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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Disrupting The Grid: Encountering Fire And Smoke Through Energy Infrastuctures, Deepti Chatti, Sayd Randle Sep 2023

Disrupting The Grid: Encountering Fire And Smoke Through Energy Infrastuctures, Deepti Chatti, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Experiences of fires are mediated by energy infrastructures and refracted through social inequality and difference. In California, a state marked by increasingly intense and frequent wildfires, the grid is a source of fire risk, with historically marginalized groups bearing the brunt of exposures to wildfire smoke. Drawing on research conducted by one of the co-authors in collaboration with California’s Karuk Tribe and Blue Lake Rancheria Tribes, this empirically grounded review article expands our understanding of grids. Extant scholarship presents the grid as a networked infrastructure mediating access to energy and one’s relationship to a collective and the state. We extend …


Geographic Distance And State's Grip: Information Asymmetry, State Inattention, And Firm Implementation Of State Policy, Xiyi Yang, Heli Wang, Xiaoyu Zhou Sep 2023

Geographic Distance And State's Grip: Information Asymmetry, State Inattention, And Firm Implementation Of State Policy, Xiyi Yang, Heli Wang, Xiaoyu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this study, we develop the argument that geographic distance between the state and local governments undermines the state's capacity to influence the implementation of state policies by local organizations. Drawing from information economics and the attention-based view, we propose that physical distance reduces the state's monitoring effectiveness through two interrelated mechanisms: information asymmetry and state leaders' inattention to distant issues. Using data of Chinese public firms' implementation of environmental activities between 2008 and 2016, we find that firms conduct fewer environmental activities required by the state when they are regulated by local governments that are more geographically distant to …


Fueling Green Connections: Networked Policy Instrument Choices For Sustainability Regulation, Ishani Mukherjee Sep 2022

Fueling Green Connections: Networked Policy Instrument Choices For Sustainability Regulation, Ishani Mukherjee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper presents a policy network analysis study that examines policy subsystem interconnectedness and cohesion, to explore three constituent regulatory policy instruments that have a combined impact on governing sustainability. The network surrounding the environmental sustainability of biodiesel policy in Indonesia is marked by high interconnectedness and relatively weaker cohesion, properties that impact how policy solutions are formulated through policy actor interactions and define prevailing policy formulation styles. Using primary policy network data on 46 organizations and the review of national regulations, laws, and directives, this paper tests established hypotheses on how instruments that are formulated within the same policy …


Desert Arcologies And Path Dependencies, Sayd Randle Sep 2022

Desert Arcologies And Path Dependencies, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In Phoenix, Arizona last year, the local high temperature topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit on 145 days, a new record. Of those 145, 53 days saw top temperatures above 110 and 14 days exceeded 115 – also new peaks. Taken together, these numbers strongly suggest that to live out 2020 in Phoenix was to inhabit an environment sliding towards a painful, and perhaps even hellish, new baseline. Of course, numbers are known to occlude at least as much as they reveal. But in the case of Arizona’s largest metropolitan area, they’re useful for framing a certain conventional wisdom about the place: …


The Rural Price Tag Of California's Clean Energy Transition, Sayd Randle Jun 2022

The Rural Price Tag Of California's Clean Energy Transition, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In the spring of 2019, residents of eastern California’s Owens Valley were on the fight. As is usual in that part of the world—where a century of aggressive water extraction by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has left the valley dry—they were angry about a water project dreamed up by some Southern Californians.


Climate Change And Sustainability In Asean Countries, David K. Ding, Sarah E. Beh Jan 2022

Climate Change And Sustainability In Asean Countries, David K. Ding, Sarah E. Beh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ASEAN region is one of the most susceptible regions to climate change, with three of its countries—Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand—among those that have suffered the greatest fatalities and economic losses because of climate-related disasters. This paper reveals that the ASEAN’s environmental performance is sorely lagging other regions despite evidence of its cohesive and comprehensive efforts to mitigate emissions and build up adaptive capacity to climate-related disasters. Within the ASEAN, there exist gaps in environmental performance between each country. This suggests that increased cooperation between individual ASEAN countries is pertinent for the region to collectively combat climate change. In …


