Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, City and Regional Planning

Research on travel behavior continues to be one of the most prominent areas in the transportation area. Planners and policymakers try to understand and manage travel behavior. Making and implementation of travel demand management (TDM) policies greatly rely on the understanding of the determinants of activity-travel patterns and travel demand. Among the activity-travel patterns, trip chaining and joint travel have received much research interest. Trip chaining is typically viewed as a home-based tour that connects multiple out-of-home activities. Joint travel is commonly defined as traveling with others. Travel demand is generally measured by trip generation and travel distances. Investigating different aspects of travel behavior helps us better understand the links between activity participation and mobility, and improves the evaluation of the transportation infrastructure investments and policies such as high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction programs. Several studies have regarded trip chaining, joint travel, trip generation, and travel distances as different dimensions of travel behavior to be examined in terms of various socio-demographics and urban form factors. However, limited work has been done to use activity-travel patterns as mediating variables and analyze how trip chaining and joint travel shape the resulting travel demand. Furthermore, relationships between travel behavior and urban form factors at out-of-home activity locations remain unclear. Based on the 2012 travel survey data from the Cleveland Metropolitan Area, this study first investigates the relationships among trip chaining, joint travel, home-based tour generation, and travel distances at three different levels: tour, individual, and household levels. Second, the influences of socio-demographics and urban form factors at tour origins and destinations on travel behavior are examined simultaneously. Lastly, while using trip chaining and joint travel a (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2007, English

This thesis explores seventeenth-century autobiographical records of small-scale travels and physical relocations in the work of Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, Anna Trapnel, and An Collins. Existing work dealing with women as travelers often focuses on international voyages, especially in the context of imperialism and tourism in the nineteenth century; however, the narratives I focus on here demonstrate that shifts in location need not have been as dramatic as overseas and/or international travel in order to effect transformations in gender identity. Indeed, their more “minor movements,” as I am terming them, while much less far-reaching in geographical scope, nonetheless enabled women to represent themselves as having been radically redefined both as individuals and as members of larger female communities.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, City and Regional Planning

Socio-demographics may represent constraints that shape different travel outcomes of individuals. This leads to studies with not only different findings on travel behavior, but also mixed and inconclusive conclusions on the effects of built environment on individuals' travel outcomes. There are gaps in many existing studies on the relationship between socio-demographics, built environment, and travel behavior, which need to be filled. In addition, the existing literature has not paid much attention to the varying impacts of neighborhood-built environment on travel outcomes across different socio-demographic groups. Many signs from U.S. Census Bureau and Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that the socio-demographics of the U.S. society are undergoing a process of significant changes. It is uncertain how these changes may affect travel behavior in the short term and the long term. In the face of this uncertainty, a key challenge for transportation planners and policymakers is to understand how socio-demographics affect individuals' travel outcomes and out-of-home activities. These major trends that affect future travel patterns will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. This dissertation quantitatively examines the links between socio-demographic constraints, neighborhood-built environments, and travel behavior. This dissertation comprises three essays. The first essay explores gender differences in commute behavior with a focus on two-earner households. The second essay examines the links between walkability and transit use, focusing on the differences between disabled individuals and others. The third essay explores how neighborhood walkability affects older adults' walking trips, considering different household income levels. The first essay utilizes the detailed individual-level data from 2001, 2009, and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS). The NHTS datasets provide information on travel by U.S. residen (open full item for complete abstract)

MS, Kent State University, 2021, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

The purpose of this study was to investigate the audience's resonance experience when watching travel vlogs and its influence on their behavioral intentions. The premise of this study was when the audience's inherent needs are being fulfilled, it would reform their behavioral intention. Three theoretical concepts including the theory of resonance, U&G theory, and the involvement theory were employed in this study. Data were collected from students at Kent State University and general consumers through Amazon MTurk (MTurk). Participants were asked to complete an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was conducted, and the results revealed that audiences' resonance experiences were significantly related with their continuance intention to watch travel vlogs and travel intention of presented destinations. Also, audiences' resonance experiences were positively related to their perceived involvement, followed by continuance intention to watch and travel intention.

