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    Start Over Publication Year 2018 Subject Term environmental communication Subject Term sustainability

    3. Information communication technologies and environmental innovations in firms: joint adoptions and productivity effects

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Antonioli, Davide (author), Cecere, Grazia (author), and Mazzanti, Massimiliano (author)
    Format:
    Online journal article
    Publication Date:
    2018
    Published:
    Taylor & Francis
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 18 Document Number: D10503
    Journal Title:
    Journal of Environmental Planning and Management
    Journal Title Details:
    61(11): 1905-1933
    Notes:
    30 pages., via online journal., Information communication technology (ICT) and environmental innovation (EI) are relevant waves of the ongoing technological revolution. We study the complementarity in innovation adoption to test the research hypothesis that the higher the diffusion and intensity of usage of ICT and EI, the higher a firm’s productivity performance might be. However, it is not certain that the use of different innovations stemming from different innovation paths generates higher productivity. To test our hypothesis, we use original survey data concerning manufacturing firms in Northeast Italy including detailed information on both ICT and EI. Empirical evidence shows that there are still wide margins to improve the integration between EI and ICT in order to exploit their potential benefits on productivity. The awareness of specific synergies seems to mainly characterise the heavy polluting firms that are subject to more stringent environmental constraints, while some trade-offs tend to emerge for the remaining firms.

    4. Mediating influences of attitude on internal and external factors influencing consumers’ intention to purchase organic foods in China

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Chu, Kuo Ming (author)
    Format:
    Online journal article
    Publication Date:
    2018
    Published:
    MDPI
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 34 Document Number: D10680
    Journal Title:
    Sustainability
    Journal Title Details:
    10(12)
    Notes:
    15 pages., Article #: 4690, via online journal., As with environment and sustainable development, there has been a rapid rise in the worldwide consumption of organic foods over the last years, as well as the quickly growing potential of organic markets in China, and their direct influence on consumer health awareness and social opinion. This study provides insights into Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward organic foods and evaluates purchase intention’s impact as a mediator in the relationship between external and internal factors on purchase intention. This empirical study is based on an online questionnaire using a sample of 1421 Chinese consumers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used as the main practical approach for data analysis, and six hypotheses were examined. The results show that a more positive attitude on the part of consumers toward organic foods will further reinforce their purchasing intentions, whereas, there was no significant impact of marketing price and communication on consumers’ attitudes toward organic foods. Furthermore, the results show that intention was a full or a whole mediator among the three exogenous constructs of environment awareness, health consciousness, and subjective norms. Based on the findings, marketing communication strategies should concentrate on offering more value to consumers regarding the features of nutritional value. Long-term environment friendliness, health benefits, and social status symbols should be assumed to enhance consumers’ purchase intention in the organic foods industry.

    6. Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Fisher, Chelsea (author) and Department of Anthropology, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA
    Format:
    Online journal article
    Publication Date:
    2018-07-09
    Published:
    Springer Netherlands
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 151 Document Number: D10126
    Journal Title:
    Agriculture and Human Values
    Journal Title Details:
    35(4) : 791–807
    Notes:
    17 pages., Print ISSN: 0889-048X Online ISSN: 1572-8366, Via online journal., Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.

    7. “Organic is more of an American term... we are traditional farmers”: discourses of place-based organic farming, community, heritage, and sustainability

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Hoffmann, Jeffrey Alan (author)
    Format:
    Online journal article
    Publication Date:
    2018
    Published:
    Taylor & Francis
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 64 Document Number: D10729
    Journal Title:
    Environmental Communication
    Journal Title Details:
    12(6): 807-824
    Notes:
    19 pages., via online journal., The following study looks at how traditional, organic, cooperative farmers starting a new farming cooperative in the US Southwest communicate about their farming as a set of (sustainable) cultural practices. The study draws on environmental communication theory, the theory of the coordinated management of meaning, and Vandana Shiva’s three-tiered economic model to construct a communication-based framework through which to view farmers’ stories about sustainability. This framework is productive, showing how some Nuevo Mexicano farmers (and others) orient toward farming, sustenance, and human-nature relationships through community, family, heritage, and education. Moreover, in addition to a conceptualization of sustainability as specific practices for nurturing and enduring in environments, communities, and organizations/institutions, sustainability can be understood as embedded ecocultural and historical experience with cross-cultural parallels in land-based communities. This study advances the ethical duty of environmental communication to better understand the ways in which environmental discourse and ecocultural and material realities are imbricated, as well as the call for such discursive study to be grounded in phenomenological experience of the natural world.