Wages For Climate Stewardship?, Sayd Randle Jan 2022

Wages For Climate Stewardship?, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

IN 1996, environmental historian Richard White published an essay with a title borrowed from a pissed-off bumper sticker: “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?” White used the frictions between loggers and spotted owl advocates in the Pacific Northwest to show readers exactly how US-based environmentalism had come to be seen as orthogonal to productive labor. “Work,” he asserted, is in fact “where we should begin” when we talk about environmentalism. Set aside idealized images of natural spaces as best suited for leisure, he counseled. It’s only “[i]n taking responsibility for our own lives and work, …


Follow The Smoke: The Pollution Haven Effect On Global Sourcing, Heather Berry, Aseem Kaul, Narae Lee Dec 2021

Follow The Smoke: The Pollution Haven Effect On Global Sourcing, Heather Berry, Aseem Kaul, Narae Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research abstract: We examine whether and how foreign environmental standards influence global sourcing decisions. Taking a question-driven approach, we find a negative association between the stringency of a country's environmental standards and its share in US imports for 82 manufacturing industries across 77 countries between 2006 and 2016. This pollution haven effect holds not only for sourcing from owned foreign operations (offshore integration), but also for sourcing from unrelated third parties abroad (offshore outsourcing), and is stronger in industries with high toxic emissions and low technological intensity. These results are robust across alternative measures of environmental stringency and to using …


Networks, Stocks, And Climate Change: A New Approach To The Study Of Foreign Investment And The Environment, Andrew Jorgenson, Rob Clark, Jeffery Kentor, Annika Marie Rieger Dec 2021

Networks, Stocks, And Climate Change: A New Approach To The Study Of Foreign Investment And The Environment, Andrew Jorgenson, Rob Clark, Jeffery Kentor, Annika Marie Rieger

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study offers a new approach to the study of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the environment. We argue that both the accumulation of inward FDI and a nation's position in the global network of FDI could facilitate either environmentally beneficial spillover effects and technology transfers or the outsourcing and distancing of environmentally harmful and ecologically unsustainable economic activities. In other words, the environmental impacts, good or bad, are potentially greater for nations that occupy more central positions in the world's FDI network and for nations with relatively larger amounts of inward FDI. To test these arguments, we estimate cross-national …


Battling Over Bathwater: Greywater Technopolitics In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle Nov 2021

Battling Over Bathwater: Greywater Technopolitics In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In Los Angeles, domestic wastewater recycling ("greywater") systems are controversial, loved by local environmentalists and disdained by the city's water agencies. Drawing on fieldwork among greywater advocates and public water agency workers, this article examines how greywater systems function as nodes that unsettle relations between residents and the public agencies that manage the city's water grid. Elaborating the longstanding frictions over greywater reuse in LA reveals how these fixtures are mobilized by advocates to rescript the roles of both individuals and the state within the urban waterscape. Detailing public agency workers' resistance to this form of selective disconnection from the …


Essays On Economic Development And Environmental Sustainability, Rohan Ray Jun 2021

Essays On Economic Development And Environmental Sustainability, Rohan Ray

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The first chapter is a randomized controlled trial study that uses loss framing and information nudges to increase secondary school attendance in Bangladesh. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become one of the most common policy interventions to increase school attendance, but the cost-effectiveness of such interventions has not attracted the attention it deserves. Hence, in addition to a standard CCT implementation, our rich unique dataset on daily attendance allows us to experimentally study two potential ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of school attendance interventions: (i) SMS information nudges and (ii) loss framing in CCTs. The former provides school attendance information …


Singapore's Climate Action: It Is Time To Be More Ambitious, Winston T. L. Chow Jun 2020

Singapore's Climate Action: It Is Time To Be More Ambitious, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Some nations have declared net-zero carbon emission targets by 2050. Businesses and the people here know Singapore can punch above its weight. The government should lend its support.


