15 pages., Via online journal., Preliminary results of a survey investigating individual well-being of residents in the
Great Barrier Reef region of Australia are presented. The well-being factors were
grouped into domains of: society, representing family and community issues; ecology, representing natural environment; and economy, dealing with economic issues
and provision of services. The relative perceived importance of factors was quantified, allowing for a creation of individual well-being functions. In the society domain,
family relations and health were identified as the most important contributors to
well-being. Water quality was the ecology domain factor that received highest
scores, and health services and income were the most important contributors to
the economic domain. The methodological approach used in this study has a potential to integrate ecological, social, and economic values of local people into
decision-making processes. The profiles of well-being thus generated would present
policymakers with information beyond that available from standard data sources.
12 pages., via online journal., Effective communication of risks involved in the climate change discussion is crucial and despite ambitious protection policies, the possibility of irreversible consequences actually occurring can only be diminished but never ruled out completely. We present a laboratory experiment that studies how residual risk of failure of climate change policies affects willingness to contribute to such policies. Despite prevailing views on people’s risk aversion, we found that contributions were higher at least in the final part of treatments including a residual risk. We interpret this as the product of a psychological process where residual risk puts participants into an ”alarm mode,” keeping their contributions high. We discuss the broad practical implications this might have on the real-world communication of climate change.
12 pages., via online journal, We examined how information from multiple communication channels can inform social norms about local food purchasing. The concept of social exposure was used as a guide. Social exposure articulates how information in social, symbolic, and physical environments contributes to normative perceptions. Data was collected from a sample in Wisconsin. Results indicated that information from communication channels representing symbolic, social, and physical environments all contributed to normative perceptions. We also found that for individuals who frequent farmers’ markets, information from some communication channels was relatively less strongly associated with injunctive norms. It may be that when first-hand, experiential information is available to inform norms, individuals rely less on information available through other communication channels. Future work might further explore how farmers’ markets foster information sharing in communities, as such information may contribute to normative perceptions.
