Professional Preparedness and Psychosocial Beliefs as Predictors of Quality Physical Education and Recreation Services to Students with Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine how professional preparedness and psychosocial beliefs affected behavioral intentions and quality service behaviors in providing physical education (PE) and recreation services to students with disabilities (SWD). Participants of an online survey included New Mexico adapted physical education (APE) teachers (N=42) and recreational therapists (RT; N=13) and a sample of PE teachers (N=63). Analyses revealed significant differences between PE teachers and personnel in specialty professional disciplines. APE and RT personnel reported greater positive attitudes, higher self-efficacy, greater behavioral intention, and more engagement in quality service behaviors than PE teachers. The results have implications for the selection and training of school personnel hired to provide PE and recreation services to SWD.

Child Health Improvement in a Summer Camp (Parental Opinion)

Introduction: Efficiency criteria of recreational facilities for children shall be updated in the light of goals and tasks set for contemporary camps. Objective: To evaluate parents’ opinion about organization of recreation and health improvement in children’s summer camps. Materials and methods: In 2019–2020, an anonymous questionnaire-based survey of 343 parents, potential consumers of children’s recreation services, from 48 Russian regions was carried out with support of the Internet catalog of children’s camps incamp.ru. Results: According to the parents, the main purpose of the children’s stay in the camp is rest (88.0 % of the respondents; 95 % confidence interval (CI): 84.6–91.5), mastering of communication skills and making new friends (79.9 %; 95 % CI: 75.6–84.1), health improvement (49.0 %; 95 % CI: 43.7–54.3), and acquisition of new knowledge (48.1 %; 95 % CI: 42.8–53.4). A third of the parents positively assessed health improvement of their child in the camp without specifying its criteria (32.3 %; 95 % CI: 27.4–37.4); 27.1 % (95 % CI: 22.4–31.8) noted an improvement in the child physical and emotional state. The respondents believed that child health improvement was strongly influenced by increased physical activity (86.6 %; 95 % CI: 83.0–90.2), diet quality (83.7 %; 95 % CI: 79.8–87.6), camp location (77.0 %; 95 % CI: 72.5–81.4), and living conditions (74.3 %; 95 % CI: 69.7–79.0). The parents were of the opinion that the length of stay was of least importance for health improvement (32.1 %; 95 % CI: 27.1–37.0). Conclusions: An effective system of developing children’s recreation and health improvement should take into account that parents and guardians are an essential part of it as potential consumers of children’s recreation services and their current expectations need to be considered when updating efficiency criteria for children’s camps.

AN ANALYSIS OF LABOUR REQUIREMENTS AND THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON MALAYSIA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY

The tourism sector is expected to continue experiencing a significant increase in tourist arrivals. Meanwhile, the labour requirement especially in the tourism sub-sector has been anticipated to increase. However, the Covid-19 outbreak has interrupted the number of tourist arrivals to Malaysia. Tourism sector’s receipt and the labour requirement will also be affected. The objective of this study is to forecast the labour requirements in the tourism sector in Malaysia. This study provides an initial overview of the labour requirements including during the Covid-19 outbreak which occurred in 2020. The method used in this study was the Input-Output method. The labour requirements were projected for three years, i.e. 2017, 2019 and 2020. Projections were also made based on a 25 percent decrease in Chinese tourist spending in Malaysia. The results showed that the labour requirements in 2017, 2019 and 2020 increased by 2.6 million people, 2.8 million people and 3.0 million people, respectively. However, when there was a decline in Chinese tourist spending, the labour requirement was 2.6 million people indicating a drop by -11.40 percent. The entertainment and recreation services were the most affected sectors when the Covid-19 outbreak occurred, at a rateof-66.31 percent. Discussions elaborated on the importance of labour requirements estimation in the tourism industry in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Implications of the study are also highlighted.

Afforestation projects in Qinghai Province: what are the benefits of ecosystem services?

<p>Qinghai is a pivotal area for protection and ecological restoration, which is a unique plateau ecosystem composed of tundra, grasslands, Gobi, and the source of rivers. In response to afforestation projects, the government has successfully implemented the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP), and Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP), etc. However, the ecological benefits after the implementation of the restoration project lack quantitative evaluation. In this study, we extracted farmland (slope> 25°) and wasteland as appropriate afforestation areas based on the ecological niche of tree species simulated by MaxEnt. Then, ecosystem services are selected as indicators to measure the benefits of restoration, with supply services and recreation services as direct benefits, and regulating services and supporting services as indirect benefits. We compared the impact of afforestation on ecosystem services, highlighting the benefits of ecological engineering. Under the assumption that all afforestation tree species survive, the appropriate afforestation areas are 549.25hm<sup>2</sup>, mainly distributed in the northeast of Qinghai. Regulating services, supporting services and the attractiveness of recreation services have improved, while crop supply and the accessibility of recreation services have decreased. Our findings can enrich theoretical and empirical research on ecosystem services and have implications for afforestation management in similar areas.</p>

Satisfaction with the Quality of Children’s Recreation and Recreation Services by the Residents of Moscow

monitoring of consumer satisfaction with the quality of children’s recreation services, conducted by the State Autonomous Cultural Institution of the City of Moscow “Moscow Agency for Recreation and Tourism” (GAUK “MOSGORTUR”), allowed testing the methodology of an online sociological survey. The article shows how the developed criteria for assessing satisfaction with the quality of children’s recreation and wellness services are transformed into indicators of customer satisfaction with these services, thereby creating tools for qualitative and quantitative analysis of data by specialists in the field of children’s recreation.

Mapping the natural heritage as a source of recreation services at national scale in Bulgaria

Natural heritage includes natural features or natural areas of outstanding universal value. At a national level, this value refers to the importance of ecosystems which can be considered as the spatial units representing the natural heritage of the particular area in terms of their values to people. Nature-based outdoor recreation represents an important service that interests millions of people and contributes to connecting them to nature, but it may also cause negative impacts in the form of pollution, erosion and habitats loss. We apply the ESTIMAP recreation model which provides a framework for a spatially-explicit assessment of local outdoor recreation and use it to identify and assess the natural heritage as a source of recreation services at a national level in Bulgaria. At the first stage of the study, we identify the natural heritage and the data sources to represent it in a spatially-explicit way. Then, we apply the module for recreation potential to assess the potential of the natural heritage to provide a recreation ecosystem service. At the third stage, the accessibility of the natural heritage is assessed in order to specify how the potential identified at the previous step can be really used. Finally, the recreation potential and accessibility are integrated into the recreation opportunity spectrum in order to develop the maps representing the ecosystem service supply provided by the natural heritage. The results are presented in form of a recreation potential map that reveals the capacity of natural heritage to provide the recreation potential, map of the accessibility of the natural heritage and map of the recreation opportunity spectrum representing the combination between the first two maps. The maps will be used for the development of an innovative geospatial platform designed to facilitate the access of the Bulgarian natural heritage to the European common knowledge and innovation markets. The results on the accessibility and recreation opportunity spectrum contribute to the development of the model in areas which were not covered by previous applications at the EU scale.