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In-depth interviews were conducted with married Asian women from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, to investigate patterns of contraceptive use and influences on contraceptive decision making. The results show two distinctively different contraceptive 'lifecycles'. Non-professional women typically have little knowledge about contraception until after their marriage or first birth. Their patterns of contraceptive behaviour show low levels of contraceptive use until after their first birth, when condom use is most prevalent. Non-professional women are influenced by their extended family, religion and cultural expectations on their fertility and family planning decisions. Professional women show an entirely different pattern of contraceptive behaviour. They are more likely to have knowledge about contraception before marriage, use some method of contraception throughout their childbearing years (typically the pill) and cite personal, practical or economic considerations in their fertility decisions rather than religious, cultural or extended family influences.

The marketing of services presents special challenges. In the industrial setting, these challenges are complicated by the nature of the industrial marketplace. This article explores some of the major problems associated with the marketing of industrial services and provides some practical guidelines for dealing with these problems. It will apply the concepts which have been nurtured in services marketing in order to assist in the establishment of a framework which will foster the development and understanding of industrial services marketing.

Abstract In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve‐year‐olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more attractive than faces with either low or high features. Although both 4‐year‐olds and 9‐year‐olds rated faces with high features as least attractive, unlike adults and 12‐year‐olds, they rated faces with low and average features as equally attractive. Three‐year‐olds with high levels of peer interaction, but not those with low levels of peer interaction, chose faces with low features as significantly more attractive than those with high‐placed features, possibly as a result of their increased experience with the proportions of the faces of peers. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that experience influences perceptions of attractiveness, with the proportions of the faces participants see in their everyday lives influencing their perceptions of attractiveness.

The paper introduces the reader to the contingent valuation method for monetary valuation of individuals preferences regarding changes to environmental goods. Approaches to the validity testing of results from such studies are discussed. These focus upon whether findings conform to prior expectations, in particular regarding whether valuations are sensitive to the size (or scope) of change being considered and whether they are invariant to changes in study design which are irrelevant from the perspective of economic theory. We apply such tests to a large sample study of two possible changes to the acidity levels of remote mountain lakes. Results suggest that robust values can be observed for a policy which would prevent further acidification of such lakes, but that values associated with measures to reduce acidity below present levels fail validity tests. Interestingly, values associated with preventing further acidification of lakes appear to be significantly lower for individuals who live further away from such lakes and there may even be a national component to this distance decay suggesting that those who live in the same country as the lakes in question hold higher values for their improvement.

The sustainable exploitation of marine ecosystem services is dependent on achieving and maintaining an adequate ecosystem state to prevent undue deterioration. Within the European Union, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires member states to achieve Good Environmental Status (GEnS), specified in terms of 11 descriptors. We analyzed the complexity of social-ecological factors to identify common critical issues that are likely to influence the achievement of GEnS in the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) more broadly, using three case studies. A conceptual model developed using a soft systems approach highlights the complexity of social and ecological phenomena that influence, and are likely to continue to influence, the state of ecosystems in the NEA. The development of the conceptual model raised four issues that complicate the implementation of the MSFD, the majority of which arose in the Pressures and State sections of the model: variability in the system, cumulative effects, ecosystem resilience, and conflicting policy targets. The achievement of GEnS targets for the marine environment requires the recognition and negotiation of trade-offs across a broad policy landscape involving a wide variety of stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Furthermore, potential cumulative effects may introduce uncertainty, particularly in selecting appropriate management measures. There also are endogenous pressures that society cannot control. This uncertainty is even more obvious when variability within the system, e.g., climate change, is accounted for. Also, questions related to the resilience of the affected ecosystem to specific pressures must be raised, despite a lack of current knowledge. Achieving good management and reaching GEnS require multidisciplinary assessments. The soft systems approach provides one mechanism for bringing multidisciplinary information together to look at the problems in a different light.

The sustainable exploitation of marine ecosystem services is dependent on achieving and maintaining an adequate ecosystem state to prevent undue deterioration. Within the European Union, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires member states to achieve Good Environmental Status (GEnS), specified in terms of 11 descriptors. We analyzed the complexity of social-ecological factors to identify common critical issues that are likely to influence the achievement of GEnS in the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) more broadly, using three case studies. A conceptual model developed using a soft systems approach highlights the complexity of social and ecological phenomena that influence, and are likely to continue to influence, the state of ecosystems in the NEA. The development of the conceptual model raised four issues that complicate the implementation of the MSFD, the majority of which arose in the Pressures and State sections of the model: variability in the system, cumulative effects, ecosystem resilience, and conflicting policy targets. The achievement of GEnS targets for the marine environment requires the recognition and negotiation of trade-offs across a broad policy landscape involving a wide variety of stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Furthermore, potential cumulative effects may introduce uncertainty, particularly in selecting appropriate management measures. There also are endogenous pressures that society cannot control. This uncertainty is even more obvious when variability within the system, e.g., climate change, is accounted for. Also, questions related to the resilience of the affected ecosystem to specific pressures must be raised, despite a lack of current knowledge. Achieving good management and reaching GEnS require multidisciplinary assessments. The soft systems approach provides one mechanism for bringing multidisciplinary information together to look at the problems in a different light.