Perspectives On The 21st Century Urban University From Singapore: A Viewpoint Forum, Jean-Paul D. Addie, Michele Acuto, K. C. Ho, Stephan Cairns, Hwee-Pink Tan May 2019

Perspectives On The 21st Century Urban University From Singapore: A Viewpoint Forum, Jean-Paul D. Addie, Michele Acuto, K. C. Ho, Stephan Cairns, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this Cities viewpoint forum, we argue that there is a need to rethink U.S./U.K.-centric approaches to the urban university in policy and practice. Gathering three critical commentaries by practitioners from within the Singaporean higher education system, the forum responds to the challenges of: (1) broadened expectation placed on higher education institutions; (2) the pressures and possibilities of global urbanization; and (3) the provocation to theorize the urban, and thus the urban university, from beyond the 'Global North'. Following an introduction detailing the history and relevance of the Singaporean case, the three viewpoints seek to illustrate the various dimensions of …


Implementation Of A Multi-Agent Environmental Regulation Strategy Under Chinese Fiscal Decentralization: An Evolutionary Game Theoretical Approach, Ke Jiang, Daming You, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Zhendong Li Mar 2019

Implementation Of A Multi-Agent Environmental Regulation Strategy Under Chinese Fiscal Decentralization: An Evolutionary Game Theoretical Approach, Ke Jiang, Daming You, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Zhendong Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Evolutionary game theory (EGT) provides a powerful tool with which to unpack the interactive strategies of polluting enterprises (PEs), local government regulators (LG), and central government planners (CG) in China. Here, the prevailing institutional system of fiscal decentralization sees regulatory mandates set by the CG and enforced at the LG level. This delegation shapes managers' incentives when deciding the degree to which firms will incur costs to reduce pollution and comply with state directives. Manager's choice sets draw shape from decisions at the LG level, where regulators balance the pursuit of environmental quality with the economic payoffs of tacit collusion …


Bare Mountaintops And Thirsty Cities: On California And Its Snowpack, Sayd Randle Jan 2019

Bare Mountaintops And Thirsty Cities: On California And Its Snowpack, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Figuring how to represent the oncoming effects of climate change is a common challenge faced by whistleblowers and policymakers attempting to alert populations. Sayd Randle shows how the state of California is trying to mobilize the monitoring of snow in the Sierra Nevada as a harbinger of a durable state of drought in the coastal cities.


The Meanings And Limits Of ‘Local Water’ In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle Dec 2018

The Meanings And Limits Of ‘Local Water’ In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In the fall of 2014, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti held a press conference in front of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s (DWP) downtown headquarters to sign his Executive Directive #5, titled “Emergency Drought Response – Creating a Water Wise City.” ED5, as everyone called the Directive, was meant to be the mayor’s big symbolic gesture signaling his seriousness about addressing the region’s ongoing drought crisis. His staff had invited several leaders of local environmental NGOs to stand by his side during its signing.As the assembled crowd of journalists and environmentalists looked on, Garcetti explained how, due to …


How Sending E-Mails Compares With Carbon Emission Of Car Use, Thomas Menkhoff Nov 2018

How Sending E-Mails Compares With Carbon Emission Of Car Use, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Digitalnatives can reduce their carbon footprint by being conscious about Internetusage. Everwondered how your e-mails may contribute to your personal carbon footprint? Accordingto estimates published in Phys.org, sending a short e-mail adds about 4g of CO2equivalent (gCO2e) to the atmosphere (an e-mail with a long attachment has atenfold carbon footprint, that is 50 gCO2e.


Policy Analytics For Environmental Sustainability: Household Hazardous Waste And Water Impacts Of Carbon Pollution Standards, Kustini Dec 2017

Policy Analytics For Environmental Sustainability: Household Hazardous Waste And Water Impacts Of Carbon Pollution Standards, Kustini

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Policy analytics are essential in supporting more informed policy-making in environmental management. This dissertation employs a fusion of machine methods and explanatory empiricism that involves data analytics, math programming, optimization, econometrics, geospatial and spatiotemporal analysis, and other approaches for assessing and evaluating current and future environmental policies.
Essay 1 discusses household informedness and its impact on the collection and recycling of household hazardous waste (HHW). Household informedness is the degree to which households have the necessary information to make utility-maximizing decisions about the handling of their waste. Such informedness seems to be influenced by HHW public education and environmental quality …


