Understanding the Dynamics of the Individual Donor’s Trust Damage in the Philanthropic Sector

Although trust is long known to be critical to predict behaviors in a charitable context, little research has examined trust damage and its effects on giving behavior. Trust damage is an intermediate state between trust and distrust, rather than a simple reversal or extension, and can change over time. Our research explores individual donor’s trust damage through a dynamic evolution. Across the longitudinal survey, we conclude that the trust damage of pre-giving, giving, and post-giving stage plays different roles in the decision-making process. Trust damage does not play a direct role in the giving intention, but it can indirectly affect giving intention through its impact on perceived benefit and perceived risk. Individual donor’s satisfaction has a strong effect on post-giving trust or continual trust damage, which in turn positively affects future giving intention and behavior. Several important insights for practitioners in the nonprofit sector are also discussed.     

Building a Values‐Informed Mental Model for New Orleans Climate Risk Management

Individuals use values to frame their beliefs and simplify their understanding when confronted with complex and uncertain situations. The high complexity and deep uncertainty involved in climate risk management (CRM) lead to individuals’ values likely being coupled to and contributing to their understanding of specific climate risk factors and management strategies. Most mental model approaches, however, which are commonly used to inform our understanding of people's beliefs, ignore values. In response, we developed a “Values‐informed Mental Model” research approach, or ViMM, to elicit individuals’ values alongside their beliefs and determine which values people use to understand and assess specific climate risk factors and CRM strategies. Our results show that participants consistently used one of three values to frame their understanding of risk factors and CRM strategies in New Orleans: (1) fostering a healthy economy, wealth, and job creation, (2) protecting and promoting healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, and (3) preserving New Orleans’ unique culture, traditions, and historically significant neighborhoods. While the first value frame is common in analyses of CRM strategies, the latter two are often ignored, despite their mirroring commonly accepted pillars of sustainability. Other values like distributive justice and fairness were prioritized differently depending on the risk factor or strategy being discussed. These results suggest that the ViMM method could be a critical first step in CRM decision‐support processes and may encourage adoption of CRM strategies more in line with stakeholders’ values.     

Does media coverage influence public attitudes towards welfare recipients? The impact of the 2011 English riots

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference‐in‐differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre‐intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post‐intervention: 10 August–10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non‐readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non‐readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right‐leaning newspaper and non‐newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right‐ and left‐leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.     

Cigarette Smoking and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Adult Mortality in the United States

This study illuminates the association between cigarette smoking and adult mortality in the contemporary United States. Recent studies have estimated smoking-attributable mortality using indirect approaches or with sample data that are not nationally representative and that lack key confounders. We use the 1990–2011 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files to estimate relative risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality for current and former smokers compared with never smokers. We examine causes of death established as attributable to smoking as well as additional causes that appear to be linked to smoking but have not yet been declared by the U.S. Surgeon General to be caused by smoking. Mortality risk is substantially elevated among smokers for established causes and moderately elevated for additional causes. We also decompose the mortality disadvantage among smokers by cause of death and estimate the number of smoking-attributable deaths for the U.S. adult population ages 35+, net of sociodemographic and behavioral confounders. The elevated risks translate to 481,887 excess deaths per year among current and former smokers compared with never smokers, 14 % to 15 % of which are due to the additional causes. The additional causes of death contribute to the health burden of smoking and should be considered in future studies of smoking-attributable mortality. This study demonstrates that smoking-attributable mortality must remain a top population health priority in the United States and makes several contributions to further underscore the human costs of this tragedy that has ravaged American society for more than a century.     

Positioning urban rivers within urban ecology

Rivers are important components of many urban systems, and research into urban rivers is increasing internationally, both in scope and intensity. As an introduction to a special section on urban rivers, this short article briefly highlights some key trends in urban river research based on a survey of published articles from Web of Knowledge, before summarising the contributions made by the special section papers. In particular, there has been a general increase in work on urban rivers since the 1990s, with a more dramatic increase from 2001. Most published research has concentrated on water quality and its wider environmental implications; ecologically, many studies have focused on autecology, community ecology or river restoration/rehabilitation, with the main emphasis on macroinvertebrates or fish. Geographically, most studies have taken place in North America (mainly the US) and Asia (mainly China). In the large majority of cases research has been on relatively small rivers within urbanised catchments rather than large, heavily urbanised systems within major towns or cities. Given the wide range of topics and studies relating to urban river research, a detailed meta-analysis of the urban river ecology literature would be a useful endeavour. The six papers included in the special section of this issue provide a sample of some of key and emerging themes within recent urban river research, and originate from a session on the understanding and management of urban rivers held at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Meeting in 2010, at Imperial College London.     

Shift Work and Work to Family Fit: Does Schedule Control Matter?

We used the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce to investigate the effects of shift work on individuals. We investigated if shift workers would have poorer work to family fit than workers with regular day schedules or flexible schedules. We also investigated if control of work schedule would moderate the possible negative effects of shift work. Results indicate that shift work is associated with increased work to family conflict, especially for women. In addition, the results indicate that women have greater work to family conflict compared to men when workers have more work schedule control. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

The star-shaped Λ-coalescent and Fleming–Viot process

The star-shaped Λ-coalescent and corresponding Λ-Fleming–Viot process, where the Λ measure has a single atom at unity, are studied in this article. The transition functions and stationary distribution of the Λ-Fleming–Viot process are derived in a two-type model with mutation. The distribution of the number of non-mutant lines back in time in the star-shaped Λ-coalescent is found. Extensions are made to a model with d types, either with parent-independent mutation or general Markov mutation, and an infinitely-many-types model, when d → ∞. An eigenfunction expansion for the transition functions is found, which has polynomial right eigenfunctions and left eigenfunctions described by hyperfunctions. A further star-shaped model with general frequency-dependent change is considered and the stationary distribution in the Fleming–Viot process derived. This model includes a star-shaped Λ-Fleming–Viot process with mutation and selection. In a general Λ-coalescent explicit formulae for the transition functions and stationary distribution, when there is mutation, are unknown. However, in this article, explicit formulae are derived in the star-shaped coalescent.