Humans and urban development mediate the sympatry of competing carnivores

Humans can profoundly shape animal community dynamics, but such effects have rarely been evaluated for terrestrial carnivores. Humans affect carnivores in both spatial and temporal dimensions via the chance of human encounter and alteration of the landscape through urban development. We investigated three hypotheses regarding how humans mediate the sympatry of larger, dominant carnivores with their smaller, subordinate counterparts. We tested these hypotheses by examining the spatio-temporal dynamics of a dominant carnivore (coyote Canis latrans) and its subordinate competitor (red fox Vulpes vulpes) across an extensive urban park system. We found that dominant and subordinate carnivores exhibited strong and often opposing spatio-temporal responses to the probability of human encounter and urban development. Spatially, coyotes visited more highly developed sites less frequently while red foxes exhibited an opposing response. Temporally, both species avoided humans via nocturnal activity. Spatio-temporally, red foxes avoided coyotes at all sites and avoided humans at highly developed sites, whereas coyotes showed a positive association with humans at such sites. Our analysis indicates that areas with higher urban development might act as spatial refugia for some subordinate carnivores against interference from larger, dominant carnivores (a “human shield” effect). Our findings also reveal that broad-scale spatial avoidance is likely a crucial component of coexistence between larger, dominant carnivores and humans, whereas finer-scale spatio-temporal avoidance is likely a key feature of coexistence between humans and smaller, subordinate carnivores. Overall, our study underscores the complex and pervasive nature of human influence over the sympatry of competing carnivores inhabiting urban systems.     

Ideological group influence: central role of message meaning

Social influence, in Asch’s famous analysis, depends on recipients’ interpretations of what issues mean. Building on this view, we showed that influence is a two-step process in which recipients first infer the meaning of a message based on the ideology of the source group. In the second step, recipients agree more with messages that support their own group ideologies. Supporting the causal sequence in the model, recipients’ attitudes changed when message meaning changed, but not when message meaning was held constant.     

Adult happiness and prior traumatic victimization in and out of the household

A large share of the American population suffers from traumatic experiences early in life. Many adults are also victims of trauma. Using data drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey–Replication, we examine the link between self-reported happiness, a broad gauge of subjective well-being, and four types of traumatic victimization that may occur at various points in the life cycle. In particular, we consider the association between home violence, sexual assault, community violence, and stalking and subsequent victims’ adult happiness. For females and males, we find that each of these traumas significantly reduces self-reported happiness later in the life course, and for both women and men, the estimated impact of home violence is greatest. Furthermore, we find that the adverse effects of trauma on happiness are comparable to the impact of critical socioeconomic developments on happiness. Moreover, we find that experiencing more than one type of these four traumas has a greater negative impact on subsequent happiness than experiencing only one type. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls, and the influence of trauma on subsequent happiness is independent of personal and family characteristics. Since happiness and mental health are closely related, our work suggests that traumatic victimization undermines overall health and well-being in the U.S.     

Global Crisis Management – Current Research and Future Directions

Examples of crises involving multinationals can be found in the media around the world on a regular basis. Despite the importance of this topic, the state of the literature in the area of global crisis management has yet to be explored. Incorporating a commonly used three-stage approach describing crisis management as involving three phases - the pre-crisis phase (prevention and preparation), the crisis phase (response), and the post-crisis phase (learning and revision) - we briefly review the literature in global crisis management. We then introduce three special issue articles. Finally, we suggest future areas for research on the topic of global crisis management.     

The Economic Foundations of Cohabiting Couples’ Union Transitions

In recent decades, cohabitation has become an increasingly important relationship context for U.S. adults and their children, a union status characterized by high levels of instability. To understand why some cohabiting couples marry but others separate, researchers have drawn on theories emphasizing the benefits of specialization, the persistence of the male breadwinner norm, low income as a source of stress and conflict, and rising economic standards associated with marriage (the marriage bar). Because of conflicting evidence and data constraints, however, important theoretical questions remain. This study uses survival analysis with prospective monthly data from nationally representative panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 1996–2013 to test alternative theories of how money and work affect whether cohabiting couples marry or separate. Analyses indicate that the economic foundations of cohabiting couples’ union transitions do not lie in economic specialization or only men’s ability to be good providers. Instead, results for marriage support marriage bar theory: adjusting for couples’ absolute earnings, increases in wealth and couples’ earnings relative to a standard associated with marriage strongly predict marriage. For dissolution, couples with higher and more equal earnings are significantly less likely to separate. Findings demonstrate that within-couple earnings equality promotes stability, and between-couple inequalities in economic resources are critical in producing inequalities in couples’ relationship outcomes.     