Toward A Theoretical Framework To Studying Climate Change Policies: Insights From Case Study Of Singapore, Ai Sian Ng, May O. Lwin, Augustine Pang Jul 2017

Toward A Theoretical Framework To Studying Climate Change Policies: Insights From Case Study Of Singapore, Ai Sian Ng, May O. Lwin, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The world decided in December 2015 to take actions to reduce global warming. To contribute toward this goal, this research examines possible policy levers for inclusion in the climate change ratification plan. A case study of the measures taken by the Republic of Singapore, a low-lying 719.2 km2 island without natural resources in Asia, is conducted. Being vulnerable to climate change impact and yet having to balance her people’s needs and economic progress with limited resources, the measures taken by this small country could offer policy insights for small states and states without access to alternative energy sources. This research …


The Effluent Society, Sayd Randle Mar 2016

The Effluent Society, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Here’s a story that sounds like a joke with a foul punch line. One day in 1939, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and two women walk along the shore south of Los Angeles. The weather is beautiful, the beach is empty, and Shakespeare is debated. Then the group realizes that something’s funny about the beach. As Huxley put it in the essay, “Like Hyperion to a Satyr,” they are suddenly walking among “ten million emblems and mementoes of Modern Love … Malthusian flotsam and unspeakable jetsam.”


Building Participatory Organizations For Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion In Indonesia, Jacob I. Ricks Jan 2016

Building Participatory Organizations For Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion In Indonesia, Jacob I. Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

States are increasingly striving to create participatory local organizations for joint management of common pool resources. What local conditions determine success of such state efforts? What effect do these efforts have? Drawing on controlled comparisons between three districts in Indonesia and an original survey of 92 water user groups, I demonstrate that local political contexts condition the effectiveness of participatory irrigation policies. When irrigation is politically salient, local politicians pressure bureaucrats to better engage with farmers. The data also show that training programs are not as effective at increasing water user organization activity as frequent contact between bureaucrats and farmers.


Communicating About Marine Disease: The Effects Of Message Frames On Policy Support, Katherine A. Mccomas, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Colleen A. Burge, Sungjong Roh Jul 2015

Communicating About Marine Disease: The Effects Of Message Frames On Policy Support, Katherine A. Mccomas, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Colleen A. Burge, Sungjong Roh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Oceans are suffering from the dual climatic pressures of warming temperatures and acidification, increasing the presence of disease risks that affect marine organisms and public health. Through a randomized field-based experiment, this study examines the effects of communicating about risks to marine organisms and public health on people’s support for policies aimed at mitigating those risks as a function of different message frames. To maximize the salience of these issues, participants were recruited from ferry passengers (N1⁄4543) in the San Juan Islands of Washington State in the summer of 2013 and randomized to read one of four fictitious news articles …


Questionnaire Design Effects In Climate Change Surveys: Implications For The Partisan Divide, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh, Norbert Schwarz Mar 2015

Questionnaire Design Effects In Climate Change Surveys: Implications For The Partisan Divide, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh, Norbert Schwarz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite strong agreement among scientists, public opinion surveys reveal wide partisan disagreement on climate issues in the united States. we suggest that this divide may be exaggerated by questionnaire design variables. Following a brief literature review, we report on a national survey experiment involving U.S. Democrats and Republicans (n = 2,041) (fielded August 25–September 5, 2012) that examined the effects of question wording and order on the belief that climate change exists, perceptions of scientific consensus, and support for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. wording a questionnaire in terms of “global warming” (versus “climate change”) reduced Republicans’ (but not Democrats’) existence …


Unilateral Emissions Mitigation, Spillovers, And Global Learning, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh, John Whalley Aug 2014

Unilateral Emissions Mitigation, Spillovers, And Global Learning, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh, John Whalley

Research Collection School Of Economics

What's the role of unilateral measures in global climate change mitigation in a post-Durban, post 2012 global policy regime? We argue that under conditions of preference heterogeneity, unilateral emissions mitigation at a subnational level may exist even when a nation is unwilling to commit to emission cuts. We establish that under certain assumptions, in a global strongly connected network of countries, learning the costs of switching to a low emissions activity can result in a universal adoption of such activities. We analyze the features of a policy proposal that could accelerate convergence to a low carbon world in the presence …