PHD, Kent State University, 2019, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

High school choirs, bands, and orchestras regularly engage in travel experiences that take students to overnight destinations where they perform and function as tourists. This dissertation explores the benefits and the drawbacks of this practice. The research is intended to reveal what music educators believe to be the learning benefits of these endeavors, aggregated by musical and nonmusical learning. Inquiry in this study asked ensemble directors to weigh the opportunities and challenges of music trips, and to consider the impact they perceive that this practice can have on their music program. An additional aim of the study is to create a clearer depiction of what occurs during travel experiences. In order to explore these areas fully, a mixed methods design was employed. The first phase involved a national survey of 745 participants to obtain a broad perspective of music educator opinions regarding the complexities of school ensemble travel. Quantitative analysis informed the questions asked in the second phase of the research, with data from participant interviews, artifact collection, trip observation, and open-ended survey responses. Nine participants were purposefully chosen from the original 745 respondents to provide a national perspective that is inclusive of choir, orchestra, and band directors for the qualitative phase of study. Data were analyzed through the lens of theories of Kolb and Plog examining travel market research and experiential learning theory. Themes that emerged were centered around student bonding, recruitment and retention, issues of authenticity, value, and access. Most teacher participants felt that the travel opportunity has a high amount of value for their program, and for the students who can afford to access the trip. Teachers use travel for recruitment and retention, yet there is little data to show that trips can cause such a benefit. Results of the study can provide music educators with more detail a (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, East Asian Languages and Literatures

Over the past 30 years, the tourism industry in China has evolved from a fledgling state-run industry to become one of the shining stars of China's ongoing economic development. Travel agencies traditionally have had held a central role in China's tourism industry and have continually adapted and evolved to meet the needs of changing markets. The appearance of Ctrip, Elong and other online travel service providers beginning in 1999 marked the entrance of China's tourism industry into the Internet Age and was a catalyst for the adoption of E-marketing and E-commerce solutions in China. This trend has created a vast number of growth opportunities in China's tourism industry, while also bringing about many challenges for Chinese travel agencies. Through the analysis of several travel agencies in Chengdu, China, this paper examines the current state of Internet Tourism in China and explores the challenges facing Chinese travel agencies seeking to adopt an Internet tourism strategy.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2006, English

My dissertation, Strange Adventures, Profitable Observations: Travel Writing and the Citizen-Traveler, 1680-1780, explores the role of the traveler as it developed in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century travel writing. Prior to this period, the traveler remained an anonymous figure of convention, reporting on worlds rarely seen with either empirical authority or utopian embellishment. Beginning approximately with William Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World (1697), travel writing became less about what was seen as how it was seen, capturing the composite experience of a nation of travelers. By authenticating their travels through a reliable witness, the writers were able to use the outside world to “see” England and explore its social, moral and economic boundaries. The four chapters of my study chart the tempestuous course of contemporary travel, as well as the tenuous divide between experience and embellishment. From Dampier's prototypical buccaneer/adventurer to Fielding's ailing misanthrope, each traveler meditates on English identity while divorced from the customs and conventions of home. While some, such as Defoe, find a national mission of travel and empire, others, such as Fielding, see the possible breakdown of English society. Yet, read as a complete narrative, these works illustrate how travel writing became a truly national enterprise, contributing to the cultural mythology that fueled the age of empire.

Master of Science, University of Akron, 2008, Civil Engineering

Providing drivers with real-time, high-quality traveler information is becoming increasingly important as congestion continues to grow in cities across the United States. Studies have shown that not only is congestion increasing, but travel time reliability also is a growing problem. Travelers would like to have information about traffic condition or the extent of delay due to construction or incident. Since congestion is treated as a major factor influencing travel decisions, most of the large metropolitan areas are providing travel time information to motorists through dynamic message signs (DMS), 511 programs, the Internet, highway advisory radio, and other sources. Traffic condition is affected by current events and historical travel pattern. Today, real time data can be gathered from microwave radar, automatic vehicle tag matching, video detection, license plate matching, and most commonly, inductive loops. Loop detectors can be placed in each lane to provide volume, occupancy and local speed information. Although closely spaced loop detectors are helpful to system operation, operation of such a system imposes a significant economic burden and enormous pressure on system maintenance. In addition, with the proliferation of cell phone usage, loop detector data is no longer critical to incident detection. On the other hand, the effectiveness of using loop detector data to reliably estimate travel time has not been proved. In recent years, researchers discussed if the spacing of detectors could be extended and wondered about the effect of detector spacing. This topic is necessary and timely because of the widespread use of the loop detection system today. The focal point of the discussion is how to determine the appropriate detector spacing needed for different applications while maintaining the same level of data quality. This thesis aimed at studying different freeway travel time estimation methods and exploring impact of loop detector spacing on travel time est (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2024, EECS - System and Control Engineering

Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) has emerged as a promising technology for producing metal parts, offering reduced lead times and costs compared to traditional methods. However, achieving optimal process parameters in WAAM and accurately predicting bead height remain challenging due to complex interactions between input variables and output characteristics. This thesis addresses the challenge of developing a machine learning regression model to predict the average bead height of single deposited beads, crucial for building simple and complex shapes in WAAM. The research investigates the relationship between four critical input parameters - Voltage, Wire Feed Speed (WFS), Travel Speed, Contact Tip to Work Distance (CTWD) - and their influence on bead dimensions in WAAM. A comprehensive experimental setup is employed, utilizing a custom-built WAAM 3D metal printer equipped with a gantry system and controlled by a Duet 3 controller. Steel wire ER70s-6 with a diameter of 0.9mm is used for printing, producing single beads with heights ranging from 2.5mm to 3.55mm. A total of 248 experiments are performed using the Arc-One Machine at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) for the model training, which are then analyzed. A machine learning regression model is built using this dataset, with four inputs (Voltage, Travel Speed, Wire Feed Speed, Contact Tip to Work Distance) and two corresponding outputs (average bead height and variance of bead heights). Various analytical techniques were explored to predict the average bead height and its variance, leading to the adoption of the Gradient 18 Boosting regression model as the most effective approach. Two models, a forward model and an inverse model, were developed to predict WAAM parameters and outputs. The forward model predicts the average bead height and variance based on the input parameters (Voltage, Wire Feed Speed, Travel Speed, and Contact Tip to Work Distance), providing insights into how th (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Environment and Natural Resources

Building on the literature surrounding recreational fishing economic valuation techniques and angler behavioral analysis, this dissertation investigates how economic and demographic data can better represent angler behaviors, motivations, and economic contributions across diverse angler groups in Ohio. Through three empirical studies, this dissertation addresses key aspects of angler engagement: economic impact, gender-based differences, and avidity bias in online surveys while also identifying methodological techniques. The findings of this dissertation underscore the potential for targeted angler surveys and avidity-adjusted economic models to produce actionable data that fisheries managers can use to inform resource allocation and policy decisions. Each of the three chapters presents an empirical study that contributes to the understanding of angler behavior in Ohio. In Chapter 2, I apply a non-market valuation technique, the travel cost method to quantify the economic contributions of recreational fishing in Ohio, employing 15 negative binomial models to estimate consumer surplus across five different waterbodies, and ten fish species to conduct a comprehensive economic analysis of recreational fisheries in Ohio. This study illustrates the significant recreational value of fisheries in Ohio that demands for more specific, waterbody/location-based management strategies to support targeted management decisions by resource managers. Chapter 3 builds on the topic by examining gender-based differences in angler behaviors in Ohio. By analyzing responses collected through a balanced, stratified sampling design, this study reveals notable distinctions in the fishing motivations and spending patterns between male and female anglers, underscoring the importance of gender inclusive data in shaping recreational fishing management strategies. Insights from Chapter 3 highlight the substantial contributions of female anglers to Ohio's recreational fishing and underscore the ne (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2006, Graduate School

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2024, Economics

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in drastic decreases in global tourism, and Latin America, which has a relatively high reliance on the tourism economy, was especially affected in the immediate short run. In this paper, I look at the effects of tourism reliance on international border policy and the effects of border policy on two main forms of macroeconomic recovery. I find that countries in Latin America that were more reliant on tourism generally opened their borders more quickly, and that decreasing international travel restrictions is correlated with positive macroeconomic growth and GDP recovery. Moreover, I uncover evidence suggesting that a high reliance on tourism is positively correlated with recovery from Covid. I also find that decreasing international travel restrictions is correlated with a positive impact on employment. There was widespread concern that countries highly reliant on tourism would struggle to recover from Covid, but countries most reliant on tourism were quicker to open their borders, perhaps stimulating growth immediately following Covid. When testing for non-linear effects of border controls, I find evidence suggesting that optimal border controls may have existed just before the implementation of quarantining for new arrivals.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