Conditional Solidarity: Social Class,Experiences of the Economic Crisis,and Welfare Attitudes in Europe

The aftermath of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis of 2007/2008 turned out as a veritable “stress test” for European welfare states. Aiming to stabilize citizens’ living conditions and mitigate socio-economic hardship, European governments have engaged in active crisis management. Yet, the protective capacities of European welfare states vary, as does individuals’ exposure to crisis-induced social risks. Hence, the crisis has impacted countries and the members of different social classes unequally. Against this backdrop, this paper asks how Europeans’ perceptions of the personal impact of the crisis are associated with their welfare attitudes, focusing on variations between social classes and across nations. Using cross-sectional Eurobarometer survey data from 2010 for 27 European countries, I find that perceived crisis impact is associated with greater support for welfare state responsibility and redistribution. However, this association is not homogeneous but moderated by an individual’s class position as well as national economic conditions and social spending levels. More specifically, on the individual level, perceived crisis impact is associated with more favourable welfare attitudes not only among its traditional supporters—such as the working class or the unemployed—but also among its traditional opponents, notably the self-employed. Furthermore, where social spending is higher, welfare state support is less strongly related to perceived crisis impact, suggesting that more encompassing welfare states mitigate the subjective impacts of the crisis. However, redistribution appears to be slightly more contested between those affected and those not affected by the crisis under better economic conditions. Given the challenges facing welfare states across Europe, it remains to be seen how stable a basis of popular support can be formed on these grounds.     

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE AND HOUSING INSECURITY

This study uses national longitudinal data from the Journeys Home survey to examine how violence and housing insecurity in one period affect disadvantaged Australians' chances of experiencing violence and housing insecurity in subsequent periods. Men experience much higher rates of violence and housing insecurity than do women. Our analyses show that housing insecurity in one period increases men's and women's subsequent risks of housing insecurity and that violence in one period increases their subsequent risks of violence. However, the multivariate results provide no evidence of one‐period crossover effects for women and only limited effects for men. (JEL J1, R2)     

A generalised NGINAR(1) process with inflated‐parameter geometric counting series

In this paper we propose a new stationary first‐order non‐negative integer valued autoregressive process with geometric marginals based on a generalised version of the negative binomial thinning operator. In this manner we obtain another process that we refer to as a generalised stationary integer‐valued autoregressive process of the first order with geometric marginals. This new process will enable one to tackle the problem of overdispersion inherent in the analysis of integer‐valued time series data, and contains the new geometric process as a particular case. In addition various properties of the new process, such as conditional distribution, autocorrelation structure and innovation structure, are derived. We discuss conditional maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters. We evaluate the performance of the conditional maximum likelihood estimators by a Monte Carlo study. The proposed process is fitted to time series of number of weekly sales (economics) and weekly number of syphilis cases (medicine) illustrating its capabilities in challenging cases of highly overdispersed count data.     

Religion and Public Perceptions of Gays and Lesbians in South Korea

Public support for gay and lesbian rights has increased in Western democracies, yet less is known regarding views in South Korea, or East Asia more broadly. Rather than broad cultural claims, this analysis asks to what extent religious identification explains perceptions of gays and lesbians. Public opinion survey data from South Korea finds that Protestants were consistently less supportive of homosexual issues compared to Catholics, Buddhists, and those without a religious identification. Furthermore, after controlling for religion, identification with the largest conservative party associated with less support.     

Estimating Quality of Life and Place with Location Theory: The McBucks Index

This paper explores the changes in inequality and welfare between EU regions at the NUTS 3 level over the 2003–2011 period. Changes in absolute and relative inequalities are broken down into components explaining the effects of population change, re-ranking of regions and income growth between regional per capita incomes. Each component of inequality change is further decomposed by subgroup, revealing the contributions arising from changes within subgroups and from changes between subgroups. The decomposition of the change in absolute inequality is used to develop a decomposition of the change in welfare between EU regions.