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1 – 6 of 6Alexander John Heeren, Ajay S. Singh, Adam Zwickle, Tomas M. Koontz, Kristina M. Slagle and Anna C. McCreery
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of sustainability knowledge to pro-environmental behaviour. A common misperception is that unsustainable behaviours are…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of sustainability knowledge to pro-environmental behaviour. A common misperception is that unsustainable behaviours are largely driven by a lack of knowledge of the underlying societal costs and the contributing factors leading to environmental degradation. Such a perception assumes if individuals “only knew better” they would engage in more sustainable behaviours. The “knowledge deficit model” has been critiqued for not including social psychological research about how knowledge is incorporated into decision-making and its subsequent effect on human behaviour. The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model has been used extensively to examine intention to engage in a variety of behaviours, therefore this model is applied to examine the effect knowledge has in predicting behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
To better understand these relationships, the authors examined the relationships between sustainability behaviours through an online survey of over 500 students at a large university in the USA.
Findings
Results indicate that knowledge had a significant, albeit weak, bivariate correlation with behaviour (r = 0.113, p < 0.001). However, when controlling for TPB variables (attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control), knowledge was not a significant predictor of behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
The authors conclude with several implications to guide university sustainability programmes.
Originality/value
This study places sustainable knowledge in the context of other social psychological factors which also influence behaviour. The results show that as the students are educated about sustainability, fostering behaviour change will require education not only about how actions affect sustainability but also about social norms, attitudes towards sustainable behaviours and the level of self-efficacy in doing those behaviours.
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Adam Zwickle, Tomas M. Koontz, Kristina M. Slagle and Jeremy T. Bruskotter
– The purpose of this article is to present a tool for assessing the sustainability knowledge of an undergraduate population.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to present a tool for assessing the sustainability knowledge of an undergraduate population.
Design/methodology/approach
Multiple-choice questions were developed through soliciting expert input, focus groups, pilot testing, distribution via a large-scale online survey and analysis using item response theory.
Findings
The final assessment consists of 16 questions from the environmental, economic and social domains, covering foundational concepts within the topic of sustainability.
Research limitations/implications
This assessment represents an initial effort to quantify knowledge of the broad and abstract concept of sustainability. The authors plan to continue refining these questions to better differentiate between students with higher levels of knowledge and to replace those with answers that may change over time.
Practical implications
With knowledge of sustainability concepts becoming increasingly included in institution-wide learning objectives, there is a growing demand for a way to measure progress in this area. Our assessment tool can easily be used (via a campus-wide survey or distributed at the classroom level) by institutions to gauge current levels of knowledge and track changes over time, as well as assess the effectiveness of courses and curricula at meeting sustainability knowledge goals.
Originality/value
This assessment of sustainability knowledge is the first of its kind to include all three separate domains of sustainability, and we expect it to be useful across a variety of college and university contexts.
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Arshad Ahmad Khan, Sufyan Ullah Khan, Muhammad Abu Sufyan Ali, Aftab Khan, Yousaf Hayat and Jianchao Luo
The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change and water salinity on farmer’s income risk with future outlook mitigation. Salinity and climate change…
Abstract
Purpose
The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change and water salinity on farmer’s income risk with future outlook mitigation. Salinity and climate change are a threat to agricultural productivity worldwide. However, the combined effects of climate change and salinity impacts on farmers' income are not well understood, particularly in developing countries.
Design/methodology/approach
The response-yield function and general maximum entropy methods were used to predict the impact of temperature, precipitation and salinity on crop yield. The target minimization of total absolute deviations (MOTAD)-positive mathematical programming model was used to simulate the impact of climate change and salinity on socioeconomic and environmental indicators. In the end, a multicriteria decision-making model was used, aiming at the selection of suitable climate scenarios.
Findings
The results revealed that precipitation shows a significantly decreasing trend, while temperature and groundwater salinity (EC) illustrate a significantly increasing trend. Climate change and EC negatively impact the farmer's income and water shadow prices. Maximum reduction in income and water shadow prices was observed for A2 scenario (−12.4% and 19.4%) during 2050. The environmental index was the most important, with priority of 43.4% compared to socioeconomic indicators. Subindex amount of water used was also significant in study area, with 28.1% priority. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution ranking system found that B1 was the best climatic scenario for adopting climate change adaptation in the research region.
Originality/value
In this study, farmers' income threats were assessed with the aspects of different climate scenario (A1, A1B and B1) over the horizons of 2030, 2040 and 2050 and three different indicators (economic, social and environmental) in Northwestern region of Pakistan. Only in arid and semiarid regions has climate change raised temperature and reduced rainfall, which are preliminary symptoms of growing salinity.
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Obadia Kyetuza Bishoge, Lingling Zhang, Witness Gerald Mushi and Nametso Matomela
This paper aims to analyze the context of community opinions and participation in the natural gas sector in developing countries, a case study of Tanzania. To achieve this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the context of community opinions and participation in the natural gas sector in developing countries, a case study of Tanzania. To achieve this purpose, the study pointed out six facts, namely, information on the natural gas sector; awareness of the natural gas-related policies; laws and regulations and the creation of employment opportunities; local experts in the natural gas sector; the use of natural gas revenues; and natural gas for poverty reduction and improvement of social well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is a systematic review of the literature on community participation based on the relevant studies published between 2010 and 2018. A comprehensive literature review was carried out following the seven-step model whereby relevant themes from different potential bibliographic databases such as Google Scholar were systematically selected, compiled and analyzed using descriptive methods.
Findings
The study revealed that despite the various efforts made by the governments and other stakeholders to promote community participation, there is an inadequate level of community participation in the natural gas sector in developing countries. There are limited local experts for natural gas operations and low transparency on natural gas contracts, agreements and revenues. Therefore, there is the need to raise awareness for a highly informed society with a clear sense of ownership of the natural gas wealth among the local communities. Moreover, transparency and accountability are recommended for the sustainable natural gas sector development.
Originality/value
This paper offers new and current cross-sectoral inclusion, opinions, hopes and concerns of the community on the natural gas sector management in developing countries.
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Mahdi Salehi and Nahid Mohammadi
Investors’ decision-making is based on quantitative and rational analyses, and some other factors deriving from the market expectations are also contribute significantly on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Investors’ decision-making is based on quantitative and rational analyses, and some other factors deriving from the market expectations are also contribute significantly on the shareholders’ response to market interactions. The present study aims to discover whether emotional intelligence and thinking style have a significant effect on the quality of investors’ decision-making.
Design/methodology/approach
To gather data, a questionnaire was designed and developed and distributed among the participants during the first half of 2015. Moreover, the SAS software and the log-linear method was used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that emotional intelligence, thinking style and quality of decision-making are not dependent and emotional intelligence and thinking style are not interdependent on each other.
Originality/value
The current study used a unique model to test the hypotheses, and the results may be different from those of previous studies.
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Community informatics can be defined as a strategy or discipline that focuses on the use of information and communication technologies by territorial communities. This paper…
Abstract
Community informatics can be defined as a strategy or discipline that focuses on the use of information and communication technologies by territorial communities. This paper analyzes the emerging community informatics evaluation literature to develop an understanding of the indicators used to gauge project impacts in community networks and community technology centers. This study finds that community networks and community technology center assessments fall into five key areas: strong democracy; social capital; individual empowerment; sense of community; and economic development opportunities. The paper concludes by making recommendations for future community informatics evaluations.
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