Willingness to pay in Taman Negara: a contingent valuation method

The main attractions of national parks include its scenic beauty, rainforest and wildlife. An appropriate pricing policy in national parks can be used as a tool to not only achieve successful and sustainable management of national parks, but also provide quality products and services at fair prices to visitors. The central question is how to establish an appropriate pricing policy for national parks? Park resources such as scenic beauty and conservation of endangered species are not traded in the market place like many other commodities so they require the use of non-market valuation techniques. One of the methods commonly used for non-market valuation is the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). With Willingness to Pay (WTP) as the elicitation method, CVM was used to determine the appropriate pricing policy for the sustainable management of Taman Negara National Park (TNNP). Respondents were asked the maximum amount they were willing to pay for the nonmarket goods available at TNNP. This provided an estimate of the mean values for setting the price for licenses and permits. In addition to estimating the mean values, the study also identifies socio-demography, visit and paying characteristics of visitors. The study employs 180 visitors to TNNP, who participated in closed-ended questionnaires through interviews. Findings of the study reveal that visitors were willing to pay more for entrance fees. This study presents implications to policy makers to guide future management of TNNP. Results of this study facilitate in establishing an efficient and realistic pricing policy for TNNP

Pricing Of Protected Areas.

Abstract is not availabl

The influence of psychological determinants and retirement planning on perceived bridge employment: examining the moderating effect of job satisfaction among employees in Sabah / Zaiton Osman

Retirement forces older workers to disconnect with their previous behavioural patterns and economic position. Transition and adjustment from working life to retirement places great psychological pressure and financial distress on older workers, especially those with dependent children. Bridge employment provides a solution for older workers to continue working after retirement while transitioning into retirement slowly and smoothly. As losing the job role has a significant impact on the psychological well-being of retirees, engaging in bridge employment helps to fulfil the important psychological functions of older workers by providing an adaptive style to retirement. This study investigates the influence of psychological determinants (future time perspective, retirement goal clarity and financial knowledge) and retirement planning on bridge employment. Moreover this study also examines the moderating effect of job satisfaction among employees in Sabah. Retiring individuals must adapt and make major life transitions. A self-administered questionnaire was used in this study and a total of 523 samples were collected for nine major district in Sabah

Scattering regimes for underwater optical wireless communications using Monte Carlo simulation

Optical wireless communications has shown tremendous potential for underwater applications as it can provide higher bandwidth and better security compared to acoustic technologies. In this paper,  an investigation on scattering regimes for underwater links using Monte Carlo simulation has been presented.While the focus of this paper is on diffuse links, the simulation results of collimated links is also provided for comparison purpose. Three types of water namely clear, coastal and turbid water are being used in the simulation. It is shown that the effect of scattering on the path loss cannot be accurately modeled by the existing channel model; ie. Beers-Lambert (BL) law.  It has been shown that  the distance at which the unscattered light drops to zero can be used to estimate the transition point for the scattering regimes in case of diffuse links. The transition point for diffuse links in coastal water and turbid water can be estimated to be around 22 m and 4 m respectively. Further analysis on the scattering order probability at different scattering regimes illustrates how scattering is affected by beam size, water turbidity and distance. From the frequency response plot, it is estimated that the bandwidth of several order of GHz can be achieved when the links are operating in the minimal scattering region and will reduce to several hundreds of MHz when the link is operating in multiple scattering region

Willingness Tto Pay for Turtle Conservation and the Financial Viability of Rantau Abang Turtle Sanctuary, Terengganu