The title of this dissertation, The Problems of Leisure in the Industrial-Era US, riffs on a phrase that became common amongst American academics in the 1970s: “the problem of leisure.” For the industrial-era American bourgeoisie, however, leisure wasn't a problem but many problems. The crystallization of leisure in its modern form—clearly defined, regularly recurring, and commercially exploitable periods of free time—created a host of fears and desires that, in turn, precipitated many different responses, including the two that I examine in this project: mid-nineteenth-century liberal efforts to control working-class uses of leisure time by “improving” working-class tastes, and the later efforts of modernists to distinguish their own uses of leisure from the purportedly more commercialized and degraded leisure practices of others, especially other within the middle class. The former efforts were spearheaded by William Ellery Channing, whose gospel of culture did two critical things. First, it insisted that culture, which Channing defined as the development of our God-given powers, required spiritual, as opposed to economic, forms of wealth. This argument helped to neutralize what I claim was the anti-capitalist potential of culture, the way it, more so than the older bourgeois conception of legitimate leisure (recreation), had the capacity to inspire a critique of the division of labor and of industrial capitalism more generally. Second, Channing's gospel posited the spread of “the means of culture” (“Self-Culture” 22)—in the forms of parks, picture galleries, lectures, and other publically provisioned, non-commercial forms of leisure—as the most effective solution to the amusement problem, the problem of working-class people consuming commercialized forms of pleasure that social reformers deemed morally degrading and socially disruptive. But my case studies of two other writers, Henry Thoreau and Ernest Hemingway, suggest that, as the demand for culturally san (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Geography

People's perceptions, experiences, and personal attributes influence their daily travel and mode choices. Existing accessibility measures, an estimate of people's potential ability to reach places, cannot capture these perceptual aspects of travel and its differences across individuals and groups, resulting in overestimation. Moreover, existing literature evaluates accessibility as either person-based (potential mobility of an individual) or place-based (potential mobility for a group residing over a large geographic space), with no specific guidelines for transitioning from one estimate to another. Although person-based estimates can effectively capture heterogeneity in travel perceptions, the findings cannot be converged for larger populations and applied in urban planning practices. On the other hand, place-based measures generalize the estimates for the overall population, assuming that the current travel environment provides equal access to all regardless of their socio-economic identities. Most importantly, both place-based and person-based measures are physicalist in nature and disregard the mobility barriers that travelers experience during their day-to-day travel as individuals or as part of their social cohorts. This dissertation develops a novel concept and method called inclusive accessibility that captures both physical and perceptual barriers of travel across individuals and socio-economic groups in evaluating their access to multimodal transportation systems. This study develops a systematic bottom-up approach that estimates inclusive accessibility for an individual first, aggregates the measure for socio-economic groups, and demonstrates the application of this concept in developing need-specific and equity-oriented infrastructure planning. We conceptualize inclusive accessibility as a subset of classic access considering hard constraints (physical space-time limitations of travel) and soft constraints (perceptions of safety comfort toward land us (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science (MS), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Applied Statistics (Math)

As noted by Stojanova et al. (2012) it is quite challenging to use a regression model on network data, especially when the predicted variables are node properties that have a correlation among themselves. This is a situation where a variable's value at one node is influenced by the values of other nodes with which it is connected. Research has shown that naive regression does not adequately account for community structure or the fact that the dependent variable serves as both a model outcome and a covariate. For this reason, a network regression model is necessary to address this gap. The aim of the model is to make up for the correlation between observations generated by the network connections, which will be managed by regulating the community structure of the modular network. By using clusters that have been identified by any single-membership community identification procedure applied to the observed network, a weighted least squares (WLS) approach will be used to train the model parameters using the R programming language. The effectiveness of the suggested model is evaluated through extensive simulations, and it is later used on real data. In applying the model to real data, we aim at estimating the joint influence of our baseline covariates and the network effect on the response variable, which is the number of cases of COVID-19 in different countries. The baseline covariates are each country's information on GDP, urban population, total population, and the network effect is the international air travel flow between countries. This analysis will cover the period January–April 2020, analyzing the months before and after the air travel ban. In our results, we find that in these initial months of COVID-19, the network effect had an overall significant effect on the spread of the virus, and the next covariate to be considered is the GDP. The flow of this research follows an introduction to the topic followed by four sec (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, Linguistics (Arts and Sciences)

