Sustainable consumption and third-party certification labels: Consumers’ perceptions and reactions

Compared with conventional products, sustainable products continue to attract relatively lower market shares. To increase customer acceptance, many sustainable products feature third-party certification labels (TPCL), yet it is unclear whether TPCL are effective and what processes and boundary conditions define their role in consumer decision making. Across three experimental studies, this research determines that sustainable products are characterized by credence qualities, associated with increased perceptions of risk, which negatively influence consumers' purchase intentions. Drawing on signaling theory, this study also shows that TPCL on sustainable products provide brand-like information cues that reduce the perceived risk of sustainable products. Finally, a third experimental study demonstrates that consumers must perceive TPCL as credible for them to reduce consumers’ risk perceptions.     

Global product development projects: measuring performance and monitoring the risks

Abstract

This article investigates the development and application of key performance indicators for global product development. Two in-depth, longitudinal case studies with multinational Danish manufacturing companies were conducted, and highlight how key performance indicators, typically used for collocated, cross-functional product development, do not provide the predictive insight required to avoid the additional risks encountered in the global product development environment. Grounded in the case study results and building on established methodologies in performance measurement literature, a framework was developed and validated in two additional Danish companies to support project managers to develop: preventive indicators, which support the avoidance of identified risks, and outcome indicators, which support the measurement towards the attainment of project objectives. The study is unique as it is one of the very few longitudinal studies of engineering design activities in a global context, providing the in-depth contextual understanding towards key risks and their influence on performance; an important step to support researchers and practitioners with the development of preventive measures.     

How to Perform an Ethical Risk Analysis (eRA)

Ethical analysis is often needed in the preparation of policy decisions on risk. A three‐step method is proposed for performing an ethical risk analysis (eRA). In the first step, the people concerned are identified and categorized in terms of the distinct but compatible roles of being risk‐exposed, a beneficiary, or a decisionmaker. In the second step, a more detailed classification of roles and role combinations is performed, and ethically problematic role combinations are identified. In the third step, further ethical deliberation takes place, with an emphasis on individual risk‐benefit weighing, distributional analysis, rights analysis, and power analysis. Ethical issues pertaining to subsidiary risk roles, such as those of experts and journalists, are also treated in this phase. An eRA should supplement, not replace, a traditional risk analysis that puts emphasis on the probabilities and severities of undesirable events but does not cover ethical issues such as agency, interpersonal relationships, and justice.     

微信时代风险信息的传播与感知——以山东“问题”疫苗事件为例

目前,以手机终端为依托的微信传播技术不仅给社会传播方式带来了前所未有的改变,而且给社会风险信息的传播获取以及公众对风险的感知与判断,甚至政府的风险决策与治理方式都带来了巨大的挑战.鉴于此,选取了比较典型的案例——山东“问题”疫苗事件作为探讨对象,结合相应的统计资料,深入分析了在此案例中微信传播呈现出的显著特征,即传播内容庞杂未见明显的“沉默螺旋”的显现,传播态度多元化但偏于激动,传播迅速集中但议题缺乏持续的关注.研究认为,正由于这样的传播特征加之疫苗风险本身的特征与个体的偏颇性解读,使公众对“问题”疫苗事件产生了强烈的风险感知,并在一定程度上造成了疫苗的污名化结果.因此建议微信时代一定要警惕媒介化的风险,风险沟通要在同理心的基础上进行,要引导公众对风险议题进行持续理性的关注等.     

Considering economic stress and empathic traits in predicting prosocial behaviors among U.S. Latino adolescents

The goal of the current study was to examine two competing models focusing on the roles of empathy‐related traits in the relation between economic stress and prosocial behaviors. First, we examined the mediating roles of perspective taking and empathic concern in the association between economic stress and adolescents’ prosocial behaviors. Second, we examined the moderating role of perspective taking in the association between economic stress and empathic concern, as well as the links between empathic concern and prosocial behaviors. Participants consisted of 307 (46.2% girls; M age = 15.05) U.S. Latino adolescents (77.5% U.S. Mexicans) and their primary caregivers (87.9% mothers). Primary caregivers reported on family‐level economic stress, and adolescents reported on their own perspective taking, empathic concern, and their tendency to engage in six forms of prosocial behaviors. Results demonstrated support for the moderating role of perspective taking on the link between economic stress and empathic concern, which in turn, was associated with multiple forms of helping behaviors. Economic stress was also directly associated with selfless and selfish helping behaviors. The discussion focuses on the multiple roles of empathic traits in understanding the links between economic stress and prosocial outcomes in U.S. Latino youth.     