Conservation is an important measure to ensure that the endangered turtles will be able to survive for the benefit of future generations. Cardinal approach i.e. Contingent Valuation Method was used in this study to evaluate the willingness to pay for conservation of turtles in Rantau Abang, Terengganu. The study also estimated the benefits of turtle conservation, evaluated the viability of the existing Turtle Sanctuary and identified the factors that influenced society's willingness to pay for turtle conservation based on a survey of different groups of respondents. Three different groups of respondents i.e. group A (residents), group B (visitors to Rantau Abang Turtle Sanctuary) and group C (tourists) were classified in this study. Each group consists of a different number of sample sizes i.e. 110 for group A, 100 and 130 for groups B and C respectively. In the estimation of benefits for each group of respondents, the Contingent Valuation Method yielded mean values of RM10.02, RM107.11 and RM61.93 using the Logit technique. It is also found that among the factors that influenced willingness to pay for turtle conservation for groups A and B were bid, monthly income and age. For group C, bid, monthly income and membership in some environmental organisations were the main factors influencing peoples' willingness to pay. The study also evaluated the role of government contribution to the viability of the project. Using RM10 as the ticket price and with the government allocation of RM150,000, the financial analysis showed that the Net Present Value (NPV) was RM1,27,603.45. However, without government allocation, the NPV was negative RM6,229.77. This infers that the government contribution is essential to ensure the viability of the project. In fact, with the current contribution of RM150,000, the ticket price could be reduced to RM5 and the project would still be viable. At this ticket price, the NPV was RM263,649.15. A sensitivity analysis showed that the project was still viable even with a 10% decrease in total cash inflow or with a 10% increase in total cash outflow. Further analysis was carried out to determine the amount of government allocation needed for the project to reach break-even point only. At the ticket price of RM10, the amount of government allocation that made the NPV equaled zero was RM700.59 per year. At the price of RM5, the amou nt of government allocation was RM120,350.59 per year

Privacy and Modification of Terrace Housing among Malay Occupants in Klang Valley, Malaysia

Privacy at home is important for normal functioning of daily activity. However, in the context of housing in Malaysia, there are many opinions which suggest that existing terrace housing is incongruent with the privacy needs of its inhabitants. Inconsistency between the house as a site for privacy, and the occupants results in behavioural adaptation and redefining of privacy needs, which over time, changed the concept of privacy. Due to its importance, privacy is expected to be one of the main reasons for housing modification which has become a Malaysian culture. This research is focused on examining the concept of privacy in the context of housing among Malay families living in terrace housing, and the relationship between privacy and terrace housing design and modification. The research employed a combination of survey interview and case study which uses in-depth interview, analytical review of housing layout drawings and site observation. The research involved 374 respondents for the survey interview and 11 respondents for the case study from three housing schemes in Gombak and Kajang. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science Software) was used to analyse data from survey interview. Data from case study were interpreted and transcribed to provide consistent results which complement each of the analyses. The research found that the concept of privacy in the context of terrace housing among Malay families has changed. Privacy of the family is given importance as compared to community ties and individual privacy. The changes are partly attributed to terrace house and housing environment which do not support the privacy needs of Malay family. It was found that at the private level, privacy is most affected by some aspects of terrace housing design particularly the lack of a clear division between the public and private spaces. At the public level, privacy is affected by the overall arrangement of housing units and the external factors of housing environment. Privacy is found to influence housing modification base on the specifics of design attributes modified. However, financial resources of the family, availability of space, individual family’s privacy perceptions and expectations and housing environment influenced the level of privacy achieved after housing modification

Educating the educators: Incorporating bioinformatics into biological science education in Malaysia

Bioinformatics can be defined as a fusion of computational and biological sciences. The urgency to process and analyse the deluge of data created by proteomics and genomics studies has caused bioinformatics to gain prominence and importance. However, its multidisciplinary nature has created a unique demand for specialist trained in both biology and computing. In this review, we described the components that constitute the bioinformatics field and distinctive education criteria that are required to produce individuals with bioinformatics training. This paper will also provide an introduction and overview of bioinformatics in Malaysia. The existing bioinformatics scenario in Malaysia was surveyed to gauge its advancement and to plan for future bioinformatics education strategies. For comparison, we surveyed methods and strategies used in education by other countries so that lessons can be learnt to further improve the implementation of bioinformatics in Malaysia. It is believed that accurate and sufficient steerage from the academia and industry will enable Malaysia to produce quality bioinformaticians in the future

Corporate Real Estate: Another Real Estate Area.

Abstract is not availabl