Social Tipping Points And Earth Systems Dynamics, R.A. Bentley, E. Maddison, P. Ranner, J. Bissell, C. Caiado, P. Bhatanacharoen, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, Botha M., Akinbami F., Hollow M., Michie R., Huntley B., Curtis S., Garnett P. Aug 2014

Social Tipping Points And Earth Systems Dynamics, R.A. Bentley, E. Maddison, P. Ranner, J. Bissell, C. Caiado, P. Bhatanacharoen, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, Botha M., Akinbami F., Hollow M., Michie R., Huntley B., Curtis S., Garnett P.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recently, Early Warning Signals (EWS) have been developed to predict tipping points in Earth Systems. This discussion highlights the potential to apply EWS to human social and economic systems, which may also undergo similar critical transitions. Social tipping points are particularly difficult to predict, however, and the current formulation of EWS, based on a physical system analogy, may be insufficient. As an alternative set of EWS for social systems, we join with other authors encouraging a focus on heterogeneity, connectivity through social networks and individual thresholds to change.


Of Accessibility And Applicability: How Heat-Related Primes Affect Belief In “Global Warming” And “Climate Change”, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh Jun 2014

Of Accessibility And Applicability: How Heat-Related Primes Affect Belief In “Global Warming” And “Climate Change”, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business


Research shows that exposure to heat-related cues (e.g., warm temperatures, “fry” and “boil”) influences the belief that global warming exists and poses a serious threat to humans. Drawing on social-cognitive principles of concept accessibility and applicability, we hypothesized that these effects may depend on how the issue is framed, given that heat-related concepts are more compatible with “global warming” than “climate change.” Exploring this possibility, we asked campus passersby about their belief in global warming or climate change shortly after a real-life unseasonably cold weather event (i.e., snowfall during Spring; Study 1). A controlled Web experiment …


Media Frames And Cognitive Accessibility: What Do "Global Warming" And "Climate Change" Evoke Partisan Minds?, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh May 2014

Media Frames And Cognitive Accessibility: What Do "Global Warming" And "Climate Change" Evoke Partisan Minds?, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Decades of research demonstrate that how the public thinks about a given issue is affected by how it is framed by the media. Typically, studies of framing vary how an issue is portrayed (often, by altering the text of written communication) and compare subsequent beliefs, attitudes, or preferences—taking a framing effect as evidence that a media frame (or frame in communication) instantiated a particular audience frame (or frame in thought). Less work, however, has attempted to measure frames in thought directly, which may illuminate cognitive mechanisms that underlie framing effects. In this vein, we describe a Web experiment (n = …


Break The Negative Spiral Over The Haze, David Chan Jun 2013

Break The Negative Spiral Over The Haze, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.


Strategic Exploitation Of A Common Resource Under Environmental Risk, Eric Fesselmeyer, Marc Santugini Jan 2013

Strategic Exploitation Of A Common Resource Under Environmental Risk, Eric Fesselmeyer, Marc Santugini

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We study the effect of environmental risk on the extraction of a common resource. Using a dynamic and non-cooperative game in which an environmental event impacts the renewability and the quality of the resource, we show that the anticipation of such an event has an ambiguous effect on extraction and the tragedy of the commons. A risk of a reduction in the renewability induces the agents to extract less today while a risk of a deterioration in the quality has the opposite effect. Moreover, when environmental risk induces conservation, the tragedy of the commons is worsened. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. …


Strategic Exploitation Of A Common Resource Under Environmental Risk, Eric Fesselmeyer, Marc Santugini Jan 2013

Strategic Exploitation Of A Common Resource Under Environmental Risk, Eric Fesselmeyer, Marc Santugini

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We study the effect of environmental risk on the extraction of a common resource. Using a dynamic and non-cooperative game in which an environmental event impacts the renewability and the quality of the resource, we show that the anticipation of such an event has an ambiguous effect on extraction and the tragedy of the commons. A risk of a reduction in the renewability induces the agents to extract less today while a risk of a deterioration in the quality has the opposite effect. Moreover, when environmental risk induces conservation, the tragedy of the commons is worsened. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. …