Travel writing is one of the ways to communicate and discover other cultures. It essentially introduces the “Other'' and their culture through literary texts. My research is a stylistic analysis of Resala (922) by Ahmad Ibn Fadlan and Travels in Arabia (1889) by Bayard Taylor. The research examines how two main concepts, “othering” and “ideology,” are linguistically manifested in both texts. The research begins with closely reading the texts to identify major content themes: religion, death, sex, food, traditions, etc. Alongside this content analysis of said themes, instances of sense impressions: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste are recorded. Special attention is paid to the source of these sense impressions and the language used to describe them. The content themes and the sense impressions are analyzed for instantiations of othering and ideology. The use of pronouns, nouns, and adjectives marks othering. In the case of Ibn Fadlan, key instantiations of language used in the translated text are compared to the original Arabic text. The results show that Ibn Fadlan and Taylor use their linguistic choices to represent the “Other” negatively.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, City and Regional Planning

Promoting walking trips improves public health and supports sustainable development. Researchers in public health and transportation fields have successfully tested several hypotheses on various determinants and benefits of walking trips. Recently, the research attention has shifted from such hypothesis tests to specific estimations on inherent characteristics of main predictors of interest. This dissertation conducts an in-depth inquiry into intrinsic walking characteristics, their relationships to health, and two essential confounding variables that control individuals' daily routines: i.e., work status and the built environment. This dissertation includes three interrelated essays, focusing on the value of walking to improve public health. It relies on the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data sets. I use various categorical analysis methods to relate variables of interest to health status. This dissertation uses the same data and analogous methods to attain a consistent research design. The first essay examines the inherent walking characteristics and walking benefits on health outcomes. Previous studies have revealed that walking trips for different purposes have different patterns. The present study categorizes walking trip records with five trip purposes (working, shopping, recreational, other, and non-home-based walking) and examines their relations to self-assessed health outcomes. The results show that walking trips with different trip purposes have various effects on health outcomes, and the health benefits mainly come from home-based walking trips. This suggests that interventions for walkable environments should be targeted to home-based commute and recreational trips and encourage people within, to, and from their neighborhoods with a purpose. The second essay explores another intrinsic characteristic and determinant of walking trips: walking bouts and built environment densities. Previous studies argue that health outcomes can be i (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, American Culture Studies

The marketing of DNA ancestry tests plays a major role in circulating ideas about how the public should interpret DNA test results, the way DNA connects us to people around the world, and the connections between race, ethnicity, nationality, genetics, and ancestry. This thesis contributes to the literature on DNA ancestry testing marketing by examining themes not thoroughly explored in previous studies: ancestry travel and DNA tests as anti-racist tools. Through a textual analysis of Ancestry, 23andMe, and MyHeritage DNA television advertisements, I analyze how these advertisements represent travel based on one's DNA ancestry test, how populations and regions around the world are represented, how race, ethnicity, and nationality are discussed, and how the root causes of racism are defined. My analysis is informed by critiques of DNA tests made by scholars in ethnic studies, biology, anthropology, and science and technology studies who argue that by taking it as a given that race and ethnicity have meaning at a genetic level, genetic scientists participate in the geneticization of race. I argue that these advertisements represent ancestry travel as journeys of self-discovery where the traveler connects with others through consumption practices. The populations the traveler visits are represented without specificity and are shown in positions of service to the traveler. By promoting the idea that DNA tests are objective arbiters of belonging, these advertisements redefine race, ethnicity, and nationality as labels that describe one's genetic ancestry and remove the agency from communities to decide who is and is not a member of their community. These advertisements promote the idea that there is a genetic component to race and ethnicity and suggest that contemporary inequalities along racial and ethnic lines are a product of innate genetic difference as opposed to historical and political processes. Thus, these ads circulate ideas that echo early 20th century (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

The Kirkbride plan for American mental hospitals first took hold in the late 1840s and remained the most popular floor plan for insane asylums for the next forty years. Kirkbride asylums were considered vital, scientifically advanced centers of mental health treatment throughout the nineteenth century, but quickly became outdated, overcrowded, understaffed, and dilapidated. Today only about one-third of the original Kirkbride buildings constructed from the 1840s to the 1890s remain standing, but their impact on the national imagination is both enormous and permanent. This thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is a combination of memoir and literary journalism documenting the origins, lifespan, decline, and historic preservation of Kirkbride asylums around the continental United States, as well as the author's own experiences with bipolar disorder and psychiatric care.