Incremental Sampling Methodology: Applications for Background Screening Assessments

This article presents the findings from a numerical simulation study that was conducted to evaluate the performance of alternative statistical analysis methods for background screening assessments when data sets are generated with incremental sampling methods (ISMs). A wide range of background and site conditions are represented in order to test different ISM sampling designs. Both hypothesis tests and upper tolerance limit (UTL) screening methods were implemented following U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) guidance for specifying error rates. The simulations show that hypothesis testing using two‐sample t ‐tests can meet standard performance criteria under a wide range of conditions, even with relatively small sample sizes. Key factors that affect the performance include unequal population variances and small absolute differences in population means. UTL methods are generally not recommended due to conceptual limitations in the technique when applied to ISM data sets from single decision units and due to insufficient power given standard statistical sample sizes from ISM.     

Spatial Risk Analysis of Power Systems Resilience During Extreme Events

The increased frequency of extreme events in recent years highlights the emerging need for the development of methods that could contribute to the mitigation of the impact of such events on critical infrastructures, as well as boost their resilience against them. This article proposes an online spatial risk analysis capable of providing an indication of the evolving risk of power systems regions subject to extreme events. A Severity Risk Index (SRI) with the support of real‐time monitoring assesses the impact of the extreme events on the power system resilience, with application to the effect of windstorms on transmission networks. The index considers the spatial and temporal evolution of the extreme event, system operating conditions, and the degraded system performance during the event. SRI is based on probabilistic risk by condensing the probability and impact of possible failure scenarios while the event is spatially moving across a power system. Due to the large number of possible failures during an extreme event, a scenario generation and reduction algorithm is applied in order to reduce the computation time. SRI provides the operator with a probabilistic assessment that could lead to effective resilience‐based decisions for risk mitigation. The IEEE 24‐bus Reliability Test System has been used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed online risk analysis, which was embedded in a sequential Monte Carlo simulation for capturing the spatiotemporal effects of extreme events and evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

产需不确定下基于零售商风险规避的三级供应链组合契约模型

针对产需不确定下单一供应商、制造商和风险规避的零售商组成的三级供应链系统，建立了分散和集中情况下的最优决策模型。通过设计风险共担和GL组合契约实现了三级供应链的协调。讨论了风险规避零售商的最优订购决策，分析了风险规避对供应链期望效益的影响。比较了风险规避和风险中性两种情况下零售商的最优决策。探讨了组合契约的协调问题及契约参数之间的关系。研究表明供应链的期望利润随着产需不确定的增加而减少，风险规避下零售商的期望利润低于风险中性时的期望利润，零售商的期望利润随着风险规避程度的加大而减少，零售商最优订购量随风险规避程度的增加而变化。最后数值算例验证了模型和契约协调的有效性。     

Development of an Asset Value Map for Disaster Risk Assessment in China by Spatial Disaggregation Using Ancillary Remote Sensing Data

The extent of economic losses due to a natural hazard and disaster depends largely on the spatial distribution of asset values in relation to the hazard intensity distribution within the affected area. Given that statistical data on asset value are collected by administrative units in China, generating spatially explicit asset exposure maps remains a key challenge for rapid postdisaster economic loss assessment. The goal of this study is to introduce a top‐down (or downscaling) approach to disaggregate administrative‐unit level asset value to grid‐cell level. To do so, finding the highly correlated “surrogate” indicators is the key. A combination of three data sets—nighttime light grid, LandScan population grid, and road density grid, is used as ancillary asset density distribution information for spatializing the asset value. As a result, a high spatial resolution asset value map of China for 2015 is generated. The spatial data set contains aggregated economic value at risk at 30 arc‐second spatial resolution. Accuracy of the spatial disaggregation reflects redistribution errors introduced by the disaggregation process as well as errors from the original ancillary data sets. The overall accuracy of the results proves to be promising. The example of using the developed disaggregated asset value map in exposure assessment of watersheds demonstrates that the data set offers immense analytical flexibility for overlay analysis according to the hazard extent. This product will help current efforts to analyze spatial characteristics of exposure and to uncover the contributions of both physical and social drivers of natural hazard and disaster across space and time.     

Integrating risk and performance management in quality management systems for the development of complex bespoke systems (CBSs)

Abstract

Risk and performance management are at the core of complex bespoke systems (CBSs). CBSs are developed to customer–specified requirements in terms of structure, functionality and conformance. This article examines how risk and performance management are integrated as essential systems in the successful development of projects across multi-organizational functions in complex bespoke system (CBS) organizations. The article argues for the development of a quality management system that consists of two sub-processes: quality control and quality development. Using three case studies from engineering companies, we provide evidence and insights of the way change control, quality development and quality performance are developed in innovating business solutions.