It is shown that each locally compact second countable non-(T) group G admits non-strongly ergodic weakly mixing IDPFT Poisson actions of any possible Krieger type. These actions are amenable if and only if G is amenable. If G has the Haagerup property, then (and only then) these actions can be chosen of 0-type. If G is amenable, then G admits weakly mixing Bernoulli actions of arbitrary Krieger type.

Amenable actions of locally compact groups on von Neumann algebras are investigated by exploiting the natural module structure of the crossed product over the Fourier algebra of the acting group. The resulting characterization of injectivity for crossed products generalizes a result of Anantharaman-Delaroche on discrete groups. Amenable actions of locally compact groups on $C^*$ -algebras are investigated in the same way, and amenability of the action is related to nuclearity of the corresponding crossed product. A survey is given to show that this notion of amenable action for $C^*$ -algebras satisfies a number of expected properties. A notion of inner amenability for actions of locally compact groups is introduced, and a number of applications are given in the form of averaging arguments, relating approximation properties of crossed product von Neumann algebras to properties of the components of the underlying $w^*$ -dynamical system. We use these results to answer a recent question of Buss, Echterhoff, and Willett.

Let $G$ be a finitely generated group acting on a compact Hausdorff space ${\mathcal{X}}$. We give a fixed point characterisation for the action being amenable. As a corollary, we obtain a fixed point characterisation for the exactness of $G$.