined by current investment and investment in the near past. However, this hypothesis does not appear to be supported by available empirical data for 251 quarters of the US economy. Statistical evidence rather supports the hypothesis of causality in the direction of profits determining investment and, in this way, leading the economy towards boom or bust.

COVID-19 has changed the landscape within which we travel. Working from Home (WFH) in many countries has increased significantly, and while it was often forced on a society it has delivered some unintended positive consequences associated in particular with the levels of congestion on the roads and crowding on public transport. With a likelihood of some amount of WFH continuing as we move out of the active COVID-19 period, the question being asked is whether the post-COVID-19 period will return the pre-COVID-19 levels of traffic congestion and crowding. In many jurisdictions, there is a desire to avoid this circumstance and to use WFH as a policy lever that has appeal to employees, employers and government planning agencies in order to find ways of better managing future levels of congestion and crowding. This chapter uses the ongoing research and surveys we have been undertaking in Australia since March 2020 to track behavioural responses that impact on commuting and non-commuting travel, and to examine what the evidence tells us about opportunities into the future in many geographical settings to better manage congestion and crowding. This is linked to a desire by employers to maintain WFH where it makes sense as a way of not only supporting sustainability charters but also the growing interest in a commitment to a broader social licence. We discuss ways in which WFH can contribute to flattening peaks in travel; but also the plans that some public transport authorities are putting in place to ensure that crowding on public transport is mitigated as people increasingly return to using public transport. Whereas we might have thought that we now have plenty of public transport capacity, this may not be the case if we want to control crowding, and more capacity may be needed which could be a challenge for trains more than buses given track capacity limits. We conclude the chapter by summarising some of the positive benefits associated with WFH, and the implications not just for transport but for society more widely.

A Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) scheme represents a major transport demand management intervention which raises a levy on private non-domestic off street parking provided by employers to employees, regular business visitors and students. It therefore increases the average cost of commuting by car and stimulates a contraction in the supply of workplace parking places. Under UK legislation the revenue from such a scheme is hypothecated funding for further transport improvements. As such it is potentially an important mixed policy instrument available to transport authorities to tackle traffic congestion and create extra transport capacity by using the additional funding such a scheme provides. At present, in the United Kingdom, only Nottingham City Council has implemented such a scheme and thus an understanding of how that scheme was implemented, how it operates and the outcomes after a full year of operation are of importance to transport academics and other local authorities considering utilising a similar approach.

This chapter presents an overview of the WPL scheme in Nottingham. The legislation, implementation experience, monitoring framework and outcomes for this scheme after the first year of full operation are discussed by drawing on current literature, documentary evidence and monitoring data.

The Nottingham WPL scheme was fully implemented in April 2012. The gap between the provisions of the underpinning legislation and the functioning scheme has necessitated the formulation of policy in line with the spirit of the legislation. Acceptance by the business community and the public were further barriers to implementation which were mitigated by a consultation process and a Public Examination. However acceptance remains a concern until the scheme has been shown to meet its key objective of reducing congestion. To date there is no evidence that the scheme has had a negative impact on business investment and, while there is as yet no evidence traffic congestion has reduced, it is still early for such impacts to be identified especially as the majority of the associated public transport improvements are yet to be implemented. However the WPL has already raised £7 million in net revenue in its first year of operation which is hypothecated for public transport improvements which may help encourage inward investment and reduce car travel.

At present the Nottingham WPL scheme has only been operational for a short time and a limitation to the research presented here is that the major public transport improvements part funded by revenue hypothecated from the WPL are not yet in place. It will be necessary to wait at least a further 3 years before more definite conclusions as to the success of the WPL package can be drawn.

As the first of its kind in the United Kingdom or indeed in Europe, the WPL scheme in Nottingham provides a unique contribution to the literature, comparing and contrasting implementation and outcomes with those in Australia and Canada. Geographical and cultural differences between the United Kingdom and these countries mean that conclusions drawn concerning existing schemes in other continents are not necessarily transferable to the United Kingdom. This chapter provides evidence in a UK framework to assess if the approach could be suitably applied more widely.

At its best, participation observation (PO) includes the researcher living inside a formal or informal organization long enough to actually observe first-hand how the organization makes sense of its environment, frames problems and opportunities, plans and performs actions, evaluates outcomes, rewards and punishes its members, and celebrates and commiserates sacred, climatic, and/or exceptional events. The core feature of PO is being there — the researcher's presence in the same context as participants as events happen and not relying mostly on participants retrospections about what happened and the causes and consequences of what happened. In some studies PO data collection occurs unobtrusively — the researcher does not inform the organizations’ participants that she is conducting a study of their thinking and behavior — for example, in The Tearoom Trade (Humphreys, 1970) the researcher becomes a “watch queen” (lookout watching for police) in a men's room in park while others engage in homosexual acts; in The Informant (Eichenwald, 2000) an executive in an international manufacturing firm becomes an undercover researcher (with hidden cameras and listening devices) to collect data showing his colleagues planning and doing illegal price-fixing deals with executives in other firms. In most studies PO data collection is obtrusive with the organizations’ members knowing that a researcher is present for the purposes of observing, describing, and explaining what is occurring in the organization — for example, in Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead, 1943) the American researcher lived among the natives in the south Pacific island to describe rituals relating to the transformation of child to adult; in The Used Car Game (Browne, 1976) the researcher directly observed interactions of salesmen, customers, and sales managers for seven-to-ten hours a day for 15 months with all participants knowing that the researcher was “being there” to collect data to describe and understand their thinking and behavior. The intent for this chapter is not to present a full review of the PO literature; the focus here is to illustrate an obtrusive PO study in a formal organizational context in-depth. The main goals include (1) illustrating doing PO and (2) describing the value of PO research. This chapter serves to introduce the reader to relevant organizational PO literature and provides details of applying participant observation to the study of organizational behavior. The study applies an ethnographic approach to develop flow diagrams of the information processes and decision-making stages of corporate and plant executives in developing corporate purchasing agreements with suppliers. Participant observations of the processes to develop corporate purchasing agreements were conducted along with extensive personal interviews of plant buyers at seven plant locations of Epsilon Corporation — a multinational electronics firm with headquarter offices in New York City. The results indicate that valid and useful descriptions are possible of the information processes and decisions actually used to produce corporate purchasing agreements. Several diagnostic comments are provided to each of the four phases in the processes used to develop corporate purchasing agreements. A template for applying participant observation methods in case study research concludes the chapter.