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.     

What innovation managers really do: a multiple-case investigation into the informal role profiles of innovation managers

Over the last fifteen years companies tended to formalise their innovation management activities and to establish formal jobs like the innovation officer, the network manager or the innovation manager. Knowledge of the informal role profiles of these formal roles is still rare. HR and R&D Managers do not know which informal role profile might suit them best, thus having difficulties to assign the best candidates for jobs in innovation management. Researchers cannot help to resolve the problem. Our research answers the question what innovation managers really do, by analysing their tasks, skills and traits, theoretically based on informal role theories. Furthermore, we will analyse how these characteristics change with company size. To provide answers to our research questions we choose a multiple-case study approach. We found, among others, that innovation managers fulfil the role of the relationship and process promotor or a combination of both with the champion, but we also found, that the innovation manager’s roles profile becomes fuzzier with shrinking company size. Our results have practical implications for top management and also HR and R&D managers, enabling them to better select and steer employees in innovation management. Researchers will be able to build on our results because we offer a comprehensive understanding of the informal role profiles of innovation managers based on informal role theories.     

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

Social Indicators Research - The empowerment of women in the livestock sector is fundamental to achieve gender equality. It also is instrumental for increased household productivity and improved...     

Predicting the Risk of Biological Invasions Using Environmental Similarity and Transport Network Connectedness

Understanding the risk of biological invasions associated with particular transport pathways and source regions is critical for implementing effective biosecurity management. This may require both a model for physical connectedness between regions, and a measure of environmental similarity, so as to quantify the potential for a species to be transported from a given region and to survive at a destination region. We present an analysis of integrated biosecurity risk into Australia, based on flights and shipping data from each global geopolitical region, and an adaptation of the “range bagging” method to determine environmental matching between regions. Here, we describe global patterns of environmental matching and highlight those regions with many physical connections. We classify patterns of global invasion risk (high to low) into Australian states and territories. We validate our analysis by comparison with global presence data for 844 phytophagous insect pest species, and produce a list of high‐risk species not previously known to be present in Australia. We determined that, of the insect pest species used for validation, the species most likely to be present in Australia were those also present in geopolitical regions with high transport connectivity to Australia, and those regions that were geographically close, and had similar environments.     

Let's Call it Quits: Break‐Even Effects in the Decision to Stop Taking Risks

“Chasing” behavior, whereby individuals, driven by a desire to break even, continue a risky activity (RA) despite incurring large losses, is a commonly observed phenomenon. We examine whether the desire to break even plays a wider role in decisions to stop engaging in financially motivated RA in a naturalistic setting. We test hypotheses, motivated by this research question, using a large data set: 707,152 transactions of 5,379 individual financial market spread traders between September 2004 and April 2013. The results indicate strong effects of changes in wealth around the break‐even point on the decision to cease an RA. An important mediating factor was the individual's historical long‐term performance. Those with a more profitable trading history were less affected by a fall in cash balance below the break‐even point compared to those who had been less profitable. We observe that break‐even points play an important role in the decision of nonpathological risk takers to stop RAs. It is possible, therefore, that these nonpathological cognitive processes, when occurring in extrema, may result in pathological gambling behavior such as “chasing.” Our data set focuses on RAs in financial markets and, consequently, we discuss the implications for institutions and regulators in the effective management of risk taking in markets. We also suggest that there may be a need to consider carefully the nature and role of “break‐even points” associated with a broader range of nonfinancially‐focused risk‐taking activities, such as smoking and substance abuse.     

Linking Decision Theory and Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment: Tradeoffs Between Compliance and Efficacy for Waterborne Disease Interventions

Achieving health gains from the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals of universal coverage for water and sanitation will require interventions that can be widely adopted and maintained. Effectiveness—how an intervention performs based on actual use—as opposed to efficacy will therefore be central to evaluations of new and existing interventions. Incomplete compliance—when people do not always use the intervention and are therefore exposed to contamination—is thought to be responsible for the lower‐than‐expected risk reductions observed from water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions based on their efficacy at removing pathogens. We explicitly incorporated decision theory into a quantitative microbial risk assessment model. Specifically, we assume that the usability of household water treatment (HWT) devices (filters and chlorine) decreases as they become more efficacious due to issues such as taste or flow rates. Simulations were run to examine the tradeoff between device efficacy and usability. For most situations, HWT interventions that trade lower efficacy (i.e., remove less pathogens) for higher compliance (i.e., better usability) contribute substantial reductions in diarrheal disease risk compared to devices meeting current World Health Organization efficacy guidelines. Recommendations that take into account both the behavioral and microbiological properties of treatment devices are likely to be more effective at reducing the burden of diarrheal disease than current standards that only consider efficacy.     

Studying categorical data over time

A review of recently developed simple techniques for analyzing data in the form of proportions from replicated, cross-sectional, sample surveys. (A) One variable over time—tests for homogeneity, pooling homogeneous proportions, tests for linear trends with as few as three time points, tests for departures from linearity; (B) Two variables with a constant percentage difference—four fold tables as rudimentary causal models, decomposing change with linear flow graphs; (C) Extension of the flow graph techniques to—three or more variables and changing coefficients; (D) Comments implying panel designs are somewhat over-rated and successive cross-sections somewhat under-rated.