Eliciting Subjective Survival Curves: Lessons from Partial Identification

When analyzing data on subjective expectations of continuous outcomes, researchers have access to a limited number of reported probabilities for each respondent from which to construct complete distribution functions. Moreover, reported probabilities may be rounded and thus not equal to true beliefs. Using survival expectations elicited from a representative sample from the Netherlands, we investigate what can be learned if we take these two sources of missing information into account and expectations are therefore only partially identified. We find novel evidence for rounding by checking whether reported expectations are consistent with a hazard of death that increases weakly with age. Only 39% of reported beliefs are consistent with this under the assumption that all probabilities are reported precisely, while 92% are if we allow for rounding. Using the available information to construct bounds on subjective life expectancy, we show that the data alone are not sufficiently informative to allow for useful inference in partially identified linear models, even in the absence of rounding. We propose to improve precision by interpolation between rounded probabilities. Interpolation in combination with a limited amount of rounding does yield informative intervals.     

Improving Flood Risk Communication by Focusing on Prevention‐Focused Motivation

This article proposes an approach to flood risk communication that gives particular emphasis to the distinction between prevention and promotion motivation. According to E. Tory Higgins, the promotion system and the prevention system are assumed to coexist in every person, but one or the other may be temporarily or chronically more accessible. These insights have far‐reaching implications for our understanding of people's reasoning about risks. Flood risk communication framed in terms of prevention involves the notions of chance and harm, woven into a story about particular events that necessitate decisions to be more careful about safety issues and protect one's family and oneself from danger. The article describes how the insights worked out in practice, using a flood risk communication experiment among a sample from the general population in a highly populated river delta of the Netherlands. It had a posttest‐only control group design (n = 2,302). The results showed that risk communication had a large effect on the participants’ responses and that this effect was higher among chronic prevention‐focused people than among others. Any information that increased the fit between a prevention‐framed message and a person's chronic prevention motivation produced stronger situationally induced, prevention‐focused responses. This may significantly improve communication about risks. In contrast, the notion of water city projects, featuring waterside living, had more appeal to promotion‐focused people.     

The multicriteria selection of products in technological diversification strategies: an application to the Spanish automotive industry based on AHP

The economic recession, the dynamism and complexity of the markets and the generalised globalisation of the world economy have forced many companies to rethink and reorganise their industrial strategies. Through identifying and taking advantage of the key technologies of a company, this work presents a new and original methodology for dealing with a general technological diversification process. The methodology, which includes an innovative cognitive perspective and its corresponding decisional tool (decision support system) has been used to select the best product in a process of technological diversification that, along with the key technologies, identifies the sub-levels consonant to the sub-technologies and applications to sectors and products. The multicriteria selection tool employed in the proposed methodology, based on the analytic hierarchy process, allows the integration of multiple scenarios, actors and criteria, both tangible and intangible. The methodology has been applied to a case study in the Spanish automotive auxiliary sector.     

Training fieldwork supervisors of social work students at a South European University: evaluation of the effectiveness of a relational psychodynamic model

This case-study adopts a mixed research methodology in order to evaluate the process and the effectiveness of a psychodynamically informed training seminar for field supervisors of undergraduate social work students, at a South European University. At the beginning of the seminar, an anonymous questionnaire gathered information on the supervisors’ demographics, preferred supervision style and expectations from the training. The training consisted of four sessions involving analysis of (1) student process-recorded interviews with clients, (2) the relationships formed between the student, the supervisor and the field practice manager, (3) brief virtual scenarios (vignettes) of field practice problems and (4) a videotaped supervision session. At the end of the training process, a follow-up questionnaire researched the satisfaction of supervisors with the training, their confidence to conduct supervision, and their satisfaction with the instructor's teaching. Overall, the training has been satisfactory for the trainees and increased their competence to supervise.     

Urban and agricultural soils: conflicts and trade-offs in the optimization of ecosystem services

On-going human population growth and changing patterns of resource consumption are increasing global demand for ecosystem services, many of which are provided by soils. Some of these ecosystem services are linearly related to the surface area of pervious soil, whereas others show non-linear relationships, making ecosystem service optimization a complex task. As limited land availability creates conflicting demands among various types of land use, a central challenge is how to weigh these conflicting interests and how to achieve the best solutions possible from a perspective of sustainable societal development. These conflicting interests become most apparent in soils that are the most heavily used by humans for specific purposes: urban soils used for green spaces, housing, and other infrastructure and agricultural soils for producing food, fibres and biofuels. We argue that, despite their seemingly divergent uses of land, agricultural and urban soils share common features with regards to interactions between ecosystem services, and that the trade-offs associated with decision-making, while scale- and context-dependent, can be surprisingly similar between the two systems. We propose that the trade-offs within land use types and their soil-related ecosystems services are often disproportional, and quantifying these will enable ecologists and soil scientists to help policy makers optimizing management decisions when confronted with demands for multiple services under limited land availability.     

Income inequality and participation: A comparison of 24 European countries

Previous research suggests that when there is a high level of inequality, there is a low rate of participation. Two arguments are generally offered: First, inequality depresses participation because people from different status groups have fewer opportunities to share common goals. Second, people may participate more in civic and social life when they have more resources. However, until now, these explanations have not been separated empirically. Using EU-SILC data for 24 European countries, we analyze how income inequality is related to civic and social participation. Our results indicate that the main effects of inequality manifest via resources at the individual and societal level. However, independent of these resources, higher inequality is associated with lower civic participation. Furthermore, inequality magnifies the relationship between income and participation. This finding is in line with the view that inter-individual processes explain why inequality diminishes participation.     

Confronting or Complementing? A Case Study on NGO–State Relations from Kerala, India

NGOs have, of late, found some of their traditional domains, such as provision of micro-credit and participatory development, coinciding with or being taken away by the state. How do they position themselves and retain relevance vis-a-vis the state in the changed scenario? Tracing the trajectory of interventions of a local NGO in Kerala, India, this article shows that NGOs exhibit ‘multiple identities’—selective collaboration, gap-filling and posing alternatives—in the process of engagement with the state. The ‘strategizing’ of such identities may hold the key to their relevance vis-a-vis the state.     

Valuation of road safety effects in cost–benefit analysis

Cost–benefit analysis is a common method for evaluating the social economic impact of transport projects, and in many of these projects the saving of human lives is an issue. This implies, within the framework of cost–benefit analysis, that a monetary value should be attached to saving human lives. This paper discusses the ‘Value of a Statistical Life’ (VoSL), a concept that is often used for monetising safety effects, in the context of road safety. Firstly, the concept of ‘willingness to pay’ for road safety and its relation to the VoSL are explained. The VoSL approach will be compared to other approaches to monetise safety effects, in particular the human capital approach and ‘quality adjusted life years’. Secondly, methods to estimate the VoSL and their applicability to road safety will be discussed. Thirdly, the paper reviews the VoSL estimates that have been found in scientific research and compares them with the values that are used in policy evaluations. Finally, a VoSL study in the Netherlands will be presented as a case study, and its applicability in policy evaluation will be illustrated.     

Revisiting the model of creative destruction: St. Jacobs,Ontario, a decade later

Ten years ago, the model of creative destruction was developed to predict the fate of communities that base their development on the commodification of rural heritage (Mitchell, C.J.A., 1998. Entrepreneurialism, commodification and creative destruction: a model of post-modern community development. Journal of Rural Studies 14, 273–286). Its application to the village of St. Jacobs, Canada, demonstrated that entrepreneurial investment had fostered the creation of a setting for aestheticized consumption. In this paper we demonstrate that creative destruction has continued to unfold in the village over the course of the past decade. The evolutionary path taken is assessed in light of current literature on rural space. It is concluded that to fully understand the transformative process, one must integrate the demands of myriad sub-cultures, whose social relations, ideologies and actions will contribute to the development of a contested landscape of consumption. This finding necessitates that modifications be made to the model and its various stages. The most significant is recognition that the “heritage-scape” is an interim state of landscape change; one that displaces the productivist landscape of the industrial period, and precedes the creation of the “neo-productivist” leisure-scape of post-industrialism. Whether or not such a “final” state is achieved is dictated by the power struggle that inevitably arises amongst sub-cultures engaged in the transformation